How long will the human race survive and why?

[paranoid marvin]

I'm still lost. So, will humanity survive another 5,000 years

1. Only if we make mining space cost effective.
2. Even if we don't make mining space cost effective.
3. We are all doomed because with current technology mining space isn't cost effective.

Space mining won't determine the continued existence of the human race either way.

As I mentioned earlier, there's a vested interest in not bringing precious metals back to Earth. And unless some wondrous new element comes to light on the Moon or Mars (which it almost certainly won't) then the billions/trillions of dollars needed to excavate and return it to our planet won't make it worth it.

There's no doubt we will attempt a manned flight to Mars, likely before the end of the 21st Century. It's also likely that one of the attempts will be successful (although I do fear that some of the earlier ones may be fatal). But it's more likely to be a flag-planting exercise more than anything more permanent.

Once/if Mars is determined to be a long-dead lump of rock in space then - like happened with the Moon - will we continue to pump the trillions of dollars needed into keep returning there?

 

[Swank]

Every other capsule has parachutes and a flotation belt both of which must survive reentry hence a good heat shield. That's already a hefty price tag, especially for a once-off.

No, they don't. Russian capsules come down on land, the space shuttle and other lifting bodies don't use parachutes.

And that's for delivering people. If the capsule is just full of exotic materials or pharma, it could withstand much higher g forces and could just fall into the sea or a lake without a parachute. Or the capsule could be a blown bubble of steel with low pressure inside that has a very slow terminal velocity after the heat shield falls off due to low density. Or is a wing.


It takes an astounding lack of imagination to not come up with low cost solutions to braking and dropping stuff to earth when you have steel, aluminum, solar power, vacuum and zero G to utilize. An appropriate aerodynamic shell could be fashioned remotely during moon-earth transit with accurate, repeatable methods for almost zero cost.

 

[Swank]

Sure we can, but the big, big problem is that we can't develop engineering that is cheap. The further we push manipulation of the laws of physics the more difficult and expensive it becomes and there's no way around that fact. One man can can train a horse, build a cart and travel at about 6km/h for an indefinite distance. One man can't build a car. That takes several men. Several men can't build a spacecraft. That takes a huge corporation with a huge budget that can be funded only from the bottomless well of taxpayer money - and that includes Musk. He is a NASA subcontractor. If NASA doesn't foot the bill using government money then Musk doesn't get to put anyone in space. These are the natural brick walls to technology. Theoretically we can push the boundaries indefinitely, but in practice the cost of doing so eventually becomes just too prohibitive. That's what killed supersonic commercial flight: it cost too much to be economically viable (the Concorde was always subsidized).

I mentioned earlier that transport tech ceilinged out about 60 years ago. A car is meant to take you from A to B, quickly and affordably. That's its primary objective, anything else is incidental. Looking at the numbers, cars have been doing that at about the same cost for performance ratio for decades (keep in mind petrol was cheaper then so there wasn't such a need for fuel efficient engines). Even the humble Model T did as well as any modern car with the same pricetag. In fact the only modern car as cheap as the Model T was the Tata Nano and its overall performance was roughly equivalent: a little faster but higher on maintenance, and less adapted to off-road performance which the Model T was designed for. Fuel consumption incidentally was the same. Commercial subsonic air travel: speed and travelling time hasn't changed much since the 1950s (actually it's slower now). Economies of scale have made it cheaper but that's not a development in technology.

I think people are slowly waking up to the fact that most of the big brick walls have been reached. What we're largely doing now is crossing Ts and dotting Is. Sure, information and communication tech have advanced dramatically since the 90s but to what extent has that physically improved our lives? There's one area where strides continue to be made and that's in the field of medicine, but I don't know if progress is slower now than it was a few decades ago. Certainly medicine has become expensive.

All of this ignores the fact that space is full of ideal manufacturing conditions that allow automated production of simple but large structures. The primary bottleneck in the usage of space is getting big things into orbit or onto the moon. But space and the moon are ideal places to turn materials into the large structures we can't easily lift off earth.

You always seem to want to look at the future as if technology is a linear path of cost/benefit progression. It isn't. Boats were incredibly radical innovations, changing where people lived and what they did entirely. We stand at the door to a new ocean and new kind of boat. The change, once instituted, will be radical, not incremental.

 

[Cthulhu.Science]

Space mining won't determine the continued existence of the human race either way.

As I mentioned earlier, there's a vested interest in not bringing precious metals back to Earth. And unless some wondrous new element comes to light on the Moon or Mars (which it almost certainly won't) then the billions/trillions of dollars needed to excavate and return it to our planet won't make it worth it.

