Realistically, what do people plan to do on the Moon and Mars that requires a permanent, or long term human presence there?

Submitted ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩ by ⁨DarrinBrunner@lemmy.world⁩ to ⁨[deleted]⁩

https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/b29cc08b-629c-40fa-98ea-2b3658c7ed81.jpeg

Is it really necessary to send humans to those places just to get the knock-on benefits? Couldn’t we do those things directly, without going there?

It seems to me that, today, those who have the money to spend on these endeavors would only do so if there were perceived short-term benefits to themselves. That means they plan to exploit the resources, or increase their own power somehow.

I know the good engineers that make this happen are doing it for the challenge and in the pursuit of knowledge, and I know that’s why we poors support it, but that doesn’t “pay the bills.” What is the motivation behind the money? Why are they really doing this?

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bitteroldcoot@piefed.social ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
In the case of musk and his billionaire friends, they just want to escape the consequences of their actions and become above the law. Basically they want to be a king, with no laws restraining them.

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- half_built_pyramids@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  It’s also a good distraction, doubt they actually think people will live on the moon or Mars
  
  Someone else pointed out that you could set off every number that has ever existed and the earth would still be more hospitable than mars
  
  To repeat myself a little, it’s all a distraction from making things better here, like the bezoes quote about getting 10,000 Einsteins in the first by expanding in the solar system, and it’s like dude, you might have 100 Einsteins pissing in bottles in your warehouse right now but they can’t afford school or groceries or rent
  
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  - doughless@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    I read that as getting 10,000 Epsteins by expanding in the solar system …
    
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  - Soggy@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    Or in the words of Stephen Jay Gould,
    
    “I am, somehow, less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein’s brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops.”
    
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  - undefined@lemmy.hogru.ch ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    
    getting 10,000 Einsteins in the future by expanding in the solar system
    
    This is incredibly random but I’ve been wondering lately what might happen if we colonized a place where comparatively speaking time moves much faster than on Earth.
    
    In theory you could bring back years of advancement in a shorter timespan, but this is obviously just a pipe dream.
    
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  - NocturnalMorning@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    The Moon and Mars are not a distraction. It’s been a Nasa goal for a long time to go to Mars. Politics has stopped us from doing it for a very long time. We’re lucky we got to put probes around it and rovers on the ground.
    
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  - SaveTheTuaHawk@lemmy.ca ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    Moon days are 250F, but it’s a dry heat.
    
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  - MisterD@lemmy.ca ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    The rich don’t need to live there. The just need to get there ASAP. If they can’t live… oh well.
    
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- stoy@lemmy.zip ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  I just wished they got the fuck on with it and left earth already, so we can turn off their radio coms and start fixing things
  
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- nilloc@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  That already seems to be the case, I’m with the other commenters who think it’s a distraction and/or window dressing for their horrible actions here on earth.
  
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- Witchfire@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  They basically wish they could be Adrian Veidt
  
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bigfish@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
So I can’t speak to the actual motivation for the moon, but can for one reason for at-least-temporary human habitation there. Solar system exploration (and, inevitably resource extraction.

When you launch rockets from Earth, a vast majority of the fuel you start with is burnt off just getting to orbit, out of the deepest part of our gravity well. If you want to go anywhere else in our solar system, you’re severely limited to what’s left. The moon’s gravity is low enough that it could work as a refuelling station. Provided we find enough water there and set up solar hydrolysis stations there and build the infrastructure to get it up to orbiting ships. All that will take people to set up, and possibly to manage long term.

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- Dhs92@piefed.social ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  iirc it also has a lot of fusion fuel in the form of Helium-3
  
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- MBech@feddit.dk ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  Couldn’t we just have an orbiting refueling station though? Seems to me like it would be even more efficient.
  
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  - Flax_vert@feddit.uk ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    It may be possible to harvest fuel on the moon itself. Also the amount of work to keep that in orbit, etc, the moon may be more promising.
    
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  - hayvan@piefed.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    The perfect solution would be an orbital station with a space elevator. An 36’000 km elevator is kinda difficult to build and maintain safely though.
    
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- eurodyne@piefed.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  The problem is: is there any evidence for water on the moon?
  
