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Notes -
Contra sapce colonization
A couple arguments against space colonization, in order of how convincing they are to me. A lot of arguments in favor of space colonization like to make specious arguments based on the proposed similarity between the colonization of the Americas and Mars/Venus/Moons of Jupiter. While potentially highlighting psychologically similar explorer mindsets, I think these arguments completely miss the physical realities of space.
1. Ecology and Biology
The newest Tom Murphy post from DoTheMath has clarified what I believe to be a huge blindspot in the space colonization narrative that many on this forum: Ecology! Murphy's argument is that we've never successfully created a sealed, self-sustaining ecology that lasts for even anything close to a human lifespan. Biosphere 2 lasted for approximately 16 months, and the EcoSphere that Murphy uses as an example in this article lasts for about 10 years, but ultimately collapses because the shrimp fail to reproduce. Both of these "sealed" examples occur on Earth, shielded from radiation, and in moderate ambient temperatures. This will not be the case on Mars, nor on the 9 month journey to the Red Planet.
Even outside of sealed environments, island ecologies on Earth are notoriously unstable because of population bottlenecks that eliminate genetic diversity and make key species vulnerable to freak viruses or environmental disruption.
Of course a Mars colony won't be an ecological island, at least at first, because of constant shipments from Earth of supplies and genetic material (humans, bacteria, crops, etc.). But unless the colony can eventually become self-sustaining, I'm not sure what the point of "colonization" actually is. It's not clear that mammals can even reproduce in low gravity environments, and barring a large scale terraforming effort that would likely take millennia, any Mars colony will be a extraterrestrial version of Biosphere 2 without the built in radiation shielding and pleasant ambient temperature.
Constant immigration and resupply missions will also be incredibly challenging. 9 months in radiation-rich deep space in cramped, near solitary confinement is not something that is necessarily possible to endure for many humans. Every simulated Mars mission has ended with the participants at each others throats before arrival to the planet. Astronauts on the ISS, who receive relatively small doses of radiation compared to deep space, experience cancers at much higher rates, and probably damage their reproductive genetics significantly.
Contrast this to the colonization of the Americas. The initial colonists of both Massachusetts and Virginia were terribly unprepared for what was, at least compared to space, a relatively benign ecological context. There was clean air, water, shielding from radiation, and relatively plentiful food. Yet these colonies nearly died out in their first winter because of poor planning, and were only saved by the help of Native Americans. There are not Native Americans on Mars, no deer or wild berries to hunt in the woods if farming fails, or a supply ship is missed. Mars colonists won't be rugged frontiersmen, but extremely fragile dependents of techno-industrial society.
I'm not saying it's impossible to overcome these challenges, but it does seem irresponsible to waste trillions of dollars and thousands of lives on something we are pretty sure won't work.
2. Motivation
The primary initial motivation for New World colonization was $$$. The voyages of discovery were looking for trade routes to India to undercut the Muslim stranglehold on the spice trade. Initial Spanish colonization was focused on exploiting the mineral wealth of Mexico and Peru, French colonization on the fur trade, and English colonization on cash crops like tobacco.
In space, there is almost 0 monetary incentive for colonization. Satellites and telecommunications operate fine without any human astronauts, and even asteroid mining, which is a dubious economic proposition in the first place, doesn't really benefit from humans being in space. Everything kind of resource extraction that we might want to do in space is just better accomplished by robots for orders of magnitude less money.
What about Lebensraum? If that's really the issue, why don't we see the development of seasteds or self-sufficient cities in otherwise inhospitable regions of earth (the top of Everest for example).
3. Cost
Keeping an astronaut on the ISS costs about $1M/astronaut per day. And this is a space station that is relatively close to earth. Of course low earth orbit (LEO) where the ISS is, is halfway to most places in the inner solar system in terms of Delta V, so we're probably not talking about more than $10M/day per person for a Mars mission. For a colony on Mars with 100 people, that's close to a billion dollars a day. There is no national government, or corporation on earth that could support that.
Even if technology development by industry leaders such as SpaceX lowers launch costs by 1,000x, which I find to be an absurd proposition, that's still $1 million/day with no return on investment.