There's no doubt we will attempt a manned flight to Mars, likely before the end of the 21st Century. It's also likely that one of the attempts will be successful (although I do fear that some of the earlier ones may be fatal). But it's more likely to be a flag-planting exercise more than anything more permanent.

Once/if Mars is determined to be a long-dead lump of rock in space then - like happened with the Moon - will we continue to pump the trillions of dollars needed into keep returning there?

In certain circles - car racing for example - and used in the first Avatar Movie - there is a mythical material that we all want to have jokingly called, "unobtainium." Who knows. Maybe it is out there for the taking.

So, if space travel isn't really an important piece of the Future of Mankind puzzle.

What do you think our outlook looks like? Will mankind really obliterate itself? Will something "out there" obliterate mankind. Or, will we keep on going along into the indefinite future?

 

[Cthulhu.Science]

If we are still on space, why not send a Hoberman sphere out there and inflate balloons one after another to provide a rigid exterior adequate to put the correct interior coating an build out the interior. Basically send a bunch of compressed stuff ready to be turned into a habitable environment. Bucky Fuller, space Frames, chemistry. they are all our friends.

 

[Cthulhu.Science]

OK. Here is the quiz: How long before humans make this planet uninhabitable for humans:

A. Less than 200 years
B. 200 to 1000 years
C. More than 1000 years
D. Humans won't do that.

 

[Swank]

If we are still on space, why not send a Hoberman sphere out there and inflate balloons one after another to provide a rigid exterior adequate to put the correct interior coating an build out the interior. Basically send a bunch of compressed stuff ready to be turned into a habitable environment. Bucky Fuller, space Frames, chemistry. they are all our friends.
View attachment 106008

Why have a frame at all?

Why not just heat iron or aluminum to liquid state and inflate it like a soap bubble? Nest a few layers with water in between.

We keep thinking about spacecraft and space stations like they are buildings, submarines or airplanes. But the reality is more jellyfish.

 

[Swank]

OK. Here is the quiz: How long before humans make this planet uninhabitable for humans:

A. Less than 200 years
B. 200 to 1000 years
C. More than 1000 years
D. Humans won't do that.

They could do it in 1 year. But no one has a crystal ball to predict stupidity.

 

[Justin Swanton]

No, they don't. Russian capsules come down on land, the space shuttle and other lifting bodies don't use parachutes.

And that's for delivering people. If the capsule is just full of exotic materials or pharma, it could withstand much higher g forces and could just fall into the sea or a lake without a parachute. Or the capsule could be a blown bubble of steel with low pressure inside that has a very slow terminal velocity after the heat shield falls off due to low density. Or is a wing.


It takes an astounding lack of imagination to not come up with low cost solutions to braking and dropping stuff to earth when you have steel, aluminum, solar power, vacuum and zero G to utilize. An appropriate aerodynamic shell could be fashioned remotely during moon-earth transit with accurate, repeatable methods for almost zero cost.

My point is that if you want to land a cargo on the sea that is easily recoverable then you need parachutes and a flotation belt,. If you want it to just fall into the sea then you have to be able to recover it easily from the ocean bottom. This means landing it at very precise coordinates (same applies to a lake). That means guidance which means much more than just a blown bubble of steel. This guidance applies all the way from the initiation of reentry (firing rockets at precisely the right moment to get your cargo to contact the atmosphere where you want it to, to actually guiding the projectile once it has slowed sufficiently. This is not simple nor cheap tech, especially if it's meant for a once-off use. Can you make all that (including the electronics and rocket engines and fuel) off-world at almost zero cost? I doubt it.

What you don't do is just fire a crude container full of stuff at the Earth and hope it doesn't land on somebody's head.

 

[Justin Swanton]

OK. Here is the quiz: How long before humans make this planet uninhabitable for humans:

A. Less than 200 years
B. 200 to 1000 years
C. More than 1000 years
D. Humans won't do that.

D. Even an all-out nuclear war won't make Earth uninhabitable. The US and USSR conducted a total of 434 atmospheric nuclear tests with no appreciable effect on the planet as a whole. Nuclear bombs have a pretty localised effect, unlike Chernobyl that spilled out large quantities of radioactive material that spread over huge distances. A nuclear bomb produces about 17.5 KT per 1kg uranium or plutonium. At Chernobyl, all or most of its 190 tons of nuclear fuel was released into the atmosphere. That enough for 33 1 megaton bombs - the most powerful nuclear bombs currently in existence. So bad but not that bad. The real damage of a nuclear bomb is the initial blast that destroys everything in a localised area.

