Fully Manual Austere Martian Communes
October 26, 2023 1:30 PM Subscribe
Space settlement advocates frequently argue that we will soon be able to settle humans in space. Surviving on Mars is clearly a pre-requisite to settlement, and much work has been done examining the engineering aspects of this endeavor. Much less work has been done, however, on questions related to how to arrange a society in space. Early settlements will be dangerous, isolated, and cramped, and picking a social arrangement that is likely to result in a vibrant and productive society will be critical. To Each According to Their Space-Need: Communes in Outer Space
Zach Weinersmith, known for SMBC(NSFW) and Bea Wolf, together with his wife Dr. Kelly Weinersmith, parasitologist and adjunct at Rice University, could not fit a chapter on communes into their upcoming book, A City on Mars. Rather than let their research go to waste, they co-wrote a paper with Ran Abramitzky and John Lehr. Kibbutz, Hutterites, and hippy communes all feature.
Zach Weinersmith, known for SMBC(NSFW) and Bea Wolf, together with his wife Dr. Kelly Weinersmith, parasitologist and adjunct at Rice University, could not fit a chapter on communes into their upcoming book, A City on Mars. Rather than let their research go to waste, they co-wrote a paper with Ran Abramitzky and John Lehr. Kibbutz, Hutterites, and hippy communes all feature.
Too many techbros read Heinlein's The Moon is a Harsh Mistress and idealized the dream of The 1840s In Space.
It's not gonna happen. You cannot have libertarianism in space because one dude with a pistol can not just kill a few schoolchildren, but the entire colony, including the techbros.
posted by zompist at 1:56 PM on October 26, 2023 [6 favorites]
It's not gonna happen. You cannot have libertarianism in space because one dude with a pistol can not just kill a few schoolchildren, but the entire colony, including the techbros.
posted by zompist at 1:56 PM on October 26, 2023 [6 favorites]
That's why they want mind-control chips in their ̶s̶l̶a̶v̶e̶s̶ i̶n̶d̶e̶n̶t̶u̶r̶e̶d̶ ̶s̶e̶r̶v̶a̶n̶t̶s̶ contractors .
posted by agentofselection at 2:11 PM on October 26, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by agentofselection at 2:11 PM on October 26, 2023 [2 favorites]
Useful information if we ever make our planet uninhabitable and need to retreat to bunkers, thanks!
posted by MrVisible at 2:15 PM on October 26, 2023 [4 favorites]
posted by MrVisible at 2:15 PM on October 26, 2023 [4 favorites]
I tend to think that shortly there is going to be some sort of twinned particle zero latency telecommunications technology coupled with gobstopping advances in robotics such that we will be able to "go" to Mars without ever leaving earth.
posted by Pembquist at 2:34 PM on October 26, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by Pembquist at 2:34 PM on October 26, 2023 [1 favorite]
Honestly, there’s a large number of “colonizing space” types I would happily send to Mars right now.
posted by GenjiandProust at 2:37 PM on October 26, 2023 [10 favorites]
posted by GenjiandProust at 2:37 PM on October 26, 2023 [10 favorites]
Too many techbros read Heinlein's The Moon is a Harsh Mistress and idealized the dream of The 1840s In Space.
It's not gonna happen. You cannot have libertarianism in space because one dude with a pistol can not just kill a few schoolchildren, but the entire colony, including the techbros.
This is too old-fashioned an interpretation of "libertarian techbro". They're not really focused on individual rights, including gun rights, for everyone anymore. With the rise of minorities and women as a political force, they've drifted more or less slowly into full fascism, so now gun rights for the masses are less important, voter suppression is ok, and oligarchy is the order of the day.
posted by Joakim Ziegler at 2:39 PM on October 26, 2023 [10 favorites]
It's not gonna happen. You cannot have libertarianism in space because one dude with a pistol can not just kill a few schoolchildren, but the entire colony, including the techbros.
This is too old-fashioned an interpretation of "libertarian techbro". They're not really focused on individual rights, including gun rights, for everyone anymore. With the rise of minorities and women as a political force, they've drifted more or less slowly into full fascism, so now gun rights for the masses are less important, voter suppression is ok, and oligarchy is the order of the day.
posted by Joakim Ziegler at 2:39 PM on October 26, 2023 [10 favorites]
So are we doing this topic in this way?
ockmockbock took the time to create a fine post. There's a scholarly paper which would engage many people here. There are some solid supporting links and a good sketch of the article's range.
What's the first - the very first - comment offered up on the blue?
Counterpoint: BBC recently ran an Apple News+ (link will open Apple News, be warned) item on why fascists (Musk et al) want everyone to live in space, and their reasons are not happy reasons...
From *the very first word* that comment wrenches us in a different direction. (And without even the grace of linking to the source.)
There goes the thread, well and truly derailed.
MetaFilter does this a *lot*. We piss on good efforts from the community - and right away, too, not even after some folks have had the chance to actually comment on the post's contents themselves.
I'm sorry that happened to you, ockmockbock. I'm going to read the article and try to formulate a comment that responds accordingly. This post, and you, deserve better.
posted by doctornemo at 2:50 PM on October 26, 2023 [68 favorites]
ockmockbock took the time to create a fine post. There's a scholarly paper which would engage many people here. There are some solid supporting links and a good sketch of the article's range.
What's the first - the very first - comment offered up on the blue?
Counterpoint: BBC recently ran an Apple News+ (link will open Apple News, be warned) item on why fascists (Musk et al) want everyone to live in space, and their reasons are not happy reasons...
From *the very first word* that comment wrenches us in a different direction. (And without even the grace of linking to the source.)
There goes the thread, well and truly derailed.
MetaFilter does this a *lot*. We piss on good efforts from the community - and right away, too, not even after some folks have had the chance to actually comment on the post's contents themselves.
I'm sorry that happened to you, ockmockbock. I'm going to read the article and try to formulate a comment that responds accordingly. This post, and you, deserve better.
posted by doctornemo at 2:50 PM on October 26, 2023 [68 favorites]
hy fascists (Musk et al) want everyone to live in space
-
Useful information if we ever make our planet uninhabitable and need to retreat to bunkers, thanks!
TBH since anyone going to Mars is unlikely and Musk triply so I’ve taken to assume “Mars” just means that whole post habitability bunkers situation.
Honestly if it comes to that I am assuming it will all break and/or the guards will eat the billionaires.
posted by Artw at 2:50 PM on October 26, 2023 [1 favorite]
-
Useful information if we ever make our planet uninhabitable and need to retreat to bunkers, thanks!
TBH since anyone going to Mars is unlikely and Musk triply so I’ve taken to assume “Mars” just means that whole post habitability bunkers situation.
Honestly if it comes to that I am assuming it will all break and/or the guards will eat the billionaires.
posted by Artw at 2:50 PM on October 26, 2023 [1 favorite]
Also: A++ post title.
posted by Artw at 2:56 PM on October 26, 2023 [3 favorites]
posted by Artw at 2:56 PM on October 26, 2023 [3 favorites]
There's a scholarly paper
For sale, for $24.95. It looks interesting, but the link above does not actually contain the paper.
posted by zompist at 3:00 PM on October 26, 2023 [4 favorites]
For sale, for $24.95. It looks interesting, but the link above does not actually contain the paper.
posted by zompist at 3:00 PM on October 26, 2023 [4 favorites]
Also: A++ post title...
For sale, for $24.95
Thank you both for commenting on the FPP.
posted by doctornemo at 3:15 PM on October 26, 2023
For sale, for $24.95
Thank you both for commenting on the FPP.
posted by doctornemo at 3:15 PM on October 26, 2023
the link above does not actually contain the paper.
Correct, unless you're logged in through a participating institution. Phooey. I'm going inter-library loan.
posted by doctornemo at 3:17 PM on October 26, 2023
Correct, unless you're logged in through a participating institution. Phooey. I'm going inter-library loan.
posted by doctornemo at 3:17 PM on October 26, 2023
Surviving on Mars is clearly a pre-requisite
Why go all the way to Mars when you could live on the Moon? The nice friendly Moon, within easy visual and communicative range, and a travel time of only days! Stronger sunlight for growing plants, and you know there's water ice in those polar craters. Please, pleasecome to I mean, go to the Moon
posted by Pallas Athena at 3:21 PM on October 26, 2023 [11 favorites]
Why go all the way to Mars when you could live on the Moon? The nice friendly Moon, within easy visual and communicative range, and a travel time of only days! Stronger sunlight for growing plants, and you know there's water ice in those polar craters. Please, please
posted by Pallas Athena at 3:21 PM on October 26, 2023 [11 favorites]
Also the summary mentions Musk’s nonsense almost immediately, if in passing, so I wouldn’t really call the discussion all that off base.