Even though SpaceX has improved the economics of launching to LEO and other near Earth orbits, our space capabilities seem to be degrading in most other areas. The promised Artemis moon missions are continually delayed by frankly embarrassing engineering oversights, and companies like Boeing, Lockheed Martin, and Northrup Grumman that were essential in the first space race can't seem to produce components without running over cost and under quality.
4. Narrative
This one is a little bit more speculative. The West, and much of the West of the world is entering a demographic spiral, with birth rates falling ever lower below replacement. This relieves a lot of the "population pressure" to colonize space, but also indicates a collapse in the narrative of progress that underpins the whole rationale that would lead us to even want to do such an absurd thing. If our leadership and population doesn't want to build the physical infrastructure and human capital necessary to embark on this kind of megaproject, doesn't this suggest that this dream is no longer appealing to the collective psyche? My read on the ground is that the general population is sick of the narrative of progress: we were promised flying cars and backyard nuclear power plants, but we instead got new financial instruments, addictive technology, and insurance.
China of course is held up as a positive example where the dream of the "engineering state" is kept alive, but I think this is misleading. China has potentially even worse of a demographic crisis than we do, and most of its smartest people (at least those I see in American academia) are desperate to leave.
Without a compelling narrative, the challenges facing potential space colonization become even more stark and difficult to overcome.
The Problem of a Flying-Machine
Others have already explained in-detail how some of the arguments don't even hold water given current technology levels, but I always find these kinds of arguments deeply silly general. As shown from the link, there is no shortage of technology that was claimed to be outright physically impossible, yet which turned out to work just fine; See also NASA vs SpaceX discussions on reuse for a more pertinent example, though that was more about never being cost-effective, as I understand it.
That said, especially given the rapid progress in AI we're seeing, I'm expecting that space colonisation will happen first through robots, which sidesteps a large number of your objections entirely. These can then build up an adequate habitat for us anywhere, given enough time & if we so choose. I also think that we are in no hurry to colonise space soon. But it will have to happen eventually if we want to exist for a cosmologically relevant timespan.
I completely disagree with the comparison to airplanes because it should have been obvious that flight was possible in general: birds, bats, and insects can all do it, so it should be possible in general.
I'm also not saying that rocketry is impossible, rather it's not economical. We won't go to space if there's no $$$ in space, and as far as I can tell, the only $$$ in space doesn't require humans.
I'm also curious how you think AI advances are actually impacting the material world. All I see is improvements in software engineering.
But there IS $$$ in space, and in a way that requires humans. It is practically guaranteed according to our best models of cosmology and biology that humanity will go extinct within the next 5 billion years if no humans ever leave the Earth. If humanity goes extinct, there will be no $$$ anywhere, since $$$ exists only as a concept within the minds of humans - who no longer exist. So humans exploring space is required for there to be any possibility of $$$ in the future. So there's absolutely $$$ in space, and specifically in human space exploration; in fact, it's basically the mirror image: there's bankruptcy in lack of human space exploration.
Longtermism has never been a long term policy of a corporation, nation, or even family. Unless there’s something that boosts quarterly profits, it’s not happening.
The "businesses only care about quarterly profits" crowd don't seem to have ever talked to a business owner/founder/competent CEO/mid tier+ chairman.
It's a meme that only lives in the minds of those critical of business or stock markets.
Saying that a country has never been longterm-pilled is actually even more egregious. And I don't know how hard you're redefining things or playing word games to say families don't take a long term view of life. I certainly do, so does almost everybody I know.
Post a definition of what you mean by "longtermism" and I'll post 20,000 examples to demonstrate that there are businesses, countries and families that have all had a long term visions of the future, and have worked towards them. Short of you saying "longterm" actually means "2,000 years" this seems like a totally indefensible comment. And if your view od short term is "quarterly reporting" then I'm going to suggest longterm should be in the range of 10 to 20 years.
The quarterly profits comment was a bit tongue in cheek. I am talking about 2000+ years because that’s what this existential risk planning entails. There are arguably only 2 countries (Japan and China) that have been around culturally that long, 1 institution (the Catholic Church), and as far as I know no corporations.
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