During the last year Amazon founder Jeff Bezos has begun to open up about the scale of his ambitions with the rocket company, Blue Origin, explaining that he envisions millions of people living and working in space. Additionally, Bezos has talked about moving heavy industry off of planet Earth to create a garden paradise on our home planet.In this view Bezos' philosophy differs significantly from the other titan of the new space industry, Elon Musk of SpaceX. Both men agree that reusable spaceflight is essential to lowering the cost of access to space, but they disagree about what to do once we get there. Musk has spoken openly of providing humanity with a "backup plan," and recently revealed his ultra-ambitious plans to colonize Mars with 100 passengers at a time via his Interplanetary Transport System.Bezos dismissed this approach on Oct. 22, during the Pathfinder Awards at the Seattle Museum of Flight. In remarks first shared by GeekWire, Bezos said Earth should be zoned as a residential area. "I don't like the Plan B idea that we want to go into space so we have a backup planet," he said, noting NASA's efforts to send probes throughout the solar system. "Believe me, this is the best planet. There is no doubt this is the one you want to protect. This is the jewel. We evolved here, we're kind of made for this planet. It's gorgeous, and we can use space to protect it."Humanity has two futures, Bezos said. It can continue to grow, or it can settle into some kind of population equilibrium. As an example of the planet's limitations he offered energy as an example. Taking the baseline energy use on Earth, and compounding it at 3 percent for 500 years, would require covering the entire surface of the Earth in solar cells to meet the demand by the year 2500. "We need to go into space if we want grow as a species," he said. "Another route would be just to face stasis, but I don't think that's as interesting. I don't think we want to just survive on this planet, I think we want to thrive and do amazing things."With his reusable approach to lowering the cost of spaceflight, Bezos said Blue Origin will try to provide the infrastructure needed to enable humans to do interesting things in space. Bezos said he believes that if he can provide low-cost access to space, the next generation will figure out how to creatively use zero gravity, 24/7 solar power, as well as valuable resources on the Moon and asteroids.
I seriously doubt that either the need or the economics of space industrialization makes any sense in our lifetimes. Maybe in 200 years, and only after advances in space propulsion. That is where Mars comes in, as the driver of such tech and demands. Bezos' ideas at best is a very long-term hope/wish. Musk's plan is a short-term concrete goal and destination for humanity. Billionaires have no need to justify and rationalize their space dreams. It is there, and they want to go, and might have the means one day. If Congress had to choose who to fund, Mr. Musk is the clear choice.
Jeff Bezos is right. Earth is by far the best planet in the Solar System for us to live on. We should take care of it.
I don't worry about asteroids - I worry about the myriad ways in which our civilisations have fallen in the past and will continue to do so in the future. Amidst that chaos, maintaining a planetary defence capability is not something I'm comfortable relying on.
Then humanity will be bound to earth until it's inevitable death. If we can't learn to live in space, not on a actual body, we cannot go anywhere, even if the tech to go to other solar systems existed. What the point of technology even? Going to Mars, Jupiter? No, it's to find another planet like earth elsewhere. The Mars plans are futile. But again, my take on Mars is that people had their dreams crushed when they where younger, so they are now finding excuses to go to Mars, like the one of living there permanently for saving humanity. That's just funny now.
