Engineer our society for its ejection from the solar system

[Elixir]

We have yet to prove ourselves to be good managers of the planet Earth and its ecosystems.

Why bother, if we’re going to start flinging the planet around to different locations?
You get good at managing it under these conditions, then conditions change and you’re back to square one.

 

[DBT]

We may become better at flinging planets than managing them....something that we may never get the hang of.

 

[bilby]

If we have thousands of years, then there are many things we could do, starting with not putting all eggs in one basket. We can create future versions of O'Neill colonies (which are mobile) our near Jupiter or beyond. We can send generation ships to other stars.
We could possibly change the path of the rogue so it doesn't affect our Solar System, possibly by bombarding it with asteroids.

We should start on a prototype ringworld real soon. Kids these days don’t want to put in the time, so it’s going to fall to us old people to get it done. We move slow, and the clock is ticking!

You are thinking waaaay too small. A ringworld is just the foundation for a proper Dyson sphere.

 

[Elixir]

If we have thousands of years, then there are many things we could do, starting with not putting all eggs in one basket. We can create future versions of O'Neill colonies (which are mobile) our near Jupiter or beyond. We can send generation ships to other stars.
We could possibly change the path of the rogue so it doesn't affect our Solar System, possibly by bombarding it with asteroids.

We should start on a prototype ringworld real soon. Kids these days don’t want to put in the time, so it’s going to fall to us old people to get it done. We move slow, and the clock is ticking!

You are thinking waaaay too small. A ringworld is just the foundation for a proper Dyson sphere.

Some of us are not fans of variable gravity!

 

[Jarhyn]

We may become better at flinging planets than managing them....something that we may never get the hang of.

And this is why I return to my claim: everyone on earth ever put into a logistics management position should be required to reach a certain threshold in Dwarf Fortress, Factorio, Stellaris, Rimworld, Satisfactory, or some other large-scale logistics building game, possibly one that has been configured to be rogue-like (with material types scrambled under the domain of the nouns; "all the names and appearances of stuff are different every time, so you have to learn what to do over again).

At the very least this would enforce the greatest measure of competence in doing the task.

I would gravitate towards games which are "war crimes simulators" (Rimworld, Stellaris, and to a lesser extend Dwarf Fortress) to see how bound a person is to acting in the benefit of all their charges and to see how they treat outsiders regardless of how it benefits (or doesn't benefit) their logistics setup.

Like, we have all kinds of simulations and games and scenarios which we can test people's abilities in situations that are otherwise without meaningful consequences.

I can't imagine that this would go over very well, though, because of the famous incompetence which builds among the affluent at doing anything of merit beyond maintaining affluence, but it would act as a very effective hedge to keep away the incompetent.

I think the problem here is that society in general is badly aligned to produce "managers" when managers are needed and instead we are aligned to provide "popular people", The ones whose primary competence is in socially convincing people of stuff rather than actually doing the work of keeping society together.

This is the same issue we all likely remember from highschool with the school president who was always a popularity context... And popular doesn't mean competent.

 

[steve_bank]

Don't know about logistics and video games, but economics and operations research would be a help.

Stars and solar systems cone and go, we see it through observation.

Species come and go on Earth. The asteroid strike tat clobbered the dinosaurs.

Unless we develop Star Trek scale technology we are not gong anywhere,.

An old scifi movie. A rogue star is headed for the solar system. A rich guy builds a space ship to take a group from Earth to another planet around the apportion star.

When Worlds Collide (1951 film) - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Full video online.

 

[Elixir]

An old scifi movie. A rogue star is headed for the solar system.

The “what-ifs” around that idea make me wonder about rogue planets - non-luminous bodies wandering around interstellar (or even intergalactic) space.
How common are they, how much advance warning could we expect if one was going to disrupt our solar system, and could we do anything about it?
I suspect we’d effectively be blindsided.

