Worlds Abundant

[Nessus]

I only wanted to point out that intelligence doesn't have to mean tool using technospecies. And even if it does mean that, here we are on our own world interacting with a species that is physiologically very like ourselves and we can't even tell for sure it is intelligent or not, much less communicate with it and exchange information. It reminds me a lot of Fiasco. Imagine if a species just like dolphins but with arms and primitive tool use was found in a big Europan ocean biosphere. We would only know they were fairly intelligent because they have arms to do stuff with. They would otherwise be completely alien, we would have a hell of a time ever communicating and exchanging meaningful information with them.

I don't think it's entirely unreasonable to suggest that the invent of calculus and differential equations requires tool-making abilities.

[EyeKhan]

I don't think it's entirely unreasonable to suggest that the invent of calculus and differential equations requires tool-making abilities.

I agree. But human beings were very intelligent, very culturally complex and interesting and got along quite fine for millenia without ever having the first inkling of calculus.

[Wraith]

You know what I mean.

I do know what you mean, and fuck the conservationists.

The only difference in cost is the need to sling material or parts off the moon to the orbital location, and frankly the gravity well of the moon is shallow. Launch costs from there are miniscule.

This is still a more complex operation than simply sitting it on the moon, and by the time you're there, you've already paid pretty much all the costs associated with building on the moon. Why pay more? I think it makes more sense to do this after we start running out of easily developed lunar real-estate, several centuries after we start.

Again, slinging material or sub-assemblies from the moon would cost very little.

Still more than not doing that.

I read some on it a while back and iirc there's roughly two kinds of asteroids - those with large amounts of metal and those composed mostly of organics and frozen volatiles. Both would be extremely valuable towed in or, as you already suggested, mined in their original orbits and slung to whatever construction site because they're already outside Earth's gravity well.

That's the problem though; we have to pick. I'd rather go for the metal ones and get the rest of the stuff we need from Luna. Why are you so dead-set on orbital powerplants anyways?

[Nessus]

I agree. But human beings were very intelligent, very culturally complex and interesting and got along quite fine for millenia without ever having the first inkling of calculus.

Which was nice for them I guess (no, it really wasn't), but they weren't the type of creature the Hungarians were interested in.

[EyeKhan]

I do know what you mean, and fuck the conservationists.

This is still a more complex operation than simply sitting it on the moon, and by the time you're there, you've already paid pretty much all the costs associated with building on the moon. Why pay more? I think it makes more sense to do this after we start running out of easily developed lunar real-estate, several centuries after we start.

Still more than not doing that.

Point taken.

That's the problem though; we have to pick. I'd rather go for the metal ones and get the rest of the stuff we need from Luna. Why are you so dead-set on orbital powerplants anyways?

You don't have to pick, send robots to one or more of each. I suppose if you are right about the costs and the ease of construction on the Moon, then for my real purposes it doesn't matter. I'm interested in a reason to build a space industry, to create the stepping stone needed to get people off the planet and out doing things throughout the rest of the solar system.

[Illusions]

Unless purposely obfuscated, broadcasts from an intelligent source should be fairly distinctive and unmistakable, neatly ordered in contrast to the random background noise. Even if we can't understand the information being carried, I think our chances are very good for realizing that a given signal carries information.

>>>AUTOMATED RADIO MESSAGING RELAY SYSTEM ONLINE
>>>STORING INCOMING MESSAGE FOR RELAY
>>>ASSIGNING TIME CODE: 2261-08-14.13-32-45-22.SST
>>>PARSING RADIO MESSAGE
>>>INCOMING MESSAGE LACKS PROPER ROUTING HEADERS
>>>INCOMING MESSAGE LACKS PROPER IDENTIFICATION HEADERS
>>>INCOMING MESSAGE LACKS PROPER CORRECTION HEADERS
>>>ATTEMPTING TO USE ALTERNATIVE PARSING METHODS
>>>ALTERNATIVE PARSING METHODS FAILED
>>>POSSIBLE DAMAGE TO MESSAGE/IMPROPER MESSAGE SYNTAX
>>>ATTEMPTING TO RECONSTRUCT MESSAGE USING CORRECTION HEADERS
>>>ATTEMPT FAILED. REASON: MESSAGE LACKS CORRECTION HEADERS
>>>ATTEMPTING TO RECONSTRUCT MESSAGE USING AI ALGORITHMS
>>>ATTEMPT FAILED. REASON: MESSAGE DATA IS OF NON-STANDARD TYPE
>>>ATTEMPTING TO CONTACT SENDER
>>>ATTEMPT FAILED. REASON: MESSAGE LACKS PROPER ROUTING HEADERS
>>>DELETING STORED MESSAGE
>>>NO OTHER CURRENT MESSAGES TO RELAY
>>>ENTERING STAND-BY MODE

