What's so special about Earth?

Sarkus said:
Impossible, I'd have thought. Bear in mind that such a ship would have to take everything with them that they'd need on the journey, other than, perhaps, some gasses that they might scoop up from whatever the interstellar medium contains
;)
Click to expand...
OK If we're gonna build it :
We need to build it in space and make it large.
(not a rowboat nor titanic, but) really large---small city large
building the craft in space means tens of thousands of supply shuttles
(if nasa is in charge, it means that I will be dead before completion)
and then we need to supply it for several centuries in space (several thousands of more supply shuttles)
figure: Build it for 1000 travelers and supply it with 100 breeding pairs with experts in all crafts and sciences and food---hydroponics, animals,
etc...............................
 
"Just" convert Ceres into a hull, cylindrical, and spin that. Live on the inside of the cylinder and farm, etc. (Stolen from
$$Dark Lightning,$$ by John Varley. (His "Thunder and Lightning" quadrilogy. Fun read.) The ship would be used at the home base for the colonization effort. And, if the selected planet doesn't measure up we could move on. OR if it does the ones who want to move on would take the ship and go asailin' into the wild black.
 
Lesson to be learned.

Treat Earth as the only habitable planet and island of Human life in the entire universe, before we start thinking about terraforming a planet that we have not yet discovered.

We don't want to become the Easter Island of space. That would end human life, but still offer a home to insects and extremophiles.

Hellstrom Chronicle
 
Last edited:
Earth is special in so many ways, from the presence of biology and it's products - "All true wealth is biological" said someone in a book I read and I think they have a point - to abundance of high grade mineral resources from hydro-geothermal processes that don't exist in asteroids or comets, or moon or Mars.

In technology terms we have a global economy big enough and wealthy enough to throw resources at the speculative without risking economic collapse - although still way, way short of wealthy and advanced enough to attempt long duration space habitats. Big enough that it probably is possible to find 1,000 highly skilled volunteers who really would attempt self reliant survival in space even with the odds stacked against them, who are irresponsible enough to risk their children in a multigenerational experiment.

Just as a self reliant space habitat within the solar system, even with abundant solar power and ongoing resource access from asteroids and comets isn't feasible, doing it between stars without those resources is a lot less feasible. How much work will be devoted to feeding, clothing, medical care, education and training? What happens when the thousand highly trained, exceptionally capable adult crew have children who are, on average, less capable than they are and some are effectively useless and a significant burden? A thousand adult, functional crew means a population of several times that to provide replacements.

Seems to me we can pick out any aspect of this and find good cause to conclude it won't work. Call it premature if you want to hold hard to longtermist dreams.

Not a doubt in my mind that the enduring wealth and health of planet Earth is the special sauce, the essential ingredient, from which all technological advancement is derived - and at that faces some major problems, excacerbated by poor governance and corruption. Mind, we have gotten better at governance and the rule of law, despite the ups and downs but are still far short of true competence, with corruption and shortsightedness and scapegoating and conflict still rife.
 
Last edited:
"Not a doubt in my mind that the enduring wealth and health of planet Earth is the special sauce, the essential ingredient, from which all technological advancement is derived"

Yep, if we can't do it, we don't. The 'health and wealth' thing got me chuckling.
 
Ken Fabian said:
Not a doubt in my mind that the enduring wealth and health of planet Earth is the special sauce, the essential ingredient, from which all technological advancement is derived - and at that faces some major problems, excacerbated by poor governance and corruption. Mind, we have gotten better at governance and the rule of law, despite the ups and downs but are still far short of true competence, with corruption and shortsightedness and scapegoating and conflict still rife.
Click to expand...
I am glad that you qualified that optimistic statement.

How many people know that we have about 40 years' worth of oil left in the entire Earth? After that fossil oil will be gone for all practical purposes. This means that anybody over 35 (and living, driving, to 75) will experience the end of gasoline-driven cars.

Note the vehement objections to the introduction of EV, even as the government subsidizes the development of an EV industry that can replace and support a commercial infrastructure based on "renewable" energy sources, i.e. electricity generated from solar, wind, hydro, all within 40 years!

