17 replies to this topic

[Evolutionary]

Newest post today at The boy who knew too much..

[caston]

What if humans actually originated from out of space? When you consider that we have almost nothing in common with the "so called early humans" and the "missing link" is still missing.

The first civilizations had incredible knowledge and maps of the solar system long before many of the outer planets were recently "discovered" using telescopes and mathematics.

Perhaps the first aristocracies were the extraterrestrials and they genetically engineered the first humans to be their slaves. e.g. the peasantry serving the aristocracy. While in most cases they did the best to maintain their blood lines they often had illegitimate children amongst the peasantry.

So the first civilizations actually had incredibly advanced technology. They may have mastered things like re-generative and electro-medicine. Perhaps they used silver iodes to kill bacteria. Alchemy may have had even earlier roots in technologies that could modify elements at the nuclear level.

Edited by caston, 27 October 2008 - 10:43 AM.

[solbanger]

Newest post today at The boy who knew too much..

Read the blog post. It reads like nerd fantasy drivel. "We need spaceships to colonize Mars! Contact your congressman!" Nothing is really thought out. This guy is just spouting unrealistic cloud dreams from a 50’s sci-fi serial. Then at the end he claims that his whole family is overflowing with genius! I mean if the goal is to have a cache of humans somewhere out of danger, who should these people be? What nationality? And most importantly are we going to bast billions of dollars into space just so a few space tourists can explore their martian arrogance. Lastly, what is the point of having a human cache to retake Earth just in case it's blown away? Just to feel good knowing that if we all die some human, somewhere will be alive, doing things to keep humanity's name unchecked in some alien's endangered species book?

It sure makes me feel better. We better ask congress for a billion bucks to send Jessica Simpson and Steve Hawkings to Mars. They’ll make offspring us Earthlings can be proud of. We need to make sure our reserve children that we’ll never meet are beautiful just to make me feel secure in humanity before the Earth explodes.

And how large would this remote colony have to be? Bigger than a mall I assume. I remember getting bored at the mall after an hour. I mean imagine only having one café to go to for the rest of your life, the others only existing in a virtual reality machine of Earth *sigh* Also what if the Earth was pounded by a meteor? I hope the colonists have plenty of brooms and trash bags to clean up the mess.

This author Valentine presumes that the human colonists would be just like us after we’re ashes. He assumes that they’ll continue on a scientific and serene exploration like a classroom full of Jean Luc Picards. What if I told you that the latest generation of colonists became Islamic extremists? Most of you would be like “Earth, you can’t blow up yet, you’ll leave these psychos with a free planet and drag mankind’s name into the ground. Nooooo!!” And at the last second you find out that one of the colonists became a Unitarian, majoring in biological science and committed to saving the rainforest, and as volcanic steam melts your body you die with a smile of hope for the future.

Edited by solbanger, 27 October 2008 - 11:48 AM.

[AVeryPatientMan]

Solbanger is being very, very mischievous and very, very misleading in his (her?) characterization of the blog post in question. He pretends to quote the post by saying: "We need spaceships to colonize Mars! Contact your congressman!" NOWHERE DOES THE WRITER SAY THIS IN THE BLOG POST. In implicitly attributing words to the writer that he never wrote, Solbanger is in breach of the moral rights of the author.

That is just the beginning of the problems with Solbanger's comment. Solbanger is clearly completely ignorant of the detailed research that has been done by NASA and independent space scientists on the science and technology of space colonization. The technology is there...all that is needed is the funding and the political will. In fact, the technology has been available for a long time, in all key respects.

I think it is a pity that Solbanger's immature nonsense has been given a voice on this forum - for his absolute drivel of a comment - and it is drivel - will prevent people from reading the original blog post and actually considering the views expressed.

Far from "not being thought out" - the views expressed on the blog are based on four decades of space research - of which Solbanger is completely unaware. Not only that, but leading thinkers in recent decades including Stephen Hawking (which Solbanger can't spell being illiterate (because he can't read the blog post accurately, either)), J. Richard Gott III and Paul Davies have each endorsed space colonization as vital to the long-term security of Mankind. But, heh, no doubt Solbanger thinks he (she?) is smarter than them, too.

Why not actually read the post. If you find that you need more information, why not read the four decades of space research on the matter that exists. This is an area that has been well thought out - and, incidentally, consists of existing technology - unlike almost everything else on this website.

