Communism and Space Colonization

[Il Medico]

No species can survive in the long run on a single planet. I just don't see capitalism making significant advances into colonizing other planets; so it will be left to the Proletariat. There are a number of problem associated with space colonization:
1. It requires massive amounts of resource, which are far too large for a single country or in this case commune/workers council to handle.

2. How will this global effort be organized after the disbanding of the the Dictatorship of the Proletariat.

3. How will "planetism" be prevented from becoming a problem between the spread out human race in a communist interplanetary/stellar civilization.

4. How would a communist society react to the discovery of intelligent life in other systems? Would speciesism develop or would would humanity integrate with these people.
4a) If we discover hostile alien civilization, how will a communist society, far removed from waging war, defend itself?

Thoughts?

[Revy]

No species can survive in the long run on a single planet. I just don't see capitalism making significant advances into colonizing other planets; so it will be left to the Proletariat. There are a number of problem associated with space colonization:
1. It requires massive amounts of resource, which are far too large for a single country or in this case commune/workers council to handle.

2. How will this global effort be organized after the disbanding of the the Dictatorship of the Proletariat.

3. How will "planetism" be prevented from becoming a problem between the spread out human race in a communist interplanetary/stellar civilization.

4. How would a communist society react to the discovery of intelligent life in other systems? Would speciesism develop or would would humanity integrate with these people.
4a) If we discover hostile alien civilization, how will a communist society, far removed from waging war, defend itself?

Thoughts?

posting this because of the recent Ares rocket launch? :D

1. Agreed, the powers that be in the capitalist states would prefer to waste effort for nationalist pride. People were in awe at the Apollo landings, but what do they look like now? They planted American flags and collected moon rocks. That's not what should have happened at all. The whole point of it was to just go there, but it should have been to stay there.

2. The creation of the International Space Agency as a space exploration arm of the world federation.

3. Good question. I think that war between planets is possible but I also think that under an inter-planetary communist society there won't be the impetus for such conflicts.

4. A future communist society would not hide such evidence as one might expect now *conspiracy theory*:) Yes, humanity would integrate with other peoples in the galaxy and I would hope that there would not be speciesism.

5. Chances are, if they have developed their society around conquering planets then we would be doomed anyway. but we would have to resist and I doubt that waging a resistance war would be much of a problem for a highly technological society. But victory would probably leaves us devastated and in ruins and we would have to rebuild. Or they could just blow the planet up....:crying:

[Kwisatz Haderach]

The fact that capitalism has made zero progress in space colonization in 40 years is one of the most egregious examples of how capitalism is holding back the progress of humanity. There are no profits to be made in space, so capitalists have little interest in going there. I am convinced that we will only seriously begin colonizing space after socialism becomes the dominant mode of production on this planet.

Having said that, to answer your questions:

1 and 2. I believe the socialist stage of history will last for a long time - over a century, at least - so the beginning stages of space exploration will certainly be undertaken by a socialist society, not a communist one. Once the initial investments and breakthroughs have been made, it should be easier for smaller political units (like communes) to sustain space travel.

However, I also don't envision communist society as a world divided into countless independent communes. I expect small communes, yes, but I also expect them to be highly interdependent, with many institutions set up to coordinate various activities at the regional, continental, and planetary level. There will not be any planetary government under communism - because there will be no governments at all - but I fully expect that there will be a planetary space agency, drawing resources and volunteers from thousands of communes across the world.

3. If by "planetism" you mean the political and economic separation of societies on different planets, then it is unavoidable. The first human societies to exist on other planets will certainly be founded long before communications have reached the point where we could have interplanetary polities. And, if it turns out that faster-than-light communication is impossible, we will have to get used to the idea that people living in different star systems will be almost entirely cut off from each other.

4. What makes you think there is intelligent life in other systems? The Fermi Paradox indicates otherwise.
4a. We should see them coming from many light-years away. We will have decades to prepare. And that's assuming there is any real possibility of encountering an alien species close to our level of development (so that (a) they would pose a real threat and (b) we would stand a chance against them). This is ridiculously unlikely. Any aliens we run across - if they exist at all - are likely to be either bacteria or gods. They will either pose no threat, or be so powerful that fighting them is simply not an option.

[Revy]

Oops.