  And even if there is something on the moon, from which fuel can be manufactured, you still have to get the fuel production components there (which includes launching those from Earth). And then anything you launched from the moon originally came from Earth, so now you’re launching it twice.
  
  And that’s the problem: anything that you wanna launch from the moon will have to, almost in its entirety, have to be launched from Earth originally before it can be launched from the moon. So what’s the point?
  
  It would be different if our moon were rich in resources and could be transformed into some sort of manufacturing base for all sorts of goods and fuels, etc., but it isn’t.
  
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  - NateNate60@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    The moon, uniquely, has no atmosphere and no magnetic field, meaning the solar wind may have deposited large quantities of Helium-3 in the lunar dust over millions or billions of years. Helium-3 is possibly a viable fuel for fusion energy production at an industrial scale. Current reactors fust Hydrogen-2 with Hydrogen-3. Hydrogen-2 is abundant but Hydrogen-3 is exceedingly rare. If I remember correctly, there are only on the order of 10 kilograms of it currently available on Earth. Helium-3 is possibly a good substitute for Hydrogen-3 in fusion reactions.
    
    Fusion reactions already produce net positive energy in laboratory settings, although it will be some time before this scientific net positive can be turned into an engineering net positive, and even more time still until it becomes an economic net positive.
    
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  - marcos@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    
    is there any evidence for water on the moon?
    
    Yes. We know there’s water there and how much accessible water is there.
    
    And it’s plenty for some exploratory uses, but not enough to make an economy extracting fuel from there. So yeah, that entire thing is bullshit, while the idea of using the water there in a way that doesn’t go away may or may not be.
    
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BananaTrifleViolin@piefed.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
I’d separate this into two different things - what is good for humanity and what is good for billionaires like Musk.

For humanity, venturing out into the solar system will advance science, and also help drive technological advancement which does have benefits for society as a whole. The space race in the 20th century did advance technology, and much of the modern technology we take for granted has routes in the space race.

But also humanity needs to move away from our current capitalistic system and that is very much driven by scarcity. The resource wealth in the solar system is mind bogglingly vast and if we can tap into even a portion of it, it could allow us to change how we as a species live. It would initially be driven by capitalism for sure, but when you have effectively infinite resources for a civilization, that changes everything we do.

Also for the long term survival of our species we need to be looking outwards. Earth is vulnerable - one asteroid strike and out species could be wiped out. Even if only a small number of people were to head out into the stars, it would help guarantee a long term future and resilience for our species.

I think one big mistake people make is that what happens on earth is a zero-sum game: i.e. for some to win, it must be at the cost of others. That is wrong and is a result of our terribly broken economic system. But we can both colonize the moon and mars AND fix the problems on Earth. And it may do good for our species to look up to the stars and have a bigger shared goal than just existing on this rock and acquiring wealth.

In terms of why the moon & mars. The moon is essential as a staging post for future expansion, as it’s very expensive resource and energy wise to launch from Earths gravity well, but much cheaper to build at the moon and launce from there without the added step & complexity in design for launching off Earths surface. Mars meanwhile is the most viable candidate at present for a self sustaining colony long term (with a couple of moons of Jupiter and Saturn other options, and possibly venus as a long stretch).

Meanwhile, Musk is a deranged billionaire idiot. He is nothing more than a investor gambler; other people are doing the hard work making things happen while he is a public face of various companies. He really is peripheral to this, even if he does push the topic into the public consciousness. Don’t conflate the idea of expanding into the solar system with that idiot. The idea precedes him and will run long beyond his life and any influence he has. He is just a narcissistic loud mouth with money.

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- Trainguyrom@reddthat.com ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  
  The idea precedes him and will run long beyond his life and any influence he has. He is just a narcissistic loud mouth with money.
  