[Nessus]

>>>AUTOMATED RADIO MESSAGING RELAY SYSTEM ONLINE
>>>STORING INCOMING MESSAGE FOR RELAY
>>>ASSIGNING TIME CODE: 2261-08-14.13-32-45-22.SST
>>>PARSING RADIO MESSAGE
>>>INCOMING MESSAGE LACKS PROPER ROUTING HEADERS
>>>INCOMING MESSAGE LACKS PROPER IDENTIFICATION HEADERS
>>>INCOMING MESSAGE LACKS PROPER CORRECTION HEADERS
>>>ATTEMPTING TO USE ALTERNATIVE PARSING METHODS
>>>ALTERNATIVE PARSING METHODS FAILED
>>>POSSIBLE DAMAGE TO MESSAGE/IMPROPER MESSAGE SYNTAX
>>>ATTEMPTING TO RECONSTRUCT MESSAGE USING CORRECTION HEADERS
>>>ATTEMPT FAILED. REASON: MESSAGE LACKS CORRECTION HEADERS
>>>ATTEMPTING TO RECONSTRUCT MESSAGE USING AI ALGORITHMS
>>>ATTEMPT FAILED. REASON: MESSAGE DATA IS OF NON-STANDARD TYPE
>>>ATTEMPTING TO CONTACT SENDER
>>>ATTEMPT FAILED. REASON: MESSAGE LACKS PROPER ROUTING HEADERS
>>>DELETING STORED MESSAGE
>>>NO OTHER CURRENT MESSAGES TO RELAY
>>>ENTERING STAND-BY MODE

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[Wraith]

>>>AUTOMATED RADIO MESSAGING RELAY SYSTEM ONLINE
>>>STORING INCOMING MESSAGE FOR RELAY
>>>ASSIGNING TIME CODE: 2261-08-14.13-32-45-22.SST
>>>PARSING RADIO MESSAGE
>>>INCOMING MESSAGE LACKS PROPER ROUTING HEADERS
>>>INCOMING MESSAGE LACKS PROPER IDENTIFICATION HEADERS
>>>INCOMING MESSAGE LACKS PROPER CORRECTION HEADERS
>>>ATTEMPTING TO USE ALTERNATIVE PARSING METHODS
>>>ALTERNATIVE PARSING METHODS FAILED
>>>POSSIBLE DAMAGE TO MESSAGE/IMPROPER MESSAGE SYNTAX
>>>ATTEMPTING TO RECONSTRUCT MESSAGE USING CORRECTION HEADERS
>>>ATTEMPT FAILED. REASON: MESSAGE LACKS CORRECTION HEADERS
>>>ATTEMPTING TO RECONSTRUCT MESSAGE USING AI ALGORITHMS
>>>ATTEMPT FAILED. REASON: MESSAGE DATA IS OF NON-STANDARD TYPE
>>>ATTEMPTING TO CONTACT SENDER
>>>ATTEMPT FAILED. REASON: MESSAGE LACKS PROPER ROUTING HEADERS
>>>DELETING STORED MESSAGE
>>>NO OTHER CURRENT MESSAGES TO RELAY
>>>ENTERING STAND-BY MODE

Building an interstellar communication system and not putting in a bit of contingency code to account for non-human sources is just negligent.

[Wraith]

You don't have to pick, send robots to one or more of each.

We're having a hard enough time getting the money and will together for just one, doing two right off the bat just isn't realistic.

[EyeKhan]

I was listening to a talking head on NPR discuss this and he said that compressed digital data signals look like noise and those are the types of signals we will be esclusively communicating with amongst ourselves before long. So nobody's going to find us by evesdropping on our microwave/ radiowave noise pollution.

