Daily Archives: May 3, 2022

NASA and SpaceX launched the first all-private space crew, Axiom-1, on April 8. The team included three wealthy businessmen and one astronaut. Whilst this marks one small step for the future of commercial space travel, it could also mark one giant leap backward for mankind.

In the Oscar-nominated Netflix film, Dont Look Up, a comet heads towards Earth and is set to destroy humanity. When billionaire CEO Peter Isherwell discovers that the raw materials of the comet are worth trillions of dollars, he calls off the launch meant to destroy the comet. When Isherwells own attempt to destroy the comet fails, he and a handful of global elites board a spaceship in hopes of fleeing Earth and finding life on another planet. While humorously dark and satirical, the story of Isherwells character is not entirely dissimilar from the numerous billionaires hoping to tap into the lucrative commercial venture of space.

In 2019, NASA was called upon to expand commercial modules onboard the International Space Station (ISS), as it was recently announced that the station is expected to retire in 2031. In offloading these human space missions to private companies, NASA hopes that the increased competition between private companies will accelerate the time we reach commercial space travel.

Were taking commercial business off the face of the Earth and putting it up in Space, NASA administrator Bill Nelson said before the Axiom-1 launch on Friday.

This ambition for future space travel draws into question who will be able to go. The three billionaires who boarded Axiom-1 Larry Connor, Mark Pathy and Eyten Stibbe each paid a sum of $55 million. While they are up there to conduct research during their stay in the ISS, this money could have also been used to fund important and life-saving research on Earth.

Dr. Wendy Whitman Cobb, an Air Force political scientist for space argues that the privatization of space is for the better, stating that it enables NASA to pursue future projects like starting moon or Mars colonies and exploring deeper space.

The more normal people we see fly into space, more of the public will see this as possible and be excited by it, Cobb said in an interview with the New York Times.

Yet, with Elon Musk valuing space travel at between $100,000-$500,000, it is hard to see that so-called normal people will ever be able to afford this luxury experience. In an interview with TED Creator Chris Anderson, Musk proposed that space travel can be affordable for anyone if people are willing to work and save up for it.

If moving to Mars costs, for arguments sake, $100,000, then I think almost anyone can work and save up and eventually have $100,000 and be able to go to Mars if they want, Musk said.

With the median income in the United States standing at $67,521 in the 2020 census, the CEO of SpaceX has underestimated the difficulty of saving $100,000, let alone for people in developing nations. Perhaps the future of commercial space travel appears more like a luxury hobby for the elite millionaires of the world rather than a goal for the average person. Somehow, we are reminded of that in the final scene in Dont Look Up where Isherwell and his high society associates flee a dying planet.

Dont Look Up is an allegory for climate change and our lack of action to prevent it. If space travel becomes commercialized, the emissions produced by rockets will significantly contribute to making climate change irreversible. It is estimated that the emissions per passenger will be around 100 times that of a long-haul flight. For some scientists, this is a worrying statistic considering some companies ambitions to fly tourists to space several times a day. Without finding a means of eliminating the carbon footprint of rockets, they are as much of a vehicle for finding new life in space as they are for destroying life on Earth.

The emissions produced by rockets also affect the Earths atmosphere in a way that no other carbon-fuelled technologies might. The use of kerosene to power rockets produces a significant amount of soot, a type of black carbon emission. When this is released into the middle and upper atmospheres, the soot has a warming effect 500 times greater than when it is closer to the Earths surface. This is because there are few clouds competing with the soot to absorb the suns rays. If rocket launches start to become far more frequent in the future, the effect of these emissions could substantially hinder the Earths ability to repair its ozone layer.

With the move towards commercialized space travel accelerating, so is the speed of global warming. Private companies like SpaceX must conduct further research to assess the ecological impact of their rockets before further expanding their commercial space flights.

Whilst the thought of flights to space remains an exciting prospect, the affordability and environmental effects of commercialized space travel should be kept firmly on the minds of the billionaires looking to invest.

Thomas Brierly is an Opinion intern for the 2022 spring Quarter. He can be reached at tbrierly@uci.edu.

