Musks new space faring ‘roadster’ will include a terraforming machine - no worries peeps… He is building it NOW (available next year), so just preorder one before your dumb neighbour that knows nothing …
humans were not made to live in the harshness of space. Perhaps first create really fantastic robots, and let them do the hard work. Or even better: invest more in saving Earth.
The whole reason humans spread all across the globe is due to our ability to shape our environment to our needs.
Currently we are destroying a formerly perfect environment.
That formerly perfect environment could not support the current human population. And I’m not saying we’re doing a good job in terms of long term planning here. I’m merely pointing out that we have the ability to shape our environment, and that’s what allowed for our civilization to exist in the first place.
Great at shaping our own environment for the immediate stuff like shelter, temperature, food, logistics. But the more foundational long-term stuff, like an atmosphere or a local ecology? We don’t have a great track record.
To be fair, there was no evolutionary driver for that kind of large scale and long term planning. Humans evolved in an environment where it was important to prioritize immediate survival over long horizon goals. So, we’re notoriously bad at making any sacrifices in the short term for the benefit of the long term. And on top of it all, capitalism makes the whole problem a whole lot worse by rewarding the most destructive and wasteful behaviors.
Here I go watching Wanderers again…
I love that short clip.
Do we shape our environment to our needs?
We very obviously do, most of the human population lives in cities and wouldn’t make it through a single week in the wild.
I see, yes I see where you are coming from. On the other hand, I was thinking of climate change, plastic in the oceans, PFAS and so on. Human products that are damaging the ecosystem around us and that will mostly hit humanity in the back of its neck in the near future. So we DO shape our environment- but not to our ACTUAL needs.
Sure, we create a lot of problems in our shaping of the environment, and we tend to prioritize short term needs over long term ones.
That’s just a contradiction of our current mode of production. The negative effect is sure there, but it’s outweighed by the positive outcomes. This gigantic mechanized monolithic production system that turns the whole humanity into one big voracious machine is what eventually will allow us to fully decentralise the way we produce things while keeping the automation and thus avoid the destruction we’ve been causing for so long.
Think of this: you don’t need packaging if you consume in the same place where you produce. You can also much more easily recycle used materials if you don’t need them to travel for thousands miles and can instead use them right where you are. If you use local small and natural sources of energy instead of burning millions of tons of coal, you also don’t pollute the enviranment as much. All of this will only be possible thanks to this destructive phase we’re currently in. So ultimately we do cater our actual needs - somewhat contradictory at times, but still.
That’s a lot of wishful thinking to digest ;-). There’s zero evidence to support this vision , and human egoism (wars, revenue-focus, …) seem to be IMHO completely ignored. I witnessed these type of predictions in the 70s, 90s, 10s… they never materialized.
The ongoing automation is the evidence. The trend is to fully automate the whole production chain and that will lead to decentralisation, because centralisation only makes sense with human labour.
Human egoism isn’t bad in itself. The problem is that it conflicts with altruism. That’s where it gets destructive. But this can be solved. If everyone can automatically produce what they need themselves, there’s no more competing for who’s going to be the one providing and the one taking. The roles merge. Egoism and altruism become the same thing and neither stays destructive.
A century. How about we start small and see where it goes before we make plans for the centennial celebration? There’s water asteroids, potentially more water on the moon to be found …
I find it weird to dismiss the idea just because in a century the water may run out, assuming a population of 1 million (!!)
For sure, there could be lots of solutions here, and we really don’t know much about what’s under the surface either. I just thought it was interesting how much water you need for a million people to live.
insufficient to support a population of one million using ISS-level (98%) recycling for more than about one century.
What happens to that 2% on the ISS?
Would the difference in design necessarily benefit a moon base more than the ISS in this regard?
Because on the moon, you can build a dome. You’ll have access to ground. … not sure if any of that matters, but it seems like it might.
I imagine just evaporation and losses in the pipes with tiny amounts escaping that add up over time.
Maybe the terraforming plans I’ve heard exist for mars, where they redirect asteroids with the needed materials to crash into it over thousands of years, would work, although they would have to be real careful not to miss if it’s the Earth’s moon instead
It looks like it might be possible to synthesize water out of the regolith https://www.nasa.gov/missions/nasa-scientists-show-how-ingredients-for-water-could-be-made-on-surface-of-moon-a-chemical-factory/
Well that sounds like a much more practical solution
indeed
I KNEW IT!