  200 years from now the average school history book will have a single photo of a Falcon-9 booster landing on earth and a couple of sentencds doscroving it as the very first demonstration of reusable rocket boosters and that will be all he amounts to in the long run. Space nerds might know his name in the same way that railway nerds know of Robert Stephenson, Isambard Kingdom Brunel, Cornelius Vanderbilt, and other railroad barrons of the 19th century, but railway nerds also remember these railroad barons of the 19th century as the robber barons they were. Honestly, it’s not the worst fate that the relentless passage of time can give to a person
  
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Cethin@lemmy.zip ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
NASA spending has historically created more in return than is spent. It’s somewhat expensive (essentially a rounding error next to military spending though), but the science done gives a good return on investment. This isn’t just like on moon rocks or whatever, but developing technology that the missions need. Things like thermally reflective lightweight fabric, or a ton of other things. The science done on the Moon is worth a lot on its own, but it’s also not the only thing we’re getting out of it.

However, what are billionaires getting out of it? Hopefully it’s just the opportunity to profit from the contracts and not something more nefarious. We all know it is though eventually.

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- mirshafie@europe.pub ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  That’s just funding research with extra steps.
  
  Science on the aggregate gives excellent return on investment. Unfortunately politicians want an extravagant excuse for funding it, but it would be much more efficient not to do the gimmicks, just do the science and not allow public sentiment to dictate what’s viable.
  
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  - Cethin@lemmy.zip ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    I don’t think we need to gatekeep funding research. You shouldn’t have to do it with no goal in mind for it to be good. The fact of the matter is its funding research and making people excited to find research. That’s a huge win.
    
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TheStaffmaster@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
The moon has HUGE reserves of Helium 3. Earth has almost none and is quickly running out. This is due to the fact that much of those reserves come from the solar wind and Earth’s magnetic field deflects that.

It’s fairly easy to launch rockets from the lunar surface, and comparatively easy to launch things to the Moon vs. Directly from Earth to Deep space.

3a. The moon blocks much of the radio chatter from Earth (on it’s far side) meaning radio telemetry and astronomy have a MUCH easier time doing research

b. By using such methods in concert with Terrestrial installations/telescopes, it makes for a FINE “natural” interferometer for literal logarithmic fractions of the price over Conventional Lagrange point based systems.

The moon is ideal for biological “life boating” (google the “Svalbard Seed Bank” to get what I’m talking about)

Earth’s gravity can sometimes skew the results of VERY sensitive nuclear particle experiments. A particle collider on the moon might lead to exciting discoveries in quantum physics. Also such colliders require lots of liquid helium for cooling. (see point 1) The moon gets INCREDIBLY cold on it’s night side, which saves on energy costs to boot, and night on the moon lasts for 2 weeks.

The Lunar crusts’ composition is almost identical to Earth’s which means it probably has huge reserves of lithium, gold, platinum, titanium, and palladium. The fact that it gets seeded by meteorites frequently also increases these odds.
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- reddit_sux@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  To your point 5, one of the biggest problem in space is cooling heat producing systems. There are 3 ways of heat transfer:
  
  Conduction - through contact of heat conducting systems like metals.
  
  Convection - through movement of heat transfer fluids like water or air.
  
  Radiation - through infrared radiation.
  
  In space there is only radiative method available which is very inefficient. The moon getting cold on the dark side is due to it lacking atmosphere to hold the heat. One of the reason convection method of heat transfer not available.
  
  Particle collider uses liquid helium to keep superconducting magnets on. Also to cool the collider.
  
  Cooling would absolutely not work on moon. Low gravity may give different results of particle experiment and might be helpful.
  
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  - TheStaffmaster@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    I was referring to that being a supplemental benefit. LiHe cooling would still be the main method, just that having that extra radiative “boost” would help do so with increased efficiency/speed. (even if it’s a small boost)
    
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  - AA5B@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    
    In space there is only radiative method available
    
    But on the moon you’d also have conductive, and be able to connect directly to a massive heat sink
    
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- mojofrododojo@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  uhh. dude, that’s a source?
  
  the ESA link is in no way proof that there’s significant helium 3 reserves on the moon.
  
  “The Apollo programme’s own geologist, Harrison Schmidt, has repeatedly made the argument for Helium-3 mining, whilst Gerald Kulcinski at the University of Wisconsin-Madison is another leading proponent.” ---- this in no way asserts that there’s actually significant amounts of helium 3 recoverable from moon mining, it’s simply stating it’s worth looking into, worth exploring.
  
  we have no idea how much helium 3 has been deposited by solar wind onto the moon’s surface; it could be HUGE. it could be a tiny fraction of a fraction of a percentage. We won’t know until we go look.
  
