"The End of the Space Age"

[Tamas]

As someone said it already: once it becomes a business opportunity, it will flourish. You can't expect governments to pay billions on helping scientists form more theories, when you could spend that money on buying votes.

However, when it will come to help their campaign financing pals nail some insanely plentiful resources bases in the solar system, there will be an upswing if we ever saw one.

[Neil]

Well, we have decent hypotheses as to how, and we do know it was not at all long after the Late Heavy Bombardment.  Archaea and bacteria are extremely old, and evidently did not need much time (geologically speaking) to develop.

I don't really agree.  A hundred million years is a fair span, even geologically.  By the time life came around (at least in a manner that we can find evidence of today), there had been oceans for something like 600 million years.  Even the LHB isn't as much of an impediment to development as one might think, as it was a process spread out over 300 million years.

Multicellular life is evidently more difficult to arrive at, but if it's common, I wouldn't be sure intelligent life would be that rare.  Hell, there are a half dozen species on Earth that approach human intelligence.  And intelligence is an obvious adaptation.

I don't think intelligence is all that obvious, at least not high intelligence.  After all, it's only really been achieved once in the 300 million years of high-order multicellular life.  In fact, the enormous energy requirements of intelligence, coupled with vulnerability to predation, make it a difficult road to travel.

[jimmy olsen]

I don't think intelligence is all that obvious, at least not high intelligence.  After all, it's only really been achieved once in the 300 million years of high-order multicellular life.  In fact, the enormous energy requirements of intelligence, coupled with vulnerability to predation, make it a difficult road to travel.

Intelligence seems to have been selected for as long as there have been animals. Amphibians are smarter than fish, reptiles are smarter than amphibians, dinosaurs/birds are smarter than reptiles, mammals are smarter than birds. Each new Class of vertebrates has been smarter on the whole than the last.

[Razgovory]

That is an odd way of looking at it.  Especially considering mammals didn't evolve from birds.   Some birds are quite intelligent (probably more intelligent then some mammals).

[Josquius]

Its not intelligence which is the issue, there's loads of smart animals, its intelligence+tool use+language+versatility, etc....

[Siege]

Once people finally get serious about exploiting the actual resources of space instead of shooting Gagarins and Voyagers into it to do things that are actually direct profitable, we'll see a new, more permanent Space Age.

Not gonna happen.
It is cheaper to build weapons and take the resources from others by force.

Its a very simple mathematical equation.
Wasting money in space give no immediate returns, while building up a powerful military protects your country, give you diplomatic cloud, and places a card in your hand that can be played offensibly if push comes to shove and resources become so scarce that it comes down to a choice between war and starvation.

Shortsighted? Absolutely.
A safer bet than space exploration? Definitively. At least in the minds of the policymakers.

[The Minsky Moment]

Asteroid mining will be a Trillion dollar industry by the end of century

Depends on your 90 year inflation forecast.

[Razgovory]

Asteroid mining doesn't seem like that lucrative an idea.  I mean, we have Iron and Nickel right here on Earth.

[Ideologue]

Well, we have decent hypotheses as to how, and we do know it was not at all long after the Late Heavy Bombardment.  Archaea and bacteria are extremely old, and evidently did not need much time (geologically speaking) to develop.

I don't really agree.  A hundred million years is a fair span, even geologically.  By the time life came around (at least in a manner that we can find evidence of today), there had been oceans for something like 600 million years.  Even the LHB isn't as much of an impediment to development as one might think, as it was a process spread out over 300 million years.

True, although biosphere-devastating events were still relatively frequent.  I was under the impression that the earliest biochemical evidence of life (admittedly, inconclusive evidence) was right at the end of the bombardment.  Although there was liquid water, getting blasted every few millennia by large rocks can't be helpful, and I suspect it would also tend to erase evidence of life.

Also, here's a funny Wikipedia malapropism from the page on the Hadean Eon, which I was using to check dates:

...rather than a hot, molten surface and atmosphere full of carbon dioxide, the Earth's surface would be very much like it is today.

Ha.  Sure, if you're not a big fan of breathing oxygen.

I don't think intelligence is all that obvious, at least not high intelligence.  After all, it's only really been achieved once in the 300 million years of high-order multicellular life.  In fact, the enormous energy requirements of intelligence, coupled with vulnerability to predation, make it a difficult road to travel.

Human vulnerability to predation isn't that acute.  We're a very large animal, and have always traveled in packs.  I'd say bipedalism is far more of a fitness valley than the energy requirements for a humanlike CNS and that's only because it fucks up our reproduction.

There's major fitness costs imposed by intelligence (and, more specifically, humanlike social behavior and technological capability), I agree.  But those are such good adaptations that they're almost impossible to kill.  So I'll amend what I said above to saying that human-level intelligence is less likely to be rare than any other adaptation because it is so robust.

We are, after all, one of the most successful vertebrates to have ever existed, either by biomass or by pure numbers.

[Ideologue]

That is an odd way of looking at it.  Especially considering mammals didn't evolve from birds.   Some birds are quite intelligent (probably more intelligent then some mammals).

Indeed.  Corvids and parrots are rather bright.

[Neil]

True, although biosphere-devastating events were still relatively frequent.  I was under the impression that the earliest biochemical evidence of life (admittedly, inconclusive evidence) was right at the end of the bombardment.  Although there was liquid water, getting blasted every few millennia by large rocks can't be helpful, and I suspect it would also tend to erase evidence of life.