I should add that my use above of the name "International Space Agency" is a bit of a contradiction. I don't see the concept of the nation existing under communism. As I said above, my vision is of a federation of Earth, where humanity is the "nation" and people have thrown off attachments to what will then be considered regional disputes of the past.

[pranabjyoti]

How can "planetism" can be prevented? Actually, the root of nationalism is class divided society. When the human race will be capable of colonizing space and other planets, I hope there would be a classless society in Earth. So, there would be no question of "planetism". This can only arise when if and only if, another class based society will be established in another planet.

[Il Medico]

4. What makes you think there is intelligent life in other systems? The Fermi Paradox indicates otherwise.
4a. We should see them coming from many light-years away. We will have decades to prepare. And that's assuming there is any real possibility of encountering an alien species close to our level of development (so that (a) they would pose a real threat and (b) we would stand a chance against them). This is ridiculously unlikely. Any aliens we run across - if they exist at all - are likely to be either bacteria or gods. They will either pose no threat, or be so powerful that fighting them is simply not an option.
There is nothing that makes me think that there is or isn't. However, the possibility is still there, and thus should, in a hypothetical such a s this, be taken into account. While any other life that we find is almost 100% likely to be non-intelligent, when it comes to intelligent life, I find it hard to believe we'd run into "gods". Any species that advanced would have been able to make contact/conquer or destroy us long ago. If they do exist they probably want no part of us and I think with that advanced of technology they'd be quite capable of avoiding us. To me the two most likely scenarios for meeting intelligent life is to come to a planet to colonized it and find a civilization at some level of development that hasn't reached expanding beyond that planet. The other scenario, which seems more likely, is to run into another civilization colonizing the stars. As both species spread out into other system, colonies meeting each other increase exponentially. However, I hold this to be the least important of the questions I posed.(as it is the least likely to be a problem)

[Glenn Beck]

tbh I don't see planetary colonization, especially on an interstellar level as a viable future for humanity.

It seems like human or human-like life could survive indefinitely after a certain level of technological development in colonies fueled by asteroids, comets, and planetoids, especially in transneptunian space. And that region of space is so vast and rich in resources while simultaneously diffuse that conflict between different human habitats would seem to me unlikely and impractical.

If my hunches from my rather limited layman's understanding of astronomy are correct, this could also go some way to explaining the Fermi paradox. If interstellar travel is impractical and a proliferation of smallish self-sufficient space habitats is the optimal mode for life in space then why would we detect evidence of extrasolar life? A single space habitat could host a vast amount of living beings in an advanced and vibrant society communicating with one another, hardly detectable at long distances unless they feel the need to communicate with the outside. If most intelligent life that has developed to living in space is living in such a manner then we wouldn't hear about it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colonization_of_Trans-Neptunian_Objects

[ÑóẊîöʼn]

No species can survive in the long run on a single planet. I just don't see capitalism making significant advances into colonizing other planets; so it will be left to the Proletariat. There are a number of problem associated with space colonization:
1. It requires massive amounts of resource, which are far too large for a single country or in this case commune/workers council to handle.

2. How will this global effort be organized after the disbanding of the the Dictatorship of the Proletariat.

I assume that in a classless society there would be a Space Agency of some kind with all communes/collectives/polises/urbanates or federations/confedarations of such which are interested in space exploration and development contributing energy, resources and brainpower towards agreed-upon projects.

For this reason I expect such a hypothetical Space Agency would initially concentrate its efforts upon researching low-cost (in terms of energy) spacelaunch as well as the industrialisation of near-Earth space - think about it - practically infinite resources, used to manufacture goods for Earth as well as bootstrap the exploration of the Solar System, with no pollution of the Earth's delicate ecosystems.

How can anyone disagree with that?


3. How will "planetism" be prevented from becoming a problem between the spread out human race in a communist interplanetary/stellar civilization.

I don't think it can, really, barring advanced technology or some as-of-yet unconcieved sociopolitical system - in many respects the inhabitants of a planet are "all in the same boat" so to speak, so there will be a collective identity of some kind.


4. How would a communist society react to the discovery of intelligent life in other systems? Would speciesism develop or would would humanity integrate with these people.

I feel this question has far too many variables for me to sensibly answer. But I will say that the general policy of such a society should be "hands-off" by default, yet at the same time I am extremely skeptical of "Prime Directive"-style laws against interference, mainly because people are going to interfere anyway.


4a) If we discover hostile alien civilization, how will a communist society, far removed from waging war, defend itself?

