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novelexistence t1_ivqd4jw wrote

Nope. We're on the brink of massive societal collapse and we're not going to solve the problem. We're way behind the curve and have reached the point that we need a miracle technological break through to catch up. Too many people think everything will be alright but greatly underestimate international stability and the impact climate refuges are going to have on peoples behavior. It's easy to tolerate different people when they're far away from you.

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Uberpastamancer t1_ivqdlgj wrote

This would basically require a space elevator, and for that to happen we would need a new material like carbon nanotubes that are miles in length

Given how far we've come in the past century, my uneducated guess is yes it's plausible

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MonitorSoggy7771 t1_ivqggof wrote

If we have successfull nuclear fusion which creates energy for almost free and the Kerosin is just used for planes and rockets, then this is possible.

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glutenfree_veganhero t1_ivqhpic wrote

At this point, almost every kind of q about humanities future boils down to this: will we get to AI before everything goes to shit?

Interestingly after all the countless bullshit we have been through that eventually led up to this, they both seem to asymptotically approach the present at approx. the same rate.

I guess that is the nature of domains of intelligence/tech. Eventually you stumble upon a breakthrough that synergizes/captures all other previous domains.

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sytrophous t1_ivqihl4 wrote

Replying to [deleted] (#487,161)

Elon Musk should fund it. Being the man who built an elevator to the moon would make him a lot more legendary than fucking up Twitter. Only problem I see is his satellites but it's doable

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Fafnir2020 t1_ivqiyqd wrote

70 years ago everyone thought we would all have flying cars by now. That said I read “the Feed” growing up, and the moon was almost like a party hub in the book and it didn’t seem that far fetched at the time.

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the_zelectro t1_ivql1qd wrote

So long as hydrogen rockets are built sufficiently advanced, trips to the moon can be made fairly cheap. Hydrogen also only emits water, so polution concerns can be minimized.

Space elevators also have potential, but I'm less inclined to buy into that. Seems iffy logistically, on several levels.

We need fusion though, if we want to get there!!!

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UniversalMomentum t1_ivqn7bx wrote

I don't think many ppl would want to. It's a neat idea, but being launched into space with anything like current tech and living in low G for any extended period of time sucks. Moon dust also clings to everything and space suits don't look fun.

Soo.. based on current tech and biological limits I'd say no chnace for moon tourism in just 100 years.

We need safer ways to get in and out of orbit and ideally far better artificial gravity.

The only space tourism I see as practical is a near earth cruise orbit, but not available to the masses and still very dangerous putting lots of ppl on one ship.

I think most people would be more interested in some high resolution VR experience that simulates the visuals well.

Potentially have brain to computer interfaces that could deliver really deep VR in 100 years.

I think at the rate we're going we're going to have the ability to copy the human brain into a machine before we have the propulsion and artificial gravity technology we need for Mass market space tourism.

AND THEN You will have a humanity that can really travel into space and survive all kinds of environment because they’re not tied to their squishy little biological body.

So I'm in a minority of current thinking where I say that we will have the ability to copy the human brain into a digital format long before we have the ability to travel easily through space and that ability to copy the human brain will become the primary mechanism that lets us explore space.

Think a lot of astrophysicists and other futurists really haven't fully considered that option seriously enough, but there's a lot more benefits in being able to copy a human brain into a machine than there is making complex space ships aka it solves a lot more problems and benefits the average human far more.

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BKStephens t1_ivqtxhx wrote

That gives us nearly 180 years, so technologically you'd think it possible.

The question would be availability of resources.

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Anacharsis_Cloots t1_ivqwwut wrote

First thing first, let's go there once , for real this time, not the fake moon landings that were filmed in some cinema studio to force the USSR into the "star war".

Notice how not a single attempt to go there as a human has been made since 50 years, 1972 to be precise.

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ItsAConspiracy t1_ivr3hef wrote

Replying to sytrophous (#487,378)

SpaceX Starship could well get us there. If they get it working at scale, it'll reduce launch cost to LEO to about $30/kg, and give the world thousands of times as much annual launch capacity.