 

[steve_bank]

Andromeda–Milky Way collision - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

The Andromeda Galaxy is approaching the Milky Way at about 110 kilometres per second (68.4 mi/s)[2][8] as indicated by blueshift. However, the lateral speed (measured as proper motion) is very difficult to measure with sufficient precision to draw reasonable conclusions. Until 2012, it was not known whether the possible collision was definitely going to happen or not.[9] Researchers then used the Hubble Space Telescope to measure the positions of stars in Andromeda in 2002 and 2010, relative to hundreds of distant background galaxies. By averaging over thousands of stars, they were able to obtain the average proper motion with sub-pixel accuracy. The conclusion was that Andromeda is moving southeast in the sky at less than 0.1 milliarc-seconds per year, corresponding to a speed relative to the Sun of less than 200 km/s towards the south and towards the east. Taking also into account the Sun's motion, Andromeda's tangential or sideways velocity with respect to the Milky Way was found to be much smaller than the speed of approach (consistent with zero given the uncertainty) and therefore it will eventually merge with the Milky Way in around five billion years.[1][2][10]
Such collisions are relatively common, considering galaxies' long lifespans. Andromeda, for example, is believed to have collided with at least one other galaxy in the past,[11] and several dwarf galaxies such as Sgr dSph are currently colliding with the Milky Way and being merged into it.

The studies also suggest that M33, the Triangulum Galaxy—the third-largest and third-brightest galaxy of the Local Group—will participate in the collision event, too. Its most likely fate is to end up orbiting the merger remnant of the Milky Way and Andromeda galaxies and finally to merge with it in an even more distant future. However, a collision with the Milky Way, before it collides with the Andromeda Galaxy, or an ejection from the Local Group cannot be ruled out.[9]

 

[bilby]

If we have thousands of years, then there are many things we could do, starting with not putting all eggs in one basket. We can create future versions of O'Neill colonies (which are mobile) our near Jupiter or beyond. We can send generation ships to other stars.
We could possibly change the path of the rogue so it doesn't affect our Solar System, possibly by bombarding it with asteroids.

We should start on a prototype ringworld real soon. Kids these days don’t want to put in the time, so it’s going to fall to us old people to get it done. We move slow, and the clock is ticking!

You are thinking waaaay too small. A ringworld is just the foundation for a proper Dyson sphere.

Some of us are not fans of variable gravity!

I am. A whole g is far too much for my back, and I would be much happier if I could live somewhere with a touch less, and vacation somewhere with a LOT less - self-powered flight would be fun.

 

[bilby]

An old scifi movie. A rogue star is headed for the solar system.

The “what-ifs” around that idea make me wonder about rogue planets - non-luminous bodies wandering around interstellar (or even intergalactic) space.
How common are they, how much advance warning could we expect if one was going to disrupt our solar system, and could we do anything about it?
I suspect we’d effectively be blindsided.

From a detection and collision warning perspective, a rogue planet* is just an asteroid that's bigger (and so brighter, and easier to detect). Our asteroid detection abilities are starting to be close to good enough, though detection is only the easy bit - we still lack the ability to do much about it if we spot one that's going to hit us.

Rogue stars** are obviously easier to spot, being self luminous.








* Not to be confused with rouge planets, such as Mars

** Not to be confused with rouge stars, such as Betelgeuse

 

[Elixir]

If we have thousands of years, then there are many things we could do, starting with not putting all eggs in one basket. We can create future versions of O'Neill colonies (which are mobile) our near Jupiter or beyond. We can send generation ships to other stars.
We could possibly change the path of the rogue so it doesn't affect our Solar System, possibly by bombarding it with asteroids.

We should start on a prototype ringworld real soon. Kids these days don’t want to put in the time, so it’s going to fall to us old people to get it done. We move slow, and the clock is ticking!

You are thinking waaaay too small. A ringworld is just the foundation for a proper Dyson sphere.

Some of us are not fans of variable gravity!

I am. A whole g is far too much for my back, and I would be much happier if I could live somewhere with a touch less, and vacation somewhere with a LOT less - self-powered flight would be fun.

You can slow the spin on the ring world to suit! You’ll need higher walls is all.

 

[bilby]

You can slow the spin on the ring world to suit!

That's gonna piss off anyone who is not a fan of variable gravity, though...

 

[Elixir]

You can slow the spin on the ring world to suit!

That's gonna piss off anyone who is not a fan of variable gravity, though...

Hey, it won’t be variable throughout the land at least. You set it and forget it.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

If we have thousands of years, then there are many things we could do, starting with not putting all eggs in one basket. We can create future versions of O'Neill colonies (which are mobile) our near Jupiter or beyond. We can send generation ships to other stars.
We could possibly change the path of the rogue so it doesn't affect our Solar System, possibly by bombarding it with asteroids.

