Will science survive human nature.

[Loren Pechtel]

Still. Will it support lifting or transporting 100 to 5000 individuals and necessary supplies hither and fro. Not damn likely. BTW bilby did the bos 'splaing it was a booster system. It's still SF stuff as far as an getting from here to another place where intelligent life exists which is still in woo woo neighborhood.

Park it next to the spot for Dean drive.

No, it's not a woo drive. The physics is sound and holds up in the real world. It's slow but it can take us to the stars.

 

[bilby]

Still. Will it support lifting or transporting 100 to 5000 individuals and necessary supplies hither and fro. Not damn likely. BTW bilby did the bos 'splaing it was a booster system. It's still SF stuff as far as an getting from here to another place where intelligent life exists which is still in woo woo neighborhood.

Park it next to the spot for Dean drive.

No, it's not a woo drive. The physics is sound and holds up in the real world. It's slow but it can take us to the stars.

And of course it only needs a fairly small probability of being implemented. If there's a 1% chance we will ever bother to do it, then you only need 69 similar civilisations in the entire galaxy for it to be more likely than not that one will eventually come and visit us.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Still. Will it support lifting or transporting 100 to 5000 individuals and necessary supplies hither and fro. Not damn likely. BTW bilby did the bos 'splaing it was a booster system. It's still SF stuff as far as an getting from here to another place where intelligent life exists which is still in woo woo neighborhood.

Park it next to the spot for Dean drive.

No, it's not a woo drive. The physics is sound and holds up in the real world. It's slow but it can take us to the stars.

And of course it only needs a fairly small probability of being implemented. If there's a 1% chance we will ever bother to do it, then you only need 69 similar civilisations in the entire galaxy for it to be more likely than not that one will eventually come and visit us.

I suspect at least most species would avoid colonizing potentially life-bearing systems. We would still detect them around nearby stars, though.

 

[bilby]

And of course it only needs a fairly small probability of being implemented. If there's a 1% chance we will ever bother to do it, then you only need 69 similar civilisations in the entire galaxy for it to be more likely than not that one will eventually come and visit us.

I suspect at least most species would avoid colonizing potentially life-bearing systems. We would still detect them around nearby stars, though.

I suspect the reverse. Surely humans would specifically target systems likely to be at least suitable for life, if not known to actually host it. Why would most aliens not be expected to do the same?

 

[fromderinside]

Still. Will it support lifting or transporting 100 to 5000 individuals and necessary supplies hither and fro. Not damn likely. BTW bilby did the bos 'splaing it was a booster system. It's still SF stuff as far as an getting from here to another place where intelligent life exists which is still in woo woo neighborhood.

Park it next to the spot for Dean drive.

No, it's not a woo drive. The physics is sound and holds up in the real world. It's slow but it can take us to the stars.

And of course it only needs a fairly small probability of being implemented. If there's a 1% chance we will ever bother to do it, then you only need 69 similar civilisations in the entire galaxy for it to be more likely than not that one will eventually come and visit us.

Yeah. The problem with 69 civilizations is not that they are similar but that they exist in proximite time. It's amazing how many evolutions can be squeezed into 13.8 billion years across a universe of ten to the whatever stars that is over 90 billion light years in extent and still never have two that meet time nor distance constraints.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

And of course it only needs a fairly small probability of being implemented. If there's a 1% chance we will ever bother to do it, then you only need 69 similar civilisations in the entire galaxy for it to be more likely than not that one will eventually come and visit us.

I suspect at least most species would avoid colonizing potentially life-bearing systems. We would still detect them around nearby stars, though.

I suspect the reverse. Surely humans would specifically target systems likely to be at least suitable for life, if not known to actually host it. Why would most aliens not be expected to do the same?

Unless there's some major loophole in interstellar travel anyone who can do it is quite capable of colonizing a system lacking in habitable worlds. The systems that might harbor life would likely be treated as we treat nature reserves.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

And of course it only needs a fairly small probability of being implemented. If there's a 1% chance we will ever bother to do it, then you only need 69 similar civilisations in the entire galaxy for it to be more likely than not that one will eventually come and visit us.