Quote from: b0objunior on 10/31/2016 05:50 amThen humanity will be bound to earth until it's inevitable death. If we can't learn to live in space, not on a actual body, we cannot go anywhere, even if the tech to go to other solar systems existed. What the point of technology even? Going to Mars, Jupiter? No, it's to find another planet like earth elsewhere. The Mars plans are futile. But again, my take on Mars is that people had their dreams crushed when they where younger, so they are now finding excuses to go to Mars, like the one of living there permanently for saving humanity. That's just funny now.But that's the crux of it. You can't live -in- space. You have to live on, or in, a body. We cannot function without specific temperature, pressure and atmospheric enviroments. They require containers.Earth is a natural container. Mars is a natural container.The "had their dreams crushed when they are younger" thing is fallacy. I'm a millennial. I wasn't around for the Space Race and only for the tail end of the shuttle era, yet I am still incredibly passionate about manned spaceflight, and more so the colonisation of exo-Earth. I am not a generational freak. I see more passion for spaceflight in the post-lunar generations than the pre. People are now accepting that this is possible and actively moving along the realisation road. If SpaceX fails, somebody else will pick up the torch.When you have to create philosophical and not technological reasons for why an act is impossible, you are doomed to be proven wrong. The same applied for flight, the same applied for polar exploration. Pessimism is unrewarding - if you are right, you get no satisfaction, nor are you going to be written into the history books. If you are wrong, nobody is going to commiserate you. The onus of proof is not on the dreamers why they dare to dream, but on the doubters who request the dreamers stop. Nobody is expecting to go to Mars to find Earth. People are expecting to go to Mars, to find Mars.Now, I would love for us to live in gigantic interplanetary Culture-esque archologies just as everybody else - but we're not going to get there by leaping a hundred steps at once. Did cave men whine about the lack of nuclear fission when we first started to harness wildfire?Get to Mars. Develop another world, then industrialise the roads between.Build the wagons to make the wagon train. Settle the towns. Build the interstates - only then do you start developing industries along the trade corridor.Space is the future, but space itself is mostly worthless. Space is absence. We travel through Space in order to reach an entity of much greater objective value: Stuff.
I seriously doubt that either the need or the economics of moving to space industrialization, space mining makes any sense in our lifetimes. Maybe in 200 years, and only after advances in space propulsion. That is where Mars comes in, as the driver of such tech and demands.
This is kind of ... dopey.If either of them get what they are after, the cost of space drops for both. So ... doesn't matter. Except for ... ego.OTOH ... the first one to bring off an operational mass spaceflight system ... might undercut the other. Being number 2 might carry a penalty.
Quote from: b0objunior on 10/31/2016 05:50 amThen humanity will be bound to earth until it's inevitable death. If we can't learn to live in space, not on a actual body, we cannot go anywhere, even if the tech to go to other solar systems existed. What the point of technology even? Going to Mars, Jupiter? No, it's to find another planet like earth elsewhere. The Mars plans are futile. But again, my take on Mars is that people had their dreams crushed when they where younger, so they are now finding excuses to go to Mars, like the one of living there permanently for saving humanity. That's just funny now.But that's the crux of it. You can't live -in- space. You have to live on, or in, a body. We cannot function without specific temperature, pressure and atmospheric enviroments. They require containers.
Earth is a natural container. Mars is a natural container.
Get to Mars. Develop another world, then industrialise the roads between.Build the wagons to make the wagon train. Settle the towns. Build the interstates - only then do you start developing industries along the trade corridor.Space is the future, but space itself is mostly worthless. Space is absence. We travel through Space in order to reach an entity of much greater objective value: Stuff.
This is a strawman. "Let's protect Earth." Well, duh. No one who is aiming to settle Mars disagrees with that.
Quote from: Robotbeat on 10/31/2016 11:19 pmThis is a strawman. "Let's protect Earth." Well, duh. No one who is aiming to settle Mars disagrees with that.If we concentrate on developing the ability to utilize NEO material for industrial purposes in orbit, we also develop the ability to protect Earth. Colonizing Mars doesn't protect Earth, and it sucks resources and mindshare for a task that's demonstrably unnecessary if we can build 1G colonies and breed in orbit. Bezos seems to have read the High Frontier and glimpsed the Golden Path. Luckily, I think economics will lead us in the right direction. LEO colonies are so much cheaper and more straightforward to build, and once the first spinning colony is built, the paradigm shift will begin.
Not sure what to think; he might be right - it might take too long for a Martian colony to become practically self-sufficient and a viable "back-up" to Earth. Or, both Musk and Bezos may be correct (about backups and industrializing space, respectively); their goals would even complement each other in expanding humanity's presence in space.