Book looks interesting though.
posted by Artw at 3:23 PM on October 26, 2023
Book looks interesting though.
posted by Artw at 3:23 PM on October 26, 2023
Yes, I have read the Moon is a Harsh Mistress. Liked it a lot when I was like, 14.
But it was another Heinlein short story that resonated even more. A couple who had been living in the Moon for a couple of years, and couldn't wait to get back to Earth. And when they did, they hated it. Felt heavy, all the cities they had loved living in felt dirty. Probably, knowing Heinlein, some "look at all the poor people" stuff in there as well.
But if you were someone qualified enough to get to live in the Moon, you were probably pretty hot shit to have gotten some corporation/government entity to pay to get you there and do the job. Everyone there had to be top notch, or, as mentioned above, could easily destroy the whole colony.
They were able to resign with their employer and move back... lol
A libertarian fantasy in so many ways, but has a different vibe to a Musk-run grimdark colony.
posted by Windopaene at 3:33 PM on October 26, 2023
But it was another Heinlein short story that resonated even more. A couple who had been living in the Moon for a couple of years, and couldn't wait to get back to Earth. And when they did, they hated it. Felt heavy, all the cities they had loved living in felt dirty. Probably, knowing Heinlein, some "look at all the poor people" stuff in there as well.
But if you were someone qualified enough to get to live in the Moon, you were probably pretty hot shit to have gotten some corporation/government entity to pay to get you there and do the job. Everyone there had to be top notch, or, as mentioned above, could easily destroy the whole colony.
They were able to resign with their employer and move back... lol
A libertarian fantasy in so many ways, but has a different vibe to a Musk-run grimdark colony.
posted by Windopaene at 3:33 PM on October 26, 2023
MetaFilter does this a *lot*. We piss on good efforts from the community - and right away, too, not even after some folks have had the chance to actually comment on the post's contents themselves.
I'm sorry that happened to you, ockmockbock. I'm going to read the article and try to formulate a comment that responds accordingly. This post, and you, deserve better.
Amen, doctornemo. That first comment shitting is way too common here. I'm guilty of it, too, at times, but strive to not do it. It should be something we all strive to do.
Too many good, interesting posts are completely redefined away from their actual FPP subject by the first comment or two that even when people come in later and say "hey, you've missed the point here, this is really about this, read the article/watch the video/whatever", it's entirely fruitless.
posted by hippybear at 3:49 PM on October 26, 2023 [3 favorites]
I'm sorry that happened to you, ockmockbock. I'm going to read the article and try to formulate a comment that responds accordingly. This post, and you, deserve better.
Amen, doctornemo. That first comment shitting is way too common here. I'm guilty of it, too, at times, but strive to not do it. It should be something we all strive to do.
Too many good, interesting posts are completely redefined away from their actual FPP subject by the first comment or two that even when people come in later and say "hey, you've missed the point here, this is really about this, read the article/watch the video/whatever", it's entirely fruitless.
posted by hippybear at 3:49 PM on October 26, 2023 [3 favorites]
Every time I read about the prospect of human beings colonizing space I kind of feel like the narrator in We Who Are About To... I mean, we're not even finished trashing this planet.
posted by The Card Cheat at 3:53 PM on October 26, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by The Card Cheat at 3:53 PM on October 26, 2023 [2 favorites]
I do wish I could read the actual paper, however. The abstract linked is quite interesting, and as someone who has 1) thought about communal living for decades and 2) have thought about space travel and colonizing other planets since the heady days of NASA moon landings, I would appreciate the rest of it. However, it's behind a paywall.
I do think that, without having read the article, maybe the kibbutz would be the basic model, as it seems to be the single most cooperative, singing while we work, "creating something out of nothing" example of commune that I can think of. But I'm sure this is discussed in depth.
posted by hippybear at 3:56 PM on October 26, 2023 [2 favorites]
I do think that, without having read the article, maybe the kibbutz would be the basic model, as it seems to be the single most cooperative, singing while we work, "creating something out of nothing" example of commune that I can think of. But I'm sure this is discussed in depth.
posted by hippybear at 3:56 PM on October 26, 2023 [2 favorites]
It appears that the full paper is available for free on sciencedirect . I copied this link from Dr. Kelly Weinersmith's twitter page. Not sure what makes it magically work.
posted by axlan at 4:16 PM on October 26, 2023 [18 favorites]
posted by axlan at 4:16 PM on October 26, 2023 [18 favorites]
Ah, bless and thanks, axian. I will check that out across the evening!
posted by hippybear at 4:20 PM on October 26, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by hippybear at 4:20 PM on October 26, 2023 [1 favorite]
I'd like to put in a word for Record of a Spaceborn Few by Becky Chambers as a thoughtful and hopeful speculative take on long-term space travel or colonization in a communal model.
Given TFA's extensive discussion of religious communities as models and examples, I'll also mention Miles Bukiet's paper Monasteries of the Future as an interesting reflection on the "state of the art" and possible evolutionary directions of cloistered or otherwise inward-facing intentional religious communities.
posted by sockshaveholes at 4:31 PM on October 26, 2023 [6 favorites]
Given TFA's extensive discussion of religious communities as models and examples, I'll also mention Miles Bukiet's paper Monasteries of the Future as an interesting reflection on the "state of the art" and possible evolutionary directions of cloistered or otherwise inward-facing intentional religious communities.
posted by sockshaveholes at 4:31 PM on October 26, 2023 [6 favorites]
Accessing the paper through this tweet works for me. Not sure why though.
posted by ockmockbock at 4:31 PM on October 26, 2023
posted by ockmockbock at 4:31 PM on October 26, 2023
Mars as an environment sounds so very hostile that the only people who could conceivably by successful there are people with a particular desire to leave present society, or people sent without a choice. The examples of kibbutzes and monasteries and hippy communes in the articles are good, but the article IMO misses the most extraordinarily successful model of communal living in modern society---and it is a successful model, with many instances across extremely diverse societies---prison.
Please note that by 'successful' I absolutely don't mean 'desirable': prisons are simply an enduring part of our societies, in all guises and sizes, from the overnight watchhouse to the GULAG. It's a strange habit that space-minded people have to imagine that societies off this planet would naturally be free ones, as though everything we know about such exercises in our own past didn't suggest it would be the other thing entirely. Prisons have a lengthy history as a part of historical colonial projects, especially where a colony had little prospect of supporting itself in its own hinterland, subsisting on supplies and administration from 'home'; we have already a long list of known historical instances where these societies of convicts, emancipists, jailers, settlers, and officers can thrive.
Let's go to Mars. Call it New New South Wales.
posted by Fiasco da Gama at 4:40 PM on October 26, 2023 [7 favorites]
Please note that by 'successful' I absolutely don't mean 'desirable': prisons are simply an enduring part of our societies, in all guises and sizes, from the overnight watchhouse to the GULAG. It's a strange habit that space-minded people have to imagine that societies off this planet would naturally be free ones, as though everything we know about such exercises in our own past didn't suggest it would be the other thing entirely. Prisons have a lengthy history as a part of historical colonial projects, especially where a colony had little prospect of supporting itself in its own hinterland, subsisting on supplies and administration from 'home'; we have already a long list of known historical instances where these societies of convicts, emancipists, jailers, settlers, and officers can thrive.
Let's go to Mars. Call it New New South Wales.
posted by Fiasco da Gama at 4:40 PM on October 26, 2023 [7 favorites]
Not sure what makes it magically work.
