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Topic: Earth-like planets raise prospects of extra-terrestial life (Read 24463 times)
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Death 999
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We did. You did. Yes we can. No.
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if they aren't frozen, the distance they are traveling is probably fairly short, so they should have a decent chance of survival assuming nothing goes horribly wrong, which is always possible. way to completely subvert the suppositions of the entire argument. This is irrelevant. We are talking about long intergenerational voyages. way to quote me out of context.
Sorry for trying to use different vocabulary. I meant "world" as in dimension, universe, place of being, not as in a planet.
What the heck? what are the chances that an interstellar colonization attempt are going to run into anything like that? Negligibly small, I think, in real life.
Given the supposedly serious discussion, no interpretation of 'world' other than 'planet' made sense.
Let me ask you: would YOU like to leave the Earth to live on a mining platform and come back every 5 or 10 years [or whatever]? Would you do it once to see what it was like and not go back?
Let me ask you: what the heck do you think this has to do with anything? Nothing to do with this topic, for sure.
The crux here is your completely baseless assumption that one would be roped into going again.
If you were thinking about this in a problem-solving fashion, this assumption would simply not occur to you.
I've noticed that seem to be becoming very emotional about this, even to the point of questioning my intelligence, which I find most rude .
I actually did not question your intelligence. I used that you aren't stupid to conclude that you aren't even trying. You amply supported this with what I just quoted. No one can be that stupid, but it's quite easy to be that apathetic.
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Dancing Fungus
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Armor always looks cool with extra techno...right?
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if they aren't frozen, the distance they are traveling is probably fairly short, so they should have a decent chance of survival assuming nothing goes horribly wrong, which is always possible. way to completely subvert the suppositions of the entire argument. This is irrelevant. We are talking about long intergenerational voyages. way to quote me out of context. This looks in context to me. The entire discussion is about long voyages without cold sleep.
No, it is NOT in context, at least as I see it. You seemed to have missed this:
I don't think that they are all going to butcher each other if they are cryogenically frozen. And if they aren't frozen......
And this:
But if we developed a slightly better form of propulsion and cryogenics.....
So no, the ENTIRE discussion was not about long voyages without cold sleep. Or if it was I missed that and said stuff about cryogenics that no one bothered to contradict. And since cryogenics really are central to my arguments and they would all be moot with cryogenics out of the way, it appears I am not the only one being apathetic.
Sorry for trying to use different vocabulary. I meant "world" as in dimension, universe, place of being, not as in a planet. What the heck? what are the chances that an interstellar colonization attempt are going to run into anything like that? Negligibly small, I think, in real life.
You still do not understand. Let me see if I can choose better wording in the original sentence.
Vaccinations are useless against strands of diseases we know nothing about. Like those that have evolved to survive in an environment with said vaccinations.
The crux here is your completely baseless assumption that one would be roped into going again.
What abyss did you pull this out of? I never said anyone would be forced to go again and again against their will.
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Thrice thy blinded cat hath mewed....
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Death 999
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We did. You did. Yes we can. No.
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No, it is NOT in context, at least as I see it. You seemed to have missed this:
... You talked about cold-sleep, then you talked about live travel, then you talked about cold sleep. Just because you sandwiched a statement about live travel in between two statements about cold sleep doesn't mean that it's actually about cold sleep.
So no, the ENTIRE discussion was not about long voyages without cold sleep.
It is the root-level discussion, at least since the start of page 2, ever since you asked, "How could you have a civilization on an asteroid..."
Or if it was I missed that and said stuff about cryogenics that no one bothered to contradict. And since cryogenics really are central to my arguments and they would all be moot with cryogenics out of the way, it appears I am not the only one being apathetic.
I have done an exhaustive review of the entire thread.