It will defend itself with John's Law (http://www.projectrho.com/rocket/rocket3a.html#johnslaw). In other words, if your ships are powerful enough to cross interstellar distances, they're powerful enough to toast bogies from a considerable distance.


4. What makes you think there is intelligent life in other systems? The Fermi Paradox indicates otherwise.

It does no such thing. It could just be that humans are extroverts in the galactic scene. It could just be that the universe is so damn vast in space and time that they still haven't arrived. I think the Fermi Paradox makes to many assumptions about creatures we're not even sure exist.

[Tatarin]

4a) If we discover hostile alien civilization, how will a communist society, far removed from waging war, defend itself?

This is of course difficult to answer. My only guess is that when humans have reached that point in where interplanetary travel is of no bigger risk and is everyday life, then we would have much automatization also.

Spaceships would most likely have shield-requirements of some sort, to protect itself from all kinds of hazards, and those could be restructured as shields. Powerful lasers could be another form of tool, which would usually be used for the mines.

Also, as comical as it may sound, waging war is what many people do - on their computers. Seriously, even in a communist society, how many strategic games without enemies would there be? Or FPS games? Of course, this isn't as effective as real-life combat, but even there we have paint-ball, soft airguns, and so on. As the latest consoles have shown, physical movement combined with the games have prooven to be popular, and I don't think for a moment entertainment in that direction would end, communism or not.

These questions are very interesting but we can only guess, and hope that the darker sides of the universe are as far from us as possible. :)

[Technocrat]

I like the idea of space colonization, but it is so often misrepresented in naive sci-fi stories which assume that technology will change but that society will essentially remain the same.

This will explore non-science fiction scenarios. In other words, the speed of light is the limit. In the absence of new technology which is indistinguishable from magic, the following is a "realistic" description of space colonization:

typical reasons given for space colonization:

-resources
-overpopulation
-disaster

First, resources. This simply stems from a poor understanding of society. We have within our grasp right now the ability to have a post-scarcity economy where anyone could consume as much of whatever they wanted for free. The scarcity we currently experience is a contrivance to maintain the centuries-old monetary system which we still cling to. So, resources are not a good reason to go into space. If anything, spaceships capable of colonizing other worlds would be a tremendous expenditure of resources, with a negative return on investment. Also, any society which is advanced enough to build colony ships are advanced enough to solve the basic problem of scarcity of resources on their own world, eliminating this as a feasible reason for space colonization.

Overpopulation. This also stems from a poor understanding of society. This won't be a problem in a post-scarcity world because birth rates naturally fall with rising standards of living (the demographic shift). Once the entire world has been lifted into a high standard of living, population will stabilize naturally. Plus, even if overpopulation were a problem, there are much easier ways of dealing with it than going into space (like birth control, or war).

Disaster. This is probably the most plausible reason. If we know that the earth is going to be destroyed ahead of time and have enough time to build a spaceship. Or a spaceship might be built if a habitable world is discovered, so that some humans could be evacuated in the event of an extinction-level event. In the game Outpost 2, an asteroid threatens to destroy the earth so a colony ship is built as a last resort in case we fail to shoot it down. They try to nuke it but it splits the asteroid in two with one massive chunk still big enough to wipe out life headed straight for earth. A group of scientists and engineers boards the colony ship and departs as the earth is destroyed.

It is unlikely that society would undertake the huge expense of building a colony ship unless there was an immediate need for one, such as the imminent destruction of the earth. Any such colony ship would be sub-light speed and take decades if not centuries to reach the nearest habitable world. They would need to be powered by fusion, since chemical fuels are not feasible due to the amount of fuel that would be required. The colonists would be frozen in stasis chambers and woken upon arrival in order to survive the centuries long journey. The ship would be controlled be AI. It might be possible to equip the ship's computer with sensors to detect habitable worlds, so that it could look for one if one wasn't found ahead of time. So we will need much more advanced knowledge of physics (nuclear fusion), biology (stasis chambers), and artificial intelligence, just in order to build the type of ship described.

There is absolutely no possibility of any kind of empire or league of worlds, because communication and transportation between worlds would take centuries. The different worlds would by left to develop on their own. The space ships' computers would contain all the recorded knowledge of mankind. The colonists would know that they originally came from earth, and would also know the locations of the other worlds where colony ships were sent (if more than one ship was sent at the time of the destruction of the earth) since this would also be in the ship's computer.

