Petrarchive – Space

I think about how the future of warfare is weaponry in space directed towards Earth, to fire on enemy countries. Tungsten rods fired from space cannot be stopped or disarmed.
Though I don't deny it, I still find it a bit implausible that space is as big as it is.
I understand why flat-Earthers think the way they do.

All the time.

https://youtu.be/2a7clqqbHZI

I think about it quite often. Especially about how mind bogglingly vast it is. About how (realistically) getting even to Alpha Centauri alone would take us likely thousands of years and it'd take us building space ship that could last this long and survive the mission duration longer than the span of human civilization has been going on for, under extremely hostile condition. And that doesn't even touch upon getting humans there which seems flat out impossible. About how it is possible that this planet is in fact the only dot in the whole galaxy, if not universe, that just so happens to host any life on it, let alone intelligent (Well, sort of) life at this time.
It is really crazy, I think human being is not really equipped with the mind capable of grasping the sheer scale of a galaxy, let alone a universe.

Space is a bit like death. It ought to put things into perspective, and yet our trivial, local concerns remains paramount. Instead we have to mark out time to consciously think about its meaning, about the ephemerality and contingency of our own small selves. It's so much easier to just think of our planet as "it".

I've been watching "For All Mankind" while I get over an illness (and it's 100% slop for boomer dads). It's led me to the following conclusion.

The thing about space is that it demonstrates that we exist under a condition of extreme vulnerability to a middling level of technology. Even a pretty poor-to-middling technological-industrial base (like North Korea's) can produce sufficient tech to ruin life for everyone. And I'm not talking about nukes, I'm talking about rocketry. Nukes are the thing that gets the headlines for the DPRK, and the Kims are basically just running that as a protection racket. But more significantly, if the Kims or any autocrat wanted to pursue a "Samson Option" of their own, it would be pretty trivial to either (a) induce Kessler syndrome just with a couple payloads of ball bearings , or (b) start an ecological crisis by chucking a fairly small number of tungsten Rods into orbit and letting them drop down willy-nilly .

Special relativity is one of the things that makes me truly wonder about a higher power. The fact that the nearest possibly inhabitable planets are a few lightyears away makes them seem so far out of reach. Time dilation feels like some kind of 'hint' that we're meant to reach these other plants

The night sky sparks my imagination. Extraterrestrial life and their forms, vastness to justify sloth and hedonism, and how the (current) impossibility of traversal beyond the solar system makes it all seem fantastical.

Learning about how humans will (most likely) never thrive in the vacuum of space or almost any other environment besides Earth because of how our biology works is really sobering. Microgravity and space radiation really fuck astronauts up even during the average 6 months duration of stay on International Space Station. DNA damage, eyesight damage, neurodegeneration, bone density loss and general atrophy, dysregulation of immunity system, vastly elevated risks of cancer, cardiovuscular damage... All that occurring after mere months up there, still within Earth's magnetosphere... And that's without touching on psychological side of things, or how it is suspected that reproduction under these conditions is probably always going to end badly. All this leads to conclusion that limes of human activity is likely our atmosphere and that's that. We were made to thrive in the very specific range of biomes in this particular spot on the map of cosmos. It is terrifying, in a way, to have to face the possibility that these obstacles are simply insurmountable, and that against all fairy tales we fed ourselves our fates are tied to this planet.

>>7270
This is roughly where I'm at. Deep space colonization is for robots. Interstellar human colonization is as close to impossible as challenges can get, and it should only concern a strictly post-scarcity species. We should solve literally every problem under the sun before we go on. Colonization within the solar system should be treated purely a hedge against freaky existential risks and as such I think we need fewer than a handful of moonbases with overbuilt hyper-hardened arcology systems to make that happen. The people who live in space will depend so completely on the technological base (short-term) and genetic base (long-term) of the Earth that there will probably never be a free society of humans in space. Mars is almost certainly useless as-is. Unless we're ready to hardcore terraform it and we find a LOT of the appropriate types of asteroids etc, then we should just leave Mars alone.

>>7275
what is the appropriate type of asteroids? for water, ammonia, etc?

>>7276

Yeah.

>>7270
>>7275
You don't send fully grown adults to do interplanetary settlement. You send robots to do decades or centuries of preparation, then you send genetic material and grow the humans locally.

We can't wait until we solve Earth's problems to do it, either. That has not how it worked at any point in human history. We never have the whole species united, there is always an instinct to create divided social groups, and the only way to have a united one consisting of Earth is when it's pitched against something other than Earth.

>>7299

Read again. Interstellar colonization is for posthistory. Different than interplanetary. And I don't object to sending the robots.

>>7299
>We never have the whole species united
We did once https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montreal_Protocol

>>7301
I was treating interplanetary and interstellar as the same thing because it's all utterly impractical for the near future. By the time we have the technology to terraform and colonize Mars, it will probably be roughly as sensible to send a seed ship at relativistic speeds to a more earthlike planet in another system.

>>7305
Love the optimism but
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montreal_Protocol#Regional_detections_of_non-compliance

>>7306

Interstellar and interplanetary are completely different. In fact they're almost perfect for distinguishing grades of impossibility. Interstellar colonization, even on the limited scale of building a handful of arcologies on the moon, is impossible in the near term future. We would probably have to have several types of revolution on this planet in order to make such a plan happen. We would need substantial improvement in our technology and our understanding of ecology.

Interstellar seed ships are a higher grade of impossible. The amount of pure unknowns are too many to get into. Any discussion of interstellar colonization is strictly hopium.

>>7335
You're too focused on the technology and not the human. Mars colonization is a project of unprecedented international cooperation and good relations between the two planets once the ball is rolling even a little. You have to get along with the neighbor without interruption. Seed ships are merely a technological challenge in going fast. The engineering is difficult to us now but the social complexity of starting a new society far away from an existing one is so simple it would be accessible to even rogue elements of humanity.

Used to all the time when I was a kid but now basically never. It's mostly empty

I took a moment the other day to do some star gazing, and the number of satellites passing through the stars is super distracting. I hate the future. You can't even look at the stars without seeing something artificial.

Looking at this written down feels bad. Maybe I was unlucky timing wise, I'll give it another go in a few days.

>>7336

Sure bro. Bumping up against relativity is merely a technological problem. Thanks for the expert analysis.

>>7368
In going fast. As in, one specific physical property. Simple, not easy.