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from the if-a-kessler-syndrome-is-not-triggered-first dept.
Charlie Stross, a science fiction writer based in Scotland, has written a post about different possible approaches to space colonization. He includes a discussion of several different models.
While the strong form of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis is evidently invalid, a weaker version—that language influences thought—is much harder to argue against. When we talk about a spaceship, a portmanteau word derived from "[outer] space" and "ship", we bring along certain unstated assumptions about shipping that are at odds with the physical parameters of a human-friendly life support environment for traversing interplanetary distances. Ships, in the vernacular, have captains and a crew who obey the captain via a chain of command, they carry cargo or passengers, they travel between ports or to a well-defined destination, they may have a mission whether it be scientific research or military. And of these aspects, only the scientific research angle is remotely applicable to any actually existing interplanetary vehicle, be it a robot probe like Psyche or one of the Apollo program flights.
(Pedant's footnote: while the Apollo crews had a nominal commander, actual direction came from Mission Control back on Earth and the astronauts operated as a team, along lines very similar to those later formalized as Crew Resource Management in commercial aviation.)
Anyway, a point I've already chewed over on this blog is that a spaceship is not like a sea-going vessel, can't be operated like a sea-going vessel, and the word "ship" in its name feeds into various cognitive biases that may be actively harmful to understanding what it is.
Which leads me to the similar term "space colony": the word colony drags in all sorts of historical baggage, and indeed invokes several models of how an off-Earth outpost might operate, all of which invoke very dangerous cognitive biases!
There are few more models which he missed.
Previously:
(2022) Moon Life 2030
(2022) Why Werner Herzog Thinks Human Space Colonization "Will Inevitably Fail"
(2020) Elon Musk Will Run Into Trouble Setting Up a Martian Government, Lawyers Say
(2018) Who Owns The Moon? A Space Lawyer Answers
(2017) Stephen Hawking Urges Nations to Pursue Lunar Base and Mars Landing
(2015) NASA Working on 3D Printers to Print Objects Using Martian Regolith
(Score: 4, Interesting) by aim on Wednesday October 16 2024, @03:46PM (10 children)
While some seem to have the hots for this Stross fellow, I've put myself through one of his books and have been so little impressed that I won't ever get anything else by this author.
If you want to get a solid read on space colonization, why not start with non-scifi "The High Frontier" by Gerard O'Neill, first released in 1976? IMHO there's a lot in there that still might come to fruition, even if a lot has happened in the meantime that can improve on those plans.
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Wednesday October 16 2024, @04:32PM (8 children)
There's two groups of people, and they're both right.
Group 1 is the visionaries, who see the promise of the future in space, and envision ways to solve the problems.
Group 2 is the folks who see the problems ahead, and realize that they can't see how to solve them.
Both groups are right. There definitely are problems that we don't know how to solve. A lot of people will probably end up dead if we start seriously trying. But it's worthwhile anyway.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by khallow on Wednesday October 16 2024, @05:52PM (4 children)
Group 2 is just not that useful though. A lot of people can think of problems they can't easily solve. Here, it's not even that. Stross goes through a bunch of historical approaches to colonization (rather to colonization governance) and just criticizes them outright. What is missed is that each of them worked to some degree - some amazingly well. The Polynesian model, for example, is thought to have been in use from 2200 BC when the Philippines would have first been settled to 1000-1200 AD when Easter Island was settled. That's over 3000 years of successful colonization. Yet all Stross can talk about is that it has multiple failure modes:
My take is that group 1 can find real problems and solve them. Group 2 just isn't that useful especially when they're just inventing problems.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Thursday October 17 2024, @03:19AM (3 children)
The major differences between space and Polynesia has to do with what is readily available when you show up somewhere:
1. Breathable air isn't the slightest bit of a problem in Polynesia. It's a major problem in space and any big rock not named "Earth" that we have a chance of getting to anytime soon.
2. Staying warm enough isn't a major problem in Polynesia: The Pacific Islands are mostly tropical, plus generally have abundant vegetation that can be used for firewood. Space doesn't have firewood, and is extremely cold (e.g. Mars is about -65C, making Antarctica look like paradise by comparison).
3. Fresh water is a solvable problem, from coconut milk to streams and the like. Plus any tools you develop to catch rainwater when it rains, which is frequently. Space mostly doesn't have fresh water about, and while you can recycle urine and such it's still something you have to concern yourself with and the system can break for all kinds of reasons.
4. Food is a very solvable problem in Polynesia - it grows wild on trees, plus is swimming in the sea, plus it can be cultivated, plus it can be hunted on land. There's basically no food natively available in space.
5. Building and crafting materials are plentiful and varied in Polynesia, suitable for making homes, tools, weapons, boats, etc. Building materials in space either consists of rocks, or nothing.
6. If you need to bail on a location, in Polynesia you can probably get to another island in a few days by boat if you can navigate well. Whereas once you're out of LEO, you're a long way from safety if you need to call it quits.
Space exploration is going to have a high body count. You're right that we might still be better off doing it, but it's also true that we have a very very long way to go in solving the engineering problems involved. We can't even get off the planet with a very high likelihood the ship wasn't damaged in the process.
"Think of how stupid the average person is. Then realize half of 'em are stupider than that." - George Carlin
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday October 17 2024, @04:12AM (2 children)
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Thursday October 17 2024, @11:41AM (1 child)
Yes, they are engineering problems. And each one, except the distance, is solvable on its own.