That makes it feasible to build a lunar colony at reasonable cost, and makes a trip to the moon cheap enough for upper-middle-class people at least.

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m1ndfuck t1_ivre79a wrote

Maybe, but why? I would love to have a safe possibility to fly through space, but the moon is basically a pile of dirt.

Or do you think about something like the amusement park in futurama? :D

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ashakar t1_ivs2nn7 wrote

Replying to MonitorSoggy7771 (#487,257)

With fusion you can just get hydrogen and oxygen from water for use in the rocket boosters. If the boosters can be landed, refueled and launched again in a day or hours, then space travel in the future may be seen much like how we view air travel today.

I look forward to going coast to coast in less than an hour.

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36-3 t1_ivslgwl wrote

Only Affordable to billionaires (or trillionaires, depending on inflation)

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TheUmgawa t1_ivsmz0f wrote

Replying to novelexistence (#487,076)

We’ve always been on the brink of societal collapse. I mean, my bet is that you’re going to see a lot of carrots and sticks after automation really starts putting tens of millions of people out of work in under fifteen or twenty years, where you’ll see rewards for people to not have kids or something. It won’t quite be China style population control, but it’s definitely going to be necessary until such time as first-world governments figure out what to do with people who just refuse to learn skills that aren’t easily automated. Universal basic income would be necessary, but it’s so expensive that it would require a total rewrite of tax and benefit structures, and the only way to pay for that is something like a national sales tax, because there aren’t enough millionaires and billionaires to pay for it. You could tax them into oblivion and that would get you maybe a year or two. It’s going to be borne on the backs of the people, like it or not.

What has historically kept society from collapsing is adaptation. Right now, there’s a big flashing neon sign that says human wages are going to outpace the all-in cost of automating no-skill and semi-skilled labor, and nobody’s doing anything about it. The laborers see it and think they’ll just destroy the machines, but that didn’t work when the Luddites tried it, and we have cameras and alarms, now, and better yet, we have insurance, so the company could just close up shop and use the payout to open an even more automated factory in a more favorable location, since they’re no longer beholden to needing a large pool of employees. After all, who’s going to object to a factory that doesn’t displace workers because it never had any? But, assuming we don’t want the displaced workers to starve to death, it’s really important for elected officials to start discussing this stuff now, rather than when it’s already happening, and the first question should be, “What are the long-term effects of increasing wages?” because the most important answer is not inflation.

And, as for climate refugees, nobody’s going to want to move to a country that doesn’t have any jobs for the people that already live there. Think about all of the immigrants who became cab drivers because the skill barrier for that is relatively low, and then think about what they’d do if those cabs drove themselves. Agriculture jobs will go out, and that will take a while, because programming a robotic hand to not crush a tomato is really difficult, but it’ll happen. Farms will require fewer and fewer workers, just as they have for the last hundred or so years.

It’s going to be interesting, but I don’t think it’ll go to full collapse, at least not in the first-world countries. Maybe a couple, toward the beginning, but that’ll be countries like Turkey or Argentina, where they’ve never really had a firm grasp on economics, so their whole economy just falls apart every twenty or forty years. And then maybe it’ll happen to someplace like Spain or Italy or something, and then everybody else will see what happens and start moving to prevent that in their own countries.

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[deleted] t1_ivsp4i5 wrote

Replying to Affectionate-Depth66 (#490,876)

“This will never happen because I think this will happen” is not futurology at all. Disregarding future ideas under the pretence of “we will all die” is the exact opposite to the sort of discussion this sub promotes.

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First-Translator966 t1_ivspsas wrote

Replying to TheUmgawa (#491,306)

The bigger issue is population DECLINE. We’ll be paying people to HAVE kids, not the other way around. If automation and AI displace blue and white collar workers in droves, they won’t be able to afford children. And this problem is already baked into the cake. Every developed country has this problem. Immigration is a bandaid, because they too stop having kids after a generation or two ascending into the middle class. The ones that can’t do that… well, they’re basically the extras from Idiocracy.

