<story><title>Is This Economist Too Far Ahead of His Time?</title><url>http://www.chronicle.com/article/is-this-economist-too-far/238050</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>mentos</author><text>Anyone that hasn&amp;#x27;t yet, check out Black Mirror on Netflix. It has a lot of ideas in it that I am surprised to see in a show in 2016.&lt;p&gt;I love Elon Musk but I think he is solving the wrong problem when it comes to making human beings a space faring species. The fragility of human flesh is the barrier to colonizing space. You can try to solve this problem by wrapping it in a contained atmosphere or wait a thousand years and send humans to Mars in a different kind of space ship. One made of metal and silicon that can recharge its batteries so long as it has a line of sight on a distant star.. maybe as the article says: &amp;quot;a robotic body [standing] roughly two millimeters tall&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;The greatest challenge we face is keeping this incubator called Earth alive long enough for us to develop the technology to abandon our flesh. But I imagine if that day ever comes what it means to be human will have been destroyed in the end anyways.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>mburns</author><text>&amp;gt;or wait a thousand years and send humans to Mars in a different kind of space ship.&lt;p&gt;Pardon the pun, but why on Earth should we wait 1000 years (or whatever it actually takes) for something when we don&amp;#x27;t have to?&lt;p&gt;Our fragile human flesh in a contained atmosphere works well enough and we&amp;#x27;re roughly capable of doing it now, give or take a couple decades.&lt;p&gt;Then we have 900+ years to improve the containers we use to maintain our preferred atmosphere while waiting for whatever form this futuristic species you describe takes.</text></comment>
<story><title>Is This Economist Too Far Ahead of His Time?</title><url>http://www.chronicle.com/article/is-this-economist-too-far/238050</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>mentos</author><text>Anyone that hasn&amp;#x27;t yet, check out Black Mirror on Netflix. It has a lot of ideas in it that I am surprised to see in a show in 2016.&lt;p&gt;I love Elon Musk but I think he is solving the wrong problem when it comes to making human beings a space faring species. The fragility of human flesh is the barrier to colonizing space. You can try to solve this problem by wrapping it in a contained atmosphere or wait a thousand years and send humans to Mars in a different kind of space ship. One made of metal and silicon that can recharge its batteries so long as it has a line of sight on a distant star.. maybe as the article says: &amp;quot;a robotic body [standing] roughly two millimeters tall&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;The greatest challenge we face is keeping this incubator called Earth alive long enough for us to develop the technology to abandon our flesh. But I imagine if that day ever comes what it means to be human will have been destroyed in the end anyways.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>elevensies</author><text>I think brain-upload is probably the only way to do interstellar travel, even if you synthesize a new body on the other side. For someone alive today, if you want to do interstellar or non-colonization space travel, going after immorality is the best option IMO.&lt;p&gt;I don&amp;#x27;t think that earth-preservation is a worthwhile quest on a personal level. There are dozens of people who could destroy the whole planet since the invention of nukes. And with climate change for example, any kind of proportionate action would require an agreement between giant (100M to 1B+ people) political organizations to voluntarily makes themselves less wealthy -- although making tech that is greener and cheaper&amp;#x2F;better is probably the most significantly helpful option.</text></comment>