Future of mankind

What do you think will happen? I think space settlement seems pretty interesting, though I can't really decide on its likelihood. Space settlement, it seems to me, would also cause humanity to branch off into separate species, since the requirements for life in space are different than on Earth.

With growing population and technology, the future's pretty much open for anything, assuming we don't blow ourselves up too soon.

http://future.wikia.org/ is a nice site on this.

And why would we want to leave the earth? Global warming? I think its more likely we would live underground or something. But if there was a threat to the earth I think we are now at least past the critical point that, with our current knowledge and technology, we can't be wiped out. Or at least not easily.

I think we're still a few centuries away from any sort of space settlement.  In any case, we're far more likely to kill ourselves off.

Living underground is an earthquake hazard, and is quite difficult.

Any extraterrestrial beings with space technology will have no problem with wiping earth clean.

The moon could quickly become an industrial resource and from that point on it would pay for itself. On the other hand if we could get some kind of radiation to the point where they can transfer energy at low loss rate we could use orbital facilities to transfer the all but infinite power of our sun into electrical energy and then beam it down in the form of electromagnetic energy.

Space settlement is too expensive to combat overpopulation, it could only happen as the result of that crisis being solved, and a subsequent industrial revolution which virtually eliminates the lower class. That isn't happening now, not until a new intellectual enlightenment, and the fall of the USA's traditional enemies, particularly the reds that still command Chinese power.

>>4
I agree.  We are running out of silicon mines on earth.

But spending trillions of dollars to build solar radiation collection plates on the moon and then beam it back down to earth in microwave form?  That's just crazy talk.

Unless the moon has a core of solid platinum or uranium there's no reason to go up there.

Well maybe if you want a killer telescope or science facility someday in the future, but other than that, no.

its gonna be like Road Warrior

There's a scale: the Kardashev scale, that defines the technological level of a civilization as the amount of energy they are able to harness, roughly exponentially as:
a Class I Kardashev Civilization would be able to harness all the energy available on a single planet.
a Class II Kardashev Civilization would be able to harness all the energy available within a single star system
a Class III Kardashev Civilization would be able to harness all the energy available within a single galaxy.
Carl sagan placed the human race at around 0.7 on the Kardashev scale.

Theories exist that if aliens existed already in the galaxy then we'd see their structures spanning star systems, like a kind of interstellar spider web. We can therefore say either the development of hypothetical alien civilizations elsewhere in the galaxy is roughly concurrent or behind us, no aliens exist, or interstellar construction work is simply impossible. I'd tend towards believing the latter, but we may prove this wrong.

extinction

>>9
Or they are so far away that we can't see them?

>>11

Not in the same galaxy as us. Other galaxies have more leeway due to the spacetime involved, but unless a hypothetical civilization on the other side of the galaxy has come very far within the past 30000 years or so (and so their light would not have reached us yet), or is "shielded" from our view by the galactic core, it is unlikely that it is a technology-welding civ of the advanced level discussed in 9.

Maybe that's expecting too much of those other life forms?

Perhaps we cannot detect them, or at least not distinguish them. I mean, if another planet had life just like we have on Earth, and technology identical to ours, do you think we'd spot them easily if they were even a thousand light years away?

Think about it. We're not that visible. Neither should we assume that any other potential intelligent life in our vicinity is more visible than ourselves.

And also, I think it's perfectly possible (though unlikely) that an alien culture 30,000 light years away is large enough to be spotted by us, but whose light hasn't yet reached us.

I mean, look how far we've gotten in two hundred years. A 30,000-year deadline for space settlement isn't too unlikely for us.

>>13
STFU we cant divide by zero yet >;(

Either we will become robots, or robots will replace us. The robots will then colonize the galaxy (if that's feasible). No need to worry about speciation, habitat, population etc, we/they would just be a program to be uploaded into whatever robot body we want.

Strong AI might even here in our lifetime, though it's really anyone's guess.

>>15
i wont let human kind die!

Were all gona blow ourselfs up! If we keep having wars and developing weapons of mass destruction, were gona die! lets tackle global peace before space and stuff

Trying to bump out my post. Please ignore this reply.

Divide by zero. Oh shi-

we will pass onto the next life!!!

>>18
Too late, I didn't ignore it

I find this quite interesting, what would happen i mean would the culture in space be different then the ones on earth. which situation improve or get worse

I'm pretty sure we'll make a tumbling monkey chain, try and chuck it to the moon, climb up one by one, make them go man, women, man, women and have a massive orgy on the moon and have babies on the moon and then the moon will be a big planet of sexy ppl. =D

>>6

The moon does have Helium-3 which can be used for fusion. 

I think we'll have a permanent base on the moon within 25 years and possibly Mars within 75 years. 

I don't expect alien contact for another 250+ years. 

If an alien civilization does exist, I don't think it's into conquest.  Any species past Class I with enough warlikeness to conquer another planet is probably going to destroy itself in short order. 

>>24
Why are humans still in existance?

Ask that question again in 100 years.

     When people think of resources often they think of food and fuel, but our metals are running out as well. There's enough useful metals on a single asteroid to provide the worlds metal production for something like, a few dozen thousand years. It's not like we have to go and live on the moon to put it to good use for us. The same goes for all of space.
     People also think we are running out of room here on earth, but that's not why we should expand into space at all; think of all the biodomes we could build out of an asteroid. Places with low population density like northern Canada and Russia could become medium density. We would have plenty of room for billions more. And there's Antartica too, but that has less access to other countries around it, so that's a bit more of a stretch.

We're far too dumb as a racial feature to expand into space.  Getting off the Earth requires resources so large that a corporation or government is required.  Since corporations and governments are even more dysfunctional and sociopathic than individuals are, that means that there's essentially ZERO chance of forming societies off the planet.

We probably won't kill each other off on the Earth, but we probably will design an event that will kill most of Humanity, sometime in the future.

As for planetary-scale disasters like a Chicxulub strike, GRB or supervolcano ... within a few hundred years, Humanity should be advanced enough that pockets of Humanity would be able to survive any such single disaster.  The vast majority of the Human race would die, of course, but as I predicted above, Humans will design such a near-extinction event for ourselves in the first place.

Eventually, squatting on the Earth, some interstellar event like a GRB will create one biosphere-killer too many and Humankind will go extinct.  This will happen well before Sol expands into a Red Giant star and engulfs the Earth, which is about 5 billion years away.  Human extinction will probably take place within the next several hundred million years.

Face facts, folks.  Look at Human social development during our entire homo-whatever history.  Even with suitably large brains, were too sociopathic and fearful and stupid to really form a space-faring civilization.  Thinking man and raging man are united in each one of us, but those two never get along and often cancel the accomplishments of civilization.  The next several centuries will be crucial as to whether Humans will persist -- albeit planetbound -- or go extinct.  But expanding into space?  No, Humanity is nowhere near smart enough to accomplish that.

is there 4chan and moot descendants in the future?

>>27
Someone should just rent some Chindians to get us off Earth.

Space travel is a possibility as far as I'm concerned, however, how quicly space travel develops and how controlled and safe it will be is another matter. The impossibility of forming societies in space is not as large of an impediment to space colonisation as it might seem at first. As long humans can survive in space without assitance from Earth, they'll likely expand across the solar sytem at a steady rate, civilised or not. And once there are settlements dispersed around the asteroid belt, there's going to be no way to reliably police it simply due to it's massive scale, so it would quickly become a mash of small states and pirate havens. As for interstellar travel, that would be even more chaotic, unless we happen to find a way to quickly search cubic light years for tiny specs smaller than the moon.

>>27
All we need is a good motor. I admit that every characterization of our

species in >>27 is the truth. But with a cheap, dependable, and fast

interstellar slower-than-light drive, you'll see freaks like Magellan and

Drake and Frobisher taking off for parts unknown. I wouldn't mind getting an

eyefull of Mars and Jupiter myself.  Saturn is a little too spooky for me,

especially that scary asshole/hurricane on its south pole

hxxp://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap061113.html*

It's going to be a significant leap of technology, but I think it's possible

in the next hundred years or so.  I'm interested in things like antimatter

rocket/ramjet designs, although Mr. Fusion needs to be developed for that.

