wat. How is it environmentally friendly to needlessly launch junk into space?! Humans are so not ready to be on other planets yet.

Yes, I said it in a jokey way but I’m actually seriously speculating about that as a distant future scenario, though I’d include their servants, clones, entertainers, staff, recruits, and progeny in that, along with probably a DNA bank of every person, animal, and strand of bacteria on earth.

> with limited access to air, water, food, sex, security, shelter until they finally perished cold and alone in the nothing

Who said anything about that? I mean, they’d be “limited”, yes, in the strictly mathematical sense that these things are finite, but they need not lack in abundance. I did say luxury space craft, didn’t I? I’m not talking about heated seats here, I’m talking nuclear powered underground cities…

How so? Humans are capable of basic space travel already.

Yes, it makes a lot of sense for mankind, no doubt about it. Does it make sense for men and women though?

It's easy to say mankind. Flight makes a lot of sense for mankind too, but less than a third of the global population has ever been on a plane because for the remaining 2/3 it doesn't make sense to do so given their economic constraints.

Absolutely, which is why I said "an answer" as opposed to "the answer".

Right. It doesn't seem to me that humans can live outside of Earth's safety for any significant duration of time at all. The Sun is very explosive.

They don't. I didn't specify who figured it out. It could have been aliens.

Humanity, itself alone, made this decision. Its the same fundamental postulate that gives governments the 'right' to invade and destroy other governments' people - without the people involved making the decision, no rockets get built in the first place.

Permission? You only need permission because you also need help - from the rest of the people who make life, as it is on Earth for humankind, what it is.

Farmers already made that choice by sending the message. Whoever wants to attack will be prepared to the point of full domination.

That said, why should space faring civilizations be incapable of cooperation? Without leaving the solar system, we are already in a state of post-modernism and multiculturalism. A civilization that can travel between solar systems can be even more advanced in respecting other cultures.

If there is a risk then it is us, not pouring more resources into research so that we have nothing to offer once somebody else comes along.

How do you build a spaceship without working together with others?

> Constructing even a galaxy's worth of kill missiles and launching them wildly like a shotgun isn't a strategy that any logical civilization would do.

Who said the missles are dumb rocks? If each one has a camera on it and a few adjustment rockets, it can choose which planets to target as it approaches the star. It's gonna take you a hundred thousand years to get there anyway, so who cares if you wreck the local ecosystem a little bit now? You're probably going to have to make changes to the planet to suit your species' needs anyway, so why be coy about it to save yourself a minivan's worth of raw material?

There is no chance in the next hundred years (I would bet more like 200-500) of a self-sufficient colony anywhere away from the earth. If humanity can't survive without rockets, it can't survive at all.

Not to mention that it is basically impossible to imagine that any technology that could allow a self-sufficient colony on another planet couldn't much more easily allow humans to live on earth after any catastrophe you could imagine short of cosmic ray events. It's much, much harder to live on Mars than on a post-apocalyptic earth, regardless of which apocalypse you care to choose (nuclear war, nuclear meltdowns in all nuclear power plants, catastrophic global warming, super volcanoes, meteor impact the size of the Cambrian event, you name it).

Sure, in the enormously long term there may be a need to leave the earth before the sun ages too much, or to try to have a chance against planetary collisions or gamma ray bursts.

But not evenly. There are certain orbits that most satellites try to stay in.

Do social and economic factors magically not apply to people who colonize the solar system? Seems to me you now have 2 problems.

With a limitless budget, you could send dozens of people to live on Mars.

But they would likely die from a thousand little cuts (rocket failures, vitamin deficiencies, air leaks, primitive medical help, it's endless) since you're basically duplicating an earth environment.

Or they could just sit around waiting for the next supply ship. We like to think that people are hardy pioneers, but most Americans stopped being tough farmers after WW2.

(The press interviews with the Mars volunteers showed they were maladjusted on earth, and probably mentally ill.)

I personally don't care if astronauts die on missions, because that's the risk they signed up for, but apparently other people do. And sending people on what is likely a one-way trip is something to be discussed beforehand.

As an example, Shuttle engineers estimated the loss likelihood at 1/100 per mission, but managers 1/10,000 and couldn't justify manned flights with the engineers' estimate. The actual number was 1.6/100.

The Biosphere project, the Space Shuttle, our lack of oceanic exploration all don't bode well for our readiness to colonize another planet.

Reading scifi about going to Mars isn't the same as reality.

Maybe, maybe not. Getting there is still a problem.

Oh, they will. Someone should build the colony. Someone should do the work to maintain and grow the colony, etc.

Not humanity. Only selected ones.

What if you don't have a need like that ? The only reason I wouldn't sign up for a one-way trip to Mars is because they would probably want to send other people too.

Depends on the resource. If they want milk and chicken for example, it might be better to get that from Earth.

> It’d be enormously uncomfortable for Mars adapted people to spend any time on earth.

They could breed a race of human slaves to work on Earth.