Answers to fermi paradox:

1) intelligent life is out there, but since faster than light travel is impossible, and the scale of the universe is mind-boggling, the chance of any two intelligent civilizations bumping into each other within the average lifespan of a civilization are so astronomically small so as to essentially be non-existent.

2) the truth just isn't out there. Intelligence just isn't common. There might be microbes, plants, and the odd critter or two out there, but nothing intelligent.

3) intelligent life is out there, but Galactus or Cthulu destroys them when they discover faster than light travel, for some cosmic reason beyond our understanding.

[TheCultofAbeLincoln]

I think it'd be cool if you could buy a condo on the moon within our lifetime (you know, when I'm a billionaire). Obviously free tours would be nice but I honestly believe the private sector, with subsidies from the government, will blaze the trail. Like the new world, it will take massive amounts of private money to begin the movement but the completion will be taken by individuals with a profit motive, or extremely wealthy philanthropists, such as the whole Galactic Airlines endeavor. And eventually, enough people paying millions and millions for rides in space or apartments on the moon will lead to cheaper and more accesible space travel for the rest of us.

Kind of interesting to look at some of the projects the Air force is working on, though that's more dedicated to deploying marines anywhere in the world in an hour or two from some launch site in the US. Mark my words, there will be a Space Force one day.

I agree with Technocrat and I've thought about different ideas for deep space exploration. Maybe by slinging a capsule around the sun and using it as a slingshot, with a computer controlling all operations (with contact to Earth) before shooting off relatively slowly but still moving towards whatever potential destination was selected, while the humans hibernate (potentially for hundreds of years). That was of course one of my more outlandish ideas.

The Russians got a pretty good idea though, I think. Fuck waiting around for fusion that is, to put it mildly, a long ways off from being a viable source. Use good, old fashioned fission reactors.



Perminov said the new nuclear-powered ship should have a megawatt-class nuclear reactor, as opposed to small nuclear reactors that powered some Soviet military satellites. The Cold War-era Soviet spy satellites had reactors that produced just a few kilowatts of power and had a life span of about a year.

Igor Lisov, a Moscow-based expert on Russian space program, said the prospective ship would use a nuclear reactor to run an electric rocket engine.

"It will be quite efficient for flight to Mars," he told The Associated Press on Thursday.

Lisov said Soviet work on a nuclear-powered electric rocket engine dates back to the 1960s when Soviet engineers began developing plans for a manned flight to Mars.

He said Russia's experience in building nuclear-powered satellites would
also help develop the new spaceship. "It will require a significantly more powerful nuclear reactor, but the task is quite realistic," Lisov said.

Stanley Borowski, a senior engineer at NASA specializing in nuclear rocket engines, said they have many advantages for deep space missions, such as to take astronauts and gear to Mars. In deep space, nuclear rockets are twice as fuel-efficient as conventional rockets, he said.

NASA has used small amounts of plutonium in deep space probes, including those to Jupiter, Saturn, Pluto and heading out of the solar system.


Now I have no idea which type of reactor they are attempting to use, however they are going to need water to be able to convert the nuclear energy into electrical energy. I've been trained on several reactors used in the US, however all these are your common PWR types using water as a moderator (i.e. what the US Navy uses.) However, the Russians use some.......weird ass shit. Just hope they don't do something dumb and use graphite as a moderator (though it actually may be no biggie in a reactor in space producing several MWs).

Maybe even a gas cooled reactor? Who know, I'm curious to see this thing if they do build it (hopefully they do).

[Technocrat]

These might be of interest:

Fusion:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Daedalus
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fusion_rocket

Fission:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Orion_(nuclear_propulsion) (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Orion_%28nuclear_propulsion)

weird that the last link doesn't work, the end parentheses ) is automatically cut off. It should work if you add the end parentheses.

One of the good things about nuclear propulsion is that it gives us something to do with all those nuclear bombs lying around.

[Dr Mindbender]

...well, its not going to happen with Zeppelins.

[Tatarin]

Deadelus... wasn't that an old government project dealing with artificial intelligence?

:lol:

[ÑóẊîöʼn]

It is unlikely that society would undertake the huge expense of building a colony ship unless there was an immediate need for one, such as the imminent destruction of the earth.

