Evacuate Earth

[ZetaX]

Building a closed circuit for few people was almost achieved already. A closed circuit for more people is simpler as a larger number is more stable and less prone to random effects. Plus another 100 years of science for the arc.

[jwenting]

I've always been a supporter of scientifically sound genetic profiling.

so was Adolf Hitler, so was Joseph Stalin, Mao ze Dongh as well.

The entire eugenics movement which was very popular in the 1920s and '30s, and culminated in the industrial scale destruction of any human deemed "unworthy of life" and "unworthy of procreation" was scientifically sound, as per the knowledge as it existed at the time.

In the US it led to the forced sterilisation and detention in "asylums for the mentally insane" of hundreds of thousands. In the USSR there were millions of those.

In Germany they took the next logical step and just killed the lot of them, including all the Jews, gypsies, blacks, and everyone else who wasn't of the declared "Master race".

Yes, very good idea that scientifically sound genetic profiling.

[Nibb31]

What I would like to say is: WTH is wrong with you people who want to sabotage our survival as a species? Are you that selfish?

If all that survives of our species is a fascist eugenist dictatorship floating in space forever, then I say let it go.

[Seret]

Building a closed circuit for few people was almost achieved already.

The problem is that when it comes to life support "almost" equals dead. We need something reliable, scalable and preferably self-balancing and we need it to be proven by extensive testing. We're a long way off that right now.

[ZetaX]

so was Adolf Hitler, so was Joseph Stalin, Mao ze Dongh as well.

That's not an argument at all, but just an association fallacy. If you want to give an argument here, you would need to describe how and why the same consequences would happen again.

Apart from that, you got a couple of things wrong. Stalin was no supporter of genetics and actually did not believe most of it (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lysenkoism ). And all those you mentioned did not follow the idea of genetic profiling at all and mostly used it as an excuse to do things (for example, there is no reason to assume that jews have bad genetic material, and depending on the circumstances such things may even apply to disabled people).

[Seret]

If all that survives of our species is a fascist eugenist dictatorship floating in space forever, then I say let it go.

I don't think anyone is suggesting eugenics. Critical personnel for all sorts of things (astronauts, airline pilots, etc) are always picked for their health, and that includes anything with a genetic basis. My daughter is blind due to a genetic hiccup, and many professions in our existing libertarian society will be closed off for her.

If the species was at stake 99% of us would get the chop for various reasons. Genetics, intelligence, mental health, experience and training and a million other criteria would be used to pick the crew, just like they are now. That's not facism, it's just common sense.

Having said that there should be criteria that were off the table for selection. Nobody should be picked for their religion (or lack thereof), race or politics. Personally I don't think sexuality should be a limiting factor either. The proportion of gays in society isn't enough that would significantly effect the capability of the breeders to take up the slack. Reproduction should still be a right, rather than a compulsion, even in a survival situation.

I think the crew manifest would sort itself, and then we'd simply fill it with the best candidates we could find. It's not like we would be sending enough people that we could afford any dead wood anyway. I find the idea of us being able to send 250,000 hopelessly optimistic. We'd send as many as we could, but even with fairly advanced future technology it's hard to imagine being able to send even 10,000 spread across multiple arks.

[Ralathon]

I can't watch the documentary right now since I'm on break during work. But building a single ship with 250k crew sounds very iffy. Even in space, the bigger you build something the harder it gets thanks to the Cube Square law.

If you make a ship exactly twice as big in every dimension it'll be 8 times heavier but only 4 times as strong and it only has 4 times the thrust. So netto your ship is comparatively 1.5 times as weak and sluggish. This in combination with the sheer difficulty to get big stuff up in space makes a single ship a very bad idea. This is why big ships in KSP always require more struts and more boosters.

Just make a hundred or so small ones with enough tech and frozen embryo's to sustain themselves for a few centuries. That's much easier and gives you redundancy. Don't bother with colonization equipment either, if our entire species is up in space it is a bad idea to ever go back down. We can get resources from asteroids and energy from fusion (sun or our own). As a spaceborne civilization you are essentially immune to every existential threat we worry about today:

Asteroid? Just nudge your station a few km's to the side.

Global warming? What's this globe thing you speak of?

Pandemic? I heard the guys over at station 12C had a pretty bad bug, better not dock there!

Overpopulation? Spawn more motherships.

Alien invasion? They'll never catch us all.

Black hole passing through the system? We just dodged that, I'm sure we can do it again.

You'd still have to worry about nearby stars going supernova and stuff. But you're a lot less likely to kick the bucket as a whole. Not to mention that you don't have to climb out of a 11km/s dV hole if you want to get anything done.

[Seret]

I agree with Ralathon. Once a civilisation has the ability to make self-supporting facilities in space there's no need to venture down onto planets except for exploration. That level of technology is probably centuries or millennia beyond where we are now, but that's not a big problem IMO. Most of the real extinction level threats are unlikely to get us in that timeframe.

[Pawelk198604]

Question is do you would try to sabotage the mission, if you wouldn't chosen, and left behind on Earth doomed to destruction.

Why are they, and not I, if I can not i make sure they not go too

[Ralathon]

Question is do you would try to sabotage the mission, if you wouldn't chosen, and left behind on Earth doomed to destruction.

Why are they, and not I, if I can not i make sure they not go too

"I can't join, therefore I should destroy the only hope for the continued existence of humanity"? Seems the like attitude of a toddler.