Authors get provided with a link which allows free access for some period, 50 or 60 days typically iirc. The link is probably that rather than the basic URL for the article.
posted by biffa at 4:59 PM on October 26, 2023
Authors get provided with a link which allows free access for some period, 50 or 60 days typically iirc. The link is probably that rather than the basic URL for the article.
posted by biffa at 4:59 PM on October 26, 2023
Mars ain't the kind of place to raise your kids ....
posted by mbo at 5:01 PM on October 26, 2023 [4 favorites]
posted by mbo at 5:01 PM on October 26, 2023 [4 favorites]
We Who Are About To... is one of the bleakest sf novels I've ever read, The Card Cheat.
posted by doctornemo at 5:37 PM on October 26, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by doctornemo at 5:37 PM on October 26, 2023 [2 favorites]
The link seem to have the full people over for me, although it cut off at 50 citations. I was hoping for a citation to Kim Stanley Robinson‘s Mars series, but I guess you don’t normally see fictional novels in scientific papers. It’s been a while since I read them, but as I recall the books, have pretty good coverage of the different political factions among mars settlers, before arriving at the socialist utopia that Robinson is really into
posted by CostcoCultist at 6:16 PM on October 26, 2023
posted by CostcoCultist at 6:16 PM on October 26, 2023
Kim Stanley Robinson's book Aurora implied to me that nowadays he's more like "erm we got one planet, better try to take good care of it"
posted by aniola at 8:57 PM on October 26, 2023
posted by aniola at 8:57 PM on October 26, 2023
The Ministry for the Future, or at least the opening pages of it, seems very relevant to the moment.
posted by Artw at 9:06 PM on October 26, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by Artw at 9:06 PM on October 26, 2023 [2 favorites]
Agreed, aniola. Aurora is definitely a switch for Stan, arguing against spaceflight beyond the Earth area.
posted by doctornemo at 9:42 PM on October 26, 2023
posted by doctornemo at 9:42 PM on October 26, 2023
Useful information if we ever make our planet uninhabitable and need to retreat to bunkers
Which is a much more likely and feasible undertaking. Earth may become uninhabitable, but not less inhabitable than the rest of the non-fantasy universe. Putting communes under domes or a few meters underground would be much easier than sending communes into space.
And if we were lucky and earth became inhabitable again, we could just open the hatches and start screwing things up again; we wouldn't be stuck on Mars or drifting between solar systems.
posted by pracowity at 11:33 PM on October 26, 2023 [4 favorites]
Which is a much more likely and feasible undertaking. Earth may become uninhabitable, but not less inhabitable than the rest of the non-fantasy universe. Putting communes under domes or a few meters underground would be much easier than sending communes into space.
And if we were lucky and earth became inhabitable again, we could just open the hatches and start screwing things up again; we wouldn't be stuck on Mars or drifting between solar systems.
posted by pracowity at 11:33 PM on October 26, 2023 [4 favorites]
I'm very confused about the desire to colonize Mars. Why? What's there that's not here?
It would be far easier to settle in Antarctica.
Sure, Mars has 10 times the area of the Antarctica, but it will require trillions in new technology's to even land there.
5-20 minute internet ping time, vs 1/2 second (worst case)
Heck, Antarctica is warmer and has an breathable atmosphere that protects us humans from cosmic rays.
posted by Marky at 12:50 AM on October 27, 2023 [7 favorites]
It would be far easier to settle in Antarctica.
Sure, Mars has 10 times the area of the Antarctica, but it will require trillions in new technology's to even land there.
5-20 minute internet ping time, vs 1/2 second (worst case)
Heck, Antarctica is warmer and has an breathable atmosphere that protects us humans from cosmic rays.
posted by Marky at 12:50 AM on October 27, 2023 [7 favorites]
i think it’s because first contact with intelligence other than humans would be one of the two or three things that could happen that could permanently change the conditions of human existence in every way — seeing another intelligence that works would allow us to have more of a handle on what our own intelligence is. we would all be radically less alone.
to a lot of people getting up and out feels like a stepping stone on the way to get connected to others-with-a-capital-o, even if the rest of the way would taken untold millennia on millennia.
and then there’s the smaller but still profoundly meaningful goal of finding if not others with minds at least other living things that aren’t related to us, which wouldn’t change everything but would change a whole lot.
it’s probably not a real stepping stone — all the money that goes to crewed space travel would be much much better spent on space telescopes like the jwst, data from which [can be / currently is being] used to select systems for seti to listen to. it’s just so many folks were raised on so much sci-fi that links the project of getting our bodies up and out with the project of meeting others that the link seems real to them whether or not it actually is. but also all the money devoted to aircraft carriers and fighter jets and tanks and bombers and murderous little helicopters shooting million dollar missiles at humans should also be channeled into seti, and that should be channeled into seti first.
establishing human bases on other worlds is not my dream, but it’s a lot of peoples’ dream, and it’s a holy. sacred dream and I can’t fault folks for having it.
that said, though: it’s a holy, sacred dream that’s so profoundly difficult that it simply can’t be carried out by profane men like mr. musk. not because he’ll sully it — though he will — but instead because keeping humans alive there for the long term is so punishingly difficulty that doing it requires, essentially, military discipline maintained over the course of decades and decades, and that’s only even hypothetically possible if the leadership can be absolutely trusted to lead in the interests of all, and in the interests of the project, at all times. it’s not just that any revolt means immediate death for all, it’s that the oppressive conditions that lead to revolt themselves mean immediate death for all.
it’s a place for highly motivated lifelong-obsessive scientists and for people with the training and discipline and inclination to sacrifice their whole lives for their comrades and for the folks back home. it’s a place for grenade-divers. it is not and will never be a place that can abide the presence of self-loving salesman hucksters.
posted by bombastic lowercase pronouncements at 1:17 AM on October 27, 2023 [10 favorites]
to a lot of people getting up and out feels like a stepping stone on the way to get connected to others-with-a-capital-o, even if the rest of the way would taken untold millennia on millennia.
and then there’s the smaller but still profoundly meaningful goal of finding if not others with minds at least other living things that aren’t related to us, which wouldn’t change everything but would change a whole lot.
it’s probably not a real stepping stone — all the money that goes to crewed space travel would be much much better spent on space telescopes like the jwst, data from which [can be / currently is being] used to select systems for seti to listen to. it’s just so many folks were raised on so much sci-fi that links the project of getting our bodies up and out with the project of meeting others that the link seems real to them whether or not it actually is. but also all the money devoted to aircraft carriers and fighter jets and tanks and bombers and murderous little helicopters shooting million dollar missiles at humans should also be channeled into seti, and that should be channeled into seti first.
establishing human bases on other worlds is not my dream, but it’s a lot of peoples’ dream, and it’s a holy. sacred dream and I can’t fault folks for having it.
that said, though: it’s a holy, sacred dream that’s so profoundly difficult that it simply can’t be carried out by profane men like mr. musk. not because he’ll sully it — though he will — but instead because keeping humans alive there for the long term is so punishingly difficulty that doing it requires, essentially, military discipline maintained over the course of decades and decades, and that’s only even hypothetically possible if the leadership can be absolutely trusted to lead in the interests of all, and in the interests of the project, at all times. it’s not just that any revolt means immediate death for all, it’s that the oppressive conditions that lead to revolt themselves mean immediate death for all.
it’s a place for highly motivated lifelong-obsessive scientists and for people with the training and discipline and inclination to sacrifice their whole lives for their comrades and for the folks back home. it’s a place for grenade-divers. it is not and will never be a place that can abide the presence of self-loving salesman hucksters.
posted by bombastic lowercase pronouncements at 1:17 AM on October 27, 2023 [10 favorites]
aw dang it’s always such a downer to bash out one of those stemwinders and then go back and see editing errors after the edit window closes. anyway, “seeing another intelligence that works differently than our own” was the intended completion of that one awkward clause early on.
posted by bombastic lowercase pronouncements at 1:28 AM on October 27, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by bombastic lowercase pronouncements at 1:28 AM on October 27, 2023 [1 favorite]
Why establish off planet home and workplaces?
New resources, mining asteroids, moon, mars is not going to hurt this planet and may become a huge advantage. No more mining here.
Move all toxic factories off planet, yes a stretch goal, but why not?
New and better science, a lot of what we know about problems here are from tiny limited satellites, what if the scientists are up there in force looking, studying and solving environmental problems real time?
New engineering, invention is a mother, problems are solved when they are in your face. Everyone benefits.
The cost is rounding error, cost to get there looks like a big number but it's 0.0001% of the actual world economy. (made up statistic but probably pretty close)
It's cool.
So far the society in space is regimented minute by minute by mission control, no one knows how an independent community will organize but it'll be worked out be very competent, very motivated to stay alive workers, engineers and scientists.
And it sounds wacky idealistic but there is one place with thinking organisms, redundancy and diversification improve the species.
posted by sammyo at 5:08 AM on October 27, 2023 [1 favorite]
New resources, mining asteroids, moon, mars is not going to hurt this planet and may become a huge advantage. No more mining here.