The problem is the margin for error is much smaller. If you take all these problems, and imagine a well-engineered solution to them somehow crammed onto a ship and lifted into space along with your intrepid colonists, so far so good, right?
Now hit those well-engineered solutions with a few rocks so they don't work, which is a real risk in space. And your available materials to rig a solution to the problems you just got handed are more rocks if you're lucky, and the other parts of your ship. You have about 20 hours before you run out of breathable air, and you will get progressively stupider and less able to do things as that time passes. "Well, carry a spare." Fine, but that's doubled the cost of launching your craft, and the moment this problem repeats itself your spare is gone too.
Contrast that with being in the middle of the Pacific: You won't run out of breathable air, you can catch water if it rains, you can fish for food, and if you can make it to an island you are likely to be able to find materials that will be useful in fixing your boat. And there's also a very distinct possibility you'll find other people who might be willing and able to help you out, too. It's an environment where you have a lot more flexibility and ability to adapt to trouble.
Terrestrial colonization worked because there was stuff humans needed and could use where they were going. Space colonization for the most part does not have that.
"Think of how stupid the average person is. Then realize half of 'em are stupider than that." - George Carlin
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday October 17 2024, @04:11PM
That still will be the case in space - the stuff humans need will be at those destinations. It's just a harder problem. That's all.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 17 2024, @07:51AM (2 children)
I'm in a different group I see that the most likely way for humans to have a longer future is via space. The Earth will eventually become more inhospitable than space colonies ( https://www.astronomy.com/science/earth-future-how-the-world-might-end-eventually/ [astronomy.com] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Future_of_Earth [wikipedia.org] ).
However, I consider it a colossal waste of money, time and resources to have projects to send humans to gravity wells like Mars.
They should be spending more on space colony/habitat related projects. Leave the Mars stuff for later.
The easily usable resources and time left on Earth are not infinite, if we waste too much on Mars we might not have enough to develop sustainable space colony tech.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday October 17 2024, @06:03PM (1 child)
Gravity wells have things like ground, free gravity (less need to rotate things), and aerobraking.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 18 2024, @02:31AM
Whereas you're going to need the artificial gravity tech anyway for future space colonies, so might as well start on it now while fossil fuels etc are still relatively cheap and available.
You're also going to need to do the science on "how much gravity is good enough for humans/chickens/fish/etc)".
Doing "humans on Mars" first is wasting resources doing the wrong thing first.
The advantage of doing Mars first is it gets the stupid and ignorant masses more excited.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by VLM on Wednesday October 16 2024, @08:59PM
What was the copyright date?
His old books were awesome, consider "The Atrocity Archives" which was around Y2K and its an amazing setting and world building, despite comic book level bad guys and not much of a story (it's a quick read)
Sometime before "The Annihiliation Score" or "The Delirium Brief" subjectively my opinion is he started hanging out with the wrong crowd, the type where authoritarianism and groupthink prevails and moral supremacy is determined by who gets triggered and reeeeeeeee's the most ridiculously intensely, and boy oh boy does that guy reeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee intensely. Imagine how unpleasant it would be to watch the cast of a really stereotypical unwatchable daytime news-talk show on MSNBC trying to play Pathfinder RPG while maxing out their snark and sneer, then put that to paper and that's how I feel about his later era of books. "The Labyrinth Index" for example was essentially unreadable.
ALL of the pre-2010 novellas and short stories were awesome. "Down on the farm" was amazing. "Overtime" was at least pretty funny to anyone who ever worked in IT and carried a pager over a holiday.
I'd like to enjoy "Escape from Yokai Land" but the copyright date is 2022 so I'm probably going to hate it because of Stross's ... outlook on life in the current year; I'd be mildly intrigued if any Soylentils have a book report on that. A new "Bob Howard" story? Oh yes yes yes. But written by 2020's Stross? Oh no no no.
The funny thing about "The Fuller Memorandum" is I actually enjoy J.F.C. Fuller's real world books, hilariously enough. Fuller is absolutely fascinating to read if you like 20th century setting combined arms strategy games, either cardboard or played on computer ("Steel Panthers" game series and all that). In the UK they have this "thing", right, where biographies are actually written (or at least ghost written) by interesting people and they discuss interesting topics unlike USA biographies that pretty much peaked with "Paris Hilton's Simple Life" TV series, Churchill's books in contrast are actually pretty interesting. Yeah, that Churchill, the politician, super interesting. Now Stross and his fictional setting was inevitably attracted to JFC Fuller because Fuller had some ... unusual philosophical-religious-political views aside from his fascinating military career. For USA peeps everyone seems to "know" the mythology of General Mitchell being the "Father of the US Air Force" or whatever, and its not entirely incorrect that JFC could be considered "The father of combined arms military strategy in the UK" or perhaps "The father of mechanized warfare in the UK". JFC is a super interesting dude and it was hilarious to see him mixed up in a Stross book.
Maybe if you or other soylentils have ever read John Ringo's books, can relate to the "mixed bag" concept, where some parts are really good which might make it easier to ignore the not-so-good parts? I still think the "Legacy of the Aldenata" needs a movie/miniseries, although it would have to be created by competent people which means no Hollywood, obviously.