[EyeKhan]

We're having a hard enough time getting the money and will together for just one, doing two right off the bat just isn't realistic.

Doing one isn't realistic. Good luck. None of this is ever going to happen.

[Nessus]

I was listening to a talking head on NPR discuss this and he said that compressed digital data signals look like noise and those are the types of signals we will be esclusively communicating with amongst ourselves before long. So nobody's going to find us by evesdropping on our microwave/ radiowave noise pollution.

It's a radio source orbiting around the star; either it's a violent natural phenomenon, or something artificial. Either way, scientist says: Worth further investigation.

[Wraith]

Doing one isn't realistic. Good luck. None of this is ever going to happen.

I'm not yet quite so cynical. The government seems to be taking space elevators pretty seriously, at least. We'll get there eventually, it'll just take way longer than it should.

[EyeKhan]

I'm not yet quite so cynical. The government seems to be taking space elevators pretty seriously, at least. We'll get there eventually, it'll just take way longer than it should.

When I hear statements like your last, the question always pops into my mind: how log should it take? Its nothing on you or anyone. Should is so subjective on one hand and it at the same time gets used in difinitively constructed statements. It's a great word - gotta head over to 'A Word...'

Anyway, afaik our materials scientists can't yet make a material with the necessary strength in the necessary quantities to make a Space Elevator. Isn't that right? I know they were looking at carbon nano-tubes but the last I read on the topic was that they were still very hard to make and industrial quantities were still beyond our ability. That's maybe 5 years out of date though....

When I was growing up, fresh on the heals of the Apollo Program, I was expecting to be at least able to apply for a job on the Moon by this time in my life. Space Stations, Mars colonies, terraforming, you name it. Nothing like that happened and I know you know why. But I'll say it anyway - the only reason we even did Apollo was for the rocket tech research and to show the Soviets we can reliably put a nuke anywhere in their Evil Empire that we want. After that point was proven, there was no interest in continued serious spending on building a anything like a space industry. Jesus, it took 30 years just to build a stripped down bucket of bolts version of the grand space station the Shuttle Program was originally engineered to build and service. It took so long that the shuttles are retiring just in time to finish building it, to say nothing of servicing it going forward, and we're likely a decade away from anything we'll be able to use to even get to it without paying the Russians for a ride. What the fuck? I mean really. What. The. Fuck.

So now we have this Starve the Beast budget crisis - here at last in the wake, finally, of a sufficiently large economic recession - and even though taxes are very low, unnecessarily low, all anyone can talk about is to cut cut cut spending. (And yes I do believe this is exactly what some if not many of the Small Government conservatives who came up with Starve the Beast had in mind.) But nobody's addressing the reasons for health care costs rising - its not driven by longevity or sheer numbers of retirees - the only plan is to cut it and I guess let the market handle it. Ok. Well, like SS, Medicare can't be cut politically, they shouldn't be cut morally, so what's going to happen? I dunno, but space research, development, and implementation is just going to be lower and lower in priority as this insanity plays out.

A project like a space elelvator, or an asteroid mine, is not going to happen without a great big giant funding source that isn't preoccupied with a 3 year payoff window. If the government is stripped of the ability to back giant infrastructure projects, who or what is going to do it? Simple, nobody and nothing. Its like the US highway system - you think that would have been built without government dollars??? Of course not; and the economic joy it allowed would not have ensued either. Its the same with space - there is unprecedented economic joy out there just itching to be scratched, but the investment is too big and too long term for the private sector. And the Powers that shove government policy around won't let it happen either - they have other priorities and no vision.

Also, I don't believe I'm cynical. I believe reality has gotten so bad that it seems like cynicism when you confront it objectively. But that could be the cynicism talking. Or ignorance. I know enough to know I don't know half of what I think I know and have only a marginal understanding of the scope of what I don't even know I don't know.

[Wraith]

When I hear statements like your last, the question always pops into my mind: how log should it take? Its nothing on you or anyone. Should is so subjective on one hand and it at the same time gets used in difinitively constructed statements. It's a great word - gotta head over to 'A Word...'

We should be starting on this sort of stuff as soon as possible. The rewards are so incredibly vast, that any justification for delays looks silly in comparison. How can you really compete with practically infinite energy and wealth?