We should start on a prototype ringworld real soon. Kids these days don’t want to put in the time, so it’s going to fall to us old people to get it done. We move slow, and the clock is ticking!

You are thinking waaaay too small. A ringworld is just the foundation for a proper Dyson sphere.

Except I haven't seen a viable proposal for how to hold up a Dyson sphere.

A Ringworld can be made without super materials. You build your ring as a maglev train on top of a foundation that's much heavier. Once everything's built you switch on the train, the ring accelerates, the foundation decelerates. You can have 1g on the surface countered by a stationary foundation, the energy adds up to the same as what the mass would be peacefully orbiting at the same distance. But now you have a train that can't be stopped for any reason, all the maintenance must be done while it's moving at an appreciable fraction of a percent of lightspeed. (Obviously, things must be modular.) And you still have the same instability problem.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

We may become better at flinging planets than managing them....something that we may never get the hang of.

And this is why I return to my claim: everyone on earth ever put into a logistics management position should be required to reach a certain threshold in Dwarf Fortress, Factorio, Stellaris, Rimworld, Satisfactory, or some other large-scale logistics building game, possibly one that has been configured to be rogue-like (with material types scrambled under the domain of the nouns; "all the names and appearances of stuff are different every time, so you have to learn what to do over again).

Second this. I only recently got the Space Age expansion for Factorio. Bigger hammer decidedly does not work on Gleba logistics. And what possessed them to not provide an enable on the radar? I had to make a stupid little power pole and a switch to have it run only during the day.

 

[Jarhyn]

We may become better at flinging planets than managing them....something that we may never get the hang of.

And this is why I return to my claim: everyone on earth ever put into a logistics management position should be required to reach a certain threshold in Dwarf Fortress, Factorio, Stellaris, Rimworld, Satisfactory, or some other large-scale logistics building game, possibly one that has been configured to be rogue-like (with material types scrambled under the domain of the nouns; "all the names and appearances of stuff are different every time, so you have to learn what to do over again).

Second this. I only recently got the Space Age expansion for Factorio. Bigger hammer decidedly does not work on Gleba logistics. And what possessed them to not provide an enable on the radar? I had to make a stupid little power pole and a switch to have it run only during the day.

Oh Jesus... I haven't touched it since before satisfactory got big... It sounds like you enabled hard mode or something ._.

But the thing is this would violate the first principle of human social dynamics: "It's a fucking popularity contest, you fucking loser, and you weren't even nominated to run. Now get lost, dweeb."

 

[Loren Pechtel]

We may become better at flinging planets than managing them....something that we may never get the hang of.

And this is why I return to my claim: everyone on earth ever put into a logistics management position should be required to reach a certain threshold in Dwarf Fortress, Factorio, Stellaris, Rimworld, Satisfactory, or some other large-scale logistics building game, possibly one that has been configured to be rogue-like (with material types scrambled under the domain of the nouns; "all the names and appearances of stuff are different every time, so you have to learn what to do over again).

Second this. I only recently got the Space Age expansion for Factorio. Bigger hammer decidedly does not work on Gleba logistics. And what possessed them to not provide an enable on the radar? I had to make a stupid little power pole and a switch to have it run only during the day.

Oh Jesus... I haven't touched it since before satisfactory got big... It sounds like you enabled hard mode or something ._.

But the thing is this would violate the first principle of human social dynamics: "It's a fucking popularity contest, you fucking loser, and you weren't even nominated to run. Now get lost, dweeb."

They added the Space Age expansion. Some tweaks, lots of techs pushed out farther, rockets are much cheaper but you're going to need a ton of them as your goal is now to escape the solar system, not merely the planet. So far I've only gotten to two of them--Fulgara where you have a bunch of islands too far apart to run power. Every night brings a lightning storm, most anything (your trains and rails are safe) not under the umbrella of a lightning rod or lightning collector takes random strikes that will blow a regular bot out of the sky (but the flip side is with enough accumulators you can power your base from the strikes.) The ocean is oil, the only other resource is scrap--recycle it but the results are random meaning your production lines can't be perfectly balanced. The only way I know of to make a factory that can run unattended for long periods is to burn up surpluses with recyclers. Now I'm working with Gleba, everything other than stone comes from plants and thus is infinitely renewable, but the volume of stuff it spits out is crazy, most of it being of little use. And everything decays until it's been turned into one of the standard resources--you can't allow your lines to back up. At best it decays, but you keep a pentapod egg around too long and instead of spoiling it hatches.

