On September 12 2023 21:39 Manit0u wrote: Would definitely be nice to find some other lifeforms but alas humans can't into space so those discoveries have little value for us for the forseeable future.
As soon as the energy problem is solved, I expect huge leaps in all kinds of technology. Imagine rockets/ starships with a fusionreactor on board. Then we only need to convert that energy into forward momentum in space somehow and it would open the possibilty of insane travelling speed
While that would solve a major issue you’re still going to find that a vessel containing humans will require:
A. Gradual acceleration: people cannot handle even 2-3G for a prolonged period of time, and they can’t really handle 0G for a prolonged period of time either (your eyes will fall apart after a few years) so you’re going to be limited in that sense.
B. Space is very dangerous for people in terms of radiation exposure. There are stories of astronauts who spent time on the ISS who when they returned had 3-6% of their white blood cells with substantial cell mutations (precursor to cancer). And the ISS gets the benefit of Earths magnetic field, it just doesn’t get the added benefit of atmosphere - a ship without either is going to expose its astronauts to a gigantic amount of radiation.
C. From what we have seen in Fusion research the adage “bigger is better” has been pretty consistent and that is going to run into massive problems given we want this thing in space.
D. Space is very big. Even with a ship moving at 10% of the speed of light (on avg. over the trip duration) it will take 40 years to get to the closest star. That means a ship that leaves with people who are 30 years old are not going to arrive at the star until they are 70.
A. When you have no gravity and no weight, does that even matter? Did not know that about 0 G. Can this solved by having a pressured space suit? Keeping your eyes where they belong ^^'
B. Most definitely does a long range space ship need some kind of protection against radiation. Very good point
C. I do kinda expect a long range spaceship to be gigantic with a crew 100+ people just for the people on board not becoming insane because of isolation issues. If this can be constructed on earth or in some kind of space port needs to be seen.
D. Absolutely. Don't have anything to add to that right now.
A. Yeah I just meant in terms of the propulsion system. It can’t be something that behaves even remotely like a chemical rocket as that sort of acceleration will not be tolerable for hours, let alone days. Our fusion propulsion needs to be able to output 1G of acceleration for what is essentially the entire duration of our trip.
Pressure suits are a definite no go. Not only are you asking very smart, very capable people to leave their families, friends, loved ones, oxygenated atmosphere and planet for a several decade long journey to a place that is likely a gravity well of hydrogen and helium surrounded by lifeless rock… You’re now asking them to do all of that while also having to wear hazmat suits at all times? So they also have to accept zero human intimacy or touch all while spending several decades in what could be best described as an iron maiden sans spikes and with a looking glass? I don’t think I can ever imagine that happening.
B. And remember you’re looking at ~10,000 kg/m^2 of atmosphere of protection here on Earth plus a gigantic magnetic field being spurred by (making this number up) several million-trillion kg of molten iron. You also have to consider that your shielding must still allow some sunlight to reach the astronauts to generate vitamin D.
C. I mean due to the simple nature of orbital mechanics you’re going to essentially have to make the thing in orbit as launching it all at once would require a ridiculously powerful engine that would be several times more powerful that you would likely need it to be - or a magical one.
I think we can both agree it’s very neat to think about, however I won’t deny that I’m extremely pessimistic that humanity will ever become a “star-fairing” species. A species that is “star-fairing” in terms of robotic exploration? I think that is an inevitability of human progress, assuming we don’t kill ourselves or our planet first. A species that is “star-fairing” in terms of human beings travelling to a single other star? Extremely unlikely outside of perhaps our very closest neighbours in the far, far future. And even then I don’t understand the “point” of it.
A. Good point, so maybe not space suits but increased cabin pressure. So as you rightly point out, that is one of the smaller problems that I have no doubt will be solved.
B. I don't think Vit D is a problem. You can supplement that artificially already. So basically your ship hull has to have a lead isolation layer or something like that with very few windows to keep radiation at a minimum. It's the only thing I can come up with right now. Maybe smarter people have smarter ideas
C. No not really. You can launch from earth without having the (big) engine on board but planetside actually. I'm thinking like magnetic levitation train just bigger, faster and with upward trajectory. You could also start the lauch horizontally and then curve upwards. Give the space ship engine at least a running start.