 

[paranoid marvin]

OK. Here is the quiz: How long before humans make this planet uninhabitable for humans:

A. Less than 200 years
B. 200 to 1000 years
C. More than 1000 years
D. Humans won't do that.

It won't be uninhabitable, but it can be made a pretty unpleasant place to live. As a race we're currently spending an awful lot of resources on finding out what's out there, but not enough in looking after what we already have.

A bit like sitting in at home in a burning house, whilst looking at a brochure deciding where to go on holiday.

 

[Swank]

My point is that if you want to land a cargo on the sea that is easily recoverable then you need parachutes and a flotation belt,. If you want it to just fall into the sea then you have to be able to recover it easily from the ocean bottom. This means landing it at very precise coordinates (same applies to a lake). That means guidance which means much more than just a blown bubble of steel. This guidance applies all the way from the initiation of reentry (firing rockets at precisely the right moment to get your cargo to contact the atmosphere where you want it to, to actually guiding the projectile once it has slowed sufficiently. This is not simple nor cheap tech, especially if it's meant for a once-off use. Can you make all that (including the electronics and rocket engines and fuel) off-world at almost zero cost? I doubt it.

What you don't do is just fire a crude container full of stuff at the Earth and hope it doesn't land on somebody's head.

You don't need a flotation belt to make a sealed capsule float, unless it is heavier than water. You'll note that ships do not have floatation belts. In fact, the Apollo capsules also float, but the float belt caused them to float rightside up.

Solid rocket for entry burn can be made of two of the most abundant moon minerals: oxygen and aluminum.

Getting a capsule or wing to a precise location requires minimal control surfaces and the established protocols of guided bombs or $100 drones. The control surfaces don't need powerful motors thanks to the way trim surfaces on planes are used.

And even if you just aim it at the ocean with no atmospheric guidance, you still could put the capsule within 3 miles of a target, like the Apollo splashdowns.

 

[Justin Swanton]

Only two ways of resolving the issue: Newbury rules outside the pub or a detailed breakdown of costing for the tech and everything else needed to actually make this happen. When it comes to the pricetag for spaceflight the devil is always in the details. We don't know just what will be required to get a projective full of stuff back to the Earth in a way that it can be feasibly recovered. We don't know what it will cost to make such a projectile off-world, either on the lunar surface or in orbit. Even a modest satellite costs a fortune, abstraction made of the launcher to get it into orbit. I'll go with a suspended judgement mixed with a good dose of scepticism.

 

[Cthulhu.Science]

D. Even an all-out nuclear war won't make Earth uninhabitable. The US and USSR conducted a total of 434 atmospheric nuclear tests with no appreciable effect on the planet as a whole. Nuclear bombs have a pretty localised effect, unlike Chernobyl that spilled out large quantities of radioactive material that spread over huge distances. A nuclear bomb produces about 17.5 KT per 1kg uranium or plutonium. At Chernobyl, all or most of its 190 tons of nuclear fuel was released into the atmosphere. That enough for 33 1 megaton bombs - the most powerful nuclear bombs currently in existence. So bad but not that bad. The real damage of a nuclear bomb is the initial blast that destroys everything in a localised area.

Remembering my teenage nuclear war fantasy discussions with classmates:
1. If all existing 440 nuclear power plants are destroyed
2. All 12,500 nuclear bombs launched and exploded (used to be so many more...)

If it all went off within a relatively short time period (days or weeks), quite a large area of the planet can become pretty rough, particularly areas that have a lot of nuclear power plants - Europe, eastern United States, Japan.

And there was something about "nuclear winter" that if enough went off all at once there would be atmospheric effects that would go beyond impact points.

Fukushima radioactive water release chart.

 

[Justin Swanton]

Remembering my teenage nuclear war fantasy discussions with classmates:
1. If all existing 440 nuclear power plants are destroyed
2. All 12,500 nuclear bombs launched and exploded (used to be so many more...)

If it all went off within a relatively short time period (days or weeks), quite a large area of the planet can become pretty rough, particularly areas that have a lot of nuclear power plants - Europe, eastern United States, Japan.

And there was something about "nuclear winter" that if enough went off all at once there would be atmospheric effects that would go beyond impact points.

I don't buy a nuclear winter. Nukes couldn't push that much material in the atmosphere to sufficiently block out sunlight.

I am happy though that I live in the southern hemisphere. I've told my family and friends: don't make any long term plans for the next two years and don't think of moving to Europe any time soon (not that they do). I've come to the conclusion that all-out war is something like 70% likely, given the refusal of all concerned parties to enter into serious negotiation which inevitably breeds escalation. My 30% is based on a hope that the West backs down; Russia certainly won't. But this might be straying into a verboten category (sorry if it has).

 

[Pyan]

I'm of the opinion that this thread has run its course - as it's now straying into politics, I'm closing it down.