Yeah. The problem with 69 civilizations is not that they are similar but that they exist in proximite time. It's amazing how many evolutions can be squeezed into 13.8 billion years across a universe of ten to the whatever stars that is over 90 billion light years in extent and still never have two that meet time nor distance constraints.

You're missing the point.

Time? Once a civilization spreads to the stars it will be incredibly hard to destroy other than through some cataclysmic war. A 99% kill wouldn't change the outcome much.

Distance? That's the point of our discussion of colonization. Slowboats can colonize the entire galaxy in tens of megayears. (Figure a slowboat goes 1% of lightspeed and will only be launched from a colony at least 1,000 years old and you get something in the 20-30 million year timeframe. Note that the spiral "arms" are not a limiting factor--the stars are nearly as dense between the arms as in them. The "arms" are regions of recent star formation with big, bright stars. Those have died in the areas between the arms.)

Thus if any civilization within our galaxy reached the point of interstellar colonization we almost certainly should have already detected them. Something makes the odds of a planet producing an interstellar civilization at least in the tens of billions to one range--but all the factors we can assign approximate values to are hopelessly inadequate to explain this. Thus it must be one of the factors we can't put numbers to.

 

[fromderinside]

I'm not talking about colonization. I'm talking about making contact with another lifeform as the equation is designed to answer.

But, since you are talking about colonization my point against that is too many people need be transported for slow systems to be workable. I'm pretty sure that over the course of about 100*10 years to get to a system only 10 light years away that the population of the ship will suffer what happened to those who migrated from Australia to Tasmania. That population was too small to sustain culture and they lost the capability to control fire among may other losses.

So the ships will have to have redundant life sustaining production capacities which don't exist. They will have to hibernate which isn't really going to do much good since acquiring such a capability probably changes us in other ways making travelers other than human. My estimate that to sustain significant culture perhaps 10 thousand persons will have to travel most reproducing and wakeful with perhaps a few geared to hibernate. There4 are all sorts of problem with size and texture of colonists beyond just losing culture and tribal history. Our friends the frogs seem to be in the process of dying out because the atmosphere is permitting more radiation to reach down to sea level for instance.

Likelihood of catastrophe isn't just from meteors and such. There lurk stars nearby that are ready to go supernova of sufficient size to produce energy jets of several dozen light years which may spew in many directions if the thing is set into some sort of gyration. In fact my guess the likelihood of extinction events will exceed what we face on earth as a probability. Hell there's already one hole in the milky way. who's to say another might be formed in human existence span.

And as you note without even considering things we don''t really understand we can conclude there are no cultures even taking into acount only what we do understand.

Put out that cigar and park your idea next to the Deandrive. You're likely to hurt someone.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

I'm not talking about colonization. I'm talking about making contact with another lifeform as the equation is designed to answer.

You miss the point. I am talking about colonization because once that happens we aren't dealing with one inhabited system but a vast number of them.

But, since you are talking about colonization my point against that is too many people need be transported for slow systems to be workable. I'm pretty sure that over the course of about 100*10 years to get to a system only 10 light years away that the population of the ship will suffer what happened to those who migrated from Australia to Tasmania. That population was too small to sustain culture and they lost the capability to control fire among may other losses.

Assuming they handle it correctly they would bring a viable population along.

So the ships will have to have redundant life sustaining production capacities which don't exist. They will have to hibernate which isn't really going to do much good since acquiring such a capability probably changes us in other ways making travelers other than human. My estimate that to sustain significant culture perhaps 10 thousand persons will have to travel most reproducing and wakeful with perhaps a few geared to hibernate. There4 are all sorts of problem with size and texture of colonists beyond just losing culture and tribal history. Our friends the frogs seem to be in the process of dying out because the atmosphere is permitting more radiation to reach down to sea level for instance.