  Please, when you post links that are supposed to buttress your argument, post something that actually supports what you’re proposing. your premise:
  
  The moon has HUGE reserves of Helium 3
  
  in no way is supported by that link.
  
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  - TheStaffmaster@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    If the ESA (AKA Actual Scientists) thinks it’s worth our time, and you are still not convinced then I literally don’t know what to tell you. Lunar regolith is lose, and lunar crust is generally porous. The moon lacks a magnetosphere and so absorbs the solar wind rather than deflecting it. The Solar wind is mostly charges particles but it’s also filled with Hydrogen fusion byproducts which is mostly HELIUM.
    
    Science is not 100% observable facts, but a good chunk of it is learning to INFER THINGS FROM AVAILABLE DATA SETS.
    
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- mojofrododojo@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  
  . The moon has HUGE reserves of Helium 3. Earth has almost none and is quickly running out. This is due to the fact that much of those reserves come from the solar wind and Earth’s magnetic field deflects that.
  
  start with speculation and work your way up. we assume it does, but this has not been proven. please, if I’m wrong, let me know.
  
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  - TheStaffmaster@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    Added a source :)
    
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- SaveTheTuaHawk@lemmy.ca ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  
  Earth has almost none and is quickly running out.
  
  Earth has 40 billion cubic metres, that we know of. We won’t run out if we don’t waste it on stupid shit like toy balloons.
  
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SkunkWorkz@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
There are resources on the moon. Like helium which the sources on Earth are slowly depleting because helium that gets released in to the air is basically gone, it floats up to the upper layers of the atmosphere and some atoms will eventually get knocked into space and leave Earth’s gravity. Also some scientific experiments require low gravity. Currently they are doing them on the ISS or in a reduced-gravity aircraft. In a moon base you can do a lot more science with more people.

Also some people that are researching lab grown organs think that in order to grow an entire organ that it has to be done in low gravity. So imagine in the future we could have a moon base that grows organs for thousands of people at a time.

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- IndustryStandard@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  But without all the helium the earth will fall down.
  
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  - janewaydidnothingwrong@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    Wake up, sheeple! The government is trying to bring down the moon!
    
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- 87Six@lemmy.zip ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  
  So imagine in the future we could have a moon base that grows organs for thousands of people at a time.
  
  Read: thousands of billionaires at a time
  
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- skibidi@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  If organs can’t grow in Earth gravity then what the fuck am I
  
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  - SkunkWorkz@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    You didn’t build your full grown adult organs cell by cell in a vat. Like if they ever able to make organs they are more like constructing them cell by cell then growing them. Growing them would be probably too slow anyway. Not everyone can wait 15 years for a new heart.
    
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  - 87Six@lemmy.zip ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    A fleshy fucking marvel, bitch
    
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  - elucubra@sopuli.xyz ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    An organ that can type?
    
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- SaveTheTuaHawk@lemmy.ca ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  
  helium which the sources on Earth are slowly depleting because helium that gets released in to the air is basically gone
  
  so we fill kids balloons with it.
  
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- personalhel@lemmy.zip ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  he extration does nor make sense. He-3 extraction might.
  
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j_elgato@leminal.space ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
There is enough material wealth in the asteroid belt to create a sustainable post-scarcity civilization. We could move out, and turn this little blue-green planet into a fucking nature preserve.

Settlements on multiple worlds within the solar system offer protection against risks that might otherwise end with the extinction of Homo Sapiens.

For the ultra rich - moving off world to escape the collapse of the biosphere is ridiculous.

Easier to “settle” the deserts of Utah of the Australian Outback than mars - plenty of O2 and no worries about ambient radiation, but a very similar environment…

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- reksas@sopuli.xyz ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  no biosphere < broken one, there is no escape
  
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jaykrown@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
The moon could be like an orbital gas station which is much easier to land and launch from compared to Earth (no atmosphere, less gravity). Building a buffer on the moon would make it considerably easier to ship mass to other planets. I don’t really see a way we build a Mars base without having succeeded on the Moon first.

