There are people out there who don't watch rocket launches for fun. Some of them don't even know what an O'Neill cylinder is. How do we talk to those who don't live and breathe this stuff?
That is a good way of illustrating just how potent the Sun is. Its expressing the 2 billion factor I talk about in terms of light missing the Earth in terms of matter to energy conversion instead. Maybe it would be worth A/B testing to see which resonates more?
Many people find small numbers like 7, and relatively small numbers like 4 million, easier to comprehend than billions.
With house price inflation over the last few decades, a million quid really isn't that impressive any more and people understand it, for better or worse.
Octonauts is a very popular children's book and cartoon series first debuted as a cartoon on the BBC and now the new seasons are being produced by Netflix.
There is a hunger for STEM focused optimistic entertainment think Star Trek meets little house on the prairie. This is where the Moonsteaders fits not colonialism or settlers but imagining frontier family life, there have been kids along on every great human endeavor.
Our generation has seen nothing but monsters at the edge of the map when it comes to space entertainment.
This is how I am working to change that to help children see them selves in space.
I mean the terms "settlement" and "colonialism" as you say they have a societal unintended meaning they bear with them. I am writing the setting past the first wave of explorers, "past the sale if you will", to the second wave of pioneers.
A semi-realistic depiction set for children’s imagination, not focusing on all of the things we haven't figured out yet like radiation exposure (we will figure these things out), and also not making it too fictional like Cat in the Hat or Magic School Bus, a middle ground of plausible.
A few years ago, Musk was practically a national treasure, lauded for taking on the impossible—cutting launch costs and making electric cars cool. Until now, I've defended him because, frankly, he earned it. But these days, sticking up for Musk feels more embarrassing by the day, as he’s all but abandoned our mission to develop space in favor of culture war theatrics.
The current polling that suggests he’s not yet overwhelmingly unpopular needs context. The people who once bashed him for his climate efforts now cheer him on, happy he’s now devoted to their culture war nonsense. Meanwhile, those of us who admired his historic contributions to technology have been slower to change our tune, too loyal to quickly turn our backs on our hero. But let’s face it—that guy’s gone, and what’s left is more liability than asset when it comes to building broad support for space exploration. That’s why I’ll be focusing on SpaceX’s accomplishments, not making excuses for Musk’s antics. SpaceX is still doing vital work, and it deserves attention for its contributions—not the distractions of its founder. The cause is bigger than the man, and we need to remember that.
I suspect both he and his haters will calm down after the election (assuming there isn't some nonsense afterwards). I don't think he is as "gone" as you think - and I think his leadership is still needed at SpaceX to complete the mission.
I’d say I’m slightly interested in solar space exploration. Much more interested in solving the Fermi Paradox or curing cancer. I guess the biggest thing I don’t understand is why we should be so excited about going somewhere so inhospitable. I mean, is there any possibility we will find something on Mars that we can actually use?
Everywhere on Earth, outside the part of Africa where we evolved, is inhospitable to humans without mitigating technology (shelter, clothing and fire counting as technology). We expanded anyway. The property of being a frontier itself gives value to places like Mars that outweighs, for many people, the physical hardship of living there.
As for the Fermi Paradox - one credible solution is that most species just give up and never leave their home planet, until it is inevitably rendered uninhabitable by some catastrophe or other. Don't be a part of the Fermi Paradox yourself!
I am a huge fan of space exploration. Space colonization by biological humans, not so much. We are animals that evolved in an absurdly complex biological ecosystem. Thinking we can detach from that and make a living on Mars makes about as much sense as expecting fish to thrive in an aquarium. I think there is a future for human intelligence to colonize beyond our solar system, but it will be accomplished by intelligent machines that we build to explore on our behalf. And they won't get very far if they're saddled with biological earth bound baggage.
If you want us to take space colonization seriously, perhaps trick us by leading with exploration.
I don’t think this is very realistic. Even if human level intelligent ages are anywhere close (I think this is overstated) then we still have concerns over what happens to biological humans. We have a place in the world, and the solar system. The life support requirements are not that hard and they have good scaling qualities.
Its a concept for a free floating space colony from the 1970s devised by Gerard O'Neill - the technology wasn't able to support the idea back then but now it looks like it might be.
The idea is that no other planet can meet our needs, so we contruct our own, by rotating a gigantic (kilometre scale) cylinder to provide Earth-like gravity on the inside and filling it with air. They are sort of the gold standard for nice places to live off Earth - although in reality we would build smaller and simpler rotating habitats before we attempted to make one. These smaller scale habitats we might see constructed in a decade or two.
ah! thank you for the explanation. Fixtures of sci fi books and movies but I never knew the name. I'd like to see one of those. You nailed the thing I get hung up on in trying to decide how excited to be about this is the scarcity of 'nice places to live off Earth'
If you've ever seen any of the Gundam anime franchise, most take place in a near earth space filled with O'neill cylinders. Other habitat types show up too.
I've heard the creator was trying to make the point colonizing space sucks, but he really got the other message through.
An illustration of the amount of energy put out by the Sun I often use goes as follows.
Einstein's famous equation, E = mc^2, says that energy is essentially the same thing as mass.
All of humanity used about 7 tonnes of energy during the whole of the year of 2021
The Sun emits 4 MILLION tonnes of energy every SECOND.
That is, we use 2 microseconds worth every year.
Don't anyone fool you into believing that energy is scarce out in the solar system.