We have no indication that hibernation is possible and the slowboat model doesn't assume it.

 

[fromderinside]

OK. This is going nowhere. The reason I mentioned Tasmania was to suggest humans don't know what they need to colonize. Look at what the Europeans did to American natives when they came if you need to understand Rumsfeld basics and this isn't even unknown unknowns.

The right place for your pet rock is next to Dean Drive.

We won't even send people. More likely, robots. That's what we'll do when we mine meteors. Nothing like the cute science-fiction I read in the late forties and the fifties.

 

[steve_bank]

here is an old saying 'No matter where you go, there YOU are'.

If we somehow manged to leave the solar system en mass we would still be the same human beings.

 

[skepticalbip]

OK. This is going nowhere. The reason I mentioned Tasmania was to suggest humans don't know what they need to colonize. Look at what the Europeans did to American natives when they came if you need to understand Rumsfeld basics and this isn't even unknown unknowns.

The right place for your pet rock is next to Dean Drive.

We won't even send people. More likely, robots. That's what we'll do when we mine meteors. Nothing like the cute science-fiction I read in the late forties and the fifties.

There has been a fair amount of talk about colonizing Mars. I have suggested that, before there is such an attempt, they should first send a sustainable size population of maybe a hundred people to colonize Antarctica... it should be much easier than Mars since the climate is milder, there is free oxygen available, there is plenty available water, and there is even native food sources. Only if this trial colonization was able to flourish without outside aid for ten or twenty years should the Mars colonization be considered. At least, the attempt would inform us of some of the problems we are currently overlooking.

The first Biosphere experiment that was tried something like 25 years ago didn't go that well and it was in a temperate climate.

 

[fromderinside]

I agree with your sentiment. We have no idea what will be needed in a foreign environment. With no available gene donors there with whom to mate knowing what humans can do becomes dramatically more important. Hell. We even have Jamestown as a red flag for our limitations and Jonestown as an example for what we might do in a hostile environment. I can hear NOMAD screaming ever more faintly Kill kill, kill as it was antigraved out into space with a bomb taped on.

 

[steve_bank]

On a multi generational ship the culture eventually would be nothing like what we call human civilization. Mythologies would emerge. Earth itself would become a myth.

Read Heinlein's Moon Is A Harsh Mistress.

I do not see a Mars colony psychologically surviving. We need some freedom of action. No where to go, a drab visual environment, and video. No release for social tensions.

 

[fromderinside]

I agree with your first paragraph up to where you generalize your thought to it would be nothing like human civilization.

Freedom is in how one arranges options. So what is human civilization?

Eskimos demonstrate humans survive in monochromatic harsh environments as humans. They preserve humor, respect, duty, family, social order. Mongols who survive as humans on treeless high elevation plateaus, do likewise. Bedouins survive in rainless desert mountains putting only minor stress on religious mores.

Psychology as we define it in the latter half of the 20th century and the first quarter of the 21st century is abnormal by human pre-industrial age norms. And those societies were unrecognizable to first farmers and before that first farmers were foreign to hunter gatherers .... und so weiter.

My thoughts on challenges to future immigrants to planet Ohfuck are there will be no life as we know it, maybe no life whatever. That would mean tools for adapting life to environment that set up trends for future humans there is paramount. We don't have such science right now. Much of what we need to live are dependent on having access to living stuff outside us even for digestion. I'm pretty sure we have no idea what we need in a new place to make us viable without being on earth.

I'm pretty sure blue sky and tinker capabilities will be of little use. We have no idea what blue sky means there and we have no means to tinker with what is there to produce something.

 

[steve_bank]

Eskimos are not confined. They are based on families and small clans in a simple environment. They have a seaonal chnaging environment.No comparison.

Humans may adapt on Mars, but their culture will be unlike anything on Earth. On Earth if you do not like the est coast you can go west. Pro sports and backyard sports are pressure release valves. On Mars survival would depend on a strict regimentation. Water, food, and energy conscription along with social rules.

