Why Colonize Space?

"Rod Speed" wrote in message
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Giga" "Giga wrote:
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In sci.physics "Giga" "Giga" just(removetheseandaddmatthe
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In sci.physics "Giga" "Giga" just(removetheseandaddmatthe
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"Immortalista" wrote in message
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Today I was reading some opinions of people who believe that
there is no reason for humans to leave earth. Are all arguments
for moving into space and onto other bodies in space really that
weak and irrelevant?

To say on the one hand that there is no reason and on the other
'it is too
expensive' is a kind of a contradiction. This means that if it
was a lot
cheaper then it would be justified, and that means there must be
some reason
for doing it, and the persons putting forward such an argument
obviously
recognise that. So if it just a question of allocation of
resources, rather
than fundamental value of the enterprise, then fine, it should
recognised
as
a financial discussion, not really a philosophical one.

Depends on who you are talking about doing it and what you are
talking about doing.

Governments do lots of things for no other reason than enough
people think it is a "good idea" both directly and indirectly
through grants.

i.e, the voters and tax payers who are going to pay for it?

Yeah, through the elected representatives funding things like NASA.

Yep. I noticed Obama was talking pretty positively, during
campaigning at least, about his support for the space programme. I'm
sure this is because most of his employers feel the same way.


Commercial enterprise doesn't do anything that doesn't have a ROI.

Potential and hoped for ROI at least.

What's your point?

There is little in life that is a sure thing, but if your business
plan doesn't show a good ROI, the bean counters won't fund you.

I just meant that businiess is often involving quite high risk
especially if the potential is large.


The only government colonies have all been penal colonies.


America wasn't a penal colony.

I didn't say it was.

It was a British colony. So was India, Malaysia, Burma (now Myanmar),
Australia (partly a penal colony for some time), Hong Kong, Singapore,
America (as you say yourself not a penal colony), Canada, New
Zealand, South Africa etc etc etc.


The colonies in North America were not government colonies either.
They were funded by private enterprise.

They were funded by the crown initially,

Nope, just given a license by the crown.

I beleive the initial explorations were funded by the crown (Sir Walter
Raleigh) but again I really cannot be bothered to check. And I think if it
was licensed by the crown then in a way it was still a government supported
enterprise in the way things worked at that time. There were British crown
warships and trioops involved as well.


but I suppose you could say that was not a government in the modern sense

No king paid for a damned thing.

Queen Elizabeth the first.


(I suggest you jump on this face saving lifeline).

No need, he's right.

It is estimated that 50,000 convicts were sent to North America by
Britain to serve as slaves or endentured labor.

So what was America a penal colony or not, you seem to be contradicting
yourself in this struggle to warp history.

Nope, just rubbing your nose in the fact that it was never
a penal colony, even tho some from jails were sent there.

He was arguing that it *was* a penal colony.


Australia had many government colonies, all penal colonies.

That is just plain wrong. Quite a few of them never were.

If you say so, howver I was not arguing that they were.


While there were some "free settlements" in Australia, the population
was predomanitly convicts and their decendants until the gold rushes
of the 1850's.

So this one example means all government colnies....I can't even be
bothered.

"David Johnston" wrote in message
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On Wed, 22 Jul 2009 13:53:31 +0100, "Giga" "Giga"
just(removetheseandaddmatthe wrote:


"Michael Stemper" wrote in message
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In article , "Giga"
"Giga"
just(removetheseandaddmatthe writes:
"Rod Speed" wrote in message
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Giga" "Giga wrote

To say on the one hand that there is no reason and on the other 'it
is
too expensive' is a kind of a contradiction.

Nope, the original is just a loose form of saying that there
is CURRENTLY no reason for humans to colonise space.

I presume by emphasising 'currently' you mean there might be in the
future,
or perhaps there will be. I suppose if you are already living the good
life
then why bother, but billions of people are not.