Move all toxic factories off planet, yes a stretch goal, but why not?
New and better science, a lot of what we know about problems here are from tiny limited satellites, what if the scientists are up there in force looking, studying and solving environmental problems real time?
New engineering, invention is a mother, problems are solved when they are in your face. Everyone benefits.
The cost is rounding error, cost to get there looks like a big number but it's 0.0001% of the actual world economy. (made up statistic but probably pretty close)
It's cool.
So far the society in space is regimented minute by minute by mission control, no one knows how an independent community will organize but it'll be worked out be very competent, very motivated to stay alive workers, engineers and scientists.
And it sounds wacky idealistic but there is one place with thinking organisms, redundancy and diversification improve the species.
posted by sammyo at 5:08 AM on October 27, 2023 [1 favorite]
Big thing for me about settling Mars is that we're one large asteroid/comet strike away from rebooting the planet and starting over with say, cockroaches.
The dinosaurs are sitting in our museums, and we watched Shoemaker–Levy 9 plough face first into Jupiter in real time and mostly went 'wow, that was an anti-climax' despite explosions hundreds of times larger than every nuclear weapon on earth going off at once.
Obviously we also need to rapidly stop destroying our own ecosystem and climate too. But it's not an either/or.
As for space communes on Mars - or the moon - I rather thought any initial efforts would look a lot more like existing science bases in Antarctica (which is an extremely harsh environment ) than Total Recall/Musk style corporate serfdom, but I guess I'm choosing to be optimistic.
posted by Absolutely No You-Know-What at 5:29 AM on October 27, 2023 [3 favorites]
The dinosaurs are sitting in our museums, and we watched Shoemaker–Levy 9 plough face first into Jupiter in real time and mostly went 'wow, that was an anti-climax' despite explosions hundreds of times larger than every nuclear weapon on earth going off at once.
Obviously we also need to rapidly stop destroying our own ecosystem and climate too. But it's not an either/or.
As for space communes on Mars - or the moon - I rather thought any initial efforts would look a lot more like existing science bases in Antarctica (which is an extremely harsh environment ) than Total Recall/Musk style corporate serfdom, but I guess I'm choosing to be optimistic.
posted by Absolutely No You-Know-What at 5:29 AM on October 27, 2023 [3 favorites]
I do not wish to experience a world ending event, and suspect even the hypothetical existence of a get out for billionaires increases the likelihood that I will.
posted by Artw at 6:59 AM on October 27, 2023 [4 favorites]
posted by Artw at 6:59 AM on October 27, 2023 [4 favorites]
first contact with intelligence other than humans would be one of the two or three things that could happen that could permanently change the conditions of human existence in every way
[Side-eyes in Dolphin/Octopus/Crow]
Having just binged six seasons of The Expanse, this post feels timely—thanks, ockmockbock! The journal article is an accessible read (loved the subheading "A very short history of communes on a planet with air"), and their observations on the role of religion in sustaining successful communes were particularly interesting—and again made me think of The Expanse (fans will know which bit I mean). Really, the main reason I'm commenting is to encourage everyone who hasn't yet to watch The Expanse...
posted by rory at 7:08 AM on October 27, 2023 [4 favorites]
[Side-eyes in Dolphin/Octopus/Crow]
Having just binged six seasons of The Expanse, this post feels timely—thanks, ockmockbock! The journal article is an accessible read (loved the subheading "A very short history of communes on a planet with air"), and their observations on the role of religion in sustaining successful communes were particularly interesting—and again made me think of The Expanse (fans will know which bit I mean). Really, the main reason I'm commenting is to encourage everyone who hasn't yet to watch The Expanse...
posted by rory at 7:08 AM on October 27, 2023 [4 favorites]
> [Side-eyes in dolphin/octopus/crow]
if you're willing to s/dolphin/spider, you just might enjoy adrian tchaikovsky's children of time series.
posted by bombastic lowercase pronouncements at 7:25 AM on October 27, 2023 [2 favorites]
if you're willing to s/dolphin/spider, you just might enjoy adrian tchaikovsky's children of time series.
posted by bombastic lowercase pronouncements at 7:25 AM on October 27, 2023 [2 favorites]
anyway, a settlement on mars would indeed have to be a religious community, and that religion would have to be mars. mars, and a future that someone will see. but not us.
if the person i'm cribbing this all from happens to be reading this, thank you very very much.
posted by bombastic lowercase pronouncements at 7:35 AM on October 27, 2023 [1 favorite]
if the person i'm cribbing this all from happens to be reading this, thank you very very much.
posted by bombastic lowercase pronouncements at 7:35 AM on October 27, 2023 [1 favorite]
I looked at this yesterday and avoided comments because I didn't want to be a threadshitter. Though apparently that happened anyway.
TFA starts off with
I grew up a space enthusiast. Some of my very earliest memories are of getting up early in the morning to watch Mercury launches (well, to watch countdowns, which IIRC often led to launch scrubs) on TV. By the time the Apollo missions were happening, I was the nerdy kid who could explain to the ignorant grownups what all the pieces of the spacecraft were for, and why getting there and back had to involve throwing away almost the whole 300-foot-tall vehicle in the process. When I was in high school, in the 70s, it still seemed possible I might leave Earth someday. That was what you'd expect, if you looked at a time-series graph of vehicle maximum speeds and ranges, like the one Heinlein drew in his essay about the future. From horse relay to steam locomotive to automobile through a few generations of airplanes, there it was, a nice exemplary exponential curve holding true across technologies: who could doubt that, after the jet aircraft would come another system with the speed and range to take us beyond Earth's atmosphere and gravity entirely?
Alas, it was not to be. Building vehicles to operate in space was doable, but making vehicles that could transport live humans was orders of magnitude harder. And the expense of getting those man-rated vehicles into space, them being 10x as big and heavy as robots, was a nasty shock that has hardly abated. Staying alive and healthy in space is so much harder than anybody imagined in the '70s. It is far from clear, for example, that humans would be able to make babies on Mars, where the gravity is only a third of Earth's. Not to mention the cosmic ray hazard, which science-fictional thinking never imagined. There is just too much of space travel that is not ready for prime time, and not realistically looking to be ready anytime in the foreseeable future.
TFA is an exercise in wanking, I am suggesting.
posted by Aardvark Cheeselog at 7:47 AM on October 27, 2023 [5 favorites]
TFA starts off with
Space settlement advocates frequently argue that we will soon be able to settle humans in space."Space settlement advocates" might frequently argue this, but the evidence that they are delusional on the topic is overwhelming. Some small obstacles to this program:
- There is not launch capability to put into space the amount of stuff that would be needed to build a colony, and it is not clear that SpaceX or anybody else has the chops to change this.
- Nobody has any clue about how to build a sealed environment that people can live in for two years without opening the door to air and water outside. The couple of efforts in this direction so far ended in failure.
- There isn't anything productive for people to do, once they are in space, that remotely approaches paying for the costs of getting there and staying alive there.
I grew up a space enthusiast. Some of my very earliest memories are of getting up early in the morning to watch Mercury launches (well, to watch countdowns, which IIRC often led to launch scrubs) on TV. By the time the Apollo missions were happening, I was the nerdy kid who could explain to the ignorant grownups what all the pieces of the spacecraft were for, and why getting there and back had to involve throwing away almost the whole 300-foot-tall vehicle in the process. When I was in high school, in the 70s, it still seemed possible I might leave Earth someday. That was what you'd expect, if you looked at a time-series graph of vehicle maximum speeds and ranges, like the one Heinlein drew in his essay about the future. From horse relay to steam locomotive to automobile through a few generations of airplanes, there it was, a nice exemplary exponential curve holding true across technologies: who could doubt that, after the jet aircraft would come another system with the speed and range to take us beyond Earth's atmosphere and gravity entirely?
Alas, it was not to be. Building vehicles to operate in space was doable, but making vehicles that could transport live humans was orders of magnitude harder. And the expense of getting those man-rated vehicles into space, them being 10x as big and heavy as robots, was a nasty shock that has hardly abated. Staying alive and healthy in space is so much harder than anybody imagined in the '70s. It is far from clear, for example, that humans would be able to make babies on Mars, where the gravity is only a third of Earth's. Not to mention the cosmic ray hazard, which science-fictional thinking never imagined. There is just too much of space travel that is not ready for prime time, and not realistically looking to be ready anytime in the foreseeable future.