Yeah I'm not thinking we'll be living in space in the next 100 years. Just theorizing what are the next steps and what are the big problems that need solving. I mean if we can build Elon's habitable (for scientists. Not gen pop obviously) Mars station in my lifetime, that would be something already
A. Increased cabin pressure doesn’t do anything.
B. The problem is that a long journey will inevitably result in the ship being hit by high energy cosmic particles and being hit by radiation from solar storms etc…
C. That’s very wishful thinking. You’re talking about a jump in material science magnitude that’s greater than the jump from the wooden wheel to a modern jet engine.
You absolutely cannot start the launch horizontally. The pressure on the vehicle from the air is directly proportional to the density of the air and the square of the speed of the vehicle. I don’t want to start a math lesson but I promise you can rest assured that you would rip the vehicle apart by trying to launch it horizontally.
Yeah I don’t think we ever move past being a solar system fairing species. Not in 100 years, not in 10000 years. The physics of the problem are totally insurmountable at a certain point and the biology of human beings would need to be entirely resolved to the point of absolute immortality for human beings to ever meaningfully leave our solar system.
And yeah I’m not very confident in Elon’s ability to do that. I obviously hope I’m wrong, but I just don’t believe SpaceX is even remotely prepared to address the biological and chemistry issues that will occur by trying to live on Mars.
On September 21 2023 18:04 Silvanel wrote: The first step would be making a colony on Luna or Mars, then probably on one of the moons of Jupiter/Saturn/Neptun. Once we do that, we will know a lot more about survival in space and long travels and we can start thinking about interstellar jurney..
They are also where we would build the ships if we do generational ones. Unless we get an orbital elevator going the gravity well of Earth makes things very expensive.
Seed ships probably makes the most sense. Robot ship that builds a colony and then fertilizes frozen eggs once it is ready. Doesn't matter if it takes 50 years to build upon arrival.
Generation ships makes sense once you hit massive scales. Where you have spin gravity at the outer edges to make it decent for humans. With large algae pools to protect the humans from radiation. Thus you don't need to accelerate for any large fraction of the journey. You join the journey and your grand-kids are the colonizers.
I honestly think it would be easy to get volunteers, just offer food and housing for a clan near starvation currently. Or just ask for volunteers and you will get flooded by people willing to go on a one-way trip, easily in the hundreds of thousands. Just need to offer living conditions such as some private time, food, water and electronic entertainment guaranteed. Just promising a 10-20 hour work week would be very attractive.
Generation ships makes sense once you hit massive scales. Where you have spin gravity at the outer edges to make it decent for humans. With large algae pools to protect the humans from radiation. Thus you don't need to accelerate for any large fraction of the journey. You join the journey and your grand-kids are the colonizers.
I honestly think it would be easy to get volunteers, just offer food and housing for a clan near starvation currently. Or just ask for volunteers and you will get flooded by people willing to go on a one-way trip, easily in the hundreds of thousands. Just need to offer living conditions such as some private time, food, water and electronic entertainment guaranteed. Just promising a 10-20 hour work week would be very attractive.
I have to wonder how horrific it would have to be on Earth for people to willingly accept having their entire lives and the entire lives of their children and grandchildren spent inside a submarine moving through the almost infinite void. The idea that you could convince people to do that right now seems impossible to me. I know you’re suggesting impoverished people but do you really believe they would all agree to be locked into to a lifelong government experiment where they are entirely powerless the second it begins and have no ability to end the experiment even if the terms are not upheld?
I think when you get into what it would take to properly inform people of the risks and the actual nature of what it entails you wouldn’t find many healthy/stable people who would still be willing to sign up for it.
it is 100% clear humanity (as in the humans themselves) can never do real space travel (let alone intergalactical travel)
either it will be 100% (non biological) machines with which we can travel through the galaxies or if we somehow manage to do it including human entities the word human no longer would make any sense because in order to do this.. the human body would have to be augmented so much that calling it a human wouldnt make any sense at all anymore..