[caston]

Yes, well don't just sit here an debate it on a online forum. Get out there and start building your own rocketship!

[John_Ventureville]

I have a fond memory of driving around with friends during the Extropy 5 Conference in 2001 and discussing with these prominent Extrope thinkers about how hopefully within 3-4 decades nanotechnology will be advanced enough that transhumanists will be able to band together to "open source" a spacecraft to get off-world. At that point we could build a space colony and develop our own government, free of outside intervention. hee Call me old fashioned but I would want to stay American, or at least a protectorate.

John

[johnf]

This guy's blog comments are fairly shallow (and seemingly totally ignorant of space colonies and much of the thought by others in the past past far-thinking on space (K Ehricke, D.Cole, G.O'Neill, F.Dyson, all the way back to Tsiolkovsky)
He's no where wrong, though.
Far better than arguing for a Lunar &/or Mars colony, better to think of inhabiting the solar system, expanding the economy and species and all Gaian life across the solar system.
Getting into space has been called the biggest step a species has taken since the evolution of the lung. That's the way it needs to be expressed. Bucky Fuller said that it's useful to model the Earth as a car's battery and the solar system as the car's engine: We've been going about our business by running the battery down, not thinking to start the engine to keep the battery up forever and actually go someplace!

And if it doesn't start at or at least include staying aware of the political situation regarding space (bassackwards, severely in need of having citizens with knowledge banging on their office doors), then where? Building rockets and blowing yourself up in the back yard? (Investing in SpaceX? Not entirely a bad idea...)

[AVeryPatientMan]

JohnF: on this guy's blog you wrote: "I agree with and praise everything you said"...behind his back, you call him shallow. Now, I call that one great way to drum up support for space. All you have to do to ensure we never get those colonies is to repeat that procedure a few million times.

By the way, if you read his blog, he makes it clear that he knows of O'Neill habitats etc...but doesn't think they will get support in the present circumstances.

[johnf]

JohnF: on this guy's blog you wrote: "I agree with and praise everything you said"...behind his back, you call him shallow. Now, I call that one great way to drum up support for space. All you have to do to ensure we never get those colonies is to repeat that procedure a few million times.

I should have thought of a better way to say it here... I said "his comments were shallow", as in barely scratching the surface of a really big topic -with plenty of better ways to stress his point that it's an imperative for us to expand.

Nothing on his blog itself said he knew of O'Neill's work, and it's very common to see people who've put a lot of thought into this topic who don't.
He stressed Mars & Luna repeatedly, while only obliquely mentioning the phrase "space colonies" or "colonization". As I wrote to him, better to think of inhabiting the solar system as a whole, rather than just talking about Luna & Mars. Writing to a larger reader base, it's both more accurate and just plain bigger, to speak instead of becoming a space-faring species.

[niner]

Hmm. CalebZ and AVeryPatientMan are both coming from addresses in Singapore. Probably just a coincidence. We get a lot of visitors from Singapore.

[Evolutionary]

Just to clarify-My guess is that AVeryPatientMan's probably the author of the blog. I'm just a reader of the blog. I'm guessing after I linked it there the author traced it to this forum and signed up to defend his blog post.

Edited by CalebZ, 26 April 2009 - 04:05 AM.

[valkyrie_ice]

What if humans actually originated from out of space? When you consider that we have almost nothing in common with the "so called early humans" and the "missing link" is still missing.

The first civilizations had incredible knowledge and maps of the solar system long before many of the outer planets were recently "discovered" using telescopes and mathematics.

Perhaps the first aristocracies were the extraterrestrials and they genetically engineered the first humans to be their slaves. e.g. the peasantry serving the aristocracy. While in most cases they did the best to maintain their blood lines they often had illegitimate children amongst the peasantry.

So the first civilizations actually had incredibly advanced technology. They may have mastered things like re-generative and electro-medicine. Perhaps they used silver iodes to kill bacteria. Alchemy may have had even earlier roots in technologies that could modify elements at the nuclear level.

*giggle* Yay! a fellow wonderer of whether our current knowledge of our past is woefully incomplete.

I've come to wonder the same, Caston. Too many anomalies in our past, too many examples of much too sophisticated devices for the culture they are supposed to come from, anomalous findings of knowledge that existed BEFORE it was rediscovered. And of course the fact that we have thousands of legends of "culture bringers" from around the world.