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- skibidi@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  This just pushes the question out one ring. What do we need to do on other planets that we can’t do on Earth?
  
  The sad answer is there isn’t really anything. Go live on Mars and it will suck compared to Earth - no nature to enjoy, instrument limited variety of food, largely cut off from the rest of human culture and experience. After hundreds of years, it might be developed to look like suburban Ohio - you’ll have some iron mines and some Applebee’s and maybe enough people that the martian memes are fire … but you still won’t have a beach, or anything to see outside, or a blue sky.
  
  It will just be Earth, but worse.
  
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  - WoodScientist@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    
    It will just be Earth, but worse.
    
    If people had had your attitude, humanity would still be huddled in one tiny corner of Eastern Africa, never having advanced past hunter-gathering. “Why go to that new empty valley over the mountains? First you have to get over the mountains. Then once you get there, there’s nobody there. You’ll be all alone. It will be just like our current home, but worse.”
    
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  - Tinks@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    Because exploration is in the human DNA. We seek to push out further, see and learn about new places, and further our understanding. Your question is like asking “why did explorers sail ships across the Atlantic when they had a perfectly good continent already?” At first, the new world was just “Europe but worse”, or the various islands of the Pacific were just “Asia but worse” - humans have always felt the need to explore and see what’s around every corner.
    
    Sure, the Moon and Mars may be boring compared to all the sights on earth, but space exploration starts somewhere. Just like sailing the ocean, you start with learning how to build a boat that can cross a lake or river; you don’t start by building an ocean liner.
    
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- mursejoy@lemmy.zip ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  Exon Mobile on the moon. As long as they have some snacks I think it would do well!
  
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BigBenis@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
The idealistic answer: Science! Lots of things to learn by establishing humanity’s first extraterrestrial presence on our closest celestial neighbor.

The realistic answer: Capitalism. Lots of money to be made in mining the moon.

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- edgesmash@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  There really isn’t that much money to be made mining the moon, though. Not considering how much it would cost to get a mining operation there.
  
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  - Trainguyrom@reddthat.com ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    The startup costs would be immense, but the cost of getting that material home wouldn’t be as much as you might think given the lower gravity on the moon. The moon’s gravity is low enough you can basically shove all of that material into a rail gun fired at about the right orbit with earth, have it escape the moon’s gravity and get captured by the earths gravity (this sounds dangerous until you remember how much energy is needed to negate the gravity of both the moon and the earth, plus the Earth’s atmosphere. Besides, it works in Kerbal space program!) , then you just need enough delta-v on board for menouvers and to deorbit your freighters. Basically imagine throwing shipping crates of ores in the general direction of earth which get caught by the Earth’s gravity then orbit and drop down at a designated site, and that’s the promise of moon mining!
    
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Yuccagnocchiyaki@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
Epstein planet

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JustPlainDave@lemmy.zip ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
Staging area for interplanetary exploration. It takes a lot of energy to leave the earth, making the rest of the journey to Mars or Jupiter quite difficult. It doesn’t take nearly as much energy to launch from the moon though.

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- AppleTea@lemmy.zip ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  The practical universe ends where the solar wind meets the interstellar medium. Baring scifi plot contrivance extra-luminality, this is it for us.
  
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  - JustPlainDave@lemmy.zip ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    70 years ago people said we’d never go to the moon. 100 years ago people said we’d never fly across the Atlantic. 600 years ago people said we’d never circumnavigate the globe. 1,000 years ago we couldn’t travel to China. 10,000 years ago we’d never see past that far mountain.
    
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- SaveTheTuaHawk@lemmy.ca ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  No one will survive a trip to Jupiter. They would learn nothing a probe would not learn.
  
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  - TefikiMupu@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    The idea is to make and launch probes on the moon using lunar materials as much as possible. People would be staying on the moon and launching probes, not going out with them.
    
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BlackLaZoR@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
Realistically, building stuff. If you want to build large radiotelescooe or space observatory you can’t launch it in one piece.