Anyway, afaik our materials scientists can't yet make a material with the necessary strength in the necessary quantities to make a Space Elevator. Isn't that right? I know they were looking at carbon nano-tubes but the last I read on the topic was that they were still very hard to make and industrial quantities were still beyond our ability. That's maybe 5 years out of date though....

No, you're right as far as I know. Nanotubes can't be grown long enough yet, though the amount and quantity we can make reliably is still constantly improving.

So now we have this Starve the Beast budget crisis - here at last in the wake, finally, of a sufficiently large economic recession - and even though taxes are very low, unnecessarily low, all anyone can talk about is to cut cut cut spending. (And yes I do believe this is exactly what some if not many of the Small Government conservatives who came up with Starve the Beast had in mind.) But nobody's addressing the reasons for health care costs rising - its not driven by longevity or sheer numbers of retirees - the only plan is to cut it and I guess let the market handle it. Ok. Well, like SS, Medicare can't be cut politically, they shouldn't be cut morally, so what's going to happen? I dunno, but space research, development, and implementation is just going to be lower and lower in priority as this insanity plays out.

The topics you're talking about are more complex than you make them seem, and I suspect you know that. Skipping this now to stay closer to the subject.

A project like a space elelvator, or an asteroid mine, is not going to happen without a great big giant funding source that isn't preoccupied with a 3 year payoff window. If the government is stripped of the ability to back giant infrastructure projects, who or what is going to do it? Simple, nobody and nothing. Its like the US highway system - you think that would have been built without government dollars??? Of course not; and the economic joy it allowed would not have ensued either. Its the same with space - there is unprecedented economic joy out there just itching to be scratched, but the investment is too big and too long term for the private sector. And the Powers that shove government policy around won't let it happen either - they have other priorities and no vision.

I think in many ways, the way our system works has given the government an even shorter time horizon than corporations do. There are many companies that invest with a 10-20 year time frame in mind, though I can't think of any instances where they went past that. The government seems completely bound up in the election cycle, and politicians never seem to care what happens when the next guy's around, only about things that'll happen when it's easy for them to take credit for them. Even when somebody does do something that with a longer time horizon than that, there's a good chance the next guy will get rid of it or mess with it for their own legacy & ego - they don't want the last guy getting credit for good things, they want credit for good things. The end result is that the government seems to have a really hard time doing anything that'll take longer than 4-6 years to work out.

And I completely agree with you that this is one of the things the government should be funding & doing. I think the market will take care of it eventually if we let it, but there's really no sense in waiting that long. We should go start grabbing that infinite wealth ASAP.

[EyeKhan]

Just a note, you basically just explained what happened to the Space Station and what's been happening at NASA for years. Each president has his own idea, each budget its own priorities, changing at least from administration to administration. While GW's ideas to go to Mars were very appealing to many, there was never anywhere near enough funding for it and while NASA went ahead and started studying, designing, awarding contracts, planning mothballs, etc, the project was doomed to failure. And sure enough, Obama completely overhauled it - actually basically said we should dump going back to the Moon and out to Mars and outsource getting to the Space Station. Ugh. Really though, all of this is because NASA takes so damn long to do anything, and that's because NASA never gets enough funding to do anything substantial in a sensible amount of time.

[Wraith]

Just a note, you basically just explained what happened to the Space Station and what's been happening at NASA for years. Each president has his own idea, each budget its own priorities, changing at least from administration to administration. While GW's ideas to go to Mars were very appealing to many, there was never anywhere near enough funding for it and while NASA went ahead and started studying, designing, awarding contracts, planning mothballs, etc, the project was doomed to failure. And sure enough, Obama completely overhauled it - actually basically said we should dump going back to the Moon and out to Mars and outsource getting to the Space Station. Ugh. Really though, all of this is because NASA takes so damn long to do anything, and that's because NASA never gets enough funding to do anything substantial in a sensible amount of time.

Oh, I know I did. And the next guy's probably going to change NASA's mission & long term goal again. Also agreed on NASA needing more funding.

[Illusions]

I do have a question though. What corporation would go through with ending their scarcity based business model by investing in a long term venture that would result in a post-scarcity world? Also what corporation would not try and hinder or stop any government or another corporation that attempted this?