What makes you so sure? The ancient Egyptians had no objective "need" to build the Pyramids, but they did so because society (or at least the ruling class) felt it was necessary.

Now, there may not be the imminent threat of Earthly destruction to galvanise us into action, but as the pyramids demonstrate, we don't need such a thing in order to undertake multi-generational projects of considerable expense - we just need the right memeplex to be dominant in society.

Transhumanism is a possible candidate for a suitable memeplex, but my suspicion is that it will only do so if the majority of the world's population don't have to worry about where their next meal is coming from. You can't put much thought to colonising the universe and upgrading your body when you can barely feed the one you've got, so to speak.


Any such colony ship would be sub-light speed and take decades if not centuries to reach the nearest habitable world. They would need to be powered by fusion, since chemical fuels are not feasible due to the amount of fuel that would be required. The colonists would be frozen in stasis chambers and woken upon arrival in order to survive the centuries long journey. The ship would be controlled be AI. It might be possible to equip the ship's computer with sensors to detect habitable worlds, so that it could look for one if one wasn't found ahead of time. So we will need much more advanced knowledge of physics (nuclear fusion), biology (stasis chambers), and artificial intelligence, just in order to build the type of ship described.

Yes, a starship capable of ferrying a baseline human crew from one star system to another (in one piece and in reasonable health) is certainly a tall order, but is by no means impossible, and there are other ways of skinning a cat (http://www.projectrho.com/rocket/rocket3aj.html#lifespan).


There is absolutely no possibility of any kind of empire or league of worlds, because communication and transportation between worlds would take centuries.

Doesn't that ultimately depend on the maximum lifespan of an average member of such a society? If you're talking about baseline humans then yes, the light-speed delay would ensure divergent cultural evolution. But for humans genetically modified to live centuries or millennia, taking a trip to the next star would be a problem of boredom more than anything else. Robots would be able to slow themselves down so that a journey takes far less subjective time. Artificial Intelligences and uploaded personalities would have it even better, since they could have themselves transmitted to another star system in a subjective instant via a communications laser.



Answers to fermi paradox:

1) intelligent life is out there, but since faster than light travel is impossible, and the scale of the universe is mind-boggling, the chance of any two intelligent civilizations bumping into each other within the average lifespan of a civilization are so astronomically small so as to essentially be non-existent.

2) the truth just isn't out there. Intelligence just isn't common. There might be microbes, plants, and the odd critter or two out there, but nothing intelligent.

3) intelligent life is out there, but Galactus or Cthulu destroys them when they discover faster than light travel, for some cosmic reason beyond our understanding.

Another possibility, which I pointed out in another thread IIRC, is that communicative species like humans are rare compared with inward-looking, contemplative species who never leave their home star system because they're all wrapped up in some alien form of navel-gazing, perhaps their societies are devoted to philosophy or mathematics, or perhaps they're just naturally solipsistic and/or "stable" as opposed to our outward-looking and expansive stance.

[Technocrat]

What makes you so sure? The ancient Egyptians had no objective "need" to build the Pyramids, but they did so because society (or at least the ruling class) felt it was necessary.Probably because their religion involved going to a specific star in space when they died, and the pyramids were thought of as cosmic cannons which would launch the Pharoah's soul into space.

In the absense of such wacky beliefs, the only rational reason for space colonization would be the scenario I described.

Sure you could drum up some irrational space obsession, but that's just as irrational as what the Egyptians did.

"In cataloguing the "obsession" of classic thinkers with space travel, Mumford turns his attention to an obscure work by Johannes Kepler entitled Somnium where Kepler speculates about the possibilities of lunar travel (supposedly attainable as early as 1609). Mumford cites this work as an example of a science-driven transition from Heaven to space travel as the salvation and ultimate goal of the human race—a recurring theme of Mumford's writings loosely summarized as sun worship which, according to Mumford, is a psychotic emanation from the "collective psyche" of mankind.

After illustrating Kepler's "keen grasp of the embarrassing details" and inferring interior compulsions were to blame, Mumford charges Kepler with being "steeped in sun-worship".

