SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
AP-NORC poll: Asteroid watch more urgent than Mars trip
Americans prefer a space program that focuses on potential asteroid impacts, scientific research and using robots to explore the cosmos over sending humans back to the moon or on to Mars, a poll shows.
The poll by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research, released Thursday, one month before the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing, lists asteroid and comet monitoring as the No. 1 desired objective for the U.S. space program. About two-thirds of Americans call that very or extremely important, and about a combined 9 in 10 say it's at least moderately important.
The poll comes as the White House pushes to get astronauts back on the moon, but only about a quarter of Americans said moon or Mars exploration by astronauts should be among the space program's highest priorities. About another third called each of those moderately important.
"More than 80% say the United States is not leading the world in space exploration."
(Score: 5, Insightful) by NotSanguine on Monday June 24 2019, @03:20AM (20 children)
With population growth of ~220,000/day [worldometers.info], we'd need to launch significantly more than that *every* *single* *day* to make that work.
And that assumes we can find ~300,000-400,000 people to send off-planet (and where, exactly, do we send them?) *every* *single* *day*.
Current launch capabilities could never accommodate 100 people a day, much less 3-4 thousand times that.
If we had multiple space elevators [wikipedia.org] spread out around the world, even then we couldn't even approach lifting that much mass on a daily basis.
Assuming an average mass of 70kg (~154lbs), that's raising a mass of (300,000/day) 21 million kg or (400,000/day) 28 million kg into at least earth orbit.
Let's say we did have four space elevators at various points along the equator. Each elevator would need to lift 100,000 people per day. But even if we could fit, say, 10,000 people in each elevator "car" (or 500,000kg per car), that would require ten launches per elevator per day.
And if we could accelerate such cars to 1000km/hour, it would still take a day and a half to reach geostationary orbit. Since a round trip would require three days, we'd need at least 40 cars at each elevator to maintain the flow of people.
If that weren't ridiculous enough, what are we going to do with all those people? Do they just hang out in earth orbit? There are no resources there, so that would obviate any advantage in getting them off the earth.
Should we just space them? If not, where do they go? How do we get them there? How do they survive to get wherever they're going? How do they survive once they get there?
tl;dr: sending people off planet is not and never will be a mechanism to reduce the population of the earth.
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Runaway1956 on Monday June 24 2019, @03:51AM (13 children)
Think longer term. No, we don't have anyplace to put a hundred people per day, or per year, right now. That's why we need to get out there, and try to figure out where to put them, then figure out how to get them there.
Long term, we need to cut this planet's population by about 75%, IMO, without just slaughtering people. Space is a potential solution, if we are smart enough to figure out how to do it.
Of course, there is our fall-back solution to population pressures. War, poverty, and disease.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 24 2019, @04:23AM (11 children)
What are you talking about? Drive or train across the US, the country is practically empty... The main problem with the world is corrupt governments making their domains relatively uninhabitable.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Monday June 24 2019, @05:09AM (10 children)
No, it isn't "practically empty". Much of the southwest was populated near the capacity of the land to support people "comfortably" when the white man arrived here. Look at that land today - it supports ten to a hundred times as many people, and we've ravaged the land. Arizona, the Colorado river, and so much more. All across this nation, we've destroyed habitats, and altered those that we haven't outright destroyed. My adopted state of Arkansas is an example. Today, it's mostly evergreen forest. It wasn't like that 150 years ago - it was mostly hardwood forest, and almost as varied as my home state of Pennsylvania. Hell, look further east, at the devastation of the landscape. When was the last time you saw a chestnut tree, dropping tons of almost free food on the ground for you to pick up?
Look at the skies during the spring and autumn migration seasons. In my own lifetime, flocks of birds made a bright, sunshiny day turn dark, like storm clouds were passing overhead. Not any more!
When you take a serious look at the state of the land around us BEFORE the white man arrived, and compare that with what we have today, THEN you realize that there really is cause for concern. We poison out environment, because there are so damned many of us.