Other use case would be to run refueling and launch station, given there’s a water ice on the moon, it makes possible to convert it into hydrogen + oxygen and refuel landing vehicles to launch them on a far missions

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- MrNesser@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  Cetain machining can be acehieved in low or no gravity as well much more easily than on earth.
  
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  - UltraBlack@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    Not sure if “certain machining” is good enough to warrant the insane transport costs
    
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qevlarr@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
Ask investors for more money

Next question

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HobbitFoot@thelemmy.club ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
Realistically, the Moon would likely carry a mix of science, mining, and power installations.

Science - You can set up a large telescope on the far side of the Moon which won’t have an atmosphere to compete with. There are some concepts which would use existing craters to keep the cost low.

Mining - It is possible for there to be rare earth minerals on the Moon. There is also Helium-3 in the regolith. A country may choose to have a colony on the Moon address terrestrial shortages.

Power - The Moon makes an excellent site to collect solar power. That power could possibly be beamed/reflected to Earth, used to refine high electrical demand materials, or be a site for compute.

As this gets built out, the Moon will likely become a manufacturing hub, especially for missions beyond the Earth-Moon gravity well due to lower launch costs.

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Arigion@feddit.org ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
Google: Tescreal, Freedom Citys, Peter Thiel, Sam Altman, Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos etc. Basically there are several projects where they try to do unregulated research. Main idea seems to be to “survive” the end of our civilisation by living in Space or in the deep sea, enhance themselves (eg neuralink) , create General Artificial intelligence etc. Thiels Palantir is thought as defense mechanism by surveilling everyone. It all sounds like a big conspiracy theory, unfortunately it is not. Musk being responsible for Dodge, deregulating the US Governement was exactly one of these things. It was never about saving money. This is all a big rabit hole and you will get in a very bad mood readinfg about it.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TESCREAL

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rumba@lemmy.zip ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
Right now we’re all kinda eggs in one basket. Earth is one good cataclysm from wiping out humanity.

But we’re not just going to sort out spreading to other planets without baby steps.

The ISS was the first step. We need a large enough permanent base to see whether agriculture and 100% recycling can work. They still need supplies from earth for now, but long term, can we make it work? how big does a settlement need to be?

cheaper access to space:

The moon is an interesting prospect. It’s significantly further up the gravity well. We might be able to launch small probes via a rail gun, then use ion engines. No atmosphere to fight.

Radio Astronomy:

Anything not aimed at earth could be super sensitive.

Fuel:

we might be able to farm oxygen and hydrogen from water/minerals. and make a depo.

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- AppleTea@lemmy.zip ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  The first step to keep eggs in multiple baskets is to start with the cataclysmic greenhouse effect in the first basket.
  
  Wanna colonize space? It’s a centuries long undertaking, and you should start from a stable foundation. Especially considering, any long term habitation is gonna be fostering an ecosystem from scratch, so you kinda really wanna model that on a stable ecosystem.
  
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  - rumba@lemmy.zip ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    Not concerned with escaping greenhouse by going to space, if we don’t sort that we’ll kill off the space fairing generations before they live. The two things are ultimately important for different reasons. Yeah, we need to stop fucking the world up, no getting off world won’t make that any better. What colonizing will help is medical (imperfect virus) cataclysm, super volcano eruption or foreign body hitting the earth.
    
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- stickly@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  The eggs in a basket argument is just unhealthy existential dread at a planetary scale. Keeping humanity alive by grasping at uninhabitable rocks and poor simulacrums of Earth is like keeping an octogenarian alive with more and more invasive treatments.
  
  The patient was born to walk in nature and enjoy food and sunsets; humanity evolved specifically to flourish on our blue marble with its delicate biosphere. Is it ethical to keep the patient alive with life support when they can’t walk or eat? Is it ethical to keep humanity alive in bubbles with pale imitations of earth on lifeless rocks?
  
  We of accept that all things end and be more honest about these discussions. Humanity is no longer in its optimistic youth. We’ve matured to the natural limits of our species (and beyond them in some aspects), ask what we can do with the finite time and resources we have and not just where we can grow next.
  
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  - rumba@lemmy.zip ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    
    The eggs in a basket argument is just unhealthy existential dread at a planetary scale. Keeping humanity alive by grasping at uninhabitable rocks and poor simulacrums of Earth is like keeping an octogenarian alive with more and more invasive treatments.
    