See, I think that a few millenia is overstating matters a bit.  As many impacts as there must have been, and how damaging their impacts must have been, we're probably looking at millions and millions of years between major impacts.

Human vulnerability to predation isn't that acute.  We're a very large animal, and have always traveled in packs.  I'd say bipedalism is far more of a fitness valley than the energy requirements for a humanlike CNS and that's only because it fucks up our reproduction.

There's major fitness costs imposed by intelligence (and, more specifically, humanlike social behavior and technological capability), I agree.  But those are such good adaptations that they're almost impossible to kill.  So I'll amend what I said above to saying that human-level intelligence is less likely to be rare than any other adaptation because it is so robust.

We are, after all, one of the most successful vertebrates to have ever existed, either by biomass or by pure numbers.

Once you get there, human-level intelligence is great.  Still, if you think about it, it's very difficult to develop pre-human intelligence.  An animal has to be large, but not too large.  The climate can't be too warm, the atmosphere has to be oxygen-rich, the biosphere needs to be very productive, and because they'll be putting most of their energy into developing and maintaining an advanced brain, they're pretty much required to be social in order to survive.  And intelligence also favours omnivores over carnivores, and both enormously over herbivores.  Really, if you think about it, there aren't a lot of times and places that advanced intelligence would be able to evolve on the Earth.

[Ideologue]

True, although biosphere-devastating events were still relatively frequent.  I was under the impression that the earliest biochemical evidence of life (admittedly, inconclusive evidence) was right at the end of the bombardment.  Although there was liquid water, getting blasted every few millennia by large rocks can't be helpful, and I suspect it would also tend to erase evidence of life.

See, I think that a few millenia is overstating matters a bit.  As many impacts as there must have been, and how damaging their impacts must have been, we're probably looking at millions and millions of years between major impacts.

I guess it depends on what you mean by major.  Extrapolating from the example of the moon, Earth would have had 22,000 impacts sufficient to develop a 20km crater.  Assuming the LHB was 4.2-3.9Gya, that's once about every 14,000 years.  And there were much larger impacts as well.  (According to this NASA chick Cohen, anyway.)

Human vulnerability to predation isn't that acute.  We're a very large animal, and have always traveled in packs.  I'd say bipedalism is far more of a fitness valley than the energy requirements for a humanlike CNS and that's only because it fucks up our reproduction.

There's major fitness costs imposed by intelligence (and, more specifically, humanlike social behavior and technological capability), I agree.  But those are such good adaptations that they're almost impossible to kill.  So I'll amend what I said above to saying that human-level intelligence is less likely to be rare than any other adaptation because it is so robust.

We are, after all, one of the most successful vertebrates to have ever existed, either by biomass or by pure numbers.

Once you get there, human-level intelligence is great.  Still, if you think about it, it's very difficult to develop pre-human intelligence.  An animal has to be large, but not too large.  The climate can't be too warm, the atmosphere has to be oxygen-rich, the biosphere needs to be very productive, and because they'll be putting most of their energy into developing and maintaining an advanced brain, they're pretty much required to be social in order to survive.  And intelligence also favours omnivores over carnivores, and both enormously over herbivores.  Really, if you think about it, there aren't a lot of times and places that advanced intelligence would be able to evolve on the Earth.

I do think there are requirements, but don't think you're right on all of them.

Regarding size and climate, elephants are probably the second smartest animal on the planet, very close to human level, capable of some abstract thought and possibly even capable of moral reasoning.  They are also the largest terrestrial mammal and live in hot climates.  I'm not saying this isn't kind of counterintuitive, given the waste heat generated by a busy brain, but there they are.  (Suggestively, elephants are also one of the few non-primates situated to manipulate their environment in a more-or-less-finely-tuned manner.  If humans had never evolved, or stopped existing right now, I think it'd be really interesting to see what happened with elephants in ten million years.)

But as for sociality, that's definitely necessary.  I occasionally wonder if the major stumbling block to intelligence is the development of very high-investment reproductive strategies such as employed by primates, elephants, and cetaceans to a high degree, and just about all mammals to some degree.

[Josquius]

Regarding size and climate, elephants are probably the second smartest animal on the planet, very close to human level, capable of some abstract thought and possibly even capable of moral reasoning.  They are also the largest terrestrial mammal and live in hot climates.  I'm not saying this isn't kind of counterintuitive, given the waste heat generated by a busy brain, but there they are.  (Suggestively, elephants are also one of the few non-primates situated to manipulate their environment in a more-or-less-finely-tuned manner.  If humans had never evolved, or stopped existing right now, I think it'd be really interesting to see what happened with elephants in ten million years.)

Asteroid mining doesn't seem like that lucrative an idea.  I mean, we have Iron and Nickel right here on Earth.

There are other materials out there. There's one asteroid which is believed to be pretty much solid gold.

[Martinus]

The pessimistic, whiny tone of people who flail their arms about the shuttle program ending drives me up the wall.  They're the ones that are too short-sighted to realize that, well, sometimes you need to wait.

They're the Veruca Salts of the space program: the technological paradigm will eventually shift, but they just want to see it now, not four or six generations from now.

I think it is a safe assumption that most of them will not see it six generations from now.

[CountDeMoney]

The pessimistic, whiny tone of people who flail their arms about the shuttle program ending drives me up the wall.  They're the ones that are too short-sighted to realize that, well, sometimes you need to wait.

They're the Veruca Salts of the space program: the technological paradigm will eventually shift, but they just want to see it now, not four or six generations from now.

I think it is a safe assumption that most of them will not see it six generations from now.

Not without cryogenic hologramming!