[Wraith]

I do have a question though. What corporation would go through with ending their scarcity based business model by investing in a long term venture that would result in a post-scarcity world? Also what corporation would not try and hinder or stop any government or another corporation that attempted this?

It's the other mining corporations that get screwed by something like asteroid mining. The corporation that does it will be filthy rich. It doesn't kill scarcity completely, it just cripples it, and the company that does it gets to hold the bat.

[EyeKhan]

But his point still stands - the wealthy, powerful, established corporations of today, with billions invested in infrastructure and operations down here on Earth, which generate profits that just keep going up as resources become more scarce, have no incentive at all to upend their deeply vested interests. And because they have enormous political influence they can step on any attempts to upend those interests. Why do you think the US has never done anything serious about alternatives to fossil fuels or limiting greenhouse gasses despite a need that is obvious to anyone with half a brain? Just look at recent oil company profits.

[Wraith]

But his point still stands - the wealthy, powerful corporations of today, with billions invested in infrastructure and operations down here on Earth which generate profits that just keep going up as resources become more scarce have no incentive at all to upend their deeply vested interests. And because they have enormous political influence they can step on any attempts to upend those interests. Why do you think the US has never done anything serious about alternatives to fossil fuels or limiting greenhouse gasses? Look at recent oil company profits.

No it doesn't. You're implicitly assuming here that there's a conspiracy amongst all the corporations of the world to never change any buisness models? How do you explain the buisness models that keep changing and the companies that keep being driven under by tech progress? On your last point, what about the electric cars that are starting to come out, hybrids, and the auto industry's heavy investments into alternatives to fossil fuels? And since any such conspiracy depends entirely on nobody ever cheating, despite the advantage cheating brings, do you think that'll hold at all the moment someone is in a position to cheat?

Anyways, with something like we were just talking about, it's most likely to come from the aerospace industry, not the mining industry. There aren't even the contacts to arrange a conspiracy, and there's no incentive for the status quo there. Anything that happens off planet is also currently outside politcal control. What's going to stop any company from doing this is the staggering investment required and the long time until payback, not any conspiracy.

[EyeKhan]

No it doesn't. You're implicitly assuming here that there's a conspiracy amongst all the corporations of the world to never change any buisness models?

Certainly not all, but enough with enough power to keep already really difficult and/or expensive and clearly obviously threatening (for them) change from happening.

How do you explain the buisness models that keep changing and the companies that keep being driven under by tech progress?

Unforseeable change that can't be easily stepped on that is relatively cheap to research and implement (by comparison to, say, retooling the planetary civilization's energy infrastructure or building an asteroid mine).

On your last point, what about the electric cars that are starting to come out, hybrids, and the auto industry's heavy investments into alternatives to fossil fuels?

There's a lot in that question. The easy one first, the auto industries afaik, and I've VERY close to them, are not investing in alternative fuels. Hybrids and electrics are coming out because there's profit in them - the price of gas is high enough now that people will buy them. As it is now, there is no clear threat to the fossil fuel industry certainly by hybrids or by electrics - power has to come from somewhere, even if a meaningful portion of cars went electric, which by current and forseeable technology, they won't any time soon. Last, my conspiracy suspicions do make me wonder about the rising price of oil. It smacks of an arrangement among the Powers, a recognition that CO2 loading in the atmosphere must come to an end, and a win-win deal where artificially high oil prices pays off these companies for the loss of their established infrastructure coming in a pair of decades and the corresponding high fuel prices soften the public to the trials and costs of retooling some of our energy infrastructure. It fits really nice, explains a lot that I don't understand, but I admit its far-fetched describes an organized global Power structure that just doesn't seem possible without being exposed for what it is.

And since any such conspiracy depends entirely on nobody ever cheating, despite the advantage cheating brings, do you think that'll hold at all the moment someone is in a position to cheat?

The extreme costs and long lead times can keep cheaters under foot in projects of this scale.

Anyways, with something like we were just talking about, it's most likely to come from the aerospace industry, not the mining industry. There aren't even the contacts to arrange a conspiracy, and there's no incentive for the status quo there. Anything that happens off planet is also currently outside politcal control. What's going to stop any company from doing this is the staggering investment required and the long time until payback, not any conspiracy.

