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Last Exit: Space is a new documentary on Discovery+ that explores the possibility of humans colonizing planets beyond Earth. Since it is produced and narrated by Werner Herzog (director of Grizzly Man, guest star on The Mandalorian) and written and directed by his son Rudolph, however, it goes in a different direction than your average space documentary. It's weird, beautiful, skeptical, and even a bit funny.
In light of the film's recent streaming launch, father and son Herzog spoke with Ars Technica from their respective homes about the film's otherworldly hopes, pessimistic conclusions, and that one part about space colonists having to drink their own urine.
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Why Werner Herzog Thinks Human Space Colonization “Will Inevitably Fail”
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(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Tuesday March 15 2022, @04:46PM (2 children)
Well, yeah, pretty much all the talk of colonizing Mars is not realistic. Maybe in 500 years we can do it, if we haven't nuked ourselves first. Science Fiction is too often Science Fantasy, imagining technology that really is impossible. Such as, Faster Than Light travel, and teleportation. Teleportation is an especially telling fantasy tech that reflects more on our pride and blinkered thinking than on rational and sober assessment of reality. To wit, it will certainly be easier to create a copy of a person at the destination, and skip the part involving the "erasure", really the murder, of the original at the source. Creating copies of people is a direct assault on another thing we in the US especially are too fond of: our individualism. Both of these techs also play to our impatience, and the fact that without FTL, our lifespans are far too short and space far too big to go gadding about the galaxy.
Most especially, the thought that Mars can be a haven from a life destroying nuclear war on Earth is at best wishful thinking. At worst, it's an excuse to get reckless with the nukes, saying that it's not a total catastrophe if we on Earth blow ourselves up, because our relatives on Mars will be safe from such madness.
One of the biggest problems with planetary and space colonization is ourselves. We're crazy enough right here on Earth. A harsh, profoundly hostile, alien environment such as Mars could dement everyone. There are a thousand things that could doom the colony.
(Score: 2) by Michael on Tuesday March 15 2022, @06:25PM (1 child)
500 years ?! That seems an outlandishly long estimate. Even if the rate of technological progress weren't accelerating, 5x the span since biplanes and cordite seems a lot. Give it a hundred years we'll probably have programmable matter, fast molecular assemblers and synthetic organisms.
As you alluded to, it's only really things which manipulate spacetime which are currently science fantasy rather than science fiction. You can do a fair bit with 'only' the technology to manipulate matter and energy. Give me a machine which can put any atom I want wherever I tell it (a billion times a minute), and I'll make the moon into a solar powered cool shit dispenser that delivers to anywhere within the orbit of pluto.
As far as human nature dooming colonisation, I think we're adapted for that pretty well. Our ancestors *walked* around the entire circumference of the earth, ending up places their ancestors wouldn't have recognised or survived in.
It's staying in the same place at very high densities which we don't tolerate well psychologically.
Maybe it will be good for us to stretch our legs a bit, it's been 10,000 years after all.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Tuesday March 15 2022, @09:37PM
Plot me a graph of the energy density of the fuels used for propulsion, over time.
Clue - we're still using the same shit as we were half a century ago. This "progress" you imagine is mostly in your own head.
We're also only sending humans 1/1000th of the distance we used to. If that's progress, next week I'll jump and make even further progress.
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves