Reply to thread

Message

<blockquote data-quote="Hussar" data-source="post: 7563384" data-attributes="member: 22779">Now that I'm going to disagree with.&nbsp; I think that it's perfectly acceptable to sink the project when someone's decision effectively condemns generations to institutional slavery and massive human rights violations.&nbsp; And, you can talk about glass houses all you like, there is always the significant difference on Earth that if we're wrong, we can make changes to fix the problem.&nbsp; Vastly more difficult in a closed system with very limited resources.&nbsp; IOW, just because our cultures might not be utopian, doesn't mean that we can't look at others and say, yup, that's worse.Hard to eat hydrogen.&nbsp; <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f600.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":D" title="Big grin&nbsp; &nbsp; :D"&nbsp; data-smilie="8"data-shortname=":D" />&nbsp; Unless we're going the route of completely magical science and we now have replicators and the like.&nbsp; By that point though, we might as well have FTL drives because, well, it's all handwavium by that point anyway.Again, at that point, we're hundreds of millions of years in the future.&nbsp; Presuming that our species should live so long, by that point, the gloves are completely off.&nbsp; Science will virtually unrecognizable to our cave dwelling selves.&nbsp; I mean, by that point in the future, we're closer in time to Homo Habilis than we our to our far, far distant offspring.Couple of points though.&nbsp; 1.&nbsp; The exploration done on Earth required very, very little resource from the sponsoring country.&nbsp; Four or five boats and a couple of hundred men?&nbsp; Yeah, that's not exactly breaking the bank.&nbsp; We're talking many, many orders of magnitude more resources required to build a single generation ship.&nbsp; 2.&nbsp; The exploration done on earth was not really done out of &quot;curiousity&quot;.&nbsp; It was done out of necessity/search for resources.&nbsp; Whether you want to talk about those coming across the land bridge to North America, or Magellan, it doesn't really matter.&nbsp; No one explored the continents nor colonized those continents because they wanted to know &quot;what's over there&quot;.&nbsp; America and Australia were dumping grounds for malcontents and convicts as well as giant sources of wealth.&nbsp; You get the exact same thing building and populating habitats in the Solar System for far, far less cost.&nbsp; Good grief, why bother sending a ship to Alpha Centauri?&nbsp; With that level of technology, I build an orbital telescope array and actually LOOK at those planets long before waiting a thousand years for some generation ship to get there and tell me.&nbsp; &nbsp; Look, it's not that I don't have romance in my soul.&nbsp; And I totally agree with the notion of space exploration benefiting Earth.&nbsp; Totally down with that.&nbsp; But, I also recognize that the F in SF is equally important.&nbsp; Generation ships are a plot device, not a practical idea.That would be cool.&nbsp; <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f600.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":D" title="Big grin&nbsp; &nbsp; :D"&nbsp; data-smilie="8"data-shortname=":D" /></blockquote>

[QUOTE="Hussar, post: 7563384, member: 22779"] Now that I'm going to disagree with. I think that it's perfectly acceptable to sink the project when someone's decision effectively condemns generations to institutional slavery and massive human rights violations. And, you can talk about glass houses all you like, there is always the significant difference on Earth that if we're wrong, we can make changes to fix the problem. Vastly more difficult in a closed system with very limited resources. IOW, just because our cultures might not be utopian, doesn't mean that we can't look at others and say, yup, that's worse. Hard to eat hydrogen. :D Unless we're going the route of completely magical science and we now have replicators and the like. By that point though, we might as well have FTL drives because, well, it's all handwavium by that point anyway. Again, at that point, we're hundreds of millions of years in the future. Presuming that our species should live so long, by that point, the gloves are completely off. Science will virtually unrecognizable to our cave dwelling selves. I mean, by that point in the future, we're closer in time to Homo Habilis than we our to our far, far distant offspring. Couple of points though. 1. The exploration done on Earth required very, very little resource from the sponsoring country. Four or five boats and a couple of hundred men? Yeah, that's not exactly breaking the bank. We're talking many, many orders of magnitude more resources required to build a single generation ship. 2. The exploration done on earth was not really done out of "curiousity". It was done out of necessity/search for resources. Whether you want to talk about those coming across the land bridge to North America, or Magellan, it doesn't really matter. No one explored the continents nor colonized those continents because they wanted to know "what's over there". America and Australia were dumping grounds for malcontents and convicts as well as giant sources of wealth. You get the exact same thing building and populating habitats in the Solar System for far, far less cost. Good grief, why bother sending a ship to Alpha Centauri? With that level of technology, I build an orbital telescope array and actually LOOK at those planets long before waiting a thousand years for some generation ship to get there and tell me. Look, it's not that I don't have romance in my soul. And I totally agree with the notion of space exploration benefiting Earth. Totally down with that. But, I also recognize that the F in SF is equally important. Generation ships are a plot device, not a practical idea. That would be cool. :D [/QUOTE]

Verification