However, I think that it was a colony, that failed because of some disaster, like a asteroid impact or something. I often wonder how much of the inactive parts of our DNA is possibly nanotech modifications that have been disabled due to lack of maintenance and cross breeding. Will we discover a gene that reactivates anti aging devices, or self repair mechanisms? Or is it truly all just viruses that got a free ride?

The clear rain erosion of the Sphinx is obvious to anyone who's studied any geology, meaning it has to be far older than first dynasty, and that the current beliefs HAVE to be wrong. And there's too much denialism running rampant in the halls of historical academics, especially Egyptologists. (I was kicked out of my egyptology course at a local college for pointing out the weathering on the Sphinx. The teacher thought I was too "disruptive" for asking questions he refused to answer.)

In the end, we're going to find out, it doesn't matter how badly historians want to close the book on history, our advancing technology will eventually force them to find new answers as better data becomes available. What will we find when the Pyramids can be explored by hordes of nanotech dustmites? Or when those mites can shift through the desert sands to bedrock? Or when we can explore the oceans as freely as we can dry land? There are still parts of our surface world unexplored by anything other than satellites. Who knows what we will find in the coming decades?

Maybe Plato will finally be proven correct about Atlantis, or maybe we can once and for all place his ghost to rest. Either way, it's going to be fun finding out.

[valkyrie_ice]

And now for On topicness! I think I agree with the idea that O'nell colonies will not receive much support at present. For two main reasons.

One: Humans like having horizons and the security of knowing that if they jump, they will come back down. Gravity is not something that most humans want to do without. I know O'nell colonies spin to produce gravity analogs, but if you've ever been on a gravitron ride and actually sat up, you can see that spin induced gravity is not quite the same thing. Even though the variation will be small, there is a strong possibility that the difference in spin rates between feet and head could induce problems. While this won't be a problem for some people, for others it will make O'nell colonies uninhabitable. Without further knowledge, we can't be certain how much this may affect if any. Regardless, most people think PLANETS when they think colonization. Call it a human foible if you will.

Two: The expense of colonizing Mars can be offset with the fact that some materials can be acquired LOCALLY. Not all building materials will need to be shipped up from Earth. This makes a martian colony potentially less expensive than an O'Nell cylinder. While it is uncertain that this will be the actual case is unknown, but in theory, (i.e. in simple political conception) cheaper is good.

Of course, all of this is based on current technological abilities. And with an Orion space cannon, the costs could be quite cheap, providing we could actually get the world to co-operate in making one. With advances in technology, all bets are off XD

[TheFountain]

(I was kicked out of my egyptology course at a local college for pointing out the weathering on the Sphinx. The teacher thought I was too "disruptive" for asking questions he refused to answer.)

This issue was raised in whitley striebers book titled 'the coming global superstorm' (upon which the film the day after tomorrow was based), in which it is suggested that the sphinx has been around for far longer than we think it has, and that the weathering of it was actually caused by a macroscopic storm that is now brewing up again in its current form, otherwise known as global warming. In an interview he suggested that Hurricane katrina was only a small sample of it. But he makes it clear that humanities impact on the atmosphere is definitely contributing to it. Point is it may have been this 'superstorm' which wiped out the colony. Just a thought.

EDIT: I think it would be very interesting if some technological invention from that time caused the 'superstorm' to develop. There have been evidence of attempts to tamper with the weather for ages. So maybe ancient people tampered with it too.

Edited by TheFountain, 27 April 2009 - 01:07 PM.

[johnf]

'valkyrie_ice' 26-Apr
And now for On topicness! I think I agree with the idea that O'nell colonies will not receive much support at present. For two main reasons.

One: Humans like having horizons and the security of knowing that if they jump, they will come back down. Gravity is not something that most humans want to do without. I know O'nell colonies spin to produce gravity analogs, but if you've ever been on a gravitron ride and actually sat up, you can see that spin induced gravity is not quite the same thing. Even though the variation will be small, there is a strong possibility that the difference in spin rates between feet and head could induce problems. While this won't be a problem for some people, for others it will make O'nell colonies uninhabitable. Without further knowledge, we can't be certain how much this may affect if any. Regardless, most people think PLANETS when they think colonization. Call it a human foible if you will.

