[HN Gopher] Our Generation Ships Will Sink (2015)
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Our Generation Ships Will Sink (2015)
Author : BerislavLopac
Score : 39 points
Date : 2024-01-10 11:45 UTC (3 days ago)
(HTM) web link (boingboing.net)
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| kiratp wrote:
| One thing I firmly believe - the people who will pull this off
| will be ones who just aren't willing or able to see all the
| possible failure paths.
|
| Unreasonable optimism is the only path to success at this scale.
| actionfromafar wrote:
| These people can be found in many crazy success stories,
| survivor bias and all that. Can't fault them either, it worked
| for them...
| dehrmann wrote:
| > survivor bias and all that
|
| Even been to the Vasa Museum?
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| A key flaw in the essay is that the failure modes inherent in
| remaining a single-planet (or even a single-system) species go
| unstated, and are arguably even worse: They
| would know that their fate was created for them by
| ancestors who made the choice to enter the starship, a
| choice they could never unmake. That might be
| irritating.
|
| Um, yeah, and so is the knowledge that an oncoming asteroid is
| about to destroy the only planet we have.
|
| In any case, the process of attacking the problems Robinson
| mentions will make us unimaginably stronger. Perfecting fusion
| power, understanding and mastering our own biomes, and learning
| to coexist with ourselves will hardly be a waste of time, even
| if we never overcome all of the showstoppers he cites.
|
| In fact, I'd agree with Robinson in one key area: humans will
| never make it to the stars.
|
| Somebody will, though. They won't be humans anymore, not as we
| are now. But their ancestors will have been. That's us.
| paulryanrogers wrote:
| What makes you think any lifeform from Earth will ever
| independently live on another planet, much less one orbiting
| a distant star? Goldilocks conditions appear to be rare, so
| far as we can see. And therefore very unlikely to be reached
| in any organism's lifetime.
| moondistance wrote:
| We will need to upload ourselves and/or have robots grow us when
| we get to our destination. We will get there. It sounds crazy
| until it doesn't.
| omeze wrote:
| The (canceled) show Raised By Wolves goes into this
| kalbadia wrote:
| this reminds me of the anime "Exception" I watched recently.
| Pretty good one.
| cousin_it wrote:
| I'm very against developing uploading tech, because it allows
| an unprecedented level of power over a person. Simply put,
| someone can repeatedly resurrect and torture an upload a
| million times a second, and if it's done on a private computer
| then nobody else will know. More generally, my position is the
| "butlerian jihad" one, that having any kind of intelligence in
| machines (AI/uploading/whatever) enables way too many bad
| outcomes, so humanity shouldn't develop such tech.
|
| Biotech seems like a better way. "Have robots grow us", maybe
| with predesigned adaptations to local conitions.
| paulryanrogers wrote:
| What convinced you to cross over to thinking it's not crazy?
| fallingknife wrote:
| I don't find this at all persuasive. The author mentions a lot of
| potential problems, but doesn't go into detail on why any of them
| are insurmountable. It just seems like the assumption that
| because it sounds impossible at current levels of tech that it
| will always be impossible.
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| The big problem is how unoriginal it is. The essay could have
| been written at any time in the past, or transported there with
| no mechanism other than a simple find/replace. As someone else
| said, it's just a big list of reasons why airplanes won't work,
| along with a few arguments regarding why submarines will never
| be any good at swimming.
|
| At some point you'd think people would get tired of being
| wrong.
| snakeyjake wrote:
| >At some point you'd think people would get tired of being
| wrong.
|
| Many people suspected that the airplane naysayers were wrong
| because heavier than air flight was already possible and the
| only problem was sustaining it via mechanical means and
| carrying a human. There were numerous examples, from falling
| leaves to birds to children's gliders.
|
| I reckon powered heavier-than-air flight was "proved"
| possible the second someone observed a bird of prey or
| scavenger carrying close in mass to itself.
|
| There is no example of a generation ship. Earth doesn't
| count. I think they won't work because there has been no
| mechanism yet built that has lasted for the amount of time a
| generation ship will need it to last. Then you get into a
| mass death spiral of spare parts, raw materials, machines
| needed to create spares out of raw materials once the spares
| run out, recycling, storage of bulk raw materials, and the
| fuel needed to move all of that mass. Even the oldest
| currently-operating non-trivial mechanical devices, probably
| clocks that have been installed in continually-operating
| cathedrals, have had TONS of external inputs in the form of
| lubricants, wood, and metals for replacement parts over the
| centuries they've been operating.
|
| Not even granite boulders "last" for tens of thousands of
| years. They weather and chip and change over timespans that
| long and are not the same as when they were formed. Space is
| not as hostile in some ways as the earth's environment but it
| is more hostile in other ways-- especially when you start
| approaching even a small fraction of the speed of light.
| People think a fusion reactor can be constructed will last
| for 50,000 years?