Just look at the population structures and fertility rates of North America, Europe, China, Japan, Australia, etc. global population is going to peak in 50 years, give or take, and then it’s a terminal decline unless people are incentivized to reproduce.

The other issue is that you can’t force people to learn jobs that they don’t have the cognitive ability to perform. You can’t force people to learn advanced physics if they have a 100 IQ. They just don’t have the intellectual horsepower. Likewise, you can’t force someone to learn basic skills if they’re on the left end of the bell curve.

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TheUmgawa t1_ivsqei7 wrote

Replying to First-Translator966 (#491,388)

And those people are just going to be jobless and will have to survive on the subsistence income that is UBI. Short of a mental defect, stupidity is 100 percent curable; most people are just the living representation of, “Ignorance is bliss.”

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Kunama_Namadgi t1_ivstmkk wrote

I doubt it, don’t really have any reasons other than to say i just don’t think it’s worth the effort and resources to go to a barren grey rock on a mass scale. Personally I’d go, but I’m sure most people I know would prefer to go to Hawaii, or what’s left of it above water.

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indoildguy t1_ivsu2vg wrote

Yes of course. The moon has vast lakes, icy mountains, floundering rivers and other gorgeous natural beauties

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Loki-L t1_ivtdso2 wrote

In the near future no.

But if you ask about the 22nd century, it is at least possible.

Not likely in my opinion but at least possible.

Right now human spaceflight is still rather expensive although the cost has come down a lot.

The resources necessary to send people into space with current tech on a large scale simply aren't there.

A system that does not primarily depend on rockets like space-planes combined with skyhooks or scramjets powered with beamed energy from the ground. May sound like sci-fi today, but they are at least known to be feasible in theory without needing to discover entirely new stuff.

So what we need is to get lucky with all that collapse going on right now and the near future. Get out of it intact enough to tackle this engineering challenge and spend enough money to actually build the necessary infrastructure.

This isn't going to happen in my lifetime.

It could at least be possible by 2199 if we are really lucky.

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LightSciences t1_ivtg6jg wrote

This will happen within 50 years, assuming that Elon is still alive these next few decades.

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arranft t1_ivtgv6v wrote

"Within 22nd century?" - That's 2100 to 2200. Considering Virgin Galactic will be having space tourism flights next year, I think it's most likely there will be at least some tourism moon landings, but "affordable price" is undefined so impossible to answer.

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pichael288 t1_ivthcdl wrote

Rocket fuel to reach escape velocity costs your weight in gold. We need a space elevator (probably impossible) or a space catapult.

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PDXJael t1_ivtz1rw wrote

Replying to MrIndigo12 (#492,336)

This. There's really no such thing as "mass tourism," the average citizen of most nations on Earth can't afford a two week international vacation and moon tourism is just an extension of that luxury.

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First-Translator966 t1_ivu441x wrote

Replying to Ambiwlans (#493,080)

No, it is absolutely horrible for people. First, “people” will cease to exist if these demographic trends don’t change. We will literally just go extinct.

Secondly, everything from basic civilizational support to the mental health of society is based on family formation. Wide swaths of jobless, childless people is a recipe for catastrophe.

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JaxJaxon t1_ivurrxm wrote

It is what they are already planning but only for the wealthy 5%. It is why they are developing a power station is space even though they say it is to send electricity down to earth which is not possible to do, it will be to recharge spaceships.

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Cncfan84 t1_ivv7jcm wrote

I'm mainly just not convinced enough people would want to.

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First-Translator966 t1_ivwzgfy wrote

Replying to Ambiwlans (#494,107)

“If they don’t change.”

Yes, it’s called math.

In any case, plenty of civilizations have been destroyed by collapsing populations. The precedent is pretty clear. And the math of replacing humans with robots is pretty clear as well: input and maintenance costs are far less economical for a lot of labor than relatively cheap humans.

So as the human population declines it becomes more and more expensive to upkeep the complex systems that allow for modern society. We can see this vulnerability today with the strain on the logistical system and supply chains and energy costs. A hypothetical future of robot workers will be exponentially more complex and exponentially more vulnerable to disruption.

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