The "baseline" designs they settled on were done so that the average person could adapt to the spin and coriolis forces with little/no problem. Many individuals can adapt to greater spin that these first generation dessigns they did, but they didn't want to design for only a few individuals, but for just about anybody.
The first generation design had a radius of 400 meters, so the distance between your head & feet isn't going to make too much difference... Anyway, this first generation isn't for tourists and everyday people. They don't move in until very much later, when the infrastructure in space allows the expense of building the really big & comfortable colonies.

The point about space colonies instead of planets -which everybody automatically thinks about- is that with artificial space colonies, we can design conservatively so that anybody can be comfortable there. We have zero experience with living in .38 G, only very little in .15G, so it was very much safer to design for no less than 1G.
Horizons are important? How about people who live their entire lives in a city, and never see a horizon for years at a time? or people who live raising sheep in a high mountain valley, and hence have a very different world view than you or I.

Two: The expense of colonizing Mars can be offset with the fact that some materials can be acquired LOCALLY. Not all building materials will need to be shipped up from Earth. This makes a martian colony potentially less expensive than an O'Nell cylinder.

Where did anybody get the idea that the O'Neill colonies would be built from materials lifted from Earth? (I know for a fact that Zubrin likes to talk as if this silly idea is the case) Only much less than 1% of a colony's mass is expected to be necessarily lifted.
For most of it, you must first initiate the space transportation infrastructure. Getting volatiles for fuels from NEAs, then getting metals for money from NEAs. Eventually, we have enough workers that need decent living conditions in Cis-Lunar space that it's in their best interests to build a colony. Only after there's economic clout among the spacers, that they get to build a decent home for workers (and maybe a high-priced tourist haven for the really rich).

Nobody's going to pay for building a "colony" on Mars, when there's nothing that's economically for trade, except maybe fossils and science exploration.

All the materials are local on Mars? All in one spot, handy for mining and refining in one spot -the same spot where we'd want to set up a base/colony? Not spread across an entire planetary surface with the surface area of all the land area of Earth.
For a space colony, the materials at present are spread across the ecliptic (free energy anywhere up there). Nothing of the sort will happen until it's needed, and by then, we'll have the knowledge to mine and move asteroids. Then suddenly, all the materials are in High Earth orbit in one spot convenient to expertise on the ground and workers in LEO (within the Van Allen belts, until a shielded colony habitat is built).

In any case, for being "on topic" we were talking about the survival of the species and all Gaian life, and one or two little planets aren't going to do that. We need to spread across space, from the Oort cloud and on to other stars, and "Earth-like" planets aren't in the cards, nor anything more "earth like" than Mars or Titan. With space colonies, the "habitable zone" for the average human of today is around any star (with light filtering), from the system's inner planets all the way into interstellar space.

[dumbdumb]

It is not profitable to colonize space, presently.
So either wait 100-200 years for it, or reorganize this world so that it doesn't run on profit. You'll find the former option much easier than the latter, so if you achieve immortality, go that route.

[valkyrie_ice]

'valkyrie_ice' 26-Apr
And now for On topicness! I think I agree with the idea that O'nell colonies will not receive much support at present. For two main reasons.

One: Humans like having horizons and the security of knowing that if they jump, they will come back down. Gravity is not something that most humans want to do without. I know O'nell colonies spin to produce gravity analogs, but if you've ever been on a gravitron ride and actually sat up, you can see that spin induced gravity is not quite the same thing. Even though the variation will be small, there is a strong possibility that the difference in spin rates between feet and head could induce problems. While this won't be a problem for some people, for others it will make O'nell colonies uninhabitable. Without further knowledge, we can't be certain how much this may affect if any. Regardless, most people think PLANETS when they think colonization. Call it a human foible if you will.

The "baseline" designs they settled on were done so that the average person could adapt to the spin and coriolis forces with little/no problem. Many individuals can adapt to greater spin that these first generation dessigns they did, but they didn't want to design for only a few individuals, but for just about anybody.
The first generation design had a radius of 400 meters, so the distance between your head & feet isn't going to make too much difference... Anyway, this first generation isn't for tourists and everyday people. They don't move in until very much later, when the infrastructure in space allows the expense of building the really big & comfortable colonies.

The point about space colonies instead of planets -which everybody automatically thinks about- is that with artificial space colonies, we can design conservatively so that anybody can be comfortable there. We have zero experience with living in .38 G, only very little in .15G, so it was very much safer to design for no less than 1G.
Horizons are important? How about people who live their entire lives in a city, and never see a horizon for years at a time? or people who live raising sheep in a high mountain valley, and hence have a very different world view than you or I.

