Does that mean you’re for or against teroforming Mars?

My mistake, I thought you had said something to that effect.

Well for what it’s worth, we do seem to be early. Our sun appears to be among the first wave of “3rd generation stars” (stars that were born from the nebula of a supernova of a star that was born the same way, from another supernova). It’s thought that only those 3rd Gen stars will have planets with enough heavy elements to support life. All elements heavier than iron [26] on the periodic table, can only be created naturally in a supernova.

So yeah, the theory is, if we’re one of the first 3rd Gen stars out there in this galaxy, and if life formed on this planet basically as soon as it could have after the earth cooled enough, then we’re probably early on the scene for life.

Yeah agreed, there’s no way we’re picking up alien radio broadcasts, not over the noise produced by a star.

On the other hand, if a civilization were creating a Dyson sphere, or other large constructions, we’d be able to see those unusual elements in the light spectrum coming off the star. So it is conspicuous that we haven’t seen anything like that.

I’m sure that’s the case. You can travel to other stars without ftl, it’s just a lot slower and probably one way. It’s really pretty limiting for society, for instance, without ftl an interstellar “civilization” is basically out of the question, you can’t govern another star system without at the very least faster communication.

We don’t know what the Great Filter is, but it must be pretty destructive for a civ. I just want to point out the fact that the Great Filter is probably still ahead of us and that we shouldn’t take our existence for granted.

If there is a great filter…

I mean, as you said, we’re pretty early to the scene. Why can’t we be the first in this galaxy? Perhaps planets like earth aren’t rare over the lifetime of a galaxy, but they are rare in these early years of a galaxy. In other words, earth just developed quickly, so now we’re here before any other earth-like planets have had a chance to develop intelligent life.

Xenoanthroplology. We’re obviously not crazy and our many cultures are presumably much different from theirs. There would be enormous amounts to learn from studying our differences and our similarities.

Unless they’ve already simulated alien life in computer models… Then there’s not a lot left to learn.

It’s simple. We’re the first intelligent life in the galaxy. There is nobody else yet in our galaxy.

Also, probably nobody capable of traveling the stars wants to settle a planet. Once you figure out how to make huge spaceships (which you’ll need to travel interstellar space) you’ve essentially learned how to make cities in space. Our solar system would support a lot of people if we just used the resources available for space habitats, and by “lot” I mean in the quadrillions. And it turns out that all you need to support that population is a star to provide energy, and some planets to source materials from.

So with that in mind, why bother finding another habitable planet?

No, it really isn’t.

Whoa! Juno is still transmitting?! I thought that spacecraft had a really limited lifespan, due to the radiation ring around Jupiter. Pretty awesome that it’s still working!

We’ll find out when they get it home.

But I hope it’s the helium 3, I think Earth full up on Nazis at the moment.

I would argue that it’s a better world because Americans spent all that money. Those billion dollar rockets are how we learned to utilize space. In the process, we built gps, satellite communications, digital cameras and countless other technologies that the world enjoys today.

Without the space program we would never have had super soakers, and frankly, I didn’t want to live in a world like that.

*Super soakers were invented by a NASA engineer. It’s not hard to see how much a super soaker has in common with the fuel injection system for a pressure fed rocket, they’re essentially the same thing.

All that said, you’re not entirely wrong, throwing away rockets is a bit crazy. But we’ve come a long way in the field of reusable rockets. Within 3 years, I expect we will be putting a whole lot more in orbit at a much lower cost, because fully reusable rockets are nearly here.

Uh… the starship did go to space a couple weeks ago, you don’t have to believe that, but it did happen.

Elon aside (cause the guy is clearly not all there at the moment), space-x is still doing amazing things. As far as I’m concerned this is the most positive thing happening on the planet at the moment. I expect reusable rockets are going to bring more benefit to human society over the next few centuries than fusion power, quantum computing, AI, or any other “future technology”.

Edit: I take it back, if we can ever achieve efficient and economical production of long carbon nanotubes / graphene, that would probably be a bigger deal. Also metallic hydrogen, or room temp superconductors, that would also be pretty huge. But reusable rockets are still vitally important.

Well I read the book, and I want to say I loved it. But 90 percent of the book is buildup, focusing on the Chinese social revolution. It’s equal parts tragic, confusing and horrifying. I mean, it’s a human story, but it’s not scifi and it’s honestly hard to get through. But then the last two chapters have some fantastic scifi, some of the coolest ideas I’ve seen in fact!

But I’m not sure it’s worth it. I kind of want to recommend reading just the last three chapters or something.

In contrast, The Expanse is a fantastic book series (and tv show) and that’s a fantastic scifi story all the way through for like 6 books.

We should have baked a cake or something…

“Verbing funs English!”

-Calvin and Hobbes