Too funny. I read and replied as I went along and here I see you already wrote what I was replying above. The fact that its aerospace, which isn't thinking about mining on their most adventerous days, might be the problem. All they think about is what people might pay them for tomorrow, like a sub-orbital vacation for billionairs, like a better weapon system, like a satellite lifter, like a taxi to the space station....

[Wraith]

Unforseeable change that can't be easily stepped on that is relatively cheap to research and implement (by comparison to, say, retooling the planetary civilization's energy infrastructure or building an asteroid mine). There's a lot in that question. The easy one first, the auto industries afaik, and I've VERY close to them, are not investing in alternative fuels. Hybrids and electrics are coming out because there's profit in them - the price of gas is high enough now that people will buy them. As it is now, there is no clear threat to the fossil fuel industry certainly by hybrids or by electrics - power has to come from somewhere, even if a meaningful portion of cars went electric, which by current and forseeable technology, they won't any time soon. Last, my conspiracy suspicions do make me wonder about the rising price of oil. It smacks of an arrangement among the Powers, a recognition that CO2 loading in the atmosphere must come to an end, and a win-win deal where artificially high oil prices pays off these companies for the loss of their established infrastructure coming in a pair of decades and the corresponding high fuel prices soften the public to the trials and costs of retooling some of our energy infrastructure. It fits really nice, explains a lot that I don't understand, but I admit its far-fetched describes an organized global Power structure that just doesn't seem possible without being exposed for what it is.

They dumped a bunch of money into hydrogen fuel cells in the past. That turns out to have been a waste, and now they're all starting to dump money into development of better batteries for electrics. The CEO of GM doesn't give a shit about the profit of Exxon, and the current mantra of any company that uses some sort of technology in their buisness model is "be agile or die". They know if they fall behind in the technology race, they'll be screwed, which was the initial motivation for trying to buy into dead-end technologies like hydrogen fuel cells. They switch because they expect profits, yes. If they don't switch, it's because they don't expect profits, not because they're conspiring with the oil companies to keep the status-quo going.

If you want a conspiracy around the price of oil, OPEC's the best you're going to get. They are openly a cartel, and control enough of the oil production that they do have significant control over the price, and they do like it high. The government isn't doing as much as I wish they would to raise gas prices further.

Too funny. I read and replied as I went along and here I see you already wrote what I was replying above. The fact that its aerospace, which isn't thinking about mining on their most adventerous days, might be the problem. All they think about is what people might pay them for tomorrow, like a sub-orbital vacation for billionairs, like a better weapon system, like a satellite lifter, like a taxi to the space station....

Yeah, they're not going to go straight for it. But once they're selling orbital vacations for average joes (or somewhat-above-average joes, anyways), they'll have paid a bunch of the costs already, lowering the additional investment required, and reducing the time until payback. Someone will eventually decide to go just a bit further and grab some asteroid moneys because they don't want to be the second person to start on that. But because they're not going straight for it, this could be a pretty long wait. Again why government work here would be good.

[EyeKhan]

They dumped a bunch of money into hydrogen fuel cells in the past. That turns out to have been a waste, and now they're all starting to dump money into development of better batteries for electrics. The CEO of GM doesn't give a shit about the profit of Exxon, and the current mantra of any company that uses some sort of technology in their buisness model is "be agile or die". They know if they fall behind in the technology race, they'll be screwed, which was the initial motivation for trying to buy into dead-end technologies like hydrogen fuel cells. They switch because they expect profits, yes. If they don't switch, it's because they don't expect profits, not because they're conspiring with the oil companies to keep the status-quo going.

I don't think of hydrogen fuel cells or battery tech as alternative fuels research. Those are just different ways the same old energy sources get into and power vehicles. Neither would cut CO2 usage and might even increase it, depending on how electricity is produced and how water is split. Real alternative energy has to come from the source where it is generated.

I don't believe for a second the auto-companies are in cahoots with the oil companies to jack up/ maintain prices of gas. That spike in gas prices in 2008 drove GM and Chrysler into bankruptcy and if the government hadn't helped those companies would be gone today. The Powers I was talking about are a mix of governmental officials, top CEOs of finance and energy executives, a nameless super rich shadow organization that combines elements of the Templars and the Masons, and the Galactic Republic Ambassador. There could be some entity represented that I don't have direct evidence for too.