TFA is an exercise in wanking, I am suggesting.
posted by Aardvark Cheeselog at 7:47 AM on October 27, 2023 [5 favorites]
The blurb for the book this was almost part is good context:
Space technologies and space business are progressing fast, but we lack the knowledge needed to have space kids, build space farms, and create space nations in a way that doesn’t spark conflict back home. In a world hurtling toward human expansion into space, A City on Mars investigates whether the dream of new worlds won’t create nightmares, both for settlers and the people they leave behind.
posted by lucidium at 8:30 AM on October 27, 2023
Space technologies and space business are progressing fast, but we lack the knowledge needed to have space kids, build space farms, and create space nations in a way that doesn’t spark conflict back home. In a world hurtling toward human expansion into space, A City on Mars investigates whether the dream of new worlds won’t create nightmares, both for settlers and the people they leave behind.
posted by lucidium at 8:30 AM on October 27, 2023
The discussion of Antarctica made me wonder about how communal the living situation is there. It's probably the closest analogue to living in a space colony: everything has to be flown in, isolated for months at a time, etc. I know that the outposts are fairly country specific, but in all my reading about what life is like there, I've never really read anything about space allocation, who gets what luxuries, etc. Is living there hierarchical in terms of the non research staff being given smaller quarters, less weight to take personal effects, etc, or outside of duties, is everyone on similar footing?
posted by Hactar at 8:48 AM on October 27, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by Hactar at 8:48 AM on October 27, 2023 [2 favorites]
TFA is an exercise in wanking, I am suggesting.
Or an exercise in supplementing these logistical objections with sociological insights into how human beings have made a hash of comparable efforts even on a planet with air...
Yeah, good point.
adrian tchaikovsky's children of time series
Not the first time I've seen this recommended, so I'd better give it a try—thanks, blp.
posted by rory at 9:09 AM on October 27, 2023 [1 favorite]
Or an exercise in supplementing these logistical objections with sociological insights into how human beings have made a hash of comparable efforts even on a planet with air...
Yeah, good point.
adrian tchaikovsky's children of time series
Not the first time I've seen this recommended, so I'd better give it a try—thanks, blp.
posted by rory at 9:09 AM on October 27, 2023 [1 favorite]
Hactar, at least for winterover at the South Pole Station, it is pretty egalitarian. The support staff is very minimal so everyone takes turns in the dish pit et al, and everyone has the same small rooms.
posted by tavella at 9:15 AM on October 27, 2023 [3 favorites]
posted by tavella at 9:15 AM on October 27, 2023 [3 favorites]
You cannot have libertarianism in space because one dude with a pistol can not just kill a few schoolchildren, but the entire colony, including the techbros.
Space era Roanoke anyone?
posted by pwnguin at 9:56 AM on October 27, 2023
Space era Roanoke anyone?
posted by pwnguin at 9:56 AM on October 27, 2023
I've been thinking about the religious aspect. Perhaps religious communes succeed because they instill an irrational fear of the outside world in their members. In an environment where fear of the outside world is completely rational, the need for religion may be obviated.
posted by MrVisible at 9:59 AM on October 27, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by MrVisible at 9:59 AM on October 27, 2023 [1 favorite]
it is a little-noted fact that the Age of Exploration was financed by the loot that the "explorers" brought back, after robbing (and in many cases enslaving) the people they found at the places they went.
People-in-space proponents often get excited about the possibility of mining asteroids and bringing the ore back to earth. Nobody really wants to be an asteroid miner, and I'm sure robot ships deploying robot miners could do it a thousand times better than human miners could, but you can always sense the excitement when there's news of an asteroid made of money. "All we have to do is find a way to get a bazillion tons of metal back to earth quickly but gently. And I'm going to be the social director on the ship that does it."
posted by pracowity at 9:59 AM on October 27, 2023 [1 favorite]
People-in-space proponents often get excited about the possibility of mining asteroids and bringing the ore back to earth. Nobody really wants to be an asteroid miner, and I'm sure robot ships deploying robot miners could do it a thousand times better than human miners could, but you can always sense the excitement when there's news of an asteroid made of money. "All we have to do is find a way to get a bazillion tons of metal back to earth quickly but gently. And I'm going to be the social director on the ship that does it."
posted by pracowity at 9:59 AM on October 27, 2023 [1 favorite]
There's a good documentary specifically about living at McMurdo Station -- maybe A Year On Ice? There the timer starts when the last plane leaves, and everyone knows they're stuck for a finite period of time and have to make things work just until then. I think that's a better model, because we are hella far out from sustainable space colonies, and probably funded by billionaire tourism for the short term, which creates its own set of weird dynamics.
It's interesting that the article brings up religion, and I think yeah, there will have to be a new spacefaring religion, and I hope it's grounded in better ideas than Dogecoin. Maybe it could call itself the No Schism Religion, just to be safe.
posted by credulous at 10:09 AM on October 27, 2023 [2 favorites]
It's interesting that the article brings up religion, and I think yeah, there will have to be a new spacefaring religion, and I hope it's grounded in better ideas than Dogecoin. Maybe it could call itself the No Schism Religion, just to be safe.
posted by credulous at 10:09 AM on October 27, 2023 [2 favorites]
The most useful space religion would worship the spaceship itself, where the ship is the mother figure, all the humans are Her children, and the greatest sins are to damage or waste something or someone.
posted by pracowity at 10:37 AM on October 27, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by pracowity at 10:37 AM on October 27, 2023 [2 favorites]
Charlie Stross has a fiction universe where causality violation is possible and there's a vastly powerful AI that lives in the future. One way it preserves its (presumably edited) history was by reaching back in time, grabbing a whole bunch of humans, and scattering them across the galaxy. Grab 1000 people, send them 5000 light years away and 5000 years into the past. Repeat thousands to millions of times. Maybe zap them to a compatible planet, maybe to a planet it had already at least half-assedly terraformed, or -- here's the point -- maybe to a habitat of some sort orbiting something, somewhere that it had built. Or at least partially-assedly slapped together.
Anyhow, there's a snark to the effect that the first thing the people who got zapped into an orbital habitat had to do was hunt down and kill the libertarians; only after that would it be safe to start actually making a home for themselves and building a civilization.
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 11:09 AM on October 27, 2023 [5 favorites]
Anyhow, there's a snark to the effect that the first thing the people who got zapped into an orbital habitat had to do was hunt down and kill the libertarians; only after that would it be safe to start actually making a home for themselves and building a civilization.
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 11:09 AM on October 27, 2023 [5 favorites]
"You cannot have libertarianism in space because one dude with a pistol can not just kill a few schoolchildren, but the entire colony, including the techbros."
It's not just a matter of one dude with a gun, the life support maintenance *has* to happen, which means people have to do it. Have to do it, as in be coerced to do it if necessary. I'm not sure how large and stable an off-earth habitat would have to be to allow for, say, strikes by people doing critical infrastructure, but it isn't going to be small.
posted by Nancy Lebovitz at 11:51 AM on October 27, 2023 [1 favorite]
It's not just a matter of one dude with a gun, the life support maintenance *has* to happen, which means people have to do it. Have to do it, as in be coerced to do it if necessary. I'm not sure how large and stable an off-earth habitat would have to be to allow for, say, strikes by people doing critical infrastructure, but it isn't going to be small.
posted by Nancy Lebovitz at 11:51 AM on October 27, 2023 [1 favorite]
the life support maintenance *has* to happen, which means people have to do it.
They would need redundant people for all essential tasks, the sort that, if you refused to do your job, someone else would have to do it or everyone would die.
But I have a suspicion that most people aren't going to be all that essential in long-term space flight and colonization. The things a robot probably won't be able to do better than a human might not be essential to infrastructure and survival.
posted by pracowity at 12:51 PM on October 27, 2023 [1 favorite]
They would need redundant people for all essential tasks, the sort that, if you refused to do your job, someone else would have to do it or everyone would die.
But I have a suspicion that most people aren't going to be all that essential in long-term space flight and colonization. The things a robot probably won't be able to do better than a human might not be essential to infrastructure and survival.
posted by pracowity at 12:51 PM on October 27, 2023 [1 favorite]
I finally got to read the main article and there's a lot going on there. I like the gambit of comparing communal societies to early space settlements to see what we can learn. I also like the way of trying out social, ah, cohesion techniques ahead of time.