There's also quality. Normal quality is what you're used to, but there are 4 tiers above that. Put quality modules in production systems and maybe the output is of higher quality. Pretty much everything gets better at higher qualities, although with things like belts that's simply a matter of more hit points. Weapon ranges go up. Ammunition damage goes up. Anything that turns turns faster. But the logistics get much harder because now there are 5 (eventually) versions of anything solid. Circuit controls become much more important.

 

[Jarhyn]

We may become better at flinging planets than managing them....something that we may never get the hang of.

And this is why I return to my claim: everyone on earth ever put into a logistics management position should be required to reach a certain threshold in Dwarf Fortress, Factorio, Stellaris, Rimworld, Satisfactory, or some other large-scale logistics building game, possibly one that has been configured to be rogue-like (with material types scrambled under the domain of the nouns; "all the names and appearances of stuff are different every time, so you have to learn what to do over again).

Second this. I only recently got the Space Age expansion for Factorio. Bigger hammer decidedly does not work on Gleba logistics. And what possessed them to not provide an enable on the radar? I had to make a stupid little power pole and a switch to have it run only during the day.

Oh Jesus... I haven't touched it since before satisfactory got big... It sounds like you enabled hard mode or something ._.

But the thing is this would violate the first principle of human social dynamics: "It's a fucking popularity contest, you fucking loser, and you weren't even nominated to run. Now get lost, dweeb."

They added the Space Age expansion. Some tweaks, lots of techs pushed out farther, rockets are much cheaper but you're going to need a ton of them as your goal is now to escape the solar system, not merely the planet. So far I've only gotten to two of them--Fulgara where you have a bunch of islands too far apart to run power. Every night brings a lightning storm, most anything (your trains and rails are safe) not under the umbrella of a lightning rod or lightning collector takes random strikes that will blow a regular bot out of the sky (but the flip side is with enough accumulators you can power your base from the strikes.) The ocean is oil, the only other resource is scrap--recycle it but the results are random meaning your production lines can't be perfectly balanced. The only way I know of to make a factory that can run unattended for long periods is to burn up surpluses with recyclers. Now I'm working with Gleba, everything other than stone comes from plants and thus is infinitely renewable, but the volume of stuff it spits out is crazy, most of it being of little use. And everything decays until it's been turned into one of the standard resources--you can't allow your lines to back up. At best it decays, but you keep a pentapod egg around too long and instead of spoiling it hatches.

There's also quality. Normal quality is what you're used to, but there are 4 tiers above that. Put quality modules in production systems and maybe the output is of higher quality. Pretty much everything gets better at higher qualities, although with things like belts that's simply a matter of more hit points. Weapon ranges go up. Ammunition damage goes up. Anything that turns turns faster. But the logistics get much harder because now there are 5 (eventually) versions of anything solid. Circuit controls become much more important.

Fuck, that sounds like a nightmare.

Maybe I'll check it out!

 

[Loren Pechtel]

We may become better at flinging planets than managing them....something that we may never get the hang of.

And this is why I return to my claim: everyone on earth ever put into a logistics management position should be required to reach a certain threshold in Dwarf Fortress, Factorio, Stellaris, Rimworld, Satisfactory, or some other large-scale logistics building game, possibly one that has been configured to be rogue-like (with material types scrambled under the domain of the nouns; "all the names and appearances of stuff are different every time, so you have to learn what to do over again).

Second this. I only recently got the Space Age expansion for Factorio. Bigger hammer decidedly does not work on Gleba logistics. And what possessed them to not provide an enable on the radar? I had to make a stupid little power pole and a switch to have it run only during the day.

Oh Jesus... I haven't touched it since before satisfactory got big... It sounds like you enabled hard mode or something ._.

But the thing is this would violate the first principle of human social dynamics: "It's a fucking popularity contest, you fucking loser, and you weren't even nominated to run. Now get lost, dweeb."

