Comment by notarobot123
1 day ago
I never understood where the desire to "colonise the galaxy" comes from. Why is this a desirable goal? Compared to anywhere else we know about, Earth is an extremely unique utopia. A "better" planet would be measured in how Earth-like it is - perhaps bigger or with more/different exploitable resources.
The only driver that I can really comprehend is the desire for freedom and autonomy in less populated spaces. The problem with this is that the human condition follows us everywhere. We'll recreate the same problems we have here everywhere we go. We can't run away from ourselves.
> Why is this a desirable goal?
It doesn't have to be a desirable goal to everyone.
> The only driver that I can really comprehend is the desire for freedom and autonomy in less populated spaces.
You got one of the big ones. But not the only one. Other is survival. Here on Earth we are all one bad infection outbreak away from ending human society as we know it. We have all of our eggs in one basket. Even if we would have a stable foothold on the moon and mars we would still be vulnerable to gamma-ray bursts and crazy despots with nuclear armed missiles.
> We'll recreate the same problems we have here everywhere we go.
We do. There are still benefits to the people who are "taming the frontier". And that is enough for it to happen. We also see that even though human condition follows us different places have a different feel to them. Some places we got some things better while others worse.
> Compared to anywhere else we know about, Earth is an extremely unique utopia.
To a certain extent. We can adapt the environments to us. And we can adapt ourselves to new environments.
When I move to the arctic I leave my parasol at home and buy a coat. When I move to a gas giant I need to rethink more of my biology. Imagine if some of us can become a buoyant sail with manipulating appendages who feels as much home in the red dot of jupiter as a homid feels home on a dewy meadow. If we could I would for sure give it a go for a few hundred years, then come back and write a book about how it was.
The fact that this is not easy is part of the lure of it.
Spread the risk and reduce the probability of extinction.
We know for a fact that earth is doomed, on top of our own continuous efforts to kill ourselves off. No not recent climate change type of doomed, but the evolution of our sun is continuously pushing the habitable zone outwards. We might be able to deal with that particular annoyance by hiding underground when it becomes an emergency in half a billion years or so, but our utopia won't be as utopic anymore.
Eventually however, the sun will balloon to a red giant at which point we better have a plan in place other than staying on this planet.
If we're thinking that far out we might as well all just lay down and wait for rain because there's no avoiding the heat death of the universe. Treating the sun dying out like it's a real concern that we need to address in the next 2, 200, 2,000, or 2,000,000 years is comical. Whatever is around to experience that won't be human as we know it.
I don't really think about this much, but your comment made me wonder:
If we do find another earth-like planet within travel distance (impossible afaik but let's suspend disbelief for a moment), how do we determine whether it's worth colonising? And how to we measure it?
"The resources on this planet will last 15.6B person-years which means if we send 5 million people there over time, we will have to prepare for their evacuation in ??? years"?
Obviously totally moot if Earth's resources aren't going to last that long, but just had that thought bubble up.
The "bigger problem" is that it is insufficient to observe the life carrying capacity of a planet for a few decades and conclude that it is stable long term.
For example, the host star could have variability measured in thousands or millions of years that would render the planet inhospitable to humans but not the indigenous life, which would have been adapted to these cycles.
Similarly, the planet could experience regular asteroid impacts due to passing through a recently broken up rock that intersects its orbital path.
Some of these risks can be eliminated through careful study, but this would require something like a century of painstaking geology, thorough astronomic surveys of its neighbourhood, a full fossil record, etc...
> The only driver that I can really comprehend is the desire for freedom and autonomy in less populated spaces
Exploration and seeing what's beyond seems to be innate in some people, not so much in others. Personally, if someone gave me to the opportunity today to "Sit in this rocket and get launched out into infinity and report back what's out there", I'd probably do it, and I'm sure I wouldn't be the only one. Curiosity would be enough for me to go.
Mankind will either spread further or die, this is binary. How much spread we can achieve or how much is even possible (ie due to limit of speed of light) is another topic, but if we want even with c being the absolute limit we can colonize milky way in maybe 100 million years if we want... in theory.
But for what? The beings that will have populated the milky way in 100 millionen years will not be humans anymore due to evolution. Some planets will be thousands of light years apart, meaningful communication will be impossible. Species will diverge. Why should I care about such a future?
Some people, both men and women, like to see their specific genes propagating and thriving. Built in by evolution definitely. Most parents do understand this.
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