It might be possible one day to store human consciousness permanently, then send it to a habitable exoplanet of our choice and simply 3D print human bodies for the colonizers once the destination is reached. It's not as dangerous as interstellar travel near light speed and a much simpler solution to spread the "human virus" across the milky way and beyond.
Depends on how far advanced medical technology would be in terms compared to that of an artificial one. Imagine being in a damaged artificial one compared to a biological one. The biological one could easily be brought back, artificial perhaps not, at least not the same as before.
yeah I think we might not be that far away to store human consciousness permanently.. if things go extremely well on earth (no big wars, no metorite impacts, no insane pandemics) I reckon we might get there in 30-40 years.. maybe even sooner..
I doubt it Xeofreestyler..
As long as you can replicate anything biological good enough there is no reason I can think of.. like "having the real thing" is only an issue as long as u can discriminate the real thing from the artifical thing..
I assume if humanity survives there will be no way to tell the difference..
Man you guys are hopeful… It’s great to see, although I think you’re far too optimistic vis-a-via storing conscience (magic-phil) or fabricating human bodies that are then implanted with consciousness (thepungun).
I don’t see how body fabrication would ever work. We’re not able to synthetically fabricate even the most basic of living organisms even in the very best conditions here on Earth. We would literally need to recreate abiogenesis (I think impossible) and then engineer the entire package somehow (I almost know to be impossible). We’re still pretty far away from being able to conclusively know the 3-D structure of some proteins which are extremely critical to the basic functions of life.
Copying human consciousness doesn’t seem likely, although I suppose that it’s more of a philosophical question than a scientific one at some point. I think it’s hard to define when exactly a human even begins to be conscious and at which point they fail to be conscious - is a baby that left the womb 30 minutes ago conscious? how about someone who has been in a persistent vegetative state for over 15 years?
Even answering those questions I think another aspect becomes how much of consciousness stems from physical existence. Can you still be a ‘conscious human being’ if you lack the biology to create non-predictive amounts of certain chemicals in response to something such as pleasurable stimuli? If all of us can hear a compliment, or a song, or read a novel that provides us with some sense of ‘pleasure’ that will be entirely variable between every single individual whom has ever lived can you truly be conscious without it?
It’s hard to even say whether ‘human consciousness’ without biology is even ‘consciousness’ at all. I don’t believe that it would be, instead it would just be an approximation of human consciousness devoid of the innate, a priori bio-chemical existence of all humans.
I think you could probably manage (at some point not in my lifetime) to take a snapshot of the neural connections of a persons brain and then use computation to fairly accurately approximate what is happening electrically. I don’t think it’s possible to manage the entirely unique and unpredictable biochemical inputs that result in the entirely, fundamentally unique constant development of the natural human brain.
Last year, it was discovered K2-18b has a 'presence of carbon-bearing molecules including methane and carbon dioxide' - NASA revealed.
The discovery built on top of previous findings which suggested the planet could be a 'Hycean exoplanet' which is 'one which has the potential to possess a hydrogen-rich atmosphere and a water ocean-covered surface'.
"These initial Webb observations also provided a possible detection of a molecule called dimethyl sulfide (DMS)," NASA added.
But does this actually mean there's life on the planet?
Well, NASA explains: "The abundance of methane and carbon dioxide, and shortage of ammonia, support the hypothesis that there may be a water ocean underneath a hydrogen-rich atmosphere in K2-18 b.
"These initial Webb observations also provided a possible detection of a molecule called dimethyl sulfide (DMS). On Earth, this is only produced by life. The bulk of the DMS in Earth’s atmosphere is emitted from phytoplankton in marine environments."
However, NASA also notes the planet's large size could indicate it isn't habitable to life forms as the planet's 'interior likely contains a large mantle of high-pressure ice' or it's possible its ocean is 'too hot to be habitable or liquid'.
EPT
