Re: Spacey Ambitions - They're KIDDING, Right ?
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Date: 03/16/05
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Date: Wed, 16 Mar 2005 09:09:08 -0500
On Tue, 15 Mar 2005 21:27:05 -0600, Joe Strout <joe@strout.net> wrote:
>No, you know nothing of the kind. Life has been surviving "properly"
>for four billion years
Give or take a few mass extinctions ...
>and humans have been surviving just fine since
Not considering that we're becoming more diseased
and wasting more of our resources just to maintain
a substandard quality of life for most of our population ...
>...We're
>continuing to survive just fine.
Actually, we're throwing away topsoil, and, more critically,
potable water that we can't afford to lose in the long term.
More people are poor, hungry, and diseased now.
http://www.anotherperspective.org/advoc325.html
>Now, if you want to make an argument that we're at risk of *not*
>surviving the next century or two, that would be at least a sensible
>argument to have. But to argue that we *can't* survive "properly"
>(whatever that means) is either an empty statement, or an obviously
>false one.
I've already mentioned that the Biosphere projects failed.
Those who want to believe that we can just throw the
Earth away and do without are the ones who aren't
doing the thinking they should.
>... Indeed, it may well be learning to live and
>work in space, and manage our artificial biospheres there, that enables
>us to best steward the Earth's ecosystem (or economy or whatever else it
>is you feel we're not doing "properly" for our survival here).
When you can't do a biosphere here, there's no logical
reason to believe you'd suddenly manage to do one
in space, though.
>... Living and thriving in space does not require planets, let
>alone the sort of planets I think you mean by "suitable."
Why would anyone believe that?
>It requires
>raw materials (various elements in easily-accessed forms and locations,
>ideally not at the bottom of a steep gravity well) and energy. Both are
>abundant in the solar system.
It requires more than that - without, for example, green
plants, there's nothing for humans to eat, and they starve.
>...First, nobody advocating space colonization supports "throwing
>your home away."
In reality, we're throwing it away regardless of the idea
of space colonization, wrt soil and water supplies.
When it becomes too contaminated to support our life,
that's throwing it away, too.
>The Earth will be here for billions of years, will
>most likely always have billions of people on it for millenia to come,
>and will hopefully always have a vibrant ecosystem.
Nice fantasy - ever done anything toward making it real,
besides waste scarce resources and create pollution?
> Indeed, many space
>enthusiasts are environmentalists who recognize that development of
>off-world resources is the best way to reduce the strain of humanity on
>the Earth.
Name one.
>Second, nobody's looking for a replacement for Earth, or advocating the
>wholesale exodus of humanity from Earth to some other place. That idea
>would be ridiculous.
That's been done right here on the Usenet, but I grant that
if you've not been around long you wouldn't know it.
>Rather, what's needed is a spreading out, so that
>we don't have all of humanity in one all-to-easily extinguished place.
>This is just simple common sense.
What's really needed is the ability to make do properly with
less waste and spread.
It helps avoid slaughtering off the indigenous cultures, too.
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/health/2002047307_sprawl27.html
>You are making unsupportable assertions which are, in fact, quite false.
Correction: every assertion I make is already supported by
known facts.
>It is very possible to do it sustainable elsewhere. There's nothing
>magical about recycling or growing crops.
On the moon? On Mars?
>...Humans couldn't colonize high latitudes of Earth
>until they'd developed the technology of clothing. Humans couldn't
>colonize space until they'd developed the technology of air recycling.
>We now have that technology (along with others that are needed), so we
>can now colonize space just as we can (thanks to clothing) colonize the
>tundra.
That's a non sequitur, but you won't know why.
There's more to extra-terrestrial survival than that.
>Sure there is. "Suitable" is defined as one in which we can live, given
>the technology available. Northern latitudes were not suitable to
>humans running around naked with wooden spears. Space is not suitable
>to humans lacking the technology to travel and live in space. We have
>that technology now; so space is now a suitable environment for us.
Why would anyone believe that we'd have the
'technology' to produce air, water, or food, in
space, when we don't even know how to do
that properly here, where it's so much easier?
