Earth's oceans on course for mass extinction
POSTED BY: Niki2
UPDATED: Monday, September 26, 2011 06:09
VIEWED: 3627
PAGE 4 of 6
It takes a hell of a lot more resources PER PERSON (the operative value) to maintain a person on a space station than on earth. As for the other planets, we haven't gotten there yet, and haven't figured out how.
Remember when teachers, public employees, Planned Parenthood, NPR and PBS crashed the stock market, wiped out half of our 401Ks, took trillions in taxpayer funded bailouts, spilled oil in the Gulf of Mexico, gave themselves billions in bonuses, and paid no taxes?
Yeah, me neither....
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That's not because the technology doesn't exist or that we couldn't, Kiki, it's because we haven't made the effort to create a truly self-contained space station yet. The International Space Station might eventually be upgraded to that point, but I doubt it, it has engineering flaws that makes it unsuitable for such a purpose. But it's a possible staging point for building a better one.
The Space Station as it is right now is like going away to science camp for a couple months, their focus is research and astronomy, not actual long term living quarters.
As for getting to other planets, I can only assume you mean people, because obviously man-made technology has reached other planets. Which means it's not impossible.
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"... because obviously man-made technology has reached other planets. Which means it's not impossible."
We've successfully landed two pieces of technology on Mars - not a habitable planet. Are there habitable planets out there? No one knows, but if they exist, they a far, far further away than Mars.
As for getting people to Mars the same way we do technology, I suppose getting people to other planets as corpses will, in its own small way, reduce earth's population.
I realize this is an irrational idée fixe of yours and my chances of bringing you to rationality are small. Just let me point out that support for your idea is fairly limited.
Remember when teachers, public employees, Planned Parenthood, NPR and PBS crashed the stock market, wiped out half of our 401Ks, took trillions in taxpayer funded bailouts, spilled oil in the Gulf of Mexico, gave themselves billions in bonuses, and paid no taxes?
Yeah, me neither....
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You need to reevaluate your estimation. It's been more than two.
Venus is UNinhabitable (temperature and sulfuric acid atmosphere). Mercury is UNinhabitable.
Mars is habitable, but you'd need plants and an enclosed structure. Mars has: an atmosphere. Almost earth-like temperatures between 80 F and -80 F. Water ice. Carbon-dioxide, meaning oxygen that could be available with the help of plants.
You might want to bring earth soil with you to establish your colony vegetation area, as the iron content in the Mars soil might be poisonous. But other than that, Mars is more habitable than the moon, and even more habitable than Earth orbit, but we have to start somewhere, so Earth orbit it will be.
I see the lobbing insults part of the conversation has begun.
EDIT: typos
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"Venus, nearly Earth's twin in size, has atmospheric pressure on the surface 90 times that of Earth. The temperature on the surface may be as high as 900 degrees Fahrenheit." (Steel softens around 900 F.)
"Generally Mercury's surface temperature fluctuates by 920 degrees Fahrenheit every day."
What Mars doesn't have besides gaseous oxygen, liquid water, gravity and a stored energy source, is a nice protective magnetic field which protects the atmosphere against being ablated away under the sun's particle stream, and protects living things from radiation, including cosmic rays.
If we could overcome all these hurdles and make these planets habitable, our efforts would be more efficient making the earth habitable.
This isn't the first time you've been through this 'discussion'. That makes it pretty easy to insult you, b/c these arguments have been brought up many, many times already and bounced off the rim every time.
Remember when teachers, public employees, Planned Parenthood, NPR and PBS crashed the stock market, wiped out half of our 401Ks, took trillions in taxpayer funded bailouts, spilled oil in the Gulf of Mexico, gave themselves billions in bonuses, and paid no taxes?
Yeah, me neither....
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Byte, if all of this is even possible, it's a long, long, LONG way off and would require a large amount of money and resources, and before any of that, the WILL to do it. If you really believe our society will be willing to put that kind of investment, in time to avoid over-population (which is already occurring) to the point of extinction, you truly HAVE forgotten the point of Firefly, and Star Trek, Star Wars, and all the others: They ARE fiction. I can't think of any other explanation, because if you look at reality, it simply ain't gonna happen, certainly not in time. Certainly, like anyone else, you have the right to dream, but it helps to keep one foot firmly in reality.
What is "possible" (if it even is) and what "will happen" are worlds apart.
Hippie Operative Nikovich Nikita Nicovna Talibani,
Contracted Agent of Veritas Oilspillus, code name “Nike”,
signing off 
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Um. Damn, typos. I meant to say Venus and Mercury are UNinhabitable. Though the "Sulfuric Acid atmosphere" thing should have given that completely away. Context.
But as for Mars and the cosmic bombardment, that also has a pretty simple solution. You go underground, rather than remain at the surface. The initial transport would have to be pretty heavy lead, so it'll stay there awhile and fold out in some manner into a kind of dome. But under the protection of that, you have some heavy machinery to drill down and carve out some underground caverns.
