• nexusband@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    0
    ·
    4 months ago

    Well, yes - unless we actually get out in space before 2050, which could make a big difference

    • current@lemmy.ml
      cake
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      0
      ·
      4 months ago

      Lol space will NOT make any difference at all. That technology is not progressing at a rate where we could have millions, let alone billions of people inhabiting space in the near future. We’d also pretty much be completely limited to our solar system, meaning planet-wise we have maybe Mars and Europa and Titan at best… but there’s absolutely no chance of any meaningful colonial activity on those planets, Mars would probably have something similar to Antarctic research facilities on it but that’s about it.

      • nexusband@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        0
        arrow-down
        1
        ·
        4 months ago

        I disagree.

        1. Technology is the only option besides euthanasia or actually killing people in a regular basis - and I doubt very much we’d like any of the latter options.

        2. Technology doesn’t have to progress at any rate - we already have the technology to build self sufficient stations. It’s just very expensive.

        3. Being limited to the solar system isn’t an issue, because the issue is fundamentally that the planet can’t sustain this many people without a lot of help. Meaning, a few 100k is enough to use the technology on planet earth as well.

        • force@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          1
          ·
          edit-2
          4 months ago

          Why do you think the planet can’t sustain some amount of people? It’s not because we don’t have enough space, we have plenty of space – especially if we prioritize car-free or low-car dense urban infrastructure design. The problem is we don’t have enough resources. Even if we could send a bunch of people into space, that doesn’t do anything for our problem at all. In fact, it just increases the strain on our resources.

          Space stations require a lot of maintanence and monitoring, we can’t just make a few billion of them and then hope it’ll work out. It’s far too complicated and unsustainable without very hard-to-find professionals. And a few easy mistakes by this completely untrained and unprofessional crew of an unimaginable amount of people can put everyone in danger. Whatever habitat could fit hundreds of thousands to millions of people has a TON of failure points, with our current technology it is in a sense too big to not catastrophically fail in a short time period. Space is dangerous, death is easy, sabatoging the entire vessel carrying everyone is easy, and maintaining one is extremely difficult and it would have many easy-to-miss potential problems. It’s not as nice as video games make it out to be, especially considering those are usually hundreds of years in the future or in a totally different universe.

          We’re all going to die of worldwide war before we find any use in sending a million people into space, and we’re going to die before we can even feasibly do it at all, probably. I would like to see it, but it’s just a massive waste of resources if we’re being realistic – there is nothing to achieve with it.