They added the Space Age expansion. Some tweaks, lots of techs pushed out farther, rockets are much cheaper but you're going to need a ton of them as your goal is now to escape the solar system, not merely the planet. So far I've only gotten to two of them--Fulgara where you have a bunch of islands too far apart to run power. Every night brings a lightning storm, most anything (your trains and rails are safe) not under the umbrella of a lightning rod or lightning collector takes random strikes that will blow a regular bot out of the sky (but the flip side is with enough accumulators you can power your base from the strikes.) The ocean is oil, the only other resource is scrap--recycle it but the results are random meaning your production lines can't be perfectly balanced. The only way I know of to make a factory that can run unattended for long periods is to burn up surpluses with recyclers. Now I'm working with Gleba, everything other than stone comes from plants and thus is infinitely renewable, but the volume of stuff it spits out is crazy, most of it being of little use. And everything decays until it's been turned into one of the standard resources--you can't allow your lines to back up. At best it decays, but you keep a pentapod egg around too long and instead of spoiling it hatches.

There's also quality. Normal quality is what you're used to, but there are 4 tiers above that. Put quality modules in production systems and maybe the output is of higher quality. Pretty much everything gets better at higher qualities, although with things like belts that's simply a matter of more hit points. Weapon ranges go up. Ammunition damage goes up. Anything that turns turns faster. But the logistics get much harder because now there are 5 (eventually) versions of anything solid. Circuit controls become much more important.

Fuck, that sounds like a nightmare.

Maybe I'll check it out!

Yeah, the game got much harder.

I decided I didn't bring enough logistics and it was going to take ages to bootstrap Gleba to be able to get off the planet. I went back to a previous save and decided to deal with Vulcanus first. Coal (and it unlocks the coal to oil recipe), sulfuric acid (which can be neutralized to get water), lava (which can be turned into iron and copper and throws off stone in the process, it can be used in place of iron ore in the concrete recipe as the only ore you get is from rocks), calcite (needed in various recipes) and tungsten. The locals are some big, mean worms that will leave you alone unless you attack them or build on their territory. Slow, but with nasty ranged attacks, gobs of health and gobs of regeneration.

I came loaded, I have a tank (which now have equipment grids) with two levels of upgrade, 2,400 points of shield. Loaded with uranium rounds--with my current research level it does 14k per hit. Three quick hits will kill a small worm, but it's about 50:50 if the worm manages to blow off the tank shields in the process. Medium--most attempts have been a failure. Big--I know better than to try. (And note that you need to bring in the uranium, there's none on planet.) The only other weapon that can take one on I haven't unlocked and I'm pretty sure it needs another planet.

Somebody wasn't thinking in setting item weights--a full magazine of uranium rounds weighs 32x as much as the tank (which had a fission reactor and 4 level three batteries to power it's shields, as well as the shields.) I still hate the tank but it now has some merit. (In the base game I could never understand it--the lack of maneuverability made it a death trap as far as I'm concerned.)

Either I'm missing something important or spacecraft logistics needs some fixing. (And I'm pretty sure it's the latter.) It's done entirely on a request basis. Spacecraft request things from planets, planets request things from spacecraft. Spacecraft can be automated like trains. But I haven't figured out how to request more than one launch worth of any given item and it won't start prepping the payload until the rocket is ready to launch. With modules, beacons, the much cheaper rockets, and light cargo you want a lot of it can take longer for the bots to load the rocket than it took to build it. (Each planet has it's own type of science pack, 1000 packs per launch.) Not unreasonable for automated transport but a PITA for lifting a bunch of stuff to build a base on another planet.

 

[Bronzeage]

The odds of a tornado destroying my house are much greater than the planet Earth being knocked out of orbit. However, I have lived my entire life in an area where tornados are common and I've never actually seen one. The technology exists to make my house resistant to a tornado. There are some people who have actually done this. I don't have those kinds of resources, but even if I did, I don't think it would be a good use of them. I have greater needs for the immediate future.

If I apply this reasoning to the planetary ejection scenario, I get the same conclusion. Beyond that, the real question is, why? I am presently a human in an aging body. I know my life could be extended indefinitely, given the resources, but again I have to ask why. If our planet is doomed and the only way to survive is to take everything we have and concentrate on creating a subterranean shelter, what do we benefit, other than breathing air for a few more years?

There will always be someone who refused to take, "because it's impossible for an answer. We can't cooperate to preserve life and human society while we walk on the surface of the planet, so I find it difficult to believe it would be possible to do it underground.