If we wanted to give billions of people the "good life", I'd like to
suggest that their lives could be improved immensely right here on
earth. Give them simple things like access to clean water, adequate
food supplies, sewage treatment, and antibiotics, and you've improved
their lives by orders of magnitude.

That to me would just the adequate life. Space could potentially give us
the
resources for everyone to have their own planet!

There are only eight within reach you know. Some of us would have to
settle for for Kuiper Belt Objects.

I am constantly amazed (yes AMAZED) at the confidence with which people
beleive that humanity can never bridge interstellar distances (let alone
intergalactic). I suppose they are the same type of people who beleived
early sailors would fall of the edge of the world, that travelling faster
than a fast horse would be impossible (on early trains), that nothing could
go faster than sound and stay intact, that astronauts would sink into 50
foot of dust if they dared set foot on the moon and now that there is no
financial or radiological way for men to reach Mars. History has proven such
people wrong every time and I'm sure that it is a wrong attitude now.



If you want to live someplace where survival is difficult, you could go
to someplace like Nunavut or the Sahel today. No selection to pass. They
have the additional advantage that you don't need special equipment in
order to breathe.

I wouldn't wan to go for the discomfort involved, as I'm sure you are
aware,
but to explore and discover.

Colonizations is what comes after explore and discover.

"Pat Flannery" wrote in message
news


Giga Giga wrote:
That to me would just the adequate life. Space could potentially give us
the resources for everyone to have their own planet!


Might be fairly small though, like that one The Little Prince got.
IIRC, good Mormons not only get their own planet, but get to be a god on
it.

Isn't it a whole Universe they get? Maybe they beleive in an infinity of
Universes in which case, why not (and in a sense they already have it!!???).

I'd settle for Mongo and wear a cool skullcap. :-)

Pat

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In sci.physics "Giga" "Giga" just(removetheseandaddmatthe
wrote:

I read some where recently that the most powerful super computer in the
world, which presumably fills a large building, has only the power of a
cricket (insect). The delay time to Mars is what 18 minutes x 2, each
time
your dumb stupid robot needs some guidance. The oprerator has to rely on
the
fairly pathetic information gathering systems of said robot to make
decisions as well. And what about the feel of a place, the atmosphere
(pure
materialists will dismiss this as just imagination but I would disagree).
In
summary you need people on the spot to properly explore it and preferably
a
settlement so they have the time to do it throughly. It would take
thousands
of people many years of dedicated work to survey Mars if adequately. It
would take 10,000s of robots centuries I would say, so maybe people would
be
cheaper in the long run?

The rather simple robots sent to Mars so far seem to have done much better
than OK in doing what they were supposed to do.

One can safely assume the next generation of robots sent will be much
improved.

For sure, but nothing compared to a human with billions of years of
evolution and 1000s of years of culture and tens of years of training (and a
billion super computers to call on plus whatever a robot could carry). The
trassmissions delays will of course be the same, at least for now.

"Rod Speed" wrote in message
...
Giga wrote
Rod Speed wrote
Giga" "Giga wrote
Rod Speed wrote
Giga" "Giga wrote
Immortalista wrote

Today I was reading some opinions of people who believe that
there is no reason for humans to leave earth. Are all arguments
for moving into space and onto other bodies in space really that
weak and irrelevant?

To say on the one hand that there is no reason and on the other 'it
is too expensive' is a kind of a contradiction.

Nope, the original is just a loose form of saying that there
is CURRENTLY no reason for humans to colonise space.

I presume by emphasising 'currently' you mean there might be in the
future,

Yes, I'm not silly enough to dismiss that possibility completely.

or perhaps there will be.

Nope.

I suppose if you are already living the good life then why bother,
but billions of people are not.

But its MUCH cheaper to improve their life significantly here on
earth than it is to give them a better life on mars or the moon etc.

This means that if it was a lot cheaper then it would be justified,

Not necessarily, most obviously if no one is interested in being
colonists etc.

I think many people would be interested, me for one,

I bet you wouldnt when it came to the crunch and your nose was
rubbed in the downsides.