Also, this is getting at the joke I was making about getting too much sunlight, but again, that isn't a deal breaker (vitamin D supplement apples anyone?). And, maybe you missed it, but there IS water on Mars.
There really isn't anything that's a deal breaker with Mars.
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The hell it's a long way off. As I said, we've had the technology for going on thirty years now. The effort has stagnated for political reasons, NOT because it's impossible.
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HAVE forgotten the point of Firefly, and Star Trek, Star Wars, and all the others: They ARE fiction.
Niki, people don't write popular fiction stories because "Oh this could never happen!" They don't intentionally write unrealistic characters or situations. There's something called the willing suspension of disbelief that has to be in place for the audience to keep reading and watching, or else they'll throw their hands up and say, "okay, this is becoming just too stupid for me to continue."
Suffice to say, no, the point of Firefly is not that it's fiction. Perhaps you meant to say it's entertainment, which is getting closer to the reason it's made (writers turn creative fun hobbies into money!), but that's still not the point of sci-fi or fantasy.
The point of sci-fi and fantasy is to ask "what if" and construct plausible scenarios from that baseline question.
The reason Firefly is popular around here is because it constructs a very plausible scenario, with likeable characters and interaction and an intriguing setting.
And in the backstory of Firefly, maybe you missed the very brief mention made in the episode openers and in the episode Heart of Gold, but humans fled earth before it became uninhabitable. I say good for them, maybe that's something we should aim for before things get bad for us, and really bad for the rest of the planet? (conceding, of course, that things are somewhat bad for the rest of the planet currently, and maybe why we should be seriously considering this option)
I mean, just summarily dismissing the best option for everyone and everything (mother Earth) involved in this situation because it would take a little effort is something that frankly baffles me. To promote a solution that ignores human nature over one that works with it? If you ask me, ZPG is what's never going to happen, because people will do everything they can to get around it. ZPG works against a human instinct for genetic survival, which it appears even some of you ZPG supporters are subject to. It hasn't worked in China, and there's talks of repealing it. I just don't think it WORKS. The only way it could work is through world war or if you mass sterilize large portions of the population against their will - like me - but is THAT really where you want to go? I don't think any of you want to go there. I think you all want to believe humans will be honest and for the greater good agree to sacrifice their own reproductive potential. But I don't think they will. And that's not even getting into the potential for abuse and genetic bottlenecking, which leads me to wonder if some people will be allowed to reproduce and others won't be, and if THAT happens I can guarantee only the people who have money and power will be allowed.
Also, I proposed to Anthony a realistic scenario about how developers and investors might get in on the whole space thing, backed up by historical precedence. All it would really need is just the right spark.
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What is "possible" (if it even is) and what "will happen" are worlds apart.
Not at all. This is the beauty of science fiction.
In 1865, Jules Verne published what many consider to be the first or at least definitive sci-fi novel, From The Earth To The Moon. While Verne proposed a cannon instead of rocket fuel, he shared in common the idea of needing some manner of propulsion to reach escape velocity. A century and four years later, well, I don't think I need to tell you how that turned out. You probably SAW it, while I wasn't even born.
Space Stations have been envisioned since 1869. In my opinion, we're due.
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Envisioning is one thing; getting the will, the money, the resources, and all the other things necessary to make what you envision come true is entirely another.
I'm interested to find out:Quote:
Is that true? It's something I enjoy because it's well written, has great characters/actors, presents a vision I think is interesting and settings I find entertaining, makes me ponder questions, all the things good sci fi does for me. But "plausible"? Not for me; not even slightly. It posits a time so far in the future that I can't see it having any chance of happening, given our history and our current situation. I'd like to see how others feel. I KNOW Wulf sees it as plausible, someone who is so invested in movies and videos and TV obviously would. But how about the rest of us?
The reason Firefly is popular around here is because it constructs a very plausible scenario.
For me, it's called science FICTION for a reason. Yeah, some of it has come to pass, but earth was on the UPSWING at that time; I don't think we still are. Some of the negative things science fiction has come up with have come to pass as well. It's possible that, given time and the will, there are possibilities such as what you describe, tho' I do wonder about it on a large enough scale to sustain Earth's population, a GROWING population. But our forays into outer space are stagnating, if not going backwards, at this time in our history, and I see little possibility of them being revived economically...to believe we will get back to the economic footing we were on before is, for me, also fiction. This is a global crisis, it won't pass easily or quickly and I don't think things will be the same if/when it does, but our over-population is growing much more quickly.
We'll have to agree to disagree on this one. I wish I could believe what you envision were possible, but I do not. Or maybe I don't even wish I could; I'm not crazy about the idea of our species out there doing to other places what we've done to earth.
Hippie Operative Nikovich Nikita Nicovna Talibani,
Contracted Agent of Veritas Oilspillus, code name “Nike”,
signing off
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So you're human. Maybe you all need to forgive yourselves for the fact, and stop punishing yourselves. It's not like you had any choice in the matter.
I don't see us as any better or worse than the other forms of life on this world just trying to survive, though in the process we've done some damage. I just like to think that all those lives have value, no matter what they have or haven't done.
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