    Yeah because an asteroid could NEVER hit the earth and wipe is out.
    
    The patient was born to walk in nature and enjoy food and sunsets; humanity evolved specifically to flourish on our blue marble with its delicate biosphere. Is it ethical to keep the patient alive with life support when they can’t walk or eat? Is it ethical to keep humanity alive in bubbles with pale imitations of earth on lifeless rocks?
    
    Nobody was born to do anything. It’s what they could achieve in existing. If they go to the outer reached, they go to the outer reaches, you have no say in that. Your moral opinion will not matter.
    
    We should accept that all things end and be more honest about these discussions. Humanity is no longer in its optimistic youth. We’ve matured to the natural limits of our species (and beyond them in some aspects), ask what we can do with the finite time and resources we have and not just where we can grow next.
    
    You can accept them over in your corner, and stuff-you telling me to be more honest while you’re trying to control society and keep doomsaying.
    
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betanumerus@lemmy.ca ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
Mars talk is a red herring to attract bright young employees. Once they’re hired, they work on drenching the sky with low orbit satellites. The same with kids wanting to be peaceful astronauts ending up as fighter pilots killing people.

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melsaskca@lemmy.ca ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
The old “strip it of all resources and anything else of value” gambit will suffice for this and all others in the future.

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Blaster_M@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
Science doesn’t really happen if we continually ask “Why do this?” Science happens when we ask “Why not do this?”

If we want to be a galactic civilization, we must first learn to live on worlds otherwise uninhabitable. The engineering challenges we must overcome to make that happen will give us the knowledge and experience we need to make it possible to expand past our solar system. This is a very long term advancent, and what we do today is what our offspring will do with ease.

Other than political roadblocks, the final roadblock to galactic expansion is FTL travel. We have theories on how to make it possible, but we are limited to the engineering and knowledge of our time now. Far future generations will be the ones to discover if and how to make it possible, but they need the foundational knowledge and experience of how to live in space.

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- radiofreebc@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  Don’t worry. We’re making Earth pretty uninhabitable these days. We’ll get there without ever leaving the planet.
  
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  - Blaster_M@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    Unfortunately also true, and more likely than the Star Trek optimism answer.
    
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W3dd1e@lemmy.zip ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
Resources that are minimally available on Earth.

Example: The moon has Helium-3 and is close (in comparison to other celestial bodies).

Is it economically viable? Is it ethical? Ehhhhhhhh. I would say no, but Elon “Head Up His Own Ass” Musk would disagree.

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- GalacticRobot@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  Probably just as ethical as Europeans coming to North America and taking over native land and exploiting it’s resources for personal gain as the cost of the environment and the people already living there, but ethics gets tricky when you really think about it.
  
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  - EvilHankVenture@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    It’s much more ethical than that. There are no native beings living on the Moon, and no real environmental concerns. Mars is slightly more complicated because it is possible there was once life there, and perhaps some microbes survive somewhere, but that’s unlikely.
    
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WoodScientist@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
Long term, the reason to expand into space is to expand into space. The point of going to Mars is not to make money. The point is to find a way for people to live there.

Let go of your sci fi visions of the future. Space colonization does not look like humans getting on a rocket ship on Earth’s surface, blasting off between stars, and landing on a second Eden around another star, a world where you can take your helmet off, breathe the local air, eat the food, and drink the water. What we’ve learned from our exoplanet studies is that the cosmos has exercised infinite creativity in generating new Hells, worlds uninhabitable and lethal to us in ways we never even dreamed of.

Real space colonization is going to take a whole lot of engineering and building. Mars is actually quite habitable compared to the vast majority of world’s in the universe. If you have some basic self-replicating machines, making Mars habitable is quite doable. Cover as much of the surface as you want in vast greenhouses. Live under domes potentially spanning the entire world. Long term, Mars has great potential for human settlement.

As for why? Well I would say it’s a moral responsibility. We know if we stay on just one planet, just one star, then it’s only a matter of time before some natural or artificial disaster wipes us out, and possibly the rest of life along with it. Earth has the type of biosphere you probably have to scour multiples galaxies to find one of comparable complexity. That’s a jewel worth protecting.