Interesting idea about a new religion-shaped pattern of belief and behavior:
profound mission goals for early settlements—such as making humans an interplanetary species—may to some extent fill the role played by religion.
Reminds me of some sf, both where people treat this idea seriously and where authors mock it (Allen Steele, I think)
Or as bombastic lowercase pronouncements put it:
a settlement on mars would indeed have to be a religious community, and that religion would have to be mars. mars, and a future that someone will see. but not us.
posted by doctornemo at 1:19 PM on October 27, 2023
Interesting idea about a new religion-shaped pattern of belief and behavior:
profound mission goals for early settlements—such as making humans an interplanetary species—may to some extent fill the role played by religion.
Reminds me of some sf, both where people treat this idea seriously and where authors mock it (Allen Steele, I think)
Or as bombastic lowercase pronouncements put it:
a settlement on mars would indeed have to be a religious community, and that religion would have to be mars. mars, and a future that someone will see. but not us.
posted by doctornemo at 1:19 PM on October 27, 2023
I simply link to my comment about this on a previous thread, and note that my views have not changed.
posted by Pouteria at 3:40 PM on October 27, 2023
posted by Pouteria at 3:40 PM on October 27, 2023
There is not launch capability to put into space the amount of stuff that would be needed to build a colony, and it is not clear that SpaceX or anybody else has the chops to change this.
SpaceX's new rocket will send 100 Tons to space each launch and the very optimistic estimate that single rocket could be launched and landed up to 3 times per DAY. That includes extra launches with just extra fuel so just going with one equipment carrying ship a day that's 36000 Tons in a year. That's a fair amount of equipment.
Nobody has any clue about how to build a sealed environment that people can live in for two years without opening the door to air and water outside. The couple of efforts in this direction so far ended in failure.
The ISS has managed pretty well for, years, decades actually.
There isn't anything productive for people to do, once they are in space, that remotely approaches paying for the costs of getting there and staying alive there.
Yep, this is a very good point, but initially there is no shortage of countries eager to send folks to the ISS and if costs come down (cough spaceX is really cutting costs by orders of magnitude) new opportunities should emerge.
The incredible cost cutting (cost/kg chart) is changing the entire industry. Putting "old Space" in the US out of business. A single launch of the new (admittedly not yet proven) "Starship" will be the same size as the ISS. A few dozen new ISS's at less the the cost of one "old space" launch changes the equation.
posted by sammyo at 5:39 AM on October 28, 2023 [1 favorite]
SpaceX's new rocket will send 100 Tons to space each launch and the very optimistic estimate that single rocket could be launched and landed up to 3 times per DAY. That includes extra launches with just extra fuel so just going with one equipment carrying ship a day that's 36000 Tons in a year. That's a fair amount of equipment.
Nobody has any clue about how to build a sealed environment that people can live in for two years without opening the door to air and water outside. The couple of efforts in this direction so far ended in failure.
The ISS has managed pretty well for, years, decades actually.
There isn't anything productive for people to do, once they are in space, that remotely approaches paying for the costs of getting there and staying alive there.
Yep, this is a very good point, but initially there is no shortage of countries eager to send folks to the ISS and if costs come down (cough spaceX is really cutting costs by orders of magnitude) new opportunities should emerge.
The incredible cost cutting (cost/kg chart) is changing the entire industry. Putting "old Space" in the US out of business. A single launch of the new (admittedly not yet proven) "Starship" will be the same size as the ISS. A few dozen new ISS's at less the the cost of one "old space" launch changes the equation.
posted by sammyo at 5:39 AM on October 28, 2023 [1 favorite]
I looked at this yesterday and avoided comments because I didn't want to be a threadshitter. Though apparently that happened anyway.
So mission accomplished, I guess? I'm glad you found a touch of self-awarness.
I am curious why the topic of human spaceflight brings out such fierce opposition on MetaFilter.
posted by doctornemo at 7:48 AM on October 28, 2023
So mission accomplished, I guess? I'm glad you found a touch of self-awarness.
I am curious why the topic of human spaceflight brings out such fierce opposition on MetaFilter.
posted by doctornemo at 7:48 AM on October 28, 2023
i have a number of hypotheses!
- the site is dominated by a bunch of sour old gen-x who haven't yet realized that their time is over
- the uncomfortable fact that far and away the most successful space program in the world is owned by that. fucker.
- the unfortunate technolibertarian edge of much of the discourse surrounding space travel
- the extremely unfortunate "what if we just earth 2?" ideology that you hear from the technolibertarian fringe with the technolibertarian edge
- a failure to realize that a left utopianism that spreads the idea that our fully automated luxury communism must be both gay and space is a more effective way to combat the nimrods than simply dismissing their dreams with sour gen-x-osity
- the need to close the outpath in order to ensure that all of the resources that would otherwise be put into space travel instead be devoted to the inpath, i.e. realizing the dreams of the russian cosmists by not merely killing death but in fact using sinister hyperfuturistic supertechnology to resurrect all humans who have ever lived, thereby digitally harrowing all hells
- wait that one's just me i guess
the site is dominated by a bunch of sour old gen-x who haven't yet realized that their time is over
Oh. Oh, mijo. Gen-x never had a time.
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 8:47 AM on October 28, 2023 [9 favorites]
Oh. Oh, mijo. Gen-x never had a time.
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 8:47 AM on October 28, 2023 [9 favorites]
Would love for futurist techno optimism to be fun again, but the illusion is broken and all we’re left with is some math that puts it out of reach and a political situation that makes it undesirable. >
posted by Artw at 8:54 AM on October 28, 2023 [3 favorites]
posted by Artw at 8:54 AM on October 28, 2023 [3 favorites]
> Gen-x never had a time.
it was the year 2003, and it sucked.
posted by bombastic lowercase pronouncements at 11:08 AM on October 28, 2023 [2 favorites]
it was the year 2003, and it sucked.
posted by bombastic lowercase pronouncements at 11:08 AM on October 28, 2023 [2 favorites]
Nice list, bombastic lowercase pronouncements. #6 is especially keen.
I definitely see this progressive opposition to human spaceflight centered on Elon Musk (essentially), and I wonder if it's a displacement. I don't see similar attention paid to public spaceflight (cf NASA, ESA, the huge Chinese campaign, all the other nations' public efforts). It feels like a gender/race/capital critique which settles on Musk, while building on progressives' long-running skepticism of space (cf Gil-Scott Heron).
As a GenXer I maintain my nearly cosmist optimism about space, hence my giant spaceposts here. In contrast to Artw, I was never disillusioned by space, at least.
posted by doctornemo at 3:00 PM on October 28, 2023
I definitely see this progressive opposition to human spaceflight centered on Elon Musk (essentially), and I wonder if it's a displacement. I don't see similar attention paid to public spaceflight (cf NASA, ESA, the huge Chinese campaign, all the other nations' public efforts). It feels like a gender/race/capital critique which settles on Musk, while building on progressives' long-running skepticism of space (cf Gil-Scott Heron).
As a GenXer I maintain my nearly cosmist optimism about space, hence my giant spaceposts here. In contrast to Artw, I was never disillusioned by space, at least.
posted by doctornemo at 3:00 PM on October 28, 2023
This eighteen year-old piece was pretty influential on me at the time, as a criticism of public spaceflight in general and NASA specifically. This might be dismissable as insufficiently "similar attention", but the viewpoint of "as robots be orders of magnitude more efficient to engineer for, shouldn't we be reallocating our space travel budget towards probes and away from fragile humans?" has existed for a while.
I understand the expectation that folks constrain themselves entirely to "the topic of the post and as positively as possible" is a site norm, but every comment thread has certain drifts and subtopics to it, and responses to it will differ in their enthusiasm, as does every conversation between relative strangers on the internet, and I find attempts to overdetermine that through bemoaning a lack of civility to be more a little quixotic.
posted by Earthtopus at 5:12 PM on October 28, 2023
I understand the expectation that folks constrain themselves entirely to "the topic of the post and as positively as possible" is a site norm, but every comment thread has certain drifts and subtopics to it, and responses to it will differ in their enthusiasm, as does every conversation between relative strangers on the internet, and I find attempts to overdetermine that through bemoaning a lack of civility to be more a little quixotic.
posted by Earthtopus at 5:12 PM on October 28, 2023
it was the year 2003
Friend, I have gained the impression that you are young and Gen-X was before your time, and it’s easy to conflate not-actually-contemporaneous things from before our time, but… That was not Gen-X.