Life ain't fair. Apparently there aren't enough resources to send everyone and you don't make the cut for whatever reason. No reason to make it a genocide-suicide. Sure, people will grumble and complain, people tend to be attached to their lives. But if the selection system is logically sound any attack is unjustified. Not to mention that attacking the ship is entirely the wrong target. You should attack the selection system instead.

[m4v]

The selection system will be always wrong unless it picks me.

[ZetaX]

If you don't even gain something from sabotaging it, you are just a self-centered dick. So what do you expect to gain¿

[Anton P. Nym]

Unless the tiny supermassive star is going to wreck the sun, too, it would save a lot more people to build a bunch of space stations in solar orbit instead. If you can build the life support system for a generation ship, planets are redundant.

The film's premise is stacked to make that unworkable; the rogue star in their scenario is going to disrupt Earth's orbit, taking it out of the "Goldilocks" zone, and pass close enough to have enormous tidal effects and gamma irradiation. Subterranian shelters would be unlikely to survive the tectonic activity, but even those who somehow survivied would be greeted with a completely sterile surface at best. (At worst, Earth might pass within the star's Roche limit and actually break up.)

I didn't finish watching it, as it was a bit too repetitive and "zOMG action!" for me, but I did like that they actually asked real scientists and engineers about the problems.

-- Steve

[ZetaX]

Earth is completely destroyed on that movie, and such a close passing would also screw orbits of everything else.

[Sof]

A neutron star passing through the solar system would probably just fling earth off into deep space. It'll perturb the orbits of everything in the solar system before it even got close enough to see from any planet with the naked eye. It would also hit the sun first.

[KASAGD]

The film's premise is stacked to make that unworkable; the rogue star in their scenario is going to disrupt Earth's orbit, taking it out of the "Goldilocks" zone, and pass close enough to have enormous tidal effects and gamma irradiation. Subterranian shelters would be unlikely to survive the tectonic activity, but even those who somehow survivied would be greeted with a completely sterile surface at best. (At worst, Earth might pass within the star's Roche limit and actually break up.)

I didn't finish watching it, as it was a bit too repetitive and "zOMG action!" for me, but I did like that they actually asked real scientists and engineers about the problems.

-- Steve

hes talking about space stations, what are you talking about

[ZetaX]

It would also hit the sun first.

What reason is this based on¿ It will probably not directly hit anything of relevance.

[Albert VDS]

If all that survives of our species is a fascist eugenist dictatorship floating in space forever, then I say let it go.

Yes, let's let our species and all other living things on Earth die because saving it this way is not politically correct.

[rpayne88]

What about colonizing a few asteroids in the asteroid belt, and launching them out of the solar system? You would have the structure of your ship already made for you. All you would have to do is bore out living space (one of the few things war has given us is explosives, which would help with this) and add life support and propulsion. You may not even need that much propulsion (slingshot around a neutron star that is going to destroy Earth, anyone?) Never mind the fact that we would be able to get much more people, if not all of us, and possibly wildlife and plants off as well.

Granted, I am typing this as it comes to my head, so I more than likely made a mistake or gross overstatement of our capabilities somewhere.

[Pawelk198604]

"I can't join, therefore I should destroy the only hope for the continued existence of humanity"? Seems the like attitude of a toddler.

Life ain't fair. Apparently there aren't enough resources to send everyone and you don't make the cut for whatever reason. No reason to make it a genocide-suicide. Sure, people will grumble and complain, people tend to be attached to their lives. But if the selection system is logically sound any attack is unjustified. Not to mention that attacking the ship is entirely the wrong target. You should attack the selection system instead.

You're right, you can always hack the system and add yourself. Like self-invitation on someone else party:D

[jwenting]

That's not an argument at all, but just an association fallacy. If you want to give an argument here, you would need to describe how and why the same consequences would happen again.

Apart from that, you got a couple of things wrong. Stalin was no supporter of genetics and actually did not believe most of it (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lysenkoism ). And all those you mentioned did not follow the idea of genetic profiling at all and mostly used it as an excuse to do things (for example, there is no reason to assume that jews have bad genetic material, and depending on the circumstances such things may even apply to disabled people).

he's talking eugenics, which Stalin supported.

If you don't know (as he doesn't know) the difference between eugenics and genetics I suggest you do some reading.

Stalin supporting Lysenkov has nothing to do with him "believing" in genetics or not. Lysenkov had ideas that fitted well with communist philosophy, so they fit the Party agenda. Anything else was secondary.

Lysenkov was mostly used as an alternative to the "decadent bourgeois theories" about crossbreeding that were the mainstay of "imperialist capitalist agriculture", thus for political reasons, not scientific ones.

[Pawelk198604]

"I can't join, therefore I should destroy the only hope for the continued existence of humanity"? Seems the like attitude of a toddler.

No reason to make it a genocide-suicide.

genocide-suicide? And what about of genocide of this who will be left behind on Earth waiting for death? I forgot to mention this in my earlier post.

[Albert VDS]

Imagine you were actually picked. Now you are traveling away from Earth with you evacuee buddies and suddenly the ship explodes.

Why? Because someone thought "If I can't go then no one can go" and sabotaged your ship. What would you think about that?

[ThatKerbal]

I woulden't think, I'd be dead probably lol.

[Pawelk198604]

Imagine you were actually picked. Now you are traveling away from Earth with you evacuee buddies and suddenly the ship explodes.

Why? Because someone thought "If I can't go then no one can go" and sabotaged your ship. What would you think about that?

If i would somehow still alive i would probably very pissed off

But I will say this as my history teacher used to say point of view depends on the point of the seat