I'll repeat - the earth's population should be reduced by about 75%, so that the world can begin to heal itself.
Let me add in mental health and psychological problems. Mankind wasn't actually meant to live in termite hills like NYC, Chicago, LA, Tokyo, Hong Kong, and a couple dozen other huge-ass megalopolis. There are reasons why country folk are generally more stable than city people.
To summarize, we've pretty well fucked the world over. I'm not part of the global warming hysteria crowd, but holy shit, just look at what we've done to the world!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 24 2019, @05:27AM (8 children)
All you mention is just change, destruction would be if it was like a contaminated wasteland.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Runaway1956 on Monday June 24 2019, @05:33AM (7 children)
*rolleyes*
Maybe you should do an internet search, and start tallying up all the plant and animal species that have been extincted in the past 100 years. Maybe you should also search for EPA superfund sites. Start with Love canal, maybe?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 24 2019, @05:50AM (6 children)
As if anyone knows the extinction rate from before 100 years ago... I looked into one of those papers once and came away very unimpressed: https://soylentnews.org/comments.pl?noupdate=1&sid=8090&cid=200461#commentwrap [soylentnews.org]
You're buying into a lot of BS from known fearmongerers.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Monday June 24 2019, @06:20AM (5 children)
Fair enough - I've often objected that climate researchers and others make presumptions which they can't verify.
Even so, a species that can only be found in one place on earth, disappears after extensive mining operations in the area. Or another disappears after clear cut logging. And, yet another can't be found after years of raw sewerage being dumped into the water. I feel a loss, each and every time I read of something like that. And, yet, slash and burn farming continues in the Amazon. Poison continues to be dumped into the Congo river. Our own "dead zone" in the Gulf of Mexico hasn't gone away. Or, imported rats devastate a local animal population on some remote island, or Australia or NZ. And, back to those American chestnut trees. They're all but gone, with only a few small populations in far northern regions left.
I've come to dislike the word "diversity" because it is so over used in strange contexts - but I seriously believe that diversity is important to the health of this world. There isn't a single organism that can fill niches all around the world, unless it is humans, roaches, and rats.
(Score: 2) by PiMuNu on Monday June 24 2019, @09:42AM (3 children)
> Even so, a species that can only be found in one place on earth, disappears after extensive mining operations in the area.
I would be interested to know what is the rate at which new species arise? I never saw that, only stuff about the rate at which old species are dying.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Monday June 24 2019, @11:08AM (2 children)
If you ignore microbiota, the rate is zero
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 24 2019, @03:13PM (1 child)
So you're a Bible nut believing in devolution this whole time?
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Monday June 24 2019, @11:41PM
Evolution happens all the time. However, new species of polycellular organisms take longer to evolve than the capacity of humans to extinguish existing ones.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 3, Interesting) by bradley13 on Monday June 24 2019, @05:12PM
On very flaky mobile, so I'll keep it short: te decline of insects is terrifying. Yet farmers continue massive, indiscriminate use of pesticides.
We don't need to reduce human population by 75%. More like 90%. We also need to end the current uncontrolled experiment in dysgenics, where the most successful individuals have the fewest children.
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by takyon on Monday June 24 2019, @11:08AM
If you concentrate humans into these places, it should lower environmental impact per capita (less need for personal transportation) and keep the hurt away from the countryside (farming excluded). If they are less stable than country folk, then that would cause them to kill each other, which slightly contributes to your population goal.
As for psychological problems, they can strap on a VR headset and be instantly transferred to a pristine, hardwood forest-filled Arkansas.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 3, Interesting) by NotSanguine on Monday June 24 2019, @10:28AM
Okay. Let's say it's 50 years from now. And the population is now growing at 500,000 per day. Now we need to transport nearer a million people a day, along with supplies (you know air, water, food, etc.) for a trip to where, exactly?