Large human populations allow for the 'starving artist' and eccentrics to survive. Anti social speech and music.

NASA has studied the wintering crew at Macmurdo base in the Antiparticle. They are isolated for the winter. No planes can land.

The Mars Society set up small habitats in the arctic and rode around on ATVs in space suits.

The problem is in all those kinds of Earth scenarios including the ISS you know it is only short term. There has been one case of a meltdown on the ISS.

 

[fromderinside]

Space craft are easily fit for environment changes. In several concept versions for interstellar craft there are living podes separated by some distance with some rotating and others fixed and early concepts. A 1950s space station, envisioned by Disney shown on Disneyland with the help of Wernher Von Braun of was even equipped with a rotating enclosed cylinder for moving about and exercise. You focus on easily resolved problems already conceived and and implemented in models at least.

 

[atrib]

And of course it only needs a fairly small probability of being implemented. If there's a 1% chance we will ever bother to do it, then you only need 69 similar civilisations in the entire galaxy for it to be more likely than not that one will eventually come and visit us.

I suspect at least most species would avoid colonizing potentially life-bearing systems. We would still detect them around nearby stars, though.

How would we detect them? Do we have radio telescopes sensitive enough to pick up communications from an intelligent radio source say even 20 light years away? To transmit recognizable signals across such distances would involve large amounts of energy, similar in scale to to the energy radiated by small stars, I would imagine. I am not well read on the subject, but based on what I know about the propagation of waves and losses through geometric spread and damping, I can't imagine this would be a straightforward task. Now if the alien species had the ability to cover up entire stars, or cause a significant change in their brightness, and they did this to enough stars, that would probably get noticed by astronomers eventually.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

And of course it only needs a fairly small probability of being implemented. If there's a 1% chance we will ever bother to do it, then you only need 69 similar civilisations in the entire galaxy for it to be more likely than not that one will eventually come and visit us.

I suspect at least most species would avoid colonizing potentially life-bearing systems. We would still detect them around nearby stars, though.

How would we detect them? Do we have radio telescopes sensitive enough to pick up communications from an intelligent radio source say even 20 light years away? To transmit recognizable signals across such distances would involve large amounts of energy, similar in scale to to the energy radiated by small stars, I would imagine. I am not well read on the subject, but based on what I know about the propagation of waves and losses through geometric spread and damping, I can't imagine this would be a straightforward task. Now if the alien species had the ability to cover up entire stars, or cause a significant change in their brightness, and they did this to enough stars, that would probably get noticed by astronomers eventually.

Our radio telescopes can pick out our TV broadcasts farther away than that.

Not to mention all those military radars around. Not much signal but power that can be detected far away.

 

[skepticalbip]

And of course it only needs a fairly small probability of being implemented. If there's a 1% chance we will ever bother to do it, then you only need 69 similar civilisations in the entire galaxy for it to be more likely than not that one will eventually come and visit us.

I suspect at least most species would avoid colonizing potentially life-bearing systems.

That seems to me to be a baseless assumption. While it is true that many humans don't want to 'contaminate' other planets, I see no reason to assume other species would have the same concern. After all, even many humans don't have that concern. Plus, there are plans to colonize Mars because it is potentially life-bearing.

We would still detect them around nearby stars, though.

We could detect them if they were a Type II or Type III civilization. Detecting a civilization like ours or even a bit more advanced would be almost impossible unless they put a lot of effort into advertising their presence. There could possibly be enough leakage for us to detect a Type I with little intentional effort on their part. Detecting a Type II would be easier or would require a lot of detailed astronomical observation unless they were intentionally attempting to let their presence be known. We would likely already be aware of a Type III civilization if there were one.

The SETI program is searching for a civilization that is intentionally attempting to advertise themselves. They are looking for a powerful, highly directional signal aimed at our solar system.