1,357,586,299,085 Oil left (barrels)
14,158Days to the end of oil (~39 years)
Countdown to the end of Oil:

Assumption:
  • If consumed at current rates
Sources and info:
Click to expand...
www.worldometers.info

Worldometer - real time world statistics

Live world statistics on population, government and economics, society and media, environment, food, water, energy and health.
www.worldometers.info www.worldometers.info

While there is still a lot of fossil coal left, it is not suitable for long term commercial consumption.
 
Last edited:
Write4U said:
I am glad that you qualified that optimistic statement.

How many people know that we have about 40 years' worth of oil left in the entire Earth? After that fossil oil will be gone for all practical purposes. This means that anybody over 35 (and living, driving, to 75) will experience the end of gasoline-driven cars.

Note the vehement objections to the introduction of EV, even as the government subsidizes the development of an EV industry that can replace and support a commercial infrastructure based on "renewable" energy sources, i.e. electricity generated from solar, wind, hydro, all within 40 years!


www.worldometers.info

Worldometer - real time world statistics

Live world statistics on population, government and economics, society and media, environment, food, water, energy and health.
www.worldometers.info www.worldometers.info

While there is still a lot of fossil coal left, it is not suitable for long term commercial consumption.
Click to expand...
LOL. Suitable would be "can we make any money off that shit?"
 
Write4U said:
I am glad that you qualified that optimistic statement.

How many people know that we have about 40 years' worth of oil left in the entire Earth? After that fossil oil will be gone for all practical purposes. This means that anybody over 35 (and living, driving, to 75) will experience the end of gasoline-driven cars.

Note the vehement objections to the introduction of EV, even as the government subsidizes the development of an EV industry that can replace and support a commercial infrastructure based on "renewable" energy sources, i.e. electricity generated from solar, wind, hydro, all within 40 years!


www.worldometers.info

Worldometer - real time world statistics

Live world statistics on population, government and economics, society and media, environment, food, water, energy and health.
www.worldometers.info www.worldometers.info

While there is still a lot of fossil coal left, it is not suitable for long term commercial consumption.
Click to expand...
In the UK almost no one will be driving a fossil fuelled vehicle 30 years from now. There will be a ban on sales of new IC engined vehicles in 2035. So even if new vehicles sold in 2034 last 20 years, these vehicles will be gone by 2055. The 40 year figure is based on current consumption rates. But actually, consumption rates will fall progressively.
 
To be clear, wealth and health are ideals and directions to aim for rather than descriptive of what currently is.

In relative/historical terms the wealth part looks to have a strong positive trajectory but to what extent that has come at the cost of the enduring healthiness part, is overshoot and cannot be sustained is a real question. It has only been relatively recently that the total numbers of people in dire poverty has stopped rising and begun to decline - a different metric to the decline in the percentage of a (much bigger, growing) population, that has been going on longer.

When the expedient political response to things going badly is to find people/nations/orgs/ideologies to blame and attack them the capacity to make what should be manageable unmanageable and much worse shouldn't be underestimated. Climate impacts (for me, in a region that already gets major droughts and heatwaves and fires) worries me greatly but it is the mismanagement and potential for conflict that worries me most.

On the positive side - even a decade ago RE was expensive and it's capacity to scale was widely disputed, now the most built new electricity options by huge margins. As the need for storage to support that growth becomes an issue we see remarkable advances and massive growth in battery manufacturing - just 7 years ago South Australia got it's first Big Battery, to widespread derision. Whole battery factories have been built and are in production since then, most recently seeing a surge in LFP type batteries with significant cost reductions. Australia probably has 20-30 times the amount of grid battery capacity already than that first example. If sodium and iron batteries prove to be reliable and cheaper again I think we will slow global warming by a lot, as a market based response to demand for electricity at least cost. Not going to fix it but without the alarmist economic fear of "too expensive" clean energy the politics will get easier.
 
Last edited:
DaveC426913 said:
What does this have to do with the thread topic?
Click to expand...
I see Earth's globally interconnected economies as something special about Earth. Global warming threatens the enduring health and wealth of the economies that make long term space programs possible. But yes it's always on my mind and that leaks out inappropriately sometimes, sorry.
 