Perhaps, its difficult to know in advance,

Not for me.

anyway there are many who would.

Nope, just a few loons at most.

You cannot call astronauts a 'few loons' these are some of the most highly
trained, intelligent and brave people around. Any of them would jump at the
chance I'm sure. When some kind of working settlement has been started by
such souls other lesser ones will follow, until maybe such as me may as
well.


but I doubt that I would be chosen.

Dunno, someone may want to get rid of you.

)

and that means there must be some reason for doing it, and the
persons putting forward such an argument obviously recognise that.

Utterly mangled all over again.

So you do not recognise any value human beings exploring space with
manned craft?

No, compare with the much cheaper and more viable alternative of
exploring space with unmanned craft.

That would be an extreme and difficult to justify position.

Wrong, as always. Completely trivial on cost alone in fact.

I read some where recently that the most powerful super computer in the
world, which presumably fills a large building,

Nope, they arent anything like that big.

Overview
IBM built the computer for the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) National
Nuclear Security Administration.[6][7] It is a hybrid design with 12,960 IBM
PowerXCell 8i[8] and 6,480 AMD Opteron dual-core processors[9] in specially
designed blade servers connected by Infiniband. The Roadrunner uses Red Hat
Enterprise Linux along with Fedora[10] as its operating systems and is
managed with xCAT distributed computing software. It also uses the Open MPI
Message Passing Interface implementation.[11]

Roadrunner occupies approximately 6,000 square feet (560 m2)[12] and became
operational in 2008.

That sounds like a large building to me!



has only the power of a cricket (insect).

Its much more powerful than any cricket in a hell of a lot of ways.

Obviously.


The delay time to Mars is what 18 minutes x 2, each time your dumb stupid
robot needs some guidance.

So you give it enough intelligence to work out the basics for itself
and just tell it general stuff like 'look for signs of water' etc.

We have done that already with those robots.

The oprerator has to rely on the fairly pathetic information
gathering systems of said robot to make decisions as well.

No reason why that cant be as good as is necessary.

And what about the feel of a place, the atmosphere

Maybe you underestimate the power of human senses.


We can recreate that here is we are silly enough to want to bother
with that much cheaper than sending some human there and back.

(pure materialists will dismiss this as just imagination but I would
disagree).

Your problem.

Or like that.


In summary you need people on the spot to properly explore it

No you dont.

and preferably a settlement so they have the time to do it throughly.

Pity about the much higher cost of doing it that way.

Yes.


It would take thousands of people many years of dedicated work to survey
Mars if adequately.

Taint worth the cost. We havent even bothered
to do that with the bottom of the ocean here.

It would take 10,000s of robots centuries I would say,

That number is straight from your arse. We can tell from the smell.

A guess, and a pretty wild one. Actually I got it from the arse of a bull.


Even you should have noticed that we do in fact use robots to
explore the bottom of the ocean and dont bother to send humans.

Except the humans that are sent, yes.


We dont even bother to send humans when exporing
enemy territory anymore, we just send a robot now.

Nope.


so maybe people would be cheaper in the long run?

Not a chance.




So if it just a question of allocation of resources,

It isnt.

rather than fundamental value of the enterprise, then fine, it should
recognised as a financial discussion, not really a philosophical one.

No one ever said it was a philosophical one.

: "Giga" "Giga" just(removetheseandaddmatthe
: I am constantly amazed (yes AMAZED) at the confidence with which
: people beleive that humanity can never bridge interstellar distances
: (let alone intergalactic). I suppose they are the same type of people
: who beleived early sailors would fall of the edge of the world, that
: travelling faster than a fast horse would be impossible (on early
: trains), that nothing could go faster than sound and stay intact, that
: astronauts would sink into 50 foot of dust if they dared set foot on
: the moon and now that there is no financial or radiological way for
: men to reach Mars. History has proven such people wrong every time
: and I'm sure that it is a wrong attitude now.