Could colonies on the moon or Mars (or even in space) handle 200,000,000 people a year? Every year? That would means that in 20 years we'd need to support approximately the current population of earth in hostile environments with raw resources and not much else. And that doesn't count any children born to those people over that time.
It's not like the Puritans landing at Plymouth rock, or even the Polynesians colonizing the Pacific islands. There was already air, food, building materials, fertile soil and on and on. You'd start with none of that on the moon, Mars or in space.
But even if we could come up with the raft of technologies to move and keep alive 200,000,000+ people in space every year, who's going to pay to develop it? Where are you going to site the *massive* infrastructure to lift that many people out of the gravity well?
Who has the resources, political will and political/economic/military clout to make this happen without bankrupting at least half the planet and forcibly moving hundreds of millions of people off-world *every year*?
Think through what would need to happen, the costs, the upheavals, the environmental damage, the political and military risks, the economic impacts. It's never gonna happen.
Because even if we solve all the problems with getting folks off the planet (fat chance), we still need to find a way to clothe, house, feed and provide atmosphere to the current population of the Earth *every* twenty years or we won't be reducing the population of Earth anyway.
And don't forget that we'll certainly need to implement *forced migrations* for hundreds of millions every year.
You really haven't thought this through. I invite you to do so.
To recap:
From a technological standpoint, it is *theoretically* possible to move that many people into earth orbit every day. However, even if we could, we have no place to send them that can support that many people on an ongoing basis. We don't have the science, let alone the technology or engineering know-how, and we aren't anywhere close, nor will we be anytime in the foreseeable future.
And if that's the case, it will no longer be 200,000,000 per year we'd need to move, but 500,000,000-1,000,000,00 every year.
What's more, the economic costs of such a project would likely bankrupt the planet.
But that's not even the worst part. There's no way you're getting 200,000,000 people to *volunteeer* to leave the friendly confines of planet Earth *every* year. I'd be amazed if you could get 2,000,000. Which means forced relocations. Which means internment. Which means using violence to 'convince' folks to 'volunteer'.
Anyone who even attempted to do something like this would make Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, Hitler and Attila *combined* look like amateurs.
Space colonization is not, and never will be, a workable mechanism for population reduction on planet earth. Fuil stop.
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
(Score: 2) by RamiK on Monday June 24 2019, @12:16PM (5 children)
The numbers add up better if you put the people you want to survive on the ships, go out into orbit, and bomb everything back to the stone age.
compiling...
(Score: 2) by NotSanguine on Monday June 24 2019, @12:50PM (4 children)
You should write that up in a paper. I smell Nobel Prize! :)
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
(Score: 2) by RamiK on Tuesday June 25 2019, @06:38AM (3 children)
Hmm, a Modest Spaceflight Program by RamiK does have a certain ring to it... But what if it turns up to be a Nobel Peace Prize? I doubt it's worth the risk.
compiling...
(Score: 3, Funny) by NotSanguine on Tuesday June 25 2019, @02:16PM (2 children)
I'm sure if you include a Bitcoin wallet address in a footnote, with the implication that donations to the charity, RLEF (The Ramik Lifestyle Enhancement Fund) might get folks priority access to the launches, you'd win the Economics prize.
But when you nuke the planet, make sure to use neutron bombs [wikipedia.org] instead of the standard stuff. Just sayin'.
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
(Score: 2) by RamiK on Tuesday June 25 2019, @08:03PM (1 child)
The problem with neutron bombs is the vegetation and sea life as well as active nuclear plants and wild fires. Now, couple the closing of nuclear plants, the building of space ships that can't reach anywhere useful and the development of AI robots and now you got yourself a quality conspiracy theory! Not sure how to work-in blockchains though... WIP
compiling...
(Score: 2) by NotSanguine on Wednesday June 26 2019, @12:57AM
An excellent point. Better to go with mass drivers [wikipedia.org] then.
Wow! This plan is really coming together. Let's do this thing!
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr