Drunkrobot

"Red sauce tastes like tomatoes, but brown sauce doesn't taste like anything." - Drunkrobot I've said some pretty stupid things in my time, but that one takes the cake for it's sheer non-informativeness.

Thinking quickly, my favorite fictional surface-to-orbit spacecraft is the Orion II spaceplane from Space Odyessy. Favorite fictional orbit-to-orbit spacecraft is split between the somewhat-realistic Red Dwarf... ...and the thoroughly impractical Imperial I-class Star Destroyer. As for real spacecraft, well, you have to go for Korolev's baby.

No. NASA is NOT going to scrap the rocket it spent the greater part of a decade building, moving their entire heavy launch capabilities to a smaller, privately-owned rocket that is still on frickin paper right now, just because the unmanned test flight ended in a explosion. Test flight: noun, A flight during which the performance of an air/spacecraft or its equipment is tested. It would be fantastic if the flight ended with a critical error, because it would mean we've found an error, and that's the point of test flights. If SLS-1 fails, NASA fishes out the wreakage from the Atlantic, finds out what went wrong, corrects the mistake, and launches again.

For as long as the humans are still indisputably "in charge", they can decide whatever jobs they desire to have, and whatever jobs they want to relegate to the robots. Humans like intellectual challenges, and others appreciating their work. Robots can do heavy-labor and repetitive, dangerous tasks. If we manage to skirt around the impending environmental disaster and increase the resource base to NEOs and the Moon, the global (now a retrospectively-archaic term) economy has space to expand for a long time, centuries at the least. An increase in wealth (here, "wealth" is food, water, housing, healthcare etc.) means one of two things: 1. An increase in population. 2. An increase in living standards. Right now, the global trend in families is moving towards having less children (less than three). As the developing world develops, and welfare spreads to those people, population growth will slow down, even stabilize. That mean the only avenue for humanity to dedicate it's wealth towards is improving living standards. The services and goods enjoyed by the middle class of today's developed world would be universally available, and god knows what the richer end of society will have access to. Of course, it might all come crashing down when the robots start asking the big questions, like "Am I alive?", "Do I have rights?" and "Why do I have to clear that minefield?". But maybe we should avoid thinking of it like 'The unstoppable killer machines enslaving and exterminating the helpless humans 4 teh evulz.' and approach it rationally. Even when there comes an AI, either by accident or concious effort on our part, that is smarter than a human, it will have no reason to turn on us, assuming we don't freak the frick out and try to delete it. Even if it was apparently superior to us in every way (which might not ever happen, we don't know yet), it will understand Darwinism, and not that pig-offal 'social Darwinism' you see employed by supervillians. An ecosystem is most versatile with the maximum number of species running the maximum number of strategies. It would be logical to favor a synergy of humans and AI in this brave new world, staying with the status quo, in a way, us doing what we do best and the robots doing what they do best. The questions on a robots standing in society might change, but we won't be made obsolete and turned into WD40, if that answers your question.

Most components on the Lunar Module had a back-up spare, including the pilot. Even if the Commander had no complications during the landing or launching sequence, the Lunar Module Pilot fed him critical information so that he didn't have to check his instruments as much, taking some of the pressure off him and letting him make a smoother landing. And no, the Lunar Module Pilot didn't actually pilot the Lunar Module.

I'm referring to how it would be like watching 'Jaws' while on a dingy off the Australian coast. "What's the absolute worst thing that could happen?" Just to mess with the astronaut's heads. What can I say, I'm a sadist.

Don't send them Gravity, whatever you do. Actually, scratch that, FORCE THEM ON PAIN OF DEATH to watch Gravity.

We could send them cheesy movies, the worst we can find. They'll have to sit and watch them all, and we'll monitor their minds.

Before you can get to the Moon, or anywhere else in the Universe, you have to first get into Low Earth Orbit. Even with all the experience we have, and will have by the time ISS is decommissioned (hopefully not too soon), we just don't have a system in place to get modules, supplies, fuel, astronauts etc. into orbit from the surface of the Earth. Hang me if I offend you, but all this talk about SpaceX "cutting out red tape" and "simplifying operations" sounds a bit like a dead end to me. Falcon is a multistage rocket, a technology based on ballistic missiles meant for nuclear war, something you only need to do once. If we're going to go back to the Moon, we need a transportation system, something we can use again and again and again, not a single-use bomb delivery platform. We need something big and new and crazy, not a re-branded package of the same old thing. I don't know what it will be, an elevator, a space-plane, or we grow and train space-dragons, but whatever we build, we need it before we get serious about the Moon or anywhere else, not after.

If you want to build anything major in space (which you probably do, since we all love space here), you will need raw materials at the very least. To get these materials where they need to be, you need either some fantastical portal technology to move materials from Earth to the building site, or you take resources from near the site itself. If the site is in an orbit of some kind, asteroids are almost always favorable than planets, since the fuel requirements to escape their gravity wells is tiny. You can argue that asteroid mining isn't necessary, but it would be in the same way that America could import all of it's food, wood, oil and metal from Europe: Possible, but not realistic, financially.

Yes, you will go to space today.

In a sense, I support Simon's opinion. If it was not for our primal instinct to desire survival, or the survival of our children, then we would be extinct. But I wouldn't catagorise it as a part of "humanity", or "personhood". It is true amongst the entirety of Life to improve one's own position at the expense of others, such is the unfortunate truth of living on a planet that simply doesn't have the carrying capacity for every species in existence. I was envisioning traits that Homo sapiens, alone of all the species on Earth, could be proud of having, products of our currently unmatched self-awareness. Any animal can lay claim to simply refusing to die, but how many can be willing to save other species from extinction, on purpose, at a cost to their own resources? We are meek, not in the modern sense (lack of power, helpless) but in an older sense (has power, but can show restraint in wielding that power), or at least, we're learning to be so. As a technicality, we're only counting traits that come along with sapience

Put it this way: If you had to make the absolute best case for the human race in a single paragraph, what would you preach about us? What aspect of our intelligence do you, personally, hold in highest regard?

Magic is science that is not yet understood. Once, only angels and birds could fly, now thousands, hundreds of thousands, of people are aloft at any moment. Telepathy was once impossible, now we carry around little black slabs that let us communicate to anybody we know, at any moment (Or not. It has become so trivial to us, we can deny messages on a whim). If the abilities wielded by wizards and superheros in current fiction turn out to be possible, then we will find a way of making them a reality, to the point where everyone has that ability, and we stop noticing that we have it.

You may or may not be familer with the 4chan-born concept of "Humanity: F*** Yeah!". Put simply, in fiction, notably science fiction and fantasy, where multipe sapient races exist, humans are, quite often, the "vanilla" race. Average, boring, jack of all trades, master of none. Every other race in the setting will have a "hat", something about them that makes them special, but not us. This is done because most writers (and readers) are human. How would a pacifist react to a book preaching our "natural supremicy at war", or a cynic to our "favor towards peace and friendship"? "Humanity: F*** Yeah!"'s goal is to give humanity a hat. Someone writes a short story, with a characteristic of the human race as a main theme. Maybe our dogged tenacity catches a stronger opponent off guard in a war of attrition? Or we take one look at the tech the older races are wielding, chew them up and spit them out smaller, cleaner, more powerful and available in several colours? In a few stories, our passion of music, literature and fashion turns us into the settings cultural rock. Or, we're just really good at killing everything , everywhere, because that's how we roll. Of course, if it was reality, we can't be all of these things. What we would become in a wider community depends on exactly what traits make us stand out. Given that we have no comparable species to measure our psychology against (at least for now), we are free to speculate. What general aspects of our collective personality (maturity, impulsiveness, tolerance, rage, genius, insanity etc) are you glad that we have, and how would they affect how we interact with "others"?

I don't think an interstellar craft is totally infeasable. Mobilizing the industry of the entire Earth could produce an Orion-powered O'Neil cylinder in a century or two, and a much smaller craft would require much less. You also have to consider what state the human race will be in a few centuries down the line. Technology will, of course, be far ahead of ours, and Humanity would potentially call upon the resources of multiple planets, and many moons and asteroids. To that era, an interstellar ship will be comparable to a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, expensive, but far from impossible. On the subject of not making contact with any extraterrestrials, I remember a short story I once read, where Sol is inside a region of the Galaxy, covering roughly 3% of the Galaxy by volume, called by outsiders "the Veil of Madness". Any sapient race that evolves inside the Veil is totally insane, and quickly annihilates itself. Except for humanity. Not that we're immune to the Veil, we are still crazy, just not debilitatingly so. That's why we expand into interstellar space and find nobody, becuase they always kill themselves before we find them. We reach the edge of the Veil, not knowing that it even exists, and why we keep finding alien rubble, and we run into living, functional, totally sane aliens. And they're TERRIFIED of us, because we just popped out of the Veil that drives everyone crazy, and we're the biggest power in the galaxy (everyone else had to contend with each other, while we were left unmatched in the Veil). After failing to convince the Aliens we're not insane, we decide to just play the part of the crazy monsters, unwittingly playing the biggest practical joke in the history of the Universe. Not that this is a serious explanation or anything, it was a funny story and seemed to fit in to the thread.

I believe that aliens exist. I do so because probability suggests so. True, the odds of any one star producing a planet that has all the perquisites for a long-lasting civilization to rise is astronomical, akin to any one national lottery ticket being the winner. But even if the odds of any one star "winning" the lottery was one in a billion, that still leaves our galaxy holding 400 billion tickets. It would be very surprising if we did turn out to be the only ones alive. Of course, I can't predict us winning the lottery one week, only for our next-door neighbors to win the next, with the same level of certainty. In this scenario, two stars, both very close to each other (think Sol and Alpha Centauri, ~4 light years), produces life independently, eventually leading to two sapient species, that both organize into technology wielding civilizations. The two of them are extremely close to each other in progress, less than a century of difference (for example, one may achieve mastery of wireless radio as the other is building it's first nuclear reactor). Yes, I'm aware it is very unlikely that evolutionary processes spanning billions of years will produce two societies so in "lockstep" with eachother, but none of this is really that likely to begin with. "A few sentences ago" would've been an excellent time to start analyzing. Anyway, eventualy they both develop radio communications. One points their receivers towards the others star, and they pick up signals that are most certainly not natural. The thousands, millions of messages both planets have been leaking out into space reaches eachothers ears. How do they both react to this? This is something that SETI has been trying to find for 50 years, but only more so. Whatever radio signals we receive would've been traveling for at least decades, even centuries. Here, the round trip for a message, and a response is a mere 8 years. To sum it up, we have the makings for the ultimate long-distance relationship. Would there be violence and fear, or rejoicing and acceptance? What sort of response would they both make? Would either of them make any long-term plans, from trying to assemble a starship to serve as a diplomatic envoy, to a missile designed to hit the other guy's planet as hard as possible?

You're welcome! I also enjoy these kinds of scenarios. Looking at the social consequences of common science fiction tropes is really cool. (at least IMO)

In this scenario, the aliens absolutely do NOT want hostilities with humanity. They'll only fight if humans strike first, and even then they'll try not to destroy the Earth. Aside from this justified product of self-preservation, they harbor no ill-will toward the humans, and will favor a result that has both species prosper. Of course, we may not know this for certain at the beginning, and a lack of trust may factor into it. This thread is more of a look into what humanity is like (whether we favor extermination, isolation or platonic symbiosis), rather than the aliens.

This. We are extremely powerful, and can destroy everything on the planet in hours, but we don't. Thanks to the environmental movement, we've learnt at least some restraint. And we're more likely to see the aliens as peers, since they can talk and reason like us.

I'm not really getting why District 9 is such a viable option. I haven't seen it, but i'm pretty sure it was more a metaphor for apartied-era South Africa than a genuine response to this kind of question. Besides, even if one government or several tries to get them into the camps, remember that everyone knows they exist, and would find them pretty soon. Call me blindly optimistic, but the vast majority of humans would go ape**** at this breach in human (sentient?) rights. We're the most altruistic race on Earth, we save entire species from extinction on purpose, even if we don't have anything to gain. I don't see the entire human race getting behind "putting the aliens heads on pikes", not when far more peaceful options are available. No, the ship does not have any weapons. They only learned about us after they left their solar system. They have everything they need to colonize a planet, not conquer it. They only have enough raw materials onboard to maintain a pop. of 250,000 for the duration of the journey. Why bring a mass accelerator cannon w/ ammunition when you could instead bring supplies for 10 more families? The barriers concerning immune systems is significant. Unless our biology is so different we don't infect each other at all, we would need suits if we wanted to interact with each other, at least initially. That wouldn't be too much bother, the aliens would have advanced spacesuits they could easily repurpose, and we've had a lot of experience handling nuclear, biological and chemical weapons, so we know our way around a hazmat suit (make of that what you will). Their knowledge of biology (particularly immunology) would be very advanced in relation to ours, and it's in their best interests to be able to go outside without a suit, so boosting their immune systems would be a top priority. [EDIT] Now that I think about it, it's extremely rare for a pathogen to make the jump from one species to another here on Earth. Alien pathogens probably wouldn't even recognize Earth life as being alive, and vice-versa. Allergic reactions to pathogens, however, may still be an issue.