(You’re not wrong about your evaluation of that particular year, though.)
posted by eviemath at 7:08 PM on October 28, 2023 [2 favorites]
Friend, I have gained the impression that you are young and Gen-X was before your time, and it’s easy to conflate not-actually-contemporaneous things from before our time, but… That was not Gen-X.
(You’re not wrong about your evaluation of that particular year, though.)
posted by eviemath at 7:08 PM on October 28, 2023 [2 favorites]
nope, 2003. measure from when people of that generation come into relatively established positions of relative power, rather than when generations become media-hypervisible because cult of youth. like, the moment when some of the kids who were actors start becoming producers.
posted by bombastic lowercase pronouncements at 8:40 PM on October 28, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by bombastic lowercase pronouncements at 8:40 PM on October 28, 2023 [1 favorite]
unless you’re on some generation jones shit in which case my condolences
posted by bombastic lowercase pronouncements at 8:44 PM on October 28, 2023
posted by bombastic lowercase pronouncements at 8:44 PM on October 28, 2023
Even if you don't agree with decades-old pessimism about the cost-benefit analysis of specifically-human-crewed spaceflight, let alone interplanetary colonization, I hope you'll agree that that Idle Words article is worth reading for such lovely prose as:
"As tempting as it is to picture a blood-spattered Canadarm flinging goat carcasses into the void, we know that the Shuttle is the fruit of what was supposed to be a rational decision making process."
posted by Earthtopus at 8:48 PM on October 28, 2023
"As tempting as it is to picture a blood-spattered Canadarm flinging goat carcasses into the void, we know that the Shuttle is the fruit of what was supposed to be a rational decision making process."
posted by Earthtopus at 8:48 PM on October 28, 2023
I have no idea what “generation jones shit” means. I’m going with the original definition of Gen-X as born from early 1960s to late 1970s, mostly coming into adulthood in the ‘80s. Kind of the whole thing with Generation X was that there weren’t the same sort of career opportunities for them to move up into as there were for the preceding generations - first generation with declines in various quality of life factors in the US and all that. They mostly weren’t in positions of power and influence even in the 2000s - the architects of the Iraq War, the Patriot Act, and other policies that really started changing life in the US around then were not Gen-Xers. But they would have been school teachers (but not superintendents or school board members who could set policy) or retail store managers (but not regional managers or at levels of corporate leadership where they could set policy) or something then, so might have been the faces having to engage with you about the policies that they didn’t have a say in, sure. My university professors at the time were all older than Gen-X, however. Other careers that require longer professional training periods, such as doctors, also would have only had Gen-Xers in very junior roles in 2003.
posted by eviemath at 4:58 AM on October 29, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by eviemath at 4:58 AM on October 29, 2023 [1 favorite]
(And, as always in debates around generations on Metafilter, it’s not really about age but about class. Comparing folks with comparable levels of socioeconomic security and buying power across generations shows more similarities than a generational analysis implies. Generational analysis only seems a little relevant because there was a post-war blip in size and relative economic power of the middle class in the US and a number of other Western countries, that coincided with the baby boom demographic event. But upper class folks of any age have always had more power, and poor folks of any age have very little, and despite the US perception of itself as a classless society, it has had very little economic mobility aside from that blip, and cultural trends are also better tracked alongside socioeconomic status.)
posted by eviemath at 5:07 AM on October 29, 2023
posted by eviemath at 5:07 AM on October 29, 2023
(* To be perfectly accurate, none of the tenured or tenure track professors were Gen-X. Some of the adjuncts were. But adjuncts have no institutional power.)
posted by eviemath at 5:34 AM on October 29, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by eviemath at 5:34 AM on October 29, 2023 [1 favorite]
it was the year 2003, and it sucked
2003 was still the boomers' time. It was the boomers' time from the 1950s through, eh we could quibble, 2010 or so or maybe still now. When it stops being the boomers' time, it'll be their kids the millennials' time.
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 7:43 AM on October 29, 2023
2003 was still the boomers' time. It was the boomers' time from the 1950s through, eh we could quibble, 2010 or so or maybe still now. When it stops being the boomers' time, it'll be their kids the millennials' time.
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 7:43 AM on October 29, 2023
the viewpoint of "as robots be orders of magnitude more efficient to engineer for, shouldn't we be reallocating our space travel budget towards probes and away from fragile humans?" has existed for a while.
Very much so. It was an issue of debate in the 1960s. I dimly remember an sf short story on this theme from the late 70s.
I understand the expectation that folks constrain themselves entirely to "the topic of the post and as positively as possible" is a site norm, but every comment thread has certain drifts and subtopics to it, and responses to it will differ in their enthusiasm, as does every conversation between relative strangers on the internet, and I find attempts to overdetermine that through bemoaning a lack of civility to be more a little quixotic.
Here I have to disagree, at least if you're referring to my up-thread complaint.
I do agree that every comment thread has drifts, which is one of the pleasures of discussion boards. Yet what happened here was different: an immediate (remember, first comment kicked it off) derail, which set the town for nearly every comment since.
I wasn't thinking of civility in general, although I try to write that way (and sometimes fail), so much as taking an FPP seriously.
posted by doctornemo at 9:35 AM on October 29, 2023
Very much so. It was an issue of debate in the 1960s. I dimly remember an sf short story on this theme from the late 70s.
I understand the expectation that folks constrain themselves entirely to "the topic of the post and as positively as possible" is a site norm, but every comment thread has certain drifts and subtopics to it, and responses to it will differ in their enthusiasm, as does every conversation between relative strangers on the internet, and I find attempts to overdetermine that through bemoaning a lack of civility to be more a little quixotic.
Here I have to disagree, at least if you're referring to my up-thread complaint.
I do agree that every comment thread has drifts, which is one of the pleasures of discussion boards. Yet what happened here was different: an immediate (remember, first comment kicked it off) derail, which set the town for nearly every comment since.
I wasn't thinking of civility in general, although I try to write that way (and sometimes fail), so much as taking an FPP seriously.
posted by doctornemo at 9:35 AM on October 29, 2023
Regarding producers: for the 10 top grossing movies from 2003:
1. Finding Nemo
Executive Producers:
John Lasseter, b. 1967
Bradford Lewis, b. 1958
Producer: Graham Walters, b. 1976
Associate Producer: Jinko Gotoh, no d.o.b. that I can find online but she received her MFA in 1982; average age of such a postgraduate degree at that time was probably about 24, which would put her year of birth at 1958, probably +/- 2 years
2. Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl
Producer: Jerry Bruckheimer, b. 1943
3. Lord of the Rings: Return of the King
Producers:
Barrie M. Osborne, b. 1944
Fran Walsh, b. 1959
Peter Jackson, b. 1961
4. The Matrix Reloaded
Producer: Joel Silver, b. 1952
5. Bruce Almighty
Producers:
Tom Shadyac, b. 1958
Jim Carrey, b. 1962
James D. Brubaker, b. 1937
Michael Bostick, b. 1970
Steve Koren, b. 1966
Mark O'Keefe, b. 1956
6. X2: X-Men United
Producers:
Lauren Shuler Donner, b. 1949
Ralph Winter, b. 1952
7. Elf
Producers:
Jon Berg, b. ??
Todd Komarnicki, b. 1965
Shauna Robertson, b. 1975
8. Chicago
Producer: Martin Richards, b. 1943
9. Terminator 2: Rise of the Machines
Producers:
Hal Lieberman, b. 1955
Colin Wilson, b. 1961
Mario Kassar, b. 1951
Andrew G. Vajna, b. 1944
Joel B. Michaels, b. 1938
10. Bad Boys II
Producer: Jerry Bruckheimer, b. 1943
Some Gen-Xers beginning to get involved, with Elf being all-Gen-X, but older generations still quite dominant.
posted by eviemath at 9:42 AM on October 29, 2023
1. Finding Nemo
Executive Producers:
John Lasseter, b. 1967
Bradford Lewis, b. 1958
Producer: Graham Walters, b. 1976
Associate Producer: Jinko Gotoh, no d.o.b. that I can find online but she received her MFA in 1982; average age of such a postgraduate degree at that time was probably about 24, which would put her year of birth at 1958, probably +/- 2 years
2. Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl
Producer: Jerry Bruckheimer, b. 1943
3. Lord of the Rings: Return of the King
Producers:
Barrie M. Osborne, b. 1944
Fran Walsh, b. 1959
Peter Jackson, b. 1961
4. The Matrix Reloaded
Producer: Joel Silver, b. 1952
5. Bruce Almighty
Producers:
Tom Shadyac, b. 1958
Jim Carrey, b. 1962
James D. Brubaker, b. 1937
Michael Bostick, b. 1970
Steve Koren, b. 1966
Mark O'Keefe, b. 1956
6. X2: X-Men United
Producers:
Lauren Shuler Donner, b. 1949
Ralph Winter, b. 1952
7. Elf
Producers:
Jon Berg, b. ??
