04-17-2012, 06:53 PM | #71 | ||
Join Date: Dec 2007
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Re: Space Opera vs Hard Sci-Fi, personal vs realistic
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04-17-2012, 07:02 PM | #72 | ||
Join Date: Dec 2007
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Re: Space Opera vs Hard Sci-Fi, personal vs realistic
That would require someone who owned a significant proportion of the sun's yearly output of power and a strong desire to commit suicide in an interesting way.
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04-17-2012, 07:17 PM | #73 | |
Join Date: Dec 2007
Location: Brooklyn, NY
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Re: Space Opera vs Hard Sci-Fi, personal vs realistic
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And if futurists' predictions of the increasing state of abundance arising from maturing information and nano technologies are correct, then abundance will launch us into space. And this is where it gets boring. Humanity's survival... who cares? I sure don't. I sure as hell do care about the lives and well-being of existing humans, some more than others, but why would anyone care about the perpetuation of the species, just for its own sake? That ideology of space travel won't ever capture many imaginations because in the end no one currently alive will ever get to benefit or see any of it. Some aliens will, albeit aliens that have our DNA and could cross-breed with us. But how similar will humans raised from germ lines on alien worlds by robots be to us? This approach makes humanity more of a cosmic virus than a collection of individuals. Individuals matter; species are just a handy biological abstraction, a category based on similar genes, often blurrier and less meaningful (especially in light of genetic engineering possibilities) than most like to think.
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04-17-2012, 07:24 PM | #74 |
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Re: Space Opera vs Hard Sci-Fi, personal vs realistic
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04-17-2012, 07:26 PM | #75 | |
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Location: Forest Grove, Beaverton, Oregon
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Re: Space Opera vs Hard Sci-Fi, personal vs realistic
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04-17-2012, 07:33 PM | #76 | |
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Location: Forest Grove, Beaverton, Oregon
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Re: Space Opera vs Hard Sci-Fi, personal vs realistic
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The real boom to energy abundance would be functional D-D fusion if and when they ever get it off the ground. Oh, I'm not that pessimistic. I'm sure humanity will get it going some day. But I'm not holding my breath for my lifetime. |
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04-17-2012, 07:38 PM | #77 | |
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Location: Forest Grove, Beaverton, Oregon
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Re: Space Opera vs Hard Sci-Fi, personal vs realistic
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Give me internet, my cats, and my life mate, and I don't care if I never physically see another living creature again. But my life mate does get antsy if she doesn't interact with other humans every month or two.... the social butterfly. :) Of course I know we're odd, but we're nice odd. |
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04-17-2012, 07:39 PM | #78 | |||
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Re: Space Opera vs Hard Sci-Fi, personal vs realistic
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04-17-2012, 07:43 PM | #79 | |||
Join Date: Dec 2007
Location: Brooklyn, NY
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Re: Space Opera vs Hard Sci-Fi, personal vs realistic
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I don't see the suicide part. Because of aging? No reason we can't conquer that. Smart people are working on that. No reason we can't even shed our biology in time, perhaps even becoming the consciousnesses of these ships. And in general risk taking behaviour isn't analogous or even similar to suicide, lest we call firefighters suicidal. Heck, we don't even usually call it suicidal when people kill themselves slowly, via alcohol, tobacco, or just plain not optimizing one's life habits to result in the maximum possible lifespan. Quote:
And even if those assumptions are and sadly will always be true, the financiers may still pay out for those sufficiently interested and asocial to make such trips joyfully. Astronauts are of necessity the types that can deal with scarcity in close quarters, separated by society, with only a few crew members for regular contact, and good at solving problems for themselves. Why would governments, businesses, and individuals finance these missions for other people? For lots of reasons. Humans have been undertaking large-scale, high-cost, and long-duration projects for which they'd never see a return of investment since the building of the pyramids and other such monuments. Sometimes it was just to say they did it, or contributed to it, or to be remembered for having done it, or for the social credit. What did we really get out of the manned mission to the Moon, in the end, or expect to get out of it? Not much. Yet we did it, at a time when technologically it was a huge stretch and probably a bad idea. Mostly to show a rival nation that we "beat them to it". Quote:
I see all these objections as surmountable, even if it may take a century or centuries to develop the technologies to enable them. Tell a Columbus-era sailor about getting across the Atlantic via the air in mere hours and they'd laugh you right into a mental hospital.
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04-17-2012, 07:47 PM | #80 | |
Join Date: Nov 2009
Location: Oregon
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Re: Space Opera vs Hard Sci-Fi, personal vs realistic
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And yes, it may make sense to send out robotic sperm'n'egg banks instead. I was just saying that if humans do ever engage in interstellar travel, those will be the most likely reasons for it - curiosity and procreation. |
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