Related

Excerpt from:
The Billionaire Space Race: Should We Be Worried? - New University

Learning more about Mars history, and how the planet formed and evolved throughout time, has been a goal for astronomers for decades. Now, though, a new discovery could give us insight into the Red Planets brutal and violent history. If what the scientists posit turns out to be true, future expeditions on the planet could prove more about Mars violent history.

Researchers published the new study in Icarus. It posits that rocks found by NASAs Spirit Rover, and in the region that Perseverance is exploring could be ignimbrite. The rock type is igneous and sedimentary, and it forms as the result of cataclysmic, volcanic eruptions. The rocks, the researchers say, could point toward Mars having a violent history.

There are lots of ideas for the origin of the olivine-rich bedrock that covers large portions of a region called Nili Fossae, Steve Ruff, lead researcher on the study said in a statement. Its a debate thats been going on for nearly 20 years.

Ruff says that he found some correlation between the rock samples that Spirit found and a specific volcanic rock found on Earth. Olivine-rich bedrock is a fairly common silicate mineral. It comes from magma generated in the mantle of Mars (and Earth). As such, scientists have posited that Mars had volcanic processes playing a part in its history and formation. However, this new study points towards a more violent Martian history than previously expected.

Ruff compared mosaics of images taken by the Mars Spirit rover with some from Earth. He noticed a correlating pattern between it and similar rocks on Earth. As such, Ruff and his fellow researchers believe that the correlation shows more about Mars violent history. Additionally, it could tell us more about how volcanic activity helped form the planet we know today.

Of course, theres still a lot we dont know about Mars. Without any new rocks to look into, its impossible to say for sure whether Mars violent history was as bad as the researchers suspect. The answer to that question will ultimately come from the rock samples Perseverance collected. Future missions may also tell us more.

Theres a lot to look forward to when it comes to learning more about the Red Planet. Not only is NASA looking for ways to colonize Mars. But theyre also trying to come up with ways to breathe on Mars. With so many missions planned to the Red Planet in the coming years, learning more about Mars violent history continues to be paramount to understanding the planet as a whole.

All we can do now is look at the work that Ruff and others have put in, and try to learn more about the Martian surface as Perseverance, and even Insight work to tell us more.

Excerpt from:
Martian rocks may give insight into the Red Planets violent history - BGR

There are many changes that youll notice in Galactic Civilizations IV. One of these is a distinction between core worlds and colonies. Likewise, although old mechanics have been retained, we might as well take a look at how youll further expand your empires domains. Heres our Galactic Civilizations IV guide to help you with core worlds and colonies, as well as how you can colonize new planets.

Note: Well have a Galactic Civilizations IV guides and features hub soon, so stay tuned.

The basics

The key distinction in Galactic Civilizations IV is how core worlds and colonies function. Firstly, core worlds are the only planets that you can manually manage (i.e., build structures or change citizen specialization). Your home planet is automatically considered a core world, as are others that have a governor assigned to them.

Colonies, meanwhile, are all the planets that youve colonized, culture flipped, or conquered, provided that they dont have a governor assigned to them.

All resources generated by that colony will be funneled into the nearest core world, boosting that planet even further. You can see these as thin lines leading from one planet to the next.

Keeping a planet a colony or turning it into a core world

Colony upgrades can be acquired if you research certain techs or acquire specific resources. Examples include an Orbital Shield (+10 planetary defense), Colony Beacon (+3 influence growth), and Monitoring Station (-5% crime).

Alternatively, you can select a colony and click on Assign Governor to pick a character that will be in charge. However, do keep in mind that turning a colony into a core world means that youll need to construct tile improvements and handle citizens manually. Still, you may also open the Leaders screen to fire a Governor. This will cause that planet to revert back into a colony.

Note: Galactic Civilizations IV does not have an AI governor feature for core worlds. As such, its better to focus only on wealthy/high-class planets that can be turned into core worlds. You dont want to have headaches due to tedious micromanagement.