Todd Komarnicki, b. 1965
Shauna Robertson, b. 1975
8. Chicago
Producer: Martin Richards, b. 1943
9. Terminator 2: Rise of the Machines
Producers:
Hal Lieberman, b. 1955
Colin Wilson, b. 1961
Mario Kassar, b. 1951
Andrew G. Vajna, b. 1944
Joel B. Michaels, b. 1938
10. Bad Boys II
Producer: Jerry Bruckheimer, b. 1943
Some Gen-Xers beginning to get involved, with Elf being all-Gen-X, but older generations still quite dominant.
posted by eviemath at 9:42 AM on October 29, 2023
This eighteen year-old piece was pretty influential on me at the time, as a criticism of public spaceflight in general and NASA specifically.
Maceij's essay struck me deeply at the time.It proved prescient about the space shuttle, its putative focus. I was not convinced about the broader argument against human spaceflight.
posted by doctornemo at 10:52 AM on October 29, 2023
Maceij's essay struck me deeply at the time.It proved prescient about the space shuttle, its putative focus. I was not convinced about the broader argument against human spaceflight.
posted by doctornemo at 10:52 AM on October 29, 2023
FWIW the problem of generational dominance, and managing the problem of handing on power, is actually completely central to the problem of the original article, and when you think about it, in no sense a derail.
A Martian or other off-Earth commune-colony that lasted beyond an arbitrary human lifespan, one that isn't run as a FIFO mining camp but as a permanency, will run, inevitably, into this problem---exacerbated by the fact that, in commune-colony conditions, there just won't be a lot to do that's new. And it will get a lot harder in space: societies on this planet can tolerate regime and social change, because Earth has so far been very providing for diverse arrangements of power, but as we've addressed above, there's much less room for that on Mars, or any other planet or place which is environmentally hostile to Homo sapiens. Someone will have to keep the life support running, by coercion if necessary, and that points to a need for an extraordinarily static political arrangement of rulers, classes, and generations, that's able to suppress and manage change, and it probably points to a profoundly unfree State, of which we have (alas) plenty of experience here: Siberian prison camps, medieval Irish Sea island monasteries, every kind of serfdom, or any other gerontocracy.
posted by Fiasco da Gama at 4:44 PM on October 29, 2023 [3 favorites]
A Martian or other off-Earth commune-colony that lasted beyond an arbitrary human lifespan, one that isn't run as a FIFO mining camp but as a permanency, will run, inevitably, into this problem---exacerbated by the fact that, in commune-colony conditions, there just won't be a lot to do that's new. And it will get a lot harder in space: societies on this planet can tolerate regime and social change, because Earth has so far been very providing for diverse arrangements of power, but as we've addressed above, there's much less room for that on Mars, or any other planet or place which is environmentally hostile to Homo sapiens. Someone will have to keep the life support running, by coercion if necessary, and that points to a need for an extraordinarily static political arrangement of rulers, classes, and generations, that's able to suppress and manage change, and it probably points to a profoundly unfree State, of which we have (alas) plenty of experience here: Siberian prison camps, medieval Irish Sea island monasteries, every kind of serfdom, or any other gerontocracy.
posted by Fiasco da Gama at 4:44 PM on October 29, 2023 [3 favorites]
Good point, Fiasco.
posted by doctornemo at 5:12 PM on October 29, 2023
posted by doctornemo at 5:12 PM on October 29, 2023
it probably points to a profoundly unfree State
No, fascists and dictators are not better at space. Quite the opposite. Really, look at Vladimir Putin or Elon Musk: do you really think they can run a life support system? Moreover, do you think they'd be personally safe in the environment you describe? You cannot have a disgruntled underclass in an environment where they can kill the entire colony.
What analogy we use is important. The article suggests communes, which are a far better choice than prison camps. But why not, you know, an Antarctic base or the ISS? This blog gives a good overview of daily life at an Antarctic base-- especially interesting are the bits about life in the winter when it's completely isolated. It's an environment where there are rules, because not following the rules can get you killed, but also where you can't treat people like dirt because they're educated, expensive, and not easily replaced.
posted by zompist at 7:29 PM on October 29, 2023 [4 favorites]
No, fascists and dictators are not better at space. Quite the opposite. Really, look at Vladimir Putin or Elon Musk: do you really think they can run a life support system? Moreover, do you think they'd be personally safe in the environment you describe? You cannot have a disgruntled underclass in an environment where they can kill the entire colony.
What analogy we use is important. The article suggests communes, which are a far better choice than prison camps. But why not, you know, an Antarctic base or the ISS? This blog gives a good overview of daily life at an Antarctic base-- especially interesting are the bits about life in the winter when it's completely isolated. It's an environment where there are rules, because not following the rules can get you killed, but also where you can't treat people like dirt because they're educated, expensive, and not easily replaced.
posted by zompist at 7:29 PM on October 29, 2023 [4 favorites]
I still don't see the argument for fast-tracking human spaceflight with current limitations on constraints (handwavable-away in the FPPs paper as "out of scope", but not in this thread) like "where does the oxygen come from" and "what do people eat" and "how do you do more than slow an irrevocable decline in bone density and other health effects from low-g environments"? If we could have a hundred probes for every live astronaut (and this is probably a conservative estate) I hope there can be dozens if not hundreds of uncrewed missions for future generations to still be squeezing telemetry from, like we today are still doing with the Voyagers.
posted by Earthtopus at 7:30 PM on October 29, 2023
posted by Earthtopus at 7:30 PM on October 29, 2023
sammyo: Move all toxic factories off planet, yes a stretch goal, but why not?
I would raise the impact on the skies and from firing rockets through them and the earth from damaging the skies.
I like your post, I think this topic is really interesting because I want to build robotic recycling factories (first using the material in orbit to prove the concepts and save on pushing more mass into orbit, then to mine asteroids to build self-sustaining machinery. Galactic impact has to happen on galactic timescales and doesn't need fragile, short-lived meatbags.
The economy of human life isn't covered by TFA, we're happy using cheap human hands to make clothes and food and to dig rocks out of the earth or assemble electronic devices. People living and dying on Mars is the goal, using expendable life because we've got so much to spare here on Earth. That's also not really sustainable for exploration on a galactic time-scale, and we keep telling stories with individual human protagonists as if it could be me or it could be you. Telling stories of individual humans also leads us to tackle the problems of space with a cluster of individuals, not a huge faceless/impersonal robotic toolkit.
posted by k3ninho at 6:52 AM on October 30, 2023
I would raise the impact on the skies and from firing rockets through them and the earth from damaging the skies.
I like your post, I think this topic is really interesting because I want to build robotic recycling factories (first using the material in orbit to prove the concepts and save on pushing more mass into orbit, then to mine asteroids to build self-sustaining machinery. Galactic impact has to happen on galactic timescales and doesn't need fragile, short-lived meatbags.
The economy of human life isn't covered by TFA, we're happy using cheap human hands to make clothes and food and to dig rocks out of the earth or assemble electronic devices. People living and dying on Mars is the goal, using expendable life because we've got so much to spare here on Earth. That's also not really sustainable for exploration on a galactic time-scale, and we keep telling stories with individual human protagonists as if it could be me or it could be you. Telling stories of individual humans also leads us to tackle the problems of space with a cluster of individuals, not a huge faceless/impersonal robotic toolkit.
posted by k3ninho at 6:52 AM on October 30, 2023
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I can't find a non-Apple News source, but long story short: dangerous environment + cramped living = people must do exactly what BOSSMAN says and be ready to sacrifice themselves at the drop of a hat or they die. Thus, paradise for thugs. Much like 1800s sailing ships.
That's the claim the article makes, anyway. Not saying I personally agree.
posted by aramaic at 1:49 PM on October 26, 2023 [2 favorites]