
Why We Should Think Twice About Colonizing Space - dnetesn
http://nautil.us/blog/why-we-should-think-twice-about-colonizing-space
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jacobwilliamroy
Every time someone talks about space travel I'm reminded of the McMansion Hell
article Jackson Gilman-Forlini wrote about rowhouses [0]. It's mostly a
technical breakdown of the design and aesthetics of rowhouses, but he also
mentions how urban neighborhoods had a surprising amount of racial and class
diversity before public transit and automobiles: "It made sense that both boss
and employee should live near their work, and therefore live near one
another... This pattern of urban living changed only with the advent of
trolleys, when the wealthy could afford to commute and consequently removed
themselves from older neighborhoods and the working class." He cites Mary
Ellen Hayward's book (which I have not read) "Baltimore’s Alley Houses: Homes
for Working People Since the 1780s"

I currently believe that this pattern will repeat itself should space travel
become affordable for the wealthy. I imagine suburbs on the moon and my
neighborhood being demolished to make way for a big-dumb ugly space highway so
the city planners who don't actually live here can get in and out of my town
as fast as possible.

[0] [http://mcmansionhell.com/post/163793178726/guest-article-
row...](http://mcmansionhell.com/post/163793178726/guest-article-rowhouses-
urban-living-at-its-best)

~~~
kayfox
>> I imagine suburbs on the moon and my neighborhood being demolished to make
way for a big-dumb ugly space highway so the city planners who don't actually
live here can get in and out of my town as fast as possible.

Hopefully they will post notice more conspicuously than in the bottom of a
locked file cabinet in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door reading
"Beware of Leopard."

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londons_explore
The argument made here has strong parallels to the initial exploration of
earth.

Why go and explore and discover the americas and australia when, due to
communication and military force delays of several months, there is no way you
could ensure peace? A war could break out between colonies and it would take
months for the british imperial army to arrive!

History worked out those issues, with a few wars, rebellions, etc., but the
final result is a world with more people living hopefully better lives in more
places.

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baud147258
But in the initial exploration of earth case, the communication lag was lower
and the condition wouldn't have forced a divergence as radical as humanity
would experience by going to another planet.

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kitsunesoba
I appreciate what the article is saying, but regardless of how likely such an
outcome is, “something bad might happen” is rarely a good reason to not do
something new and unknown. A modicum of caution is important of course, but if
said caution spirals out of control you end up with stagnation which with time
is arguably as dangerous as the worst outcomes of attempted advancement.

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DowsingSpoon
The article puts forward the notion that "the universe is simply too big for a
government to establish law and order in a top-down fashion." However,
conflict will most assuredly not be "extremely difficult to avoid" because
space is large, and interstellar travel will always be extraordinarily
difficult and slow. There will be no war between two groups when they have
basically no interaction whatsoever.

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fallingfrog
This author seems to be really confused about how vast space really is. He
keeps talking about "neighbors", but someone who lives _light years_ away from
you is in no way a neighbor.

~~~
ForHackernews
"Space is big. Really big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-
bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to
the chemist, but that's just peanuts to space."

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mpettitt
This seems to be conflating dispersal to multiple star systems and
trade/regular interaction with the newly colonized planets. Given that it
would take 40 years to get a reply to a message, discussion wouldn't be the
normal pattern - by the time you see an insult/aggressive message, there is a
reasonable chance that whoever sent it is now either regretful about it, or
dead, or, most likely of all, has completely forgotten about it.

Colonized planets in different star systems are effectively alone, able to
receive old news, and potentially get deliveries of new colonists or
technology every once in a while, should anyone on another planet send some.
For anything urgent, it would need to be dealt with without calling back home
- whether that is disease, local war (e.g. within the star system), or simply
resource shortages - there just isn't a suitable way to top them up from
elsewhere.

That same limitation means that taking war to another planet is unfeasible -
even if you're just redirecting asteroids, the target planet would be able to
see them coming, and, importantly, has had as long as you have had, plus the
travel time of the rock, to master manipulating rocks in space. Similarly,
while you could target computer systems (interstellar cyber warfare), the most
recent details about their computers you have is dependent on the last message
you received - computer viruses from 20 years ago don't work on modern
computers without quite a bit of effort to make them run, and even if you get
them to run, the effects are limited.

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ArekDymalski
>For anything urgent, it would need to be dealt with without calling back home
- whether that is disease, local war (e.g. within the star system)

Exactly. Alastair Reynolds painted an intersting view for such a furure in his
"Revelation Space" series. Including biological and cultural diversification
into several human species.

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ddnb
How are these arguments even valid. If we stay on earth we could just as well
kill each other. Nothing changes with going to outer space.

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stuntkite
I don't think anyone is going to stop us if we can do it. Our ability to
actually do it remains to be written, but it looks like that's coming due
soon. Like most things that we do as a species, it's probably going to be
messy and nothing like what we expect.

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botverse
We will do it “when we can because we can” is the conclusion I give to so many
conversations about the future of the species where morality should be a
deterrent:

\- modifying the genome of the species until unrecognisable

\- transfer people to machines

\- cyborg’ing and body mods

\- creating weapons that could destroy all of humanity

This works in the past and present too, otherwise how would you explain Love
Island?

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squozzer
Despite my misgivings - we should probably attempt to colonize Antarctica and
the continental shelves before other planets - I think it's a good idea to
colonize at least one other planet before a truly global government bans space
travel.

Why? Because one thing governments hate is competition.

Think of the European colonial powers - they lost all of their colonies
eventually, some quite violently (e.g. USA, South America, Indochina, some
Africa), and others out of political / economic necessity (most of Africa.)

And sometimes the colonies are more powerful - USA v UK, Brazil v Portugal,
Mexico v Spain (maybe) - which makes them _threats_ , especially in the near
term after a secession.

I think some of the notions regarding space colony threats is overblown -
after all, space is huge, huge enough to spread political or economic
competition pretty thin.

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vanattab
Ok, I was ready to entertain the author of article until I got to this line:
>"My conclusion is that in a colonized universe the probability of the
annihilation of the human race could actually rise rather than fall."

If you have the hubris to state you can accurately calculate such a
probability I really have no interest in reading the rest of the article.

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megaman22
The dangers do increase... if planetary spaceflight is a reality, and common
as, say shipping in the age of sail, then the danger of some nutter or
terrorist tossing a rock down a gravity well becomes a real threat on an
existential level. See _Nemesis Games_ in the Expanse series, among others.

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whoGoesThere
If we've been left with the impression that no one else is doing it, then for
sure, we should move quickly to try and do it without letting anyone else (who
may or may not be) out there know what we're up to.

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daedalus2027
Beacuse we will be misserable in more planets?