Two: The expense of colonizing Mars can be offset with the fact that some materials can be acquired LOCALLY. Not all building materials will need to be shipped up from Earth. This makes a martian colony potentially less expensive than an O'Nell cylinder.

Where did anybody get the idea that the O'Neill colonies would be built from materials lifted from Earth? (I know for a fact that Zubrin likes to talk as if this silly idea is the case) Only much less than 1% of a colony's mass is expected to be necessarily lifted.
For most of it, you must first initiate the space transportation infrastructure. Getting volatiles for fuels from NEAs, then getting metals for money from NEAs. Eventually, we have enough workers that need decent living conditions in Cis-Lunar space that it's in their best interests to build a colony. Only after there's economic clout among the spacers, that they get to build a decent home for workers (and maybe a high-priced tourist haven for the really rich).

Nobody's going to pay for building a "colony" on Mars, when there's nothing that's economically for trade, except maybe fossils and science exploration.

All the materials are local on Mars? All in one spot, handy for mining and refining in one spot -the same spot where we'd want to set up a base/colony? Not spread across an entire planetary surface with the surface area of all the land area of Earth.
For a space colony, the materials at present are spread across the ecliptic (free energy anywhere up there). Nothing of the sort will happen until it's needed, and by then, we'll have the knowledge to mine and move asteroids. Then suddenly, all the materials are in High Earth orbit in one spot convenient to expertise on the ground and workers in LEO (within the Van Allen belts, until a shielded colony habitat is built).

In any case, for being "on topic" we were talking about the survival of the species and all Gaian life, and one or two little planets aren't going to do that. We need to spread across space, from the Oort cloud and on to other stars, and "Earth-like" planets aren't in the cards, nor anything more "earth like" than Mars or Titan. With space colonies, the "habitable zone" for the average human of today is around any star (with light filtering), from the system's inner planets all the way into interstellar space.

I can see you seem to feel quite strongly enough to attack me for giving a honest opinion. So, put bluntly, we can't even build a successful biosphere on earth using earth materials, yet you seem to feel we'll have no problems creating a completely synthetic environment using NEAs and CHON? Better to prove it can even be done first. Also, you should maybe do a bit of research into the current findings that most of the "dirty snowballs" are solid rock with very little CHON content. Metals might be easy enough to get from them, but biosphere materials will still be required to be shipped to orbit.

as for moving asteroids? By the time we can successfully even GET to them to mine them or move them, we will have progressed to the point where better options might have been found.

And a mars colony will also require significant imports from earth, but habitats can be manufactured by tunneling, thus a lot of the construction can be done quickly, and will not require the elaborate shielding that is needed to protect from radiation in space.

Note, I never argued that O'neill colonies could NOT be made, merely that under current conditions they were unlikely to be funded due to popular conceptions. You can get as mad as you want that your pet dream isn't a universal concern among the voting populace, but it isn't, and it won't be until a lot more immediate crises have been dealt with. Once the economy is back on track, the wars are over, and the world populace can focus on such extreme long range goals, it might become a possibility. Until then, you will see a lot more votes for Mars colony than O'Neill.

[Dmitri]

What if humans actually originated from out of space? When you consider that we have almost nothing in common with the "so called early humans" and the "missing link" is still missing.

The first civilizations had incredible knowledge and maps of the solar system long before many of the outer planets were recently "discovered" using telescopes and mathematics.

Perhaps the first aristocracies were the extraterrestrials and they genetically engineered the first humans to be their slaves. e.g. the peasantry serving the aristocracy. While in most cases they did the best to maintain their blood lines they often had illegitimate children amongst the peasantry.

So the first civilizations actually had incredibly advanced technology. They may have mastered things like re-generative and electro-medicine. Perhaps they used silver iodes to kill bacteria. Alchemy may have had even earlier roots in technologies that could modify elements at the nuclear level.

Where did you get the information that we share almost nothing with early ancestors? We share 94%+ of our DNA with Chimpanzees which branched of from us 7 millions years ago. Looking at the fossil record we can also see that as time passed the humanoids become more and more human like, and it's not surprising the missing link has not been found considering it's not very easy for a body to become fossilized. In fact a lot of the bones that have been found of early humanoids are not even complete.

Edited by Dmitri, 04 June 2009 - 06:31 PM.