I am constantly amazed at the frequency with which the same
invalid analogies are dragged out, despite the myriad reasons
the cases aren't analogous.

Well actually, I suppose I'm not amazed.
It happens so often. But it is kind of depressing.


Wayne Throop http://sheol.org/throopw

In sci.physics "Giga" "Giga" just(removetheseandaddmatthe wrote:

wrote in message
...

Name all the government funded colonies during the colonial period and
don't restrict yourself to North America.

What percentage were penal colonies?

I really honestly cannot be b othered, why don't you, my guess less than
10%.

Nope.


--
Jim Pennino

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In sci.physics "Giga" "Giga" just(removetheseandaddmatthe wrote:

He was arguing that it *was* a penal colony.

No, I wasn't.

Learn how to read.


--
Jim Pennino

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In sci.physics "Giga" "Giga" just(removetheseandaddmatthe wrote:

wrote in message
...
In sci.physics "Giga" "Giga" just(removetheseandaddmatthe
wrote:

I read some where recently that the most powerful super computer in the
world, which presumably fills a large building, has only the power of a
cricket (insect). The delay time to Mars is what 18 minutes x 2, each
time
your dumb stupid robot needs some guidance. The oprerator has to rely on
the
fairly pathetic information gathering systems of said robot to make
decisions as well. And what about the feel of a place, the atmosphere
(pure
materialists will dismiss this as just imagination but I would disagree).
In
summary you need people on the spot to properly explore it and preferably
a
settlement so they have the time to do it throughly. It would take
thousands
of people many years of dedicated work to survey Mars if adequately. It
would take 10,000s of robots centuries I would say, so maybe people would
be
cheaper in the long run?

The rather simple robots sent to Mars so far seem to have done much better
than OK in doing what they were supposed to do.

One can safely assume the next generation of robots sent will be much
improved.

For sure, but nothing compared to a human with billions of years of
evolution and 1000s of years of culture and tens of years of training (and a
billion super computers to call on plus whatever a robot could carry). The
trassmissions delays will of course be the same, at least for now.

Yeah, the ability of humans to do laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy,
map the spectra of X-rays, perform X-ray diffraction/X-ray fluorescence
of minerals, do gas analysis, perform radiation assements, determine the
dynamic albedo of neutrons, monitor atmospheric pressure, humidity, wind
currents and direction, air and ground temperature and ultraviolet
radiation levels, is so much better than purpose built machines.

And humans are so good at carrying around the thousand pounds or so
of equipment it takes to do such things.

And humans don't require sleep, food, air, and can run 24/7/365 for a
couple of years.

People are not billions of years old and rovers operate autonomously; they
have no need for drivers.


--
Jim Pennino

Remove .spam.sux to reply.

On Thu, 23 Jul 2009 03:55:27 +0100, "Giga" "Giga"
just(removetheseandaddmatthe wrote:



That to me would just the adequate life. Space could potentially give us
the
resources for everyone to have their own planet!

There are only eight within reach you know. Some of us would have to
settle for for Kuiper Belt Objects.

I am constantly amazed (yes AMAZED) at the confidence with which people
beleive that humanity can never bridge interstellar distances (let alone
intergalactic). I suppose they are the same type of people who beleived
early sailors would fall of the edge of the world,

We never detected an edge of the world.

that nothing could
go faster than sound and stay intact,

We had already observed objects going faster than the speed of sound
and remaining intact. So nobody suggested that nothing could go
faster than sound and stay intact.

that astronauts would sink into 50
foot of dust if they dared set foot on the moon

We had never detected 50 feet of dust. (And really, given how much 50
feet of dust _weighs_ it was an impossible idea. It would pack.) We
have detected the problems with interstellar flight.

and now that there is no
financial or radiological way for men to reach Mars.

Nobody is saying there is no financial way for men to reach Mars
(Radiological? What the hell is that?). If we spend enough money on
it we can certainly reach Mars. And I suppose we can travel to other
stars if we're prepared to spend a few thousand years in transit.