The crux is an examination of two methods of interstellar colonization:
1) people gradually move to the asteroids, get more independent, move out when they're ready and it's in their interest (the Asimov method)
1a) with all the tech you'd need to have an asteroid civilization but without actually having one, send out a large well-equipped fleet of colony ships that could become an asteroid civilization if it wanted to (the Lukipela method)
2) build cheap cold-sleep colony ships that haven't got recycling facilities and rely on support from home, and send out a lot of them, despite that no one doing the hard work to make them at home benefits from these, ever (the Dancing Fungus method).
Luki and I have attacked 2 based on a variety of things, but its use of cold sleep is not one of them. So, attempting to buttress the use of cryogenics is missing the point totally.
Vaccinations are useless against strands of diseases we know nothing about.
If we can isolate an infectious agent, we're more than half the way. The problem is mainly if it changes its surface all the time (like, say, HIV). But anyway, you've ignored my rebuttal to that, which was, if it's an asteroid civilization, it's not going to get infected because it's not going to come in contact with alien life.
Like those that have evolved to survive in an environment with said vaccinations.
Like I said, going to a foreign planet should help greatly in that regard, since no alien world will have vaccinations before we get there, and the world we're coming from did.
And lastly:
The crux here is your completely baseless assumption that one would be roped into going again.
What abyss did you pull this out of? I never said anyone would be forced to go again and again against their will.
I could find no other interpretation of this sentence:Let me ask you: would YOU like to leave the Earth to live on a mining platform and come back every 5 or 10 years [or whatever]? The next sentence muddied matters, to be sure... but in the light of how you had misportrayed life in an asteroid civilization ("And in that giant space ship you would have to spend your entire life working like a dog so that maybe the 20th generation of your descendants [assuming you are allowed to have any and that they don't die] can live on some ugly little planet somewhere far away?"), it didn't seem so unreasonable that you'd have such a dystopian view.
I just couldn't figure out what you were getting at. Because just asking if some people would be all right with living on a mining platform for a period of 5-10 years for adequate remuneration seems to have the obvious answer, "YES", which doesn't support your point.
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« Last Edit: March 12, 2008, 07:55:27 pm by Death 999 »
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Lukipela
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Rather than to try and jump into the quoting fray again, I'll just limit myself to a few comments.
Dancing Fungus, most of your objections to an asteroid based civilisation are things that would be much more likely to affect colonists on one of your colony ships. Loss of tools, loss of ships, unknown diseases and such are all things that will affect your colony ship much more badly than they will a (small) civilisation with the ability to produce replacements, better isolate and treat diseases and so forth.
Other issues you raise affect both equally, such as the need to recycle. An asteroid civilisation certainly cannot survive without some high tech recycling facilities, but the same can be said for a colony ship and the colony it creates.
As for the arguing about the use of resources, I think you don't fully appreciate just what your colonists need to continue their civilisation. It is certainly much cheaper to send a small colony ship off into the stars than launch a part of your infrastructure, or create similar infrastructure for that purpose. But if you only send out small colony ships with a small chances of survival, your job really isn't done there. You also need to furnish those colonies with all the preprocessed resources and tools needed to colonise the new planet properly, and allow them to become independent. And since each launch is independent and risky, that means you will in fact have to launch quite a few ships in order to guarantee survival.
There is another resource question I think is worth considering as well. The quality of your colonists. If an asteroid civilisation takes off, it will certainly consist of a lot more people. But will they all be as valuable? Every colony ship you send out needs to incorporate a large amount of specialists, from Leaders and Doctors to Geophysicists and.. Well, you get the idea. As many of your colony ships will fail (due to Murphys law and the processes you yourself have described) this essentially means that any civilisation sending out a lot of these colony ships will be suffering a severe brain drain. In comparison, an existing asteroid civilisation will contain people of all creeds, and if the civilisation already exists it will not need to recruit new geniuses from the intelligence pool.
Naturally this isn't true if you build up a splinter from the beginning, in that case you will need a lot of people. But these people will stand a better chance of surviving and not as many will die in vain.