|
| "Oh just use robots and to keep the robots from breaking down
| they'll be organic self-replicating robots and everything
| will be recycled in a closed loop even though it is
| impossible (literally and actually absolutely impossible) to
| construct a pressure vessel (like, it's atomically impossible
| it doesn't matter what material you use or how thick you make
| it) that won't either leak or absorb (seriously, even if you
| made it out of an exotic element not yet discovered that is
| denser by orders of magnitude than anything we can even dream
| of and install a magnetic containment field it WILL leak) the
| atmosphere to a noticeable degree over tens of thousands of
| years.
|
| So then people come up with hand-waving solutions to those
| problems that are the equivalent to "oh they'll just use
| AI/the blockchain/hyperdrive".
|
| Tell you what.
|
| Once industrialized society exists for the amount of time it
| will take to get to an inhabitable star (so NOT Proxima
| Centauri) I'll say "you know what if we can last that long it
| might be worth figuring out the mass death spiral problem".
| We'll see if we last that long.
|
| Until then?
|
| Impossible.
| Terr_ wrote:
| In terms of flight comparisons, it's also worth bearing in
| mind how many of our current flying contraptions don't
| overlap with the kinds of things people were excited about
| imagining at the time. Yes, in broad terms it was invented,
| but that only validates a subset of predictions.
|
| There are no cohorts of commuters using there bicycle
| blimps or personal jetpacks to cross the skyways of Paris,
| for example.
| paulryanrogers wrote:
| Fusion is possible, we even live near a star doing it right
| now! But there are so many challenges that combine to make it
| impractical for us to do on Earth. Overcoming them could
| consume so many resources most of humanity is forced back into
| the stone age, before seeing any positive output.
|
| Permanent, independent residence apart from Earth strikes me as
| a similar challenge.
| southernplaces7 wrote:
| Taking aside the unknown unknowns and known unknowns in the
| speculative science of really creating generation ships, the
| article puts forth a forced narrative that Plan B has to involve
| colonizing extrasolar worlds and then breaks down why it's
| impossible (again, a highly debatable conclusion). What it
| doesn't talk about so much is that we don't need to leave the
| solar system to create a Plan B. While nearby solar systems are
| very speculatively feasiable for humanity, our own solar system
| is outright technically feasible and at a much lower
| technological threshhold. We could put deep effort into
| colonizing many places right here and in some cases even with
| something close to current technology, just massively scaled up.
| A few basic ideas in descending order of feasability:
|
| The obvious candidate, Mars (despite its supposed problems, still
| a much more reasonable choice than anything outside the solar
| system and the planet with the most benign climatic conditions
| outside earth our whole system. This is a huge plus even when
| weighed against all of the difficulties of Mars)
|
| The upper atmosphere of Venus (extremely amenable and doable even
| with something very close to current tech)
|
| The subsurface of Mercury (easy climate control and so much free
| solar power once you set up the collection systems)
|
| Asteroids hauled into the inner solar system, or even asteroids
| as they currently orbit in the Belt
|
| At least a couple of Jupiter's moons.
|
| With enough long-term investment and effort, potentially
| millions, or even hundreds of millions of people could live
| scattered across these places, with the resources of Earth still
| in the background as a backup to potential problems and creating
| a humanity that's much more robust against terrestrial
| cataclysms.
|
| On that last note, asteroids would cease being one of those
| potential cataclysms, since our being able to fulfill any of the
| above colonization plans presupposes our being able to capture
| and redirect all but the most gargantuan asteroids if they're
| discovered heading for Earth.
| jvanderbot wrote:
| Not to mention that the article attacks the currently known
| technology with reasonable extensions, and treats those as a
| Ark or cruise ship that somehow has to get to another solar
| system. Rightfully skeptical there.
|
| But there's so many other ways, ways that our descendents will
| think of that were beyond our imagination. Think tiny robots
| and gene bombs, or peppering interstellar visitors with inert
| payloads, etc. Once you abandon the meme of a brave ship full
| of sailors, it's fair to return to an optimistic future
| millennium where humans are sending life to the stars.
|
| And that's completely without considering all the very real
| possibilities in our solar system, which are more challenges of
| degree, rather than kind. Perhaps human lifespan in orbit is 30
| years at first. It wouldn't be the first time a population took
| root in a hostile area.
| paulryanrogers wrote:
| > While nearby solar systems are very speculatively feasiable
| for humanity...
|
| Such confidence. We aren't even living sustainably on our home
| world. Strongly doubt we'll ever do so in craft that can reach
| other stars, much less once we arrive there.
| johnbcoughlin wrote:
| The author of the article is Kim Stanley Robinson, whose Mars
| Trilogy and novel 2312 include all of the possible in-solar
| system alternatives you mention and more.