Is that what you think we should do, what we would do, or both?

True, but Wall-E also tells us something else: When the Captain gets curious about Earth, and learns about the oceans, mountains and clouds, and the culture that once existed on that faraway rock, he fell in love. He wanted to go back to his home more than anything else. The details would be very different in our scenario, but it's the same. The tight confines of a ship, or the lush, open spaces of a planet? Their continued existence might be possible onboard, but that doesn't mean they want to stay onboard. "I don't want to survive! I want to live!"

While space is a wonderful environment, it is also very dangerous. A hull breach, or failed equipment can mean a lot of dead. A population as low as 250,000 is a very precarious existence, they might learn to resent us and our 7 billion-strong force, living on a nice, secure, on the average forgiving planet, while they're stuck inside their prison. It would probably be wise to give them a chance on Earth, even if they could SURVIVE in space, they might not want to LIVE in space.

Watch out, I'm about to drop a social sci-fi scenario on your heads. So it's another normal day. Kids in Vancouver are tucking into hot coco for supper, while the people of Tokyo try to break through the morning rush hour. Humanity of the spaceship Earth continues it's march into the future. Then, observatories around the world notice something: a huge, metal object entering the solar system at a small percentage of the speed of light. As it nears Earth, it slows down, rather than speed up, as Kepler would wish it to. It's a spacecraft the size of a small city. As it enters orbit around the Earth, a radio message blares out from the ship, in every human tounge. In a word, the message is: Help. Here's the facts: In a star system not too far away from ours, many centuries ago, a species of life not at all different from us (carbon-based, four limbs, a face, social and sentient) is ready to colonize another star. After looking at every system in the local neighborhood, one is considered most likely to house a world comparable to theirs. They construct a generation ship, 250,000-strong, and start the centuries-long voyage. Unfortunately, during the voyage, two developments sprout up. (1) The homeworld descends into nuclear war, and contact is lost. (2) Radio signals are detected from the destination world, first simple beeps, then dialogue and television. There is another form of intelligent life living on the world they're trying to get to. As they get closer to their destination, they watch the race that inhabits that world advance. They watch footage of a dictator on a stage, above a huge crowd of soldiers marching in lockstep, the nuclear fireball of an atomic bomb rising over a desert, two men in bulky white suits skipping around their spider-like vehicle, sitting on a desolate, blank plain. Finally, they reach their destination, now having to secure a home for their species. And that brings us to the present day. 250,000 aliens on a colony ship and 7,000,000,000 humans on planet Earth. They know that they can't get into a war with us and win, it would be like 250,000 21st century civilians with cellphones against 7 billion 16th century soldiers with muskets. They simply don't have the resources or the weapons. They can't drop asteroids on us, as that would destroy the habitable planet they need to survive. They could try living on Mars, but that is far from the ideal. And they can't go back home or call for help, because "home" no longer exists. I think you can see where this is going. Having decrypted the languages of these humans during the last leg of their journey, they now transmit their story to the people of Earth, and ask if they could find shelter on our home. What do WE do? We have the survival of another sentient race in our hands, we could blow them out of the sky if we wanted to. Could we even live with ourselves if we did that? If we decide to let them stay, to what degree to we welcome them, do we let them into our homes, build a house for them next door, or keep them in concentration camps? What about the long-term effects of this, at every level, from technological to social? Would we eventually try to destroy each other, or would the two races merge together in such a way (from a social viewpoint, not a biological one. Sorry, Kirk-fans) that the two are treated one and the same by society? What are your personal opinions on what SHOULD happen, and what WOULD happen? [CLARIFICATION ON THE ALIENS] Imagine we turned back time by 50 million years, to when mammels were starting to fill out the niches left empty by the dinosaurs. If we let natural selection do it's thing, we would eventually produce a species very much like Homo sapiens, but not quite. All the really important stuff, what we say to distinguih ourselves from the other lifeforms, will still be there, but it could be slightly taller, or less hairy, or a slightly different leg structure. THAT is our aliens. This is so that the scenario works (they would very much like a world like Earth, and we could communicate with them once we're past the language barrier).