Colonizing new planets in Galactic Civilizations IV

All major factions in Galactic Civilizations IV start with at least one Colony Ship, allowing you to gain a foothold on new frontiers from the get-go. Also, if the faction allows it, you can activate the Draft Colonists Executive Order. It costs 33 Control and youll lose a bit of approval. But, you do obtain a free Colony Ship instantly. For example, if youre playing as the Terran Alliance, you can swiftly colonize Mars and Artemis.

Note: Some planets that you colonize will trigger an event. The decision that you make can provide resources, Ideology points/spread, additional leaders, and more.

Colony Ships can be built by default via the shipyard. However, certain kinds of planets might require techs to be researched first before your people can claim them safely. Youll want to check the Colonization (green) tab for the following:

Last but not least, colonization in Galactic Civilizations IV requires a citizen from the core world to board it. This citizen will be that new planets first settler, subsequently improving its growth in the long run.

Note 1: The Mimot Brotherhood faction has the Fertile and Proliferation abilities. This allows these cute furballs to rapidly breed, and any ship you construct will also have a duplicate. You should be able to rush planets to create a massive empire. Just be forewarned that Mimot Brotherhood citizens tend to consume a lot of food as well.

Note 2: When playing on larger galaxy maps, be sure to defend Subspace Streams. Since these lead to other sectors with countless planets, you can keep your opponents at bay with a stationary fleet.

Galactic Civilizations IV is available via the Epic Games Store.

Read the original here:
Galactic Civilizations IV: Core worlds, colonies, and colonization guide - PC Invasion

Elon Musk, the richest person on the planet, has apparently struck a deal to buy Twitter, by all accounts "one of the world's most influential platforms." Many people are trying to understand why: what exactly is motivating Elon Musk? Is it just a matter of (his hypocritical notion of) free speech? Are there deeper reasons at play here? In truth, virtually no one in the popular press has gotten the right answer. I will try to provide that here.

Let's begin with an uncontroversial observation: Elon Musk does not care much about others, you and me, or even his employees. As his brother Kimbal Musk told Time magazine, "his gift is not empathy with people," after which the article notes that "during the COVID-19 pandemic, [Musk] made statements downplaying the virus, [broke] local health regulations to keep his factories running, and amplified skepticism about vaccine safety."

Nonetheless, Elon Musk sees himself as a leading philanthropist. "SpaceX, Tesla, Neuralink, The Boring Company are philanthropy," he insists. "If you say philanthropy is love of humanity, they are philanthropy." How so?

RELATED:The cult of Elon Musk: Why do some of us worship billionaires?

The only answer that makes sense comes from a worldview that I have elsewhere described as "one of the most influential ideologies that few people outside of elite universities and Silicon Valley have ever heard about." I am referring to longtermism. This originated in Silicon Valley and at the elite British universities of Oxford and Cambridge, and has a large following within the so-called LessWrong or Rationalist community, whose most high-profile member is Peter Thiel, the billionaire entrepreneur and Trump supporter.

"Longtermists" like Nick Bostrom imagine a future in which trillions of human beings lead "happy lives" inside vast computer simulations powered by the energy output of stars.

In brief, the longtermists claim that if humanity can survive the next few centuries and successfully colonize outer space, the number of people who could exist in the future is absolutely enormous. According to the "father of Longtermism," Nick Bostrom, there could be something like 10^58 human beings in the future, although most of them would be living "happy lives" inside vast computer simulations powered by nanotechnological systems designed to capture all or most of the energy output of stars. (Why Bostrom feels confident that all these people would be "happy" in their simulated lives is not clear. Maybe they would take digital Prozac or something?) Other longtermists, such as Hilary Greaves and Will MacAskill, calculate that there could be 10^45 happy people in computer simulations within our Milky Way galaxy alone. That's a whole lot of people, and longtermists think you should be very impressed.

But here's the point these people are making, in terms of present-day social policy: Let's say you can do something today that positively affects just 0.000000000000000000000000000000000000000000001% of the 10^58 people who will be "living" at some point in the distant future. That means, mathematically, that you'd affect 10 trillion people. Now consider that there are roughly 8 billion people on the planet today. So the question is: If you want to do "the most good," should you focus on helping people who are alive right now or these vast numbers of possible people living in computer simulations in the far future? The answer is, of course, that you should focus on these far-future digital beings. As longtermist Benjamin Todd writes:

Since the future is big, there could be far more people in the future than in the present generation. This means that if you want to help people in general, yourkey concern shouldn't be to help the present generation, but to ensure that the future goes well in the long-term.