Anyone wishing to check my figures will find the conversion rate of energy <-> mass of 89.9 PJ per kg at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass%E2%80%93energy_equivalence
the 14800 MToe annual consumption and the conversion factor of 1MToe = 41.9 PJ at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_energy_supply_and_consumption
and the solar energy production at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun
That is a good way of illustrating just how potent the Sun is. Its expressing the 2 billion factor I talk about in terms of light missing the Earth in terms of matter to energy conversion instead. Maybe it would be worth A/B testing to see which resonates more?
I think it is worth testing.
Many people find small numbers like 7, and relatively small numbers like 4 million, easier to comprehend than billions.
With house price inflation over the last few decades, a million quid really isn't that impressive any more and people understand it, for better or worse.
Octonauts is a very popular children's book and cartoon series first debuted as a cartoon on the BBC and now the new seasons are being produced by Netflix.
There is a hunger for STEM focused optimistic entertainment think Star Trek meets little house on the prairie. This is where the Moonsteaders fits not colonialism or settlers but imagining frontier family life, there have been kids along on every great human endeavor.
Our generation has seen nothing but monsters at the edge of the map when it comes to space entertainment.
This is how I am working to change that to help children see them selves in space.
Octonauts is great! A similar sort of thing for space would be very welcome.
I'm interested to see your work. I'm not sure family life is incompatible with settlement though? Surely its part of it.
I mean the terms "settlement" and "colonialism" as you say they have a societal unintended meaning they bear with them. I am writing the setting past the first wave of explorers, "past the sale if you will", to the second wave of pioneers.
A semi-realistic depiction set for children’s imagination, not focusing on all of the things we haven't figured out yet like radiation exposure (we will figure these things out), and also not making it too fictional like Cat in the Hat or Magic School Bus, a middle ground of plausible.
Yes, families must be a part of the settlements.
A few years ago, Musk was practically a national treasure, lauded for taking on the impossible—cutting launch costs and making electric cars cool. Until now, I've defended him because, frankly, he earned it. But these days, sticking up for Musk feels more embarrassing by the day, as he’s all but abandoned our mission to develop space in favor of culture war theatrics.
The current polling that suggests he’s not yet overwhelmingly unpopular needs context. The people who once bashed him for his climate efforts now cheer him on, happy he’s now devoted to their culture war nonsense. Meanwhile, those of us who admired his historic contributions to technology have been slower to change our tune, too loyal to quickly turn our backs on our hero. But let’s face it—that guy’s gone, and what’s left is more liability than asset when it comes to building broad support for space exploration. That’s why I’ll be focusing on SpaceX’s accomplishments, not making excuses for Musk’s antics. SpaceX is still doing vital work, and it deserves attention for its contributions—not the distractions of its founder. The cause is bigger than the man, and we need to remember that.
I suspect both he and his haters will calm down after the election (assuming there isn't some nonsense afterwards). I don't think he is as "gone" as you think - and I think his leadership is still needed at SpaceX to complete the mission.
The fact Musk is now so hated by the left shows he's doing something right
I’d say I’m slightly interested in solar space exploration. Much more interested in solving the Fermi Paradox or curing cancer. I guess the biggest thing I don’t understand is why we should be so excited about going somewhere so inhospitable. I mean, is there any possibility we will find something on Mars that we can actually use?
Everywhere on Earth, outside the part of Africa where we evolved, is inhospitable to humans without mitigating technology (shelter, clothing and fire counting as technology). We expanded anyway. The property of being a frontier itself gives value to places like Mars that outweighs, for many people, the physical hardship of living there.
As for the Fermi Paradox - one credible solution is that most species just give up and never leave their home planet, until it is inevitably rendered uninhabitable by some catastrophe or other. Don't be a part of the Fermi Paradox yourself!
I am a huge fan of space exploration. Space colonization by biological humans, not so much. We are animals that evolved in an absurdly complex biological ecosystem. Thinking we can detach from that and make a living on Mars makes about as much sense as expecting fish to thrive in an aquarium. I think there is a future for human intelligence to colonize beyond our solar system, but it will be accomplished by intelligent machines that we build to explore on our behalf. And they won't get very far if they're saddled with biological earth bound baggage.
If you want us to take space colonization seriously, perhaps trick us by leading with exploration.
I don’t think this is very realistic. Even if human level intelligent ages are anywhere close (I think this is overstated) then we still have concerns over what happens to biological humans. We have a place in the world, and the solar system. The life support requirements are not that hard and they have good scaling qualities.
I’ve convinced a few people to be in favor of it but most are lost causes
…i just want to live in a bezos box as we all should…
I hadn't heard "Bezos box" before, but it doesn't quite have the romance of "O'neill Cylinder"!
Great article Peter!
What's an O'Neil cylinder?
Its a concept for a free floating space colony from the 1970s devised by Gerard O'Neill - the technology wasn't able to support the idea back then but now it looks like it might be.
The idea is that no other planet can meet our needs, so we contruct our own, by rotating a gigantic (kilometre scale) cylinder to provide Earth-like gravity on the inside and filling it with air. They are sort of the gold standard for nice places to live off Earth - although in reality we would build smaller and simpler rotating habitats before we attempted to make one. These smaller scale habitats we might see constructed in a decade or two.
ah! thank you for the explanation. Fixtures of sci fi books and movies but I never knew the name. I'd like to see one of those. You nailed the thing I get hung up on in trying to decide how excited to be about this is the scarcity of 'nice places to live off Earth'
If you've ever seen any of the Gundam anime franchise, most take place in a near earth space filled with O'neill cylinders. Other habitat types show up too.
I've heard the creator was trying to make the point colonizing space sucks, but he really got the other message through.