As for how such an asteroid civilisation would start, I think it is fairly natural. When there is not enough space, people move to the frontiers. Look at America. The first people who arrived there certainly left a lot of amenities behind, and for generations they toiled under very basic circumstances. Similarly, an asteroid civilisation would have to begin humble, with people who no longer wish to go back "home" and people who are no longer welcome at "home". As time passes and conditions improve, suddenly all manner of people wish to live there.
And as I already said as an psychological aside. It's a lot easier to leave if you are taking your friends, family and people with you on a world you grew up on than if you shot off with a low survival chance to eke out a uncertain, back-breaking living on a world that may be very different from what you once knew.
And finally, for Death_999. An "Asimov" civilisation as you call it is much more likely to be first, but I think the positive benefits of a "Lukipela" civilisation would be that all your equipment is new. Instead of leaving with things that have been built during centuries with all the problems that might entail, you leave with a shiny streamlined infrastructure.
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What's up doc?
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Lukipela
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When there is not enough space, people move to the frontiers. Look at America. The first people who arrived there certainly left a lot of amenities behind, and for generations they toiled under very basic circumstances. I would suspect it's more like where there is an opportunity, some people will go there. Especially as going now would be a great deal more expensive than then. An oppressed minority might be able to afford to send one member if they all chipped in. So, more like the southern (commercial) colonies than the northern (religious) colonies.
In a way I suppose. I was more trying to compare the primitive living conditions you'd face at first in the asteroid belt, compared to what you might be used to on a planets surface. I'd guess that once you have a colony or two inside your solar system, and private spaceflight becomes even vaguely affordable, quite a few different groups would be eager to set up shop in different regions. Eventually they'll have been around long enough to raise the standard of living considerably.
As for old vs. new: tools will be made afresh every so often. The atoms will get old, but they do that the same rate regardless.
I was thinking more in terms of compatibility and standardization. A civilisation that has grown slowly under a long time in the asteroid belt is bound to have machinery adhering to quite a few different standards, much like any oldish factory/country. A freshly put together one could be more standardized, easier on replacements and generally easier to handle, repair and refit.
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What's up doc?
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Death 999
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We did. You did. Yes we can. No.
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Nifty that we can do spectroscopy on these planets.
But Methane isn't exactly surprising, considering it's just one carbon and four hydrogen. It's the simplest thing you can make with carbon, possibly excepting carbon mono- or di- oxide.
Don't forget, just because it's an 'organic' molecule doesn't mean it came from life. Not that I'm saying you thought that.
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Death 999
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We did. You did. Yes we can. No.
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The only thing of interest is that we can tell that there's methane on a particular planet outside the Solar system. We've seen methane ambiently in outer space before, that's not at all a concern.
However, that is significantly of interest!
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SweetSassyMolassy
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I wasn't referring to us. I was referring to intelligent races that have existed for thousands or millions of years by now. I mean, it seems unlikely that we will happen to be the first race in the neighborhood to discover FTL travel. Sub-light travel is so pathetically slow in cosmic terms, that it just doesn't seem to be of any relevance to us as beings that live for only ~70 years. 
Also, with stuff like this
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_pulse_propulsion
Sub-light speed will become possible.
Let's say a spaceship reaches 80% of the speed of light, then the trip will only take about 18 years. So, if the pilot doesn't mind watching everyone he/she's ever known on earth outgrow them, then it is possible to make it to other places.
Lets say he/she travels at 99.99% the speed of light
On earth it would take around 4 years
The trip will take .4 years in the space ship.
So if you wanted to travel 100 light years, it would only take 10 years traveling at that speed. So, one generation could make it 100 light years and back, assuming they don't mind that the earth will be hundreds of years into the future
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« Last Edit: May 19, 2008, 10:24:22 pm by SweetSassyMolassy »
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I am not always understand about what you speak, unfortunately.
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