We tend to be too hard on ourselves as as species, viewing ourselves as some sort of cancer on the world. At the same time, we are the only hope for life on this planet to survive past a certain point. We are the children of Gaia. It’s our duty and moral obligation to spread life as far and wide as possible. Life itself has intrinsic value. And it’s our job to spread it.

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- rekabis@lemmy.ca ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  Some exobiologists have also suggested that even if we settle habitable worlds with active biospheres, there is so much research needed to ensure biocompatibility that anyone settling there would be quarantined for the first century or two in order to suss out any long-term pathogen or other nasty. And that if one is found, those settlers would be SOL without an effective cure.
  
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  - WoodScientist@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    Truthfully I don’t think we should even consider settling any body with a complex biosphere. We’re going to have to search for a very long time before we find a biosphere anywhere near as complex as Earth’s. You probably have to scour entire galaxies before you find another world with covered in a biosphere as rich as Earth’s. These worlds will be so rare and so far away, that by the time we can reach them, if ever, we’ll have already become experts at living in space. Hell, by the time we even attempt interstellar colonization, the vast majority of the human population likely won’t even live on a planetary surface. By the time we reach a true Earth twin, humanity will have become experts at transforming the deadest of dead rocks into living worlds. (Or just forego the idea entirely and use planets only as sources of raw materials for space-based habitats.)
    
    I see no reason to ever colonize and exploit those rare Edens. Explore? Sure. Comb the organisms there for useful genetics and compounds? No problem. But actually settling en masse? Just leave them alone. We can afford to leave .00001% of planet’s untouched.
    
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foodandart@lemmy.zip ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
The ONE justifiable thing I could see is to set up a massive telescopic observatory on the far side of the moon.

Why the far side? Because the moon goes into eclipse many times a year and on those occasions when it’s a full lunar eclipse - at the far side, it is in the shadow of earth and is for a few minutes, the darkest place in the solar system we can have massive equipment arrays permanently set up to look into deepest space.

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- HubertManne@piefed.social ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  there no reason for that to be manned any more than space telescopes are. You just need data relays.
  
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  - SaveTheTuaHawk@lemmy.ca ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    There is no reason for any space exploration to the manned.
    
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mojofrododojo@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
lot of big ‘ifs’ involved: re: the moon specifically -

if we can find water, we can make fuel and oxygen, instead of lifting both out of earth’s gravity well. this could unlock a gigantic generation of probe exploration for much cheaper launch costs. and perhaps even human habitation, and later, human travel to mars etc.

mars - I don’t see any good reasons to rush humans to mars, it would be a stunt at best. the distances involved and the amount of resources they’d have to schlep are daunting with current technologies.

so maybe a reason to start robotic exploration of the moon, specifically lunar lava tubes for potential habitation and shaded craters where water ice might be recoverable.

none of it should take our priority off of stopping climate collapse tho. let’s keep the only space ship we’ve got habitable first.

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altphoto@lemmy.today ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
The same thing we do here I guess.

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crypt0cler1c@infosec.pub ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
Rocket fuel. The moon is like the local gas station you stop at to top off the tank and get snacks before you hit the open road.

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GreenKnight23@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
the colonies have a right to exist without OZ interference.

1000004649

UESA has no governance over the colonies and must respect their sovereign will for independence.

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Sam_Bass@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
same thing theyre doing here. exploit the resources til the planet is destroyed

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Worstdriver@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
Begin getting the species out of the solar system.

Yes, I know many of you think we should all die in a fire, but personally, I’m a fan of “The Last Question” by Isaac Asimov.

Anyway, wherever you happen to be on this flaming cannonball of a planet we call home, I hope you’re having an excellent day.

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forkDestroyer@infosec.pub ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
The promise of going there is enough to raise revenue. Whether or not we go there doesn’t matter to the corpos making the false promises. Musk said we’d be in Mars by now, right?

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Manjushri@piefed.social ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

“The Earth is just too small and fragile a basket for the human race to keep all its eggs in.” - Robert A. Heinlein

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