On Tue, 15 Mar 2005 20:58:44 +0000 (UTC), echomko_at_@polaris.umuc.edu (Eric Chomko)
wrote:
>You are the modern day version of the Wright Bros critics, "if man were
>meant to fly, then God would have given him wings".
No, I'm not. I don't doubt that you could spend
more than you can afford to play in space.
I know for a fact that you can't survive properly
here, and that you won't be able to do so on any
other planet if you don't learn how on the one
that spawned you.
You, in fact, are the one clipping your own wings.
You're insisting that sustainable life can't be done.
You want to keep using up resources when if you
had some sense you'd sustain your lifestyle.
>As someone else stated, not expanding our habitat off the earth is
>suicide.
Actually, the expectation that another suitable planet
awaits is ludicrous.
You can't even deal properly with this one, and that's
your suicide.
>In short, to survive, it MUST be done...
You are mistaken. To survive, you'll need to quit
throwing your home away as you pretend there'd
somehow be a replacement waiting.
On Mon, 14 Mar 2005 14:44:26 GMT, "glbrad01" <glbrad01@insightbb.com> wrote:
> Breathable "air" is not separate from its atomic makeup. Nor is any
>environment separate from its atomic makeup. We can already manipulate the
>atomic, now, and we will do it on much grander scales in outer space. We've
>done it for thousands of years to some degree, raising that degree by many
>orders of magnitude in the last little more than half a century. In getting
>so far into the micro-universe as we have we'd better get into the
>macro-universe for a balance weight (so to speak). Believing we can
>maintain, and even evolve and grow, the imbalance in place is sheer suicidal
>arrogance on our part.
>
>Brad
Do you have any idea what's required to provide air, water, and food to humans?
We don't even do that particularly well or efficiently here.
You have no possible way of doing it sustainably elsewhere.
On Mon, 14 Mar 2005 02:29:31 GMT, simberg.interglobal@org.trash (Rand Simberg) wrote:
>...People could just wander up from Africa, into a glacial
>period or up into the tundra, with no technology ...
Wow, another straw man. Even the coldest tundra
has air humans can breathe, or hadn't you noticed?
On Sun, 13 Mar 2005 22:09:01 GMT, Fred J. McCall <fmccall@earthlink.net> wrote:
>This explains so much. You think ...
Why don't you?
In the 'cave' example, in each case there's a suitable
environment awaiting. In that of space, there isn't.
On Sun, 13 Mar 2005 00:20:14 GMT, "glbrad01" <glbrad01@insightbb.com> wrote:
> You shouldn't leave a cave until you've first figured out how to live
>properly inside the cave into perpetuity. You should never leave an
>island.... You should never a room.... You should never leave an area.....
You don't know why that's just a straw man, do you.
If your species is hellbent on destroying its environment
rather than preserving it, it doesn't deserve to have any
other environments to damage.
> ...Minds are growing
>more puny by the minute. People are growing less discerning, more
>thoughtless, more stupid, more unwise, and more suicidal, by the minute.
Speak for yourself. Those of us who are not suffering
from the impairments you have know that we must learn
how to live properly here before we have any business
going anywhere else.
On Sat, 12 Mar 2005 18:12:43 GMT, Roy Stogner <roystgnrNO@SPAMices.utexas.edu> wrote:
>Are you posting from near Olduvai Gorge?
No, but that'd still beat posting from "Planet Pollyanna".
>... it's [sic] biological homelands.
You realize that you can't get even the 'biosphere' idea to work, don't you?
Apparently not ...
>... to expand to new territories ...
You really shouldn't try to go to places which won't sustain your life
when you can't figure out how to manage in places which would.
>... I think ...
Not if you don't realize that you can't begin to afford your 'Star-Trek'
fantasies, you don't ...
On 11 Mar 2005 16:38:30 -0800, "Jordan" <JSBassior2001@yahoo.com> wrote:
>... to colonize the Solar System...
How very silly: humans haven't even figured out
how to live properly on earth, the one planet
that tends to favor their existence.
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