Lets hope they don’t send socialists to colonize. They made that mistake with the Pilgrims and they nearly died from want. It wasn’t until they switched to capitalism they produced enough food to invite the Indians over for a feast.
I can see it now, everyone waiting for a check and then dying.
It’s not as easy to do as the movies would have you believe.
And since the odds are still very low that it will actually happen during the lifetime of any one generation, the impetus to develop the tech is never there.
It’s pretty bad that you are so consumed with negative views that you have to inject them even to a simple thread about liquid water being discovered on another planet.
His has a good point. Colonizing a planet is not just a technology issue. There is the social organization of the colony to consider. It is not like that is irrelevant.
We do, just not the big one’s. The problem is with detecting them in time to intercept them or change their trajectory enough to eliminate the risk. Most of them are huge chunks of solid nickel, Iron, and other metals and by nuking them or hitting them with other explosives you actually risk turning one planet killer into many with unpredictable trajectories.
The further out we can intercept them they better our chances of finding a way to simply move them to a safer orbit, direct them into the sun or to planets like Jupiter and Saturn where they would simply be absorbed harmlessly.
A base on Mars could certainly be a huge help in that area for both detection and interception.
Yikes is right. Ever read the book “Two Minutes After”? The U.S. gets hit by an EMP. The book is pretty realistic in how everything breaks down without electricity/electronics.
That book scared the poo out of me. My best friend and her husband read it and they kind of became mini-preppers.
We’d be knocked back to square one. Basically the situation on the ground would be medieval.
Plus there’s the worry that in the chaos following a civilization ending solar flare that the nuclear powers might freak out and launch on each other. So we might off ourselves anyway.
With a big enough EMP all the nukes will be fried.
I can’t remember if it was Von Bruan or Einstien who said it but he predicted that the secret weapon of WW4 would be the stone ax and they were likely right.
It appears that humanity has already had to hit the restart button at least two or 3 times due to major catastrophic impacts and volcanoes., and if enough of us survive the next apocalypse we’ll just do it again.
Unfortunately such an event would probably be the best thing for the species in the long run as it would pretty well wash out the gene pool.