Read more: Lewis Mumford - Life, Ideas, Writing style, Influence, Works, Reference http://encyclopedia.stateuniversity.com/pages/13460/Lewis-Mumford.html#ixzz0XcKcI2V5"


Transhumanism is a possible candidate for a suitable memeplex, but my suspicion is that it will only do so if the majority of the world's population don't have to worry about where their next meal is coming from. You can't put much thought to colonising the universe and upgrading your body when you can barely feed the one you've got, so to speak.I see space ships as a huge expenditure of resources - bigger than any other project we've attempted. It should be up to the citizens if they want to impose such high taxes on themselves in order to build a colony ship. I don't think they would agree to it unless it was necessary (such as in the destruction of the earth scenario). If it was necessary because the earth was going to be destroyed you wouldn't bother getting the approval of the public - you would just build the space ship and load it up with scientists and engineers.


Doesn't that ultimately depend on the maximum lifespan of an average member of such a society? If you're talking about baseline humans then yes, the light-speed delay would ensure divergent cultural evolution. But for humans genetically modified to live centuries or millennia, taking a trip to the next star would be a problem of boredom more than anything else. Robots would be able to slow themselves down so that a journey takes far less subjective time. Artificial Intelligences and uploaded personalities would have it even better, since they could have themselves transmitted to another star system in a subjective instant via a communications laser.You still couldn't have an empire because en empire implies that you would have worlds supplying the empire with resources. With a centuries long shipping time, I think it is obvious how that wouldn't work. Each colonized world would be its own island, and would develop on its own. Their only knowledge of other worlds would be the data stored in their space ship's memory banks. Instantaneous communication isn't even possible, so yeah I think you would have significantly divergent cultural development.


Another possibility, which I pointed out in another thread IIRC, is that communicative species like humans are rare compared with inward-looking, contemplative species who never leave their home star system because they're all wrapped up in some alien form of navel-gazing, perhaps their societies are devoted to philosophy or mathematics, or perhaps they're just naturally solipsistic and/or "stable" as opposed to our outward-looking and expansive stance.That assumes that our extroverted stance is an anomaly and that the norm is for intelligent races to be philosophical and introverted. That's possible, but we don't have any reason to believe that extroversion is less common than introversion (except that it explains why we haven't run into any aliens).

[ÑóẊîöʼn]

Probably because their religion involved going to a specific star in space when they died, and the pyramids were thought of as cosmic cannons which would launch the Pharoah's soul into space.

Except that the hypothetical future "cosmic cannons" are intended to demonstrably work. And one won't have to die (or be a god-king) to take a trip.


In the absense of such wacky beliefs, the only rational reason for space colonization would be the scenario I described.

You are probably aware that the Sun won't be around forever - it will soon (in cosmic terms) swell up into a red giant before puffing off its outer layers and cooling down as a white dwarf, with all the disruption to the rest of the solar system that such events imply.

Sure, it's not going to happen for 4-5 billion years, but why wait? Just as it's foolish to put all of our eggs in one planetary basket, so it is also foolish for us to cluster around a single mortal star if we have any interest in continuing as a species.


Sure you could drum up some irrational space obsession, but that's just as irrational as what the Egyptians did.

Sure, but that peculiar Egyptian irrationality left a legacy that still stands today. In a way, the Egyptians are still with us, and yet they lacked many of things we have today. With the magnifying power of present and future technologies and the ability and willingness to spread ourselves out into the universe, we could potentially survive in one form or another (certainly in a form far more substantial than that of what's left of Ancient Egypt today) until the heat death of the universe. Maybe longer if it turns out there are other universes we (or our much-removed biological and/or machine descendants) can somehow access.

Maybe such scenarios as I have outlined are no more than the ancient instinct of biological survival appropriated or "exapted (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exaptation)" for another purpose. But so are a lot of other human activities I suspect, and so what? Rationality, as I see it, defines the means, not the ends, since all ends are ultimately arbitrary.

It might not be rational as a goal to spread out into the universe and survive for as long as possible (If not, then what would be rational?), but we can try to ensure that we be rational about achieving such goals.


"In cataloguing the "obsession" of classic thinkers with space travel, Mumford turns his attention to an obscure work by Johannes Kepler entitled Somnium where Kepler speculates about the possibilities of lunar travel (supposedly attainable as early as 1609). Mumford cites this work as an example of a science-driven transition from Heaven to space travel as the salvation and ultimate goal of the human race—a recurring theme of Mumford's writings loosely summarized as sun worship which, according to Mumford, is a psychotic emanation from the "collective psyche" of mankind.

After illustrating Kepler's "keen grasp of the embarrassing details" and inferring interior compulsions were to blame, Mumford charges Kepler with being "steeped in sun-worship".

