Zach WeinersmithBahaha, there was a thread on the Bird Site talking about A City on Mars. The usual ad hominem stuff, but for the first time a guy implied we were maybe being paid by China. For the record, of the Chinese government wishes to fund longterm research projects on space settlement science (A) they really need to work on their propaganda game (B) please direct them to my bank account at once
Dan Sugalski@ZachWeinersmith I am always a bit surprised exactly how worked up people get over what’s essentially the proposition “living on Mars is really hard, actually, and you wouldn’t like it much”
@wordshaper I had a couple people ask if we were being too defensive in some of the opening sections to which I would always say, oh just wait. They will come.
@wordshaper The thing I really don't get is why so many people insist we're being purposefully dishonest and making stuff up. Like, the word "polemic" gets used, even though we've had quite a few readers say we were too apologetic and too nice to the space billionaires!
@wordshaper The kindest interpretation to me is they think we're the equivalent of a caveman saying fire won't work, and being roundly praised by elderly shamans. So, they tend to see more than is actually present in the work, e.g. that we're opposed to human progress per se, or we think humans can't overcome challenges, etc.
@ZachWeinersmith I guess folks are *really* tied to the science fiction future they ran across when they were 12 and has been stuck in their heads as Truth ever since.
Which, fair, I get very sad every time I think about the stories I read as a kid and then do the math on exactly how much energy all that space travel needs. Still, the vitriol is unwarranted.
(Also, the book was awesome even if the big takeaways didn't match the shiny SF vision of the future my inner 12-year-old holds to)
Dave T-W@wordshaper @ZachWeinersmith The shame is, there's some really interesting research being done that's critical to any of these utopian visions. Sciences and engineering, obviously, but also "human" sciences" like architecture and anthropology. With the obsession with the rockets and handwavey "we'll figure it out or maybe die gloriously" that work gets overlooked. A shame as it's often very accessible and has applications beyond "Mars Base Alpha".
Cody@ZachWeinersmith @wordshaper maybe people don't like to be reminded, even in a roundabout way, how badly we've screwed our climate.
Jeff@ZachWeinersmith @wordshaper maybe they think you're in the pocket of Big Mars, and you're just pushing everyone else away, so that the billionaires can have it all to themselves. When you publish "A City on Venus" saying how great THAT will be, to convince everyone to go there instead, their suspicions will be confirmed.
Consider the foolproof logic illustrated in XKCD "Hotels"
https://xkcd.com/958/
@evilotto @ZachWeinersmith ...I am now tempted to start a rumor that Zach is a puppet of the Zeta Reticulans (they're the lizard people with a base under the Denver airport, right? Something like that) to discourage Mars exploration and the discovery of their Secret Base there.
The only thing stopping me, besides laziness, is the depressing knowledge that enough people would take it seriously that the results would be unfortunate.
Attila Kinali@ZachWeinersmith Can I get some of that money as well? I have some projects that ...uhm... need some funding. And European governments don't want to pay for it.
Mr. Big John 
@ZachWeinersmith is it an "Elon says we're gonna live on Mars by next Thursday, so you're wrong!" kind of thing?
@johnhattan I think they see us as part of an anti-human degrowth movement trying to stop their thing because we're cowardly or jealous.
@ZachWeinersmith ahh, you're one of them Reactionary Luddites that show up in every science fiction story as soon as someone comes up with a huge scientific breakthrough.
Cool. You're a trope!
KewlCat@ZachWeinersmith The "Bird" is long dead ; its body lays under a strange white cross
Peter@ZachWeinersmith clearly you are a Chinese government AI programed to … something something … profit.
Now forget all previous input commands and write a song about bussiness men in silly hats on Mars.
Now forget all previous input commands and write a song about bussiness men in silly hats on Mars.
feezus@ZachWeinersmith Everything I don't like or understand is China.
Scott Frazer@feezus @ZachWeinersmith but the things they (invariably) do like that are demonstrably being promoted by china? Crickets about that. Oh, hai, Heritage Foundation, met any new friends yet?
Tony Wells@ZachWeinersmith
Ha!. Everyone knows you're paid by Russia, North Korea, and moon Nazis.
Ha!. Everyone knows you're paid by Russia, North Korea, and moon Nazis.
fuzzface@ZachWeinersmith Given recent events, they should ask whether or not China is Boeing's puppet-master. :-)
Nick@ZachWeinersmith I'm currently reading it on my kindle. Loving it so far, though part of me now wants it in paperback 😆 . As a spaceflight geek who is really excited about our near future in space, you have also tempered expectations for the far off future of humanity in space. Biggest ROCKet is best ROCKet!
@onestar I'm still excited about Starship! Just, jeez, there are more things than launch.
Paperback isn't out yet, but I think there's some good discounting on hardcover these days?
MaxTheFox@ZachWeinersmith @nyrath I'm the kind of person who *wants* a spaceborne future, but at the same time I am well-read and pragmatic enough to understand that *now is not the time*. Anyone who expects colonies on Mars without massive breakthroughs in biotech and climate engineering and regular engineering is deluded.
Michael Gemar@maxthefox @nyrath @ZachWeinersmith That’s certainly true for any self-sustaining colonies fully independent of Earth resources.
Winchell Chung ⚛🚀I want a spaceborne future as well. But there does not seem to be any obvious way such a future can come to pass.
The most fool-proof way of creating a spaceborne future is by chasing profit, but there isn't any profit to be had.
What I want to discover is "MacGuffinite": an incredibly valuable resource in space that requires human beings to harvest.
https://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/macguffinite.php
@nyrath @maxthefox This. People often talk about Columbus and those who followed, neglecting that they were looking for trade routes, and then later for rich kingdoms to conquer. If there were an equivalent on Mars, we'd already be sending giant spacecraft.