| jl6 wrote:
| Asteroids have at least one advantage over planets - their
| shallow gravity well makes it much easier to come and go.
| Perhaps a little too easy. The sci-fi vision of a travel/trade
| network in space seems more feasible between asteroids than
| between planets.
| Terr_ wrote:
| The question is what one would trade, especially if there has
| to be an actual early growth phase rather than just having it
| poofed into existence with regional value-added manufacturing
| specialties out of nowhere.
| XorNot wrote:
| Precious industrial metals and beamed solar power would be
| one thing.
|
| Spaceborne agriculture would be another, if only for
| species like bananas which are too vulnerable to parasites
| on Earth now (easier sterile, isolated environments).
| dash2 wrote:
| How easy is it to grow an atmosphere on Mars? Either for the
| whole planet, or say for some 1km x 1km bubbles?
| stevenwoo wrote:
| The author's fictional works (Mars trilogy for instance)
| speculate that it would require the concentrated effort of
| the human race (via a UN type government or corporation) and
| Von Neumann factory robots that can replicate themselves or
| other robots and hundreds of years of a multiple pronged
| approach in space around Mars and on surface of Mars - spread
| out over many thousands of acres, just based on what we knew
| at the time of the writing. At the present time we cannnot
| make a Von Neumann automata outside of paper or electronic
| versions.
| golem14 wrote:
| Hah! We can't even build nuclear plants surviving a 20m tsunami
| or airplanes where the front (door) doesn't fall off ...
|
| I jest, but I believe we're far away from anything truly useful
| for space travel even to MARS or Belt objects. We should
| obviously try, so we can eventually succeed. I suspect our
| (democratic) culture is making long term thinking and planning
| harder than ever, since these efforts will require sacrificing
| short term comforts. It will be interesting to see if the much
| more centralized Chinese or private US-based efforts will speed
| up our progress.
| issa wrote:
| Tons of respect for KSR but this reads like a treatise on why
| airplanes will never work. https://bigthink.com/pessimists-
| archive/air-space-flight-imp...
| Analemma_ wrote:
| I don't think you can treat those as equivalent. The arguments
| against airplanes were about _physics_ , which is comparatively
| easy. The whole point of this essay, and KSR's companion novel
| Aurora, is that people who get excited about generation ships
| tend to only think about the physics and engineering problems,
| and handwave away the problems of ecology, biology, sociology,
| ethics (!), and politics (!!) because they don't find them
| interesting, even though these problems are actually much
| harder to solve. His complaint is that by sweeping the hard
| problems under the rug, people are making this out to be a much
| more feasible operation than it actually is.
|
| In order to prove him wrong, you'd have to really grapple with
| the question of how to have a self-sustaining ecology in space.
| This is something I basically never see in online space
| boosterism, and note that empirical attempts to answer it like
| Biosphere 2 ended in complete failure (and those were on Earth,
| which is orders of magnitude easier).
| Terr_ wrote:
| Coincidentally, I'm reading A City On Mars (by the husband
| and wife team behind Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal comics
| [0]) and it's pretty much all about poking at those legal,
| sociological, and medical problems that keep getting skipped
| over.
|
| [0] https://smbc-comics.com
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| Well the big flaw here is that he just outright throws away
| the idea of FTL travel. A lot of that friction will be
| reduced if we ever figure out how to break that (which yes,
| is extremely tricky. Even IF we figure it out we'd need to
| also counter time dilation to properly verify).
|
| Now sure, the politics on who and what gets to go to thr next
| world will doom many. But physics can alleviate the whole
| "we'll tear each other apart over 200 years of space travel"
| part
| XorNot wrote:
| The ethics of generation ships always seems like a ridiculous
| issue to worry about: no one born today for a say in the
| circumstances of their birth, nott the ideology they get
| raised in. And there's _a lot_ of bad options if that 's
| anywhere on Earth.
| t43562 wrote:
| Physics might seem easy to you now but flying was an
| impossible dream for most of history.
|
| The other problems may become more amenable - you just don't
| know what will happen. CRISPR - an incredible tool.
| Sequencing the Genome once seemed a massive task.
|
| We can also re-engineer ourselves and that might help a lot.
| coldtea wrote:
| With enough hand waving and wishful thinking about FTL travel and
| generation ships and other such BS, the sky is not the limit.
| throwuwu wrote:
| The chip on KSR's shoulder is so big you could hollow it out and
| use it as a generation ship.
| api wrote:
| Arguing that things are impossible is, along with pessimism and
| doomerism, a cheap low effort way to look smart and profound.
| It's much easier than actually doing anything and since doing
| things is hard and often fails it sets you up to say "ha ha told
| you so."
|
| Same thing applies to social criticism. Criticism is easy and
| makes you look wise. Improving society is incredibly hard and
| since it's so hard you often fail and look foolish.
|
| All advancement depends on people who don't care if they look
| dumb or foolish.
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