Thread: When will humanity expand into space?

Originally Posted by sloth

Perhaps there could be law enforcement, with enough space lasers, and space food, and space beer, and other necessary space supplies that would be needed for space cop duties and activities.

This will, inevitably, become ugly too.

Something to that level will probably develop, if it does not already exist (GALACTIC FEDERATION OF LIGHT BITCHES!)

It would essentially work the same way that colonization works on Earth. Governments, which control militaries, will need to claim what they want so they can protect it with their military. If they don't then private companies will have to hire privateers to protect their interests, but they're more likely to want to work with governments and purchase land. It'll essentially be first come first serve in that regard, but if an entrepreneur using a bank loan is the first come, and he/she doesn't also contract some sort of military protection, then there's no guarantee that shit won't get stolen.

For sure.
Claiming land amounts to nothing, unless others respect your claim.
Claiming land with no physical way to back up your claim amounts to double nothing.
Claiming toenail fungus amounts to crazy.

As I said, the act of claiming land is as real as the population decides it is. If the majority of humans say you have no land, then you have no land.. unless you have lots of guns. Using enough guns, one can hold land, but not because others believe that you have a claim to that land, but because they know that there are consequences if they try to interfere. It's still not a claim in my opinion, but that is arguable.

Yeah, land isn't a huge issue to me either. I'm planning on being a space pirate anyways, so you can have the land I'll just plunder and rape you whenever I'm around.

Bad form. No raping.

I'll probably be more of a freelancer in a space ship, or I will create a big bomb shelter.

Who knows. There are a million variables to consider. That said, I believe the most likely scenario is as follows:

Around the year 2060 a strong artificial intelligence will be created. If we are wise and have conducted adequate testing, the artificial intelligence will turn out to be a benevolent one and will begin pursuit of the utilitarian ideal of maximizing good feelings for the maximum amount of people for the maximum amount of time. The machine will realize that to achieve this ideal, it will require a lot of energy and space. What is the greatest source of energy that is potentially within reach? The Sun. And so the machine will set out on a quest to tame our star. It will construct all manner of robots and rocket ships, utilizing a great amount of resources in the process, that will exist for the purpose of establishing an industrial base on Mercury. The machines planted there will harvest Mercury's resources and convert them into solar-harvesting satellites to be put in orbit around the sun. This may be the beginning of a dyson sphere. With a large and steady flow of energy, the AI will create ever more machines to begin the terraforming of Mars and perhaps other planets as well. Hopefully the AI will figure out warp drive around this time so it can begin expansion to more hospitable planets far outside our solar system.

However, humans may not have much of a part to play in space. The thing is, any mechanism for fast-travel we uncover is likely to be extremely volatile. If you've read about the possibility warp drive, you also know both that force fields may be possible and that they would be required for high-speed travel in order to defend against space debris. What would happen if a spaceship with this kind of technology were to slam into an inhabited planet? It could cause an apocalypse. Observing this risk, the machine would either prevent humans from flying spaceships or it would install extensive safety mechanisms in any spaceship humans are allowed to control. It doesn't matter if most people are good, all it would take is for one person among trillions to go insane to initiate destruction like the world has never seen before.

So let's see... If all goes well, in fifty years we create strong benevolent AI. It may take anywhere between 1-10 years for it to build up an industrial base and infrastructure to support its activities on Earth. After this, it could take God knows how long to establish industrial activities on Mercury, send satellites into orbit around the Sun, AND terraform Mars. In my scenario, I'd say at least 60 years for the ball to even start rolling. It could take another century for humans to be able to inhabit other planets. I think 80-150 years in the best case scenario is a good estimate.

I suppose in the next 30 years or so we could have some sort of moon base, but I wouldn't really consider this serious expansion, myself.

Originally Posted by Hercuflea

Your predictions? By "expanding" into space I mean the establishment of permanent -preferably but not necessarily self-sufficient- colonies either in space stations or on celestial bodies such as the Moon, Mars, Venus, Ganymede, Europa, Ceres, the Asteroid Belt, etc. Justifications for your thoughts would be appreciated.

(posted this on physicsforums and they locked it, bastards.)

Why did they lock it?

Originally Posted by Parousia

Why did they lock it?

I posted it in the Astronomy forum, and they said it wasn't technical enough, locked it, and gave me an infraction. Wtf bro.

lol! Gave you an infraction? That's a noob thing to do.
Anyway, I have reported your post for not being technical enough.

As soon as strong AI is created, we'll have an explosion in resources. It will be integrated into our brains to expand our capabilities as well. I think that as soon as we begin infusing matter with intelligence we'll start permanently expanding outward into space to obtain more resources for computation. This will happen in 40 years max if quantum computing is realized. I think it will happen in 25 to thirty years. Once we reach the stage where we don't need bodies to exist, the only thing to do is to expand outward so that we can utilize more matter for more computational ability.

As far as the first martian and moon colonies, I think that will happen within 15 years. Space stations closer to earth will be built as well.

Hawking says that he considers this bio-engineering to be a natural stage in evolution.

Originally Posted by MindGames

As soon as strong AI is created, we'll have an explosion in resources. It will be integrated into our brains to expand our capabilities as well. I think that as soon as we begin infusing matter with intelligence we'll start permanently expanding outward into space to obtain more resources for computation. This will happen in 40 years max if quantum computing is realized. I think it will happen in 25 to thirty years. Once we reach the stage where we don't need bodies to exist, the only thing to do is to expand outward so that we can utilize more matter for more computational ability.

As far as the first martian and moon colonies, I think that will happen within 15 years. Space stations closer to earth will be built as well.

What is the stage where we don't need bodies to exist? Please explain... Also how do you expect there to be colonies on mars in 15 years when there is no reason to think that we'll send a human being to the surface that soon?

Originally Posted by FriendlyFace

What is the stage where we don't need bodies to exist? Please explain... Also how do you expect there to be colonies on mars in 15 years when there is no reason to think that we'll send a human being to the surface that soon?

Once we start replacing our bodies with bionic parts we'll start becoming less human. We'll always need bodies but we'll get to the stage where all of our body parts are non-biological. At that point we can organize ourselves however we want. That's what I mean. That will happen within this century.

We'll probably send people to other planets to mine for resources at first, but once we get to the stage where our bodies are primarily non-biological we'll expand outward mainly for incorporating that matter into ourselves for processing and energy.

It all gets kickstarted when we start increasing our brain capacity. That should happen gradually by living healthier and using technology, until we develop brain-computer interfaces and nanotechnology.

Alright.... once again I think your timeline might be off but I agree with the inevitable conclusion that humanity will eventually make itself obsolete. It's pretty scary to think about... like these machines will identify as much with humans as we do with chimpanzees. What are we going to do with all the humans though? Just let them die out? Some matrix shit right here. Sorry off topic. Uhmmm I think we should use extremophiles to terraform the atmosphere of Venus. It's closer to Earth's size than Mars, and it's got all that carbon dioxide to work with.

My timeline could indeed be off by a lot. But I get my timeline from a consensus that centers around Ray Kurzweil's predictions. If the human brain is as powerful as his estimates, we will have the power to simulate it by the end of this decade. Perhaps not all the data we need to make an accurate model. But the intelligence can be reached without simulating the human brain. We just need to make an AGI first.

Well, there will be a permanent settlement on Mars well within our lifetime, if Mars One is a success. I like to hope that it will be.

Have any of you considered that the way we're going, we may have caused irreversible climate change before we ever get the chance to colonize anything?

We probably will cause irreversible climate change, but that isn't going to kill everyone. It will mostly kill the poor people, and just make life more miserable for everyone else.

It will require a lot of resources and energy to colonize anything, will the wealthy be able to acquire such resources without using the poor? Not to mention the vast amount of infrastructure that'll get destroyed. In reality, all the wealthy have are a bunch of numbers hidden off-shore which only mean anything so long as there is infrastructure to use it. I don't expect everyone to get killed, but I don't expect we'll the ability to get into space for much longer.