961
We're not going to terraform Mars, but we're doing a good job of venusforming Earth.
(fediscience.org)
this post was submitted on 15 Nov 2024
961 points (99.1% liked)
Showerthoughts
29707 readers
1470 users here now
A "Showerthought" is a simple term used to describe the thoughts that pop into your head while you're doing everyday things like taking a shower, driving, or just daydreaming. A showerthought should offer a unique perspective on an ordinary part of life.
Rules
- All posts must be showerthoughts
- The entire showerthought must be in the title
- Avoid politics
- NEW RULE as of 5 Nov 2024, trying it out
- Political posts often end up being circle jerks (not offering unique perspective) or enflaming (too much work for mods).
- Try c/politicaldiscussion, volunteer as a mod here, or start your own community.
- Posts must be original/unique
- Adhere to Lemmy's Code of Conduct-----
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Elon’s argument for why we need to spread to other planets holds true even if everything on Earth were going perfectly.
It’s not about getting everyone off Earth - it’s about creating a backup for humanity on other planets. This ensures that the only known flame of consciousness in the universe isn’t extinguished by a nuclear war, pandemic, supervolcano, or asteroid impact. It's about not having all your eggs in one basket.
This is not risk free. When you give people access to space and still have terrorism and wars, things can end badly quickly.
There's also a valid argument around where to best focus those resources now. We are nowhere near ready for space colonization on any scale, let alone sustainable ones.
A City on Mars by the Wienersmiths dives into some of these challenges if you are interested.
I think it would be a good idea to start colonizing space before "we have our shit figured out on earth", since you know, that will never actually happen. We will have wars on earth for all eternity, we should colonize and explore space anyway.
Honestly, I strongly believe that striving to make space habitats work is one of the things that will finally teach us what we need to know to live sustainably on earth. The thing is, an affordable space colony is one that recycles almost everything, one that works mostly as a closed loop, a sustainable bubble. So in other words, if you know how to survive in a space colony, you know how to live without destroying the earth. And extreme sustainability is really the natural goal with any large space colony. Unfortunately nobody is really trying to do that here on earth, the funding, the engineering, it just isn't happening. But if we start seriously attempting habitats in space, then people will be attempting that somewhere... And once we figure out how to do it, it can be reapplied to life on earth.
I used to think this way too, or hand wave away all the inconvenients as lessons to be learned, but there is a very valid argument to make that the best thing we can do as a species right now, is to focus inward here before we move out there. Wall before you run type thing. The book mentioned earlier covers a lot of these topics in detail and if you are interested I'd highly recommend as it reshaped my view of the current options. godpseed
Yeah, I've been meaning to read a City on Mars, it's near the top of my list. I have read some excerpts from it though, and from what I've seen, it is trying to tackle these questions from a realistic perspective, but it does also seem overly pessimistic at times.
Btw, your username is awesome.