Gawdzilla Sama said:
"Just" convert Ceres into a hull, cylindrical, and spin that. Live on the inside of the cylinder and farm, etc. (Stolen from
$$Dark Lightning,$$ by John Varley. (His "Thunder and Lightning" quadrilogy. Fun read.) The ship would be used at the home base for the colonization effort. And, if the selected planet doesn't measure up we could move on. OR if it does the ones who want to move on would take the ship and go asailin' into the wild black.
Click to expand...
Reminds me of KSR's Aurora, which delves into some similar situations. Robinson always does good research on his hard science stuff. He also explores the challenge of maintaining a stable ecosystem and society on the generation ship; IIRC the O.1 c they're moving at causes somewhat elevated ionizing radiation and the ship bacteria tend to mutate. They get to Tau Ceti and find an "earth-like" moon which proves to have deadly prion problems.
 
TheVat said:
Reminds me of KSR's Aurora, which delves into some similar situations. Robinson always does good research on his hard science stuff. He also explores the challenge of maintaining a stable ecosystem and society on the generation ship; IIRC the O.1 c they're moving at causes somewhat elevated ionizing radiation and the ship bacteria tend to mutate. They get to Tau Ceti and find an "earth-like" moon which proves to have deadly prion problems.
Click to expand...
Yep. Good book. One of his few that is not optimistic.
 
Everything about the earth is special, unique and one of a kind.

Contrary to NASA’s continuous self serving propaganda, there is no such thing as a earthlike exoplanet.
www.forbes.com

Sorry, 'Earth 2.0' Fans, There's No Such Thing As An Earth-Like Exoplanet

The dream of an 'Earth-like' planet showcases our astrobiological ignorance.
www.forbes.com www.forbes.com

The earth exists in the center of an intricate web of protection that does not exist anywhere else in the known universe. Without these protections, life on earth would be instantly eradicated.

This is how the universe really works, from a few famous physicists…

Hakeem Oluseyi – “The universe has just one rule when it comes to life - Kill it all!”
Neil deGrasse Tyson – “The universe is a deadly place; at every opportunity it’s trying to kill us.”
Lawrence Krauss – “The universe constantly wants to kill us.”

Simply put, life cannot exist in this universe. The concept of life violates every known law of physics and observation we’ve ever made.

There is no logical reason or scientific theory that can explain why this tiny oasis of life exists in a universe that appears designed to kill and destroy everything in it.

But life does exist, and it requires numerous miracles to occur on a daily basis to survive. I wonder why this is left out of your textbooks.

Only recently, we have developed the technology to observe other solar systems. The results are shocking.

We are utterly alone in the cosmos.
https://science.nasa.gov/solar-system/the-weirdest-solar-system-weve-found-so-far-you-may-be-in-it/

Red Dwarf stars, which make up 75-80% of all main sequence stars, regularly unleash flares 10,000 times more deadly than our star. We have observed a few flares that are billions of times more deadly.

More disturbing, a study of stars similar to our sun revealed, our sun has five times less magnetic activity than all similar stars. This leads other sunlike stars to have deadly solar flares and coronal mass ejections.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-...-similar-stars-thats-good-news-idUSKBN22C3NY/
another study -
The flares on our Sun are thousands of times punier than those on similar stars, Kepler observations suggest.
https://www.nature.com/articles/nature.2012.10653

Despite what you have been taught, our star is NOT average in any way. It is bigger and more powerful than 95% of the stars in the universe. Yet, it is calmer and gentler than every other star we have observed.

Still, without an ozone layer and magnetic field (which we don’t truly know how the earth is generating) the nicest star in the universe would kill us almost instantly. Strangely, while the earth protects us from the sun’s radiation. The sun’s emissions protect us from deadly cosmic rays that are coming from all points in the universe.

Our magnetic field is not strong enough to protect us from cosmic rays, but the solar wind blocks and weakens them before they arrive and kill the life on earth.

Our Star, our Moon, our Planet and our Solar System are behaving differently than everywhere else in the universe. If this were not the case, you would be dead.

So what make the earth special? It starts with a star that is violating the laws of physics that govern every other star in the universe.
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top