But once they're selling orbital vacations for average joes (or somewhat-above-average joes, anyways), they'll have paid a bunch of the costs already, lowering the additional investment required, and reducing the time until payback. Someone will eventually decide to go just a bit further and grab some asteroid moneys because they don't want to be the second person to start on that. But because they're not going straight for it, this could be a pretty long wait. Again why government work here would be good.

That's a theory.... and maybe it will happen. But my expectation is that warming is going to be extraordinarily disastrous in the next 50 years or so and that's going to threaten the foundations of global civilization. When that happens there really won't be resources available for space exploration and settling. I hope I'm wrong, but it doesn't look like it.

[Wraith]

And besides, conservationists would have a cow over flattening the moon's surface.

Since the main discussion thread has pretty much fallen off, I wanted to come back to this. What do you think about subjects like lunar conservationism? Do you feel that's a strong enough reason to limit/stop lunar development? Any differences for something like Mars, where it's possible primitive life existed/exists?

Open question, naturally. Responses from not-EyeKhans also welcome.

[Illusions]

Do you feel that's a strong enough reason to limit/stop lunar development? Any differences for something like Mars, where it's possible primitive life existed/exists?

I think the Amazon is a prime example that the people motivated to strip an area/planet of its resources are not going to give a shit whats living there, as the Amazon provably has complex life, sentient beings living there, and a ton of data and knowledge we could gain from it, but that hasn't really stopped us. Think about it this way. Our forum exists a millenia from now, and we're debating whether or not its right to strip mine a planet with multicellular organisms but that hasn't evolved complex life yet. Is future Lewkowski more likely to:

A) Bash future liberals for caring more about some non-earth flat worm, than his son's ability to buy a holodeck for 500 credits instead of 10,000

or

B) Argue that we should endeavor to ensure that possible complex alien life is not inhibited in its evolution or destroyed by mans' continuing gluttony for resources

[Wraith]

I don't care what future lewkowski thinks, I want to know what you think. Should we eternally avoid something like terraforming mars, just take it off the table completely, in case we destroy some non-earth flatworm fossils? I think the answer's fairly easy when there's complex life currently around someplace, but what about extremely primitive life, or just fossils?

[EyeKhan]

Since the main discussion thread has pretty much fallen off, I wanted to come back to this. What do you think about subjects like lunar conservationism? Do you feel that's a strong enough reason to limit/stop lunar development? Any differences for something like Mars, where it's possible primitive life existed/exists?

Open question, naturally. Responses from not-EyeKhans also welcome.

If the world is dead, then do what you want with it. In the case of the Moon, it might be nice to preserve some of the bigger craters because they look nice, but overall I think paving it flat is fine. As for Mars, we need to look it over thoroughly for native life and if there is none, then extract whatever you want. We should be careful to not mess it up too much because we will want to terraform at some point. And there are some neat places to preserve there as well, like Olympus and maybe some of the big canyon and some craters.

[EyeKhan]

I don't care what future lewkowski thinks, I want to know what you think. Should we eternally avoid something like terraforming mars, just take it off the table completely, in case we destroy some non-earth flatworm fossils? I think the answer's fairly easy when there's complex life currently around someplace, but what about extremely primitive life, or just fossils?

If just fossils, we study it all thoroughly and then proceed as above. If there is actual life, I'm not sure.

[Wraith]

If the world is dead, then do what you want with it. In the case of the Moon, it might be nice to preserve some of the bigger craters because they look nice, but overall I think paving it flat is fine. As for Mars, we need to look it over thoroughly for native life and if there is none, then extract whatever you want. We should be careful to not mess it up too much because we will want to terraform at some point. And there are some neat places to preserve there as well, like Olympus and maybe some of the big canyon and some craters.

For Mars, I think we should start terraforming it now. One suggested method for kicking off the process is actually relatively cheap - it involves bombing it with certain terran extremophiles, it'll just take an insanely long time. Estimates I saw go about three centuries. More expensive options, like dropping Ceres onto Mars, or adding orbital mirrors, will help speed things up and increase the habitability in the end. But if this will naturally be hugely destructive to any native life, if there's any there. It'll also mean that if there are any new biological discoveries we make it'll be tough to tell whether it's native, or we put it there.