So why is Musk spending $44 billion or so to buy Twitter, after dangling and then withdrawing the $6.6 billion needed "to feed more than 40 million people across 43 countries that are 'on the brink of famine'"? Perhaps you can glimpse the answer: If you think that "the future is big," in Todd's words, and that huge numbers of future people in vast computer simulations will come into existence over the next billion years, then you should focus on them rather than those alive today. As Greaves and MacAskill argue, when assessing whether current actions are good or bad, we should focus not on their immediate effects, but on their effects a century or millennium into the future!

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This doesn't mean we should entirely neglect current problems, as the longtermists would certainly tell us, but in their view we should help contemporary people only insofar as doing so will ensure that these future people will exist. This is not unlike the logic that leads corporations to care about their employees' mental health. For corporations, people are not valuable as ends in themselves. Instead, good mental health matters because it is conducive to maximizing profit, since healthy people tend to be more productive. Corporations care about people insofar as doing so benefits them.

For longtermists, morality and economics are almost indistinguishable: Both are numbers games that aim to maximize something. In the case of businesses, you want to maximize profit, while in the case of morality, you want to maximize "happy people." It's basically ethics as capitalism.

Musk has explicitly said that buying Twitter is about "the future of civilization." That points to his peculiar notion of philanthropy and the notion that no matter how obnoxious, puerile, inappropriate or petty his behavior no matter how destructive or embarrassing his actions may be in the present by aiming to influence the long-term future, he stands a chance of being considered by all those happy people in future computer simulations as having done more good, overall, than any single person in human history so far. Step aside, Mahatma Gandhi, Mother Teresa and Martin Luther King Jr.

Why does Musk care about climate change? Not because of injustice, inequality or human suffering but because it might snuff us out before we can colonize Mars and spread throughout the universe.

If you wonder why Musk wants to colonize Mars, this framework offers an answer: Because Mars is a planetary stepping-stone to the rest of the universe. Why does he want to plug our brains into computers via neural chips? Because this could "jump-start the next stage of human evolution." Why does he want to fix climate change? Is it because of all the harm it's causing (and will cause) for poor people in the Global South? Is it because of the injustice and inequality made worse by the climate crisis? Apparently not: It's because Musk doesn't want to risk a "runaway" climate change scenario that could snuff out human life before we've had a chance to colonize Mars, spread to the rest of the universe, and fulfill our "vast and glorious" potential to quote longtermist Toby Ord. Earlier this year, Musk declared that "we should be much more worried about population collapse" than overpopulation. Why? Because "if there aren't enough people for Earth, then there definitely won't be enough for Mars."

There is a reason that Musk is on the scientific advisory board of the grandiosely named Future of Life Institute (FLI), to which he has donated millions of dollars. It's the same reason why he has donated similar sums to Bostrom's Future of Humanity Institute (Oxford) and the Centre for the Study of Existential Risk (Cambridge), that he holds a position on the scientific advisory board of the Centre for the Study of Existential Risk, and likes to talk about us living in a computer simulation and how superintelligent machines pose a "fundamental existential risk for human civilization."

By definition, an existential risk is any event that would prevent humanity from completely subjugating nature and maximizing economic productivity, both of which are seen as important by longtermists because they would enable us to develop advanced technologies and colonize space so that we can create as many happy people in simulations as physically possible. (Again, this is capitalism on steroids.) Bostrom, whom Elon Musk admires, introduced this term in the early 2000s, and it has become one of the central research topics of the "Effective Altruism" movement, which currently boasts of some $46.1 billion in committed funding and has representatives in high-level U.S. government positions (such as Jason Matheny). Reducing "existential risk" is one of the main objectives of longtermists, many of whom are also Effective Altruists.

