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
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.
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
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.
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@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.
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(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.