I dunno, I think it’s quite optimistic, actually. If I thought the challenges of humans living well on earth were hopelessly beyond us, I wouldn’t care. And I can’t say I’m disappointed on humanity’s behalf if the preposterously difficult task of genuine extraplanetary colonization is beyond us. We’ll probably never build that Dyson sphere we were talking about, either. So what?
To my way of thinking, the idea that all we need is just a few asteroids full of high-value elements, and then things will finally turn around for us–that’s dismal.
But the reality is, neither of us will get what we want.
I agree with you on not seeking to colonize other planets right now. However, I don’t think that should limit us on imagining, thinking about, and discussing possibilities of doing so at sometime in the future. I just think we do need to be clear about how much global unity and investment such a project would take.
If we have positive visions of the future, that includes cool things like visiting other planets, it can give us a goal to work towards. Having that in mind can help us to make life better here, so we can eventually get there. Maybe we should call this the Roddenberry strategy, I don’t know…
How difficult would it be to send a spacecraft to Venus that comes almost to a stop in the upper atmosphere and inflates an ENORMOUS balloon (or many smaller ones)?
Also, what’s the payoff, aside from slighly better exploration? Now you live in the sky above Venus, and that’s a good thing for why?
And also, I think we often fixate on the biological changes that will take place when we colonize a new planet (or live for extended periods in space), as if those changes are a bad thing. As if there’s some kind of justification for preserving humanity in its current form, which isn’t even that consistent to begin with.
Sure! If you want to put a more positive spin on my basic stance of “let’s never do it,” let’s do it when it will be easy and recreational. I don’t have philosophical objections, just practical ones.
I’d quintuple NASA’s budget tomorrow if I could, with no skimping on seed money for “impractical” blue-sky projects. I have opinions on what kind of metamaterials we should use to build our Ringworld. I’m pro-cool-space-stuff. I just think extraplanetary colonization is not cool under the present and foreseeable circumstances.
That’s not what I’m saying though. I’m arguing that the role of people like Newitz, as a writer, especially one who regularly writes about the future, is to imagine possibilities. She’s not a policy maker after all. Whatever becomes possible in the future will be in part due to people imagining possibilities today. Once again, see Roddenberry. Star Trek gave people something somewhat concrete to strive for, even if we all know that the technology is far off.
To be fair, I don’t think a Ringworld is within reach either. We barely have people LEO for longer periods of time. Many things need to be improved technologically and socially before we have a working space station that’s accessible to all of humanity, not just state sponsored astronauts and the ultra rich. Doesn’t mean we can’t imagine what that might look like and how we might build such things in 50 or 100 years.
No, I get you. I don’t object to the article, or to Trek*, or to talking about these things.
I mean, I do worry about the inevitable mass graves on Mars if we try to solve a 29th-century problem with 21st-century technology built by the lowest bidder. But that’s still a fairly distant threat. A much more substantial and immediate threat is the prospect that the colonizers among us—I mean the people who are going to be submitting the contracts—are going to use the positive “indomitable human spirit” Roddenberry stuff in order to accomplish pretty grubby ends in the short term, to the detriment of what should be higher priorities.
It’s also worth saying that we—the descendants of the colonizers and the colonized alike—are repenting now of the colonizing impulse here on Earth, and for good reason. Sure, Mars doesn’t have a society or ecosystem to disrupt (that I know of!), so it’s not a perfect equivalence. But the impulse that says “there’s more stuff out there and we need to go and get that stuff at extraordinary risk and with no clear understanding of the consequences, because we can, the moment we can, and perhaps also it will be a great adventure”—which is not at all like Roddenberry’s 24th century, but very 15th-through-21st century—that’s something we need to pump the brakes on.
That I totally agree with. She does address the problem of capitalism in the essay, in fact, and how problematic it is.
Well, some of us are, others have lamented the end of colonialism. But you can tie that back to the development of capitalism too. She’s not suggesting a corporate-centric approach being championed by Musk and his ilk, in fact the opposite.
Again, we’re in agreement here. But again, she addresses this directly, so she seems concerned with that as well.
There is no Earth-based analogy of life adapting to or living in sulfuric acid concentrations as high as those in Venus cloud droplets. It is quite impossible for terrestrial metabolism to function in concentrated sulfuric acid where the majority of terrestrial biochemicals would be destroyed in seconds. There is extensive literature on the reactions of classes of molecules with concentrated sulfuric acid. Crucial biochemicals are unstable in sulfuric acid and include sugars (including nucleic acids, RNA, and DNA) (Krieble, 1935; Dische, 1949; Long and Paul, 1957), proteins (Reitz et al., 1946; Habeeb, 1961), and other compounds such as lipids and complex carbohydrates (as shown, e.g., by studies on dissolution of organic matter away from the outer shell of pollen grains; Moore et al., 1991) and small-molecule metabolites of Earth’s life core metabolism (Wiig, 1930; DeRight, 1934).
Right?!
I mean the dystopian tales from the likes of Orwell, PK Dick, Atwood, Collins and more were not supposed to be prophetic!
I am not trying to make a lame “life imitates art” point here, but current cultural, climatological, political conditions certainly reflect some of the worst parts of those stories. perhaps a wave of positive scienc-y science fiction that explores ideals of interplanetary exploration and the closer relations that could support that would encourage young readers to apply to that end.
^^^this^^^
I like that! indeed The Roddenberry Strategy!