From this perspective, the best way to be philanthropic is to not worry so much about the lives of present-day humans, except once again insofar as doing so will help us realize this techno-utopian future among the stars. Bostrom has described the worst atrocities in human history, including World War II and the Holocaust, as "mere ripples on the surface of the great sea of life. They haven't significantly affected the total amount of human suffering or happiness or determined the long-term fate of our species."

Leading longtermists say we shouldn't "fritter away" altruistic energy on "feel-good projects" like world hunger, systemic racism or women's rights. Saving the lives of people in rich countries is "substantially more important."

More recently, Bostrom has said that "unrestricted altruism is not so common that we can afford to fritter it away on a plethora of feel-good projects of suboptimal efficacy," such as helping the poor, solving world hunger, promoting LGBTQ rights and women's equality, fighting racism, eliminating factory farming and so on. He continued: "If benefiting humanity by increasing existential safety achieves expected good on a scale many orders of magnitude greater than that of alternative contributions, we would do well to focus on this most efficient philanthropy" [emphasis added]. In a 2019 paper, he suggested that we should seriously consider implementing a centralized, invasive, global surveillance system to protect human civilization from terrorists.

Indeed, another leading longtermist and Effective Altruist, Nick Beckstead, wrote in his much-cited-by-other-longtermists dissertation that since the future could be so large, and since people in rich countries are better positioned to influence the long-term future than people in poor countries, it makes sense to prioritize the lives of the former over the lives of the latter. In his words:

saving lives in poor countries may have significantly smaller ripple effects than saving and improving lives in rich countries. Why? Richer countries have substantially more innovation, and their workers are much more economically productive. [Consequently,] it now seems more plausible to me that saving a life in a rich country is substantially more important than saving a life in a poor country, other things being equal.

When one examines Elon Musk's behavior through the lens of longtermism, his decisions and actions make perfect sense. Sure, he makes misogynistic jokes, falsely accuses people of pedophilia, rails against pronouns and trans people, and spreads COVID misinformation. Yes, he exchanged messages with Jeffrey Epstein after Epstein pleaded guilty to sex trafficking minors, joked that he thought Bernie Sanders was dead, mocked support for the Ukrainian people and so on. (See here for a nauseating list.)

But the future may very well be disproportionately shaped by Musk's decisions which are made unilaterally, with zero democratic influence and since the future could be enormous if we colonize space, all the good that will come to exist (in the reckoning of longtermists) will dwarf all the bad that he may have done during his lifetime. The ends justify the means, in this calculus, and when the ends are literally astronomical value in some techno-utopian future world full of 10^58 happy people living in computer simulations powered by all the stars in the Virgo Supercluster, you can be the worst person in the world during your lifetime and still become the best person who ever existed in the grand scheme of things.

Elon Musk wants power. This is obvious. He's an egomaniac. But he also subscribes, so far as I can tell, to a big-picture view of humanity's spacefaring future and a morality-as-economics framework that explains, better than any of the alternatives, his actions. As I have noted elsewhere:

[Longtermism is] akin to asecular religionbuilt around the worship of "future value," complete with its own "secularised doctrine ofsalvation," as the Future of Humanity Institute historian Thomas Moynihan approvinglywritesin his book "X-Risk." The popularity of this religion among wealthy people in the West especially the socioeconomic elite makes sense because it tells them exactly what they want to hear: not only are youethically excusedfrom worrying too much about sub-existential threats like non-runaway climate change and global poverty, but you are actually amorally better personfor focusing instead on more important things risk that could permanently destroy "our potential" as a species of Earth-originating intelligent life.

It is deeply troubling that a single human being has so much power to determine the future course of human civilization on Earth. Oligarchy and democracy are incompatible, and we increasingly live in a world controlled in every important way by unaccountable, irresponsible, avaricious multi-billionaires. Even more worrisome than Elon Musk wanting to buy Twitter is his motivation: the longtermist vision of value, morality and the future. Indeed, whether or not the deal actually goes through and there are hints that it might not you should expect more power-grabs like this to come, not just from Musk but others under the spell of this intoxicating new secular religion.

Read more on Elon Musk's Twitter-quest:

See more here:
Elon Musk, Twitter and the future: His long-term vision is even weirder than you think - Salon