Read more: Lewis Mumford - Life, Ideas, Writing style, Influence, Works, Reference http://encyclopedia.stateuniversity.com/pages/13460/Lewis-Mumford.html#ixzz0XcKcI2V5"

What's your point?


I see space ships as a huge expenditure of resources - bigger than any other project we've attempted. It should be up to the citizens if they want to impose such high taxes on themselves in order to build a colony ship.

Well, obviously. Part of why I even talk about such things is to convince other people that such endeavours are worthwhile.


I don't think they would agree to it unless it was necessary (such as in the destruction of the earth scenario). If it was necessary because the earth was going to be destroyed you wouldn't bother getting the approval of the public - you would just build the space ship and load it up with scientists and engineers.

Whereas if Earth/the Solar System had got its act together centuries/millennia/billennia beforehand, there would be systems already in place to ensure evacuation of more people than a select elite - much as I admire scientists and engineers.


You still couldn't have an empire because en empire implies that you would have worlds supplying the empire with resources.

Well, I would imagine star systems to be almost entirely self-sufficient in terms of resources, apart from some specialised products such as bulk antimatter, degenerate matter, and other stuff that is hard to come by or excessively energy-intensive/dangerous to produce within a "typical" (that is to say, like our own Solar System) inhabitable star system.

Rather, I would expect the main traffic between star systems would be information, with the amount of physical passengers depending on the average citizen's lifespan and the distance to neighbouring inhabited stars.


With a centuries long shipping time, I think it is obvious how that wouldn't work.

It certainly wouldn't work as a unified political structure, but if you're sending and recieving interstellar ships with whatever cargo and passengers can make the trip, as well as sending/recieving a constant stream of communications with said neighbours, then you've got the makings of an interstellar civilisation of some kind - think "federation" or "commonwealth" or some other more egalitarian arrangement than the top-down hierarchy of an Empire with a central capital surrounded by provinces. Anascopic rather than katascopic, with new members coming into being by virtue of virgin systems being developed and/or colonised.

Sure, you might not be able to cross the entire commonwealth in the course of an average baseline human lifetime, but each neighbour communicates with each other across the whole domain, unified like cells in an organism, but operating on a much slower timescale.


Each colonized world would be its own island, and would develop on its own. Their only knowledge of other worlds would be the data stored in their space ship's memory banks.

Really? Why would be impossible, before and during the trip to a newly colonised system, to arrange for regular communications between old colony and ship? If nothing else, it would be reassuring for those at the old colony to recieve regular status reports so that they will know whether or not their shiny new colony ship is doing well or has lost an argument with an asteroid.

I have already mentioned the transfer of information, cargo and passengers between systems, but how would such a thing be done? Right from the start, the enterprising colony ship would be in some kind of communication with the old system. I mentioned status reports as a bare minimum, but the colony ship could also recieve cultural input from the old system, and who cares if it's a couple of years old? It's new to the crew. Perhaps the colony ship itself has some artists among its crew with an interest in sending their work back to the home system.

As for physical transfer - in the old system, build a solar-powered mass-driver that shoots cargo pods at regular intervals towards the departing colony ship, for as long as it take for the ship to get there. Depending on the final velocity of the pods as they leave the mass-driver, the colony ship can either recieve regular deliveries of supplies along its journey (but my prejudice would be to make the colony ship as self-sufficient as technology allows) or will be followed by a long train of cargo pods full of materials that would be useful to a prospective colony in the new system - the pods may have taken just as long as you have to get there, but because they've been following relatively close behind you, with new pods constantly joining the train at the other end, you'll still get regular deliveries at whatever frequencies the pods left the mass-driver.

The pods that the nascent colony starts recieving could initially contain the parts for a new solar-powered mass-driver, so that the new colonists could "close the loop" and start sending pods back for whatever purpose - perhaps a spectrometry survey indicates the presence of a material that will turn out valuable by the time the first pod arrives back from the new system. Or perhaps demands for antimatter in the old system are predicted to increase, and a colony ship is sent to nearby star to start work on building an energy-collecting dyson sphere (which won't require anywhere near as much mass as a similar megastructure intended for human habitation) which captures most of the energy output of the new system's star and uses it to produce antimatter, which is then sent back to the old system, just in time to fill in the increased demand.

This all is sheer speculation on my part, but surely you can appreciate that much greater minds than mine can work on the problem?