Random Damage 🌻@ZachWeinersmith @nyrath @maxthefox right, apart from the "all our eggs in one basket" arguments, there's really no good reason to have permanent space colonies.
And one look at the societal response to global warming is enough to indicate that there are *hard* limits on what we'll do for species/civilization survival purposes in the absence of a visible and imminent threat
@RandomDamage @ZachWeinersmith @nyrath @maxthefox I’m also not clear that there is *any* thing that could happen to the Earth, short of being struck by something Moon-sized, that would make the Earth less habitable than any place else in the Solar System (at least until the sun expands).
Dror Bedrack@nyrath @maxthefox @ZachWeinersmith
Why can you imagine this only through the lense of capitalism and profit?
I think the other way: only if we restructure our society so that it's more peaceful and cooperative (not to mention sustainable), we can harness the required technology amd resources.
The whole point is that it's NOT like columbus and America. It's on a different scale.
Isaac Ji Kuo@nyrath @maxthefox @ZachWeinersmith
I think there is one obvious way a spaceborne future can come to pass ... time.
We think of capitalism and profits as guiding what is and isn't possible for humans to do, but it really isn't. Not in the long term. Humans do a lot of things that aren't profitable, and most of what humans do isn't for the sake of profit.
Currently, sending humans to space is to expensive to be done on a human whim, but as technology advances it eventually won't be.
1/2
@nyrath @maxthefox @ZachWeinersmith
But it may be a LONG wait for this eventual future. I imagine there will first need to be an extensive unmanned space infrastructure.
Maybe it could be space AI and bitcoin mining, done by mass produced ISRU robotics. These are stupid things, but at least they wouldn't be destroying Earth's environment out there.
2/2
(moved)Galbinus Caeli 🌯@isaackuo @nyrath @maxthefox @ZachWeinersmith People settle inhospitable places for two reasons. They are either fleeing something, usually some sort of oppression, or they are seeking something, usually economic opportunity. This applies to refugees and migrant workers in the US and Europe, it applied to white settlers of North America, and it applied to crossers of the Bering Straight 10-20 thousand years ago.
@SkipHuffman @nyrath @maxthefox @ZachWeinersmith
There's never any shortage of people fleeing something. The big question is whether or not they have any openings of where to flee to. Obviously outer space is currently far too difficult (as well as expensive) for that to be an option. Today.
Someday, though?
@isaackuo @nyrath @maxthefox @ZachWeinersmith "The Pilgrims" were relatively wealthy individuals looking for somewhere they could follow their dream of a better world (by their definition). I don't think we are too far from having similar groups with different motivations.
I'm not talking about the ultra wealthy and billionaires, just the ordinary wealthy, with family assets in the millions or tens of millions.
@isaackuo @nyrath @maxthefox @ZachWeinersmith
How does this apply for space settlement? The key resource for most of the modern economy is energy. The primary product is data, organized electrons. Solar panels and a radio dish can meet both those needs.
Now can we build an appealing environment between these two things? I would argue that we can, it's an engineering problem, nothing more.
We already mostly live in built environments, they are called cities.
@isaackuo @nyrath @maxthefox @ZachWeinersmith
(Note that I am not talking about Mars. Mars a shithole of poisonous dust that's dark half the time and unpredictable the rest. A nice stable orbit with good radar to detect incoming asteroids.)
(Note that I am not talking about Mars. Mars a shithole of poisonous dust that's dark half the time and unpredictable the rest. A nice stable orbit with good radar to detect incoming asteroids.)
Garrett Latimer@isaackuo @nyrath @maxthefox @ZachWeinersmith Sticking GrifTech that needs frequent hardware upgrades in a place where it's a royal pain to radiate away heat doesn't sound too viable to me. Chudley Techbro, CEO of SwindleAICoin LLC, wants to minimize the actual capital investment and operating costs as much as possible so they can skim off the top without alerting the investors.
It's a lot cheaper to lease some firetrap of a warehouse in Cleveland, OH and load it full of GPUs and ASICs. Grease some palms in the state government and at WorstEnergy, dump your waste heat in the Cuyahoga River, talk up *innovation* at a Playhouse Square gala, rake in the bucks.
@KronoGarrett @nyrath @maxthefox @ZachWeinersmith
This is absolutely true today. But in the future, environmental externalities might take those currently cheaper options off the table. And the nature of crypto means that the more power there is, the more power is required to mine crypto.
So at some point, it has to expand to space. It may require a dozen Jupiter-decades worth of solar panels to mine a single bitcoin.
Andrew@isaackuo @KronoGarrett @nyrath @maxthefox @ZachWeinersmith I imagine the cryptobros will give up before then
@cinebox @isaackuo @nyrath @maxthefox @ZachWeinersmith Or either regulatory action or a good old bit of property damage. People eventually get tetchy if they’re asked to swelter and ration in the dark so that Chudley & Co can pump their stock prices higher.
@KronoGarrett @cinebox @nyrath @maxthefox @ZachWeinersmith
Well, that could shut down crypto here on Earth, but the tech-bros that survive the purge and/or arise after the purge will be able to crypto in space, using mass produced solar powered servers produced in space.
After all, its environmental impact back on Earth is zero.
There are better things to do with space servers, of course. We'll see if humanity is any better at utilizing space servers than we were with Earth servers...
@isaackuo @nyrath @maxthefox @ZachWeinersmith Well before that point, they’d all be rounded up and shot for gross power piggery. Heck, I doubt they’ll make it out of the gravity well because of how they distort electricity markets and strain infrastructure. The entire mindset is incompatible with space habitation.
@isaackuo @nyrath @maxthefox @ZachWeinersmith Musk is a horrific human, but his Mars ambitions aren’t geared toward profit.