Instantaneous communication isn't even possible, so yeah I think you would have significantly divergent cultural development.

I said "subjective instant". The AI or uploaded personality itself would not experience time passing, and so would be unchanged and therefore have the same cultural baggage it had when it set off.

Interstellar travel, even at below lightspeed, becomes a trivial matter when one can live for centuries/millennia at least and no subjective time passes for the traveller.

That's why I'm a Transhumanist - it's just not enough to use technology to change our surroundings, but we must also change ourselves if we are to have any hope of going anywhere than our cosmic doorstep.


That assumes that our extroverted stance is an anomaly and that the norm is for intelligent races to be philosophical and introverted. That's possible, but we don't have any reason to believe that extroversion is less common than introversion (except that it explains why we haven't run into any aliens).

Well, it could be any one of the aforementioned options, or a combination of them, or even something we have yet to concieve. But we won't find out, not really conclusively, if we sit on our arses on one little planet orbiting one small yellow star.

[Technocrat]

Good points Noxion, can't say I disagree with any of them.


That's why I'm a Transhumanist - it's just not enough to use technology to change our surroundings, but we must also change ourselves if we are to have any hope of going anywhere than our cosmic doorstep.

My one objection to transhumanism is that I believe that we are currently only tapping into a small fraction of our natural human abilities, and if we try to take technological shortcuts we may never tap into them.

[ÑóẊîöʼn]

Good points Noxion, can't say I disagree with any of them.

Why thank you.


My one objection to transhumanism is that I believe that we are currently only tapping into a small fraction of our natural human abilities, and if we try to take technological shortcuts we may never tap into them.

Well, I'm not proposing that Homo sapiens be completely abolished - not only is there is the issue of freedom (people generally shouldn't be forced to give up their current form if they don't want to), but redundancy and diversity are also prudent policies which I feel apply to civilisations as much as they do to engineering and biology.

Having said that, what do you think it would take to unleash the full potential of the human species as it stands? I suspect I know the answer, but I would be interested in the answer in any case.

[Technocrat]

Having said that, what do you think it would take to unleash the full potential of the human species as it stands? I suspect I know the answer, but I would be interested in the answer in any case.It will never happen so long as people have to work 40+ hours a week to barely get by, and are constantly being brainwashed by price system propaganda. If you look at the great philosophers, most of them were slave owners, because it was only by owning slaves that they were able to have any free time to dedicate to philosophy. Many of the Founding Fathers were slave holders. Jefferson had 70+ slaves. Today, each American consumes around 200,000 calories of extraneous energy per day through the use of machines. A person working hard all day can burn 4,000 calories. So, if one person = 4,000 calories, 200,000/4,000 = the equivalent of 50 slaves for the average middle-class American, except it would actually be 100 slaves because you can't make someone work that hard every day without soon killing them - you would have to give them every other day off. With the energy equivalent of 100 slaves for the average middle-class American, it's clear that we have more than enough resources to achieve an abundance. The problem is that the profit motive rules under capitalism and waste is profitable. This means we use our resources in an extremely inefficient way, resulting in an artificial, not absolute, scarcity.

[Velkas]

1. It requires massive amounts of resource, which are far too large for a single country or in this case commune/workers council to handle. If all the communes worked in a joint effort to get us into space, we would get into space. After we get into space, we could make use of a huge amount of resources. (ex: metal from asteroids)


2. How will this global effort be organized after the disbanding of the the Dictatorship of the Proletariat. The scientists and technicians could make the designs of the spacecraft and such, and the people in each commune can vote on what resources to give to the project, and what to do with such spacecraft.


3. How will "planetism" be prevented from becoming a problem between the spread out human race in a communist interplanetary/stellar civilization. In a stateless, classsless society, everyone would understand the importance of equality and the destruction discrimination can bring.


4. How would a communist society react to the discovery of intelligent life in other systems? Would speciesism develop or would would humanity integrate with these people. They'd probably try to make friends with them and attempt to integrate.


4a) If we discover hostile alien civilization, how will a communist society, far removed from waging war, defend itself? By being prepared for anything and everything. Virtually any tool can be used as a weapon, if used in the right way.


Having said that, what do you think it would take to unleash the full potential of the human species as it stands? I suspect I know the answer, but I would be interested in the answer in any case.By creating a classless, stateless, free, and equal society.:D