Antimatter rocketry alone would provide ample lifting power to get started on

interplanetary civilization in our own system.

hxxp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antimatter_catalyzed_nuclear_pulse_propulsion**
hxxp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antimatter

Similar leaps of technology/cheapness/dependability are the Douglas DC-3, and

the evolution of European deep-sea sailing ships in the 15th and 16th

centuries.

hxxp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_DC-3
hxxp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carrack

Another factor is bigger space telescopes.  Soon enough, these will be able

to see extrasolar planets with relatively high resolution.  No matter how

dodgy the environment, people will be strongly attracted to blue planets in

other solar systems.

hxxp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Webb_Space_Telescope

It would be nice to deal with our species' ignorance and tendency toward

evil, but we really don't have time to fix ourselves before we GTFO. Even

smart and promising species usually last only a couple million years. And

those species didn't have a death wish, either. 

*No0bs replace xx with tt.  No0b.
**Wikipedia said it, so it's got to be true. :Q___

It's almost irresistible for humans to contemplate a Utopian future. The idea of unlimited progress has deeply infected the species. The problem is that this ambition is moving perpendicular to the inadequacies of the human spirit. While humans are unveiling the mechanistic qualities of matter, they are neglecting to confront the limitations imposed by their weakness.

>>32
i dont give a shit about Utopian future
all i want to know if is there 4chan in the future

>>33
ooo there will be, most definitely

>>26
Will the asteroids have all the metals we want?  I'm pretty sure the metals available are quite limited (iridium, iron...?).

>>27
It's reasonably likely that at least one of those corporations will get their top executives off earth just before nuclear winter.

GRB = gamma ray burst?

Give stupid people enough time, and they will get off the planet.  Whether they can accomplish it before they bring themselves to almost extinction is a different story of its own.

>>31
Let me know when you find a good source of antimatter.  Producing it from particle accelerators is far more expensive than just using current rocket fuel.

The other species were eliminated by either predation or natural disaster.  If humans go extinct by warfare, we'll be the first species to commit suicide.

>>32
Our colleagues in this thread don't seem quite as optimistic as you suggest.

>>33
4chan will probably survive for a while, but moot and his descendants probably won't.

>>25

We aren't class I yet either.  But we already see the writing on the wall.  We have the power to destroy ourselves, but the danger comes from our lack of self-control.  Either we'll find some way to control our aggression or end up extincting ourselves.  If we learn to control ourselves, we can go far, if not, we'll bend over and kiss our asses goodbye, probably via germ warfare or nukes.

Poster #35, GRB does indeed mean a Gamma Ray Burst.

As for corporations "saving" their CxOs from certain doom ... let's not forget that they'd have to come up with the infrastructure to even achieve such a thing.  There is NO infrastructure for living in space.  None.  (Our space stations cannot serve as long-term living environments.)  That "invention margin" represents a large risk that such a save probably won't succeed.  On top of that, these corporations would only be gearing up to save the LEAST CAPABLE of Humankind.  It'd be like putting people like George Bush, Paris Hilton, Leona Helmsley, Martha Stewart and other elitists on an island (an airless, irradiated and rocky one at that) like some sort of twisted version of "Survivor".  These are not survivors!  They are used to being SERVED by the REAL survivor classes -- the working men and women of America.  Said working folk will largely not be going up on the post-NW lifters.  That's just another large risk of failure.

On top of all THAT, what the corporations and governments can come up with on their own is not a survivable set to reform Humanity from the remainder.  Like I said originally, elitist survival attempts will only work for so long, before a really strong extinction event comes along and wipes out the largely inbred survivors from the last event.

The only thing that will ensure continuation of the Human species unto the Heat Death of the universe (or whatever the End of Everything really is -- see the wiki on the subject) is getting large numbers of Humans off the Earth as Step One of a multi-step plan.  That will ensure that a minimum Human civilization base will be planted as a seed in the solar system in order to form Step Two:  development of a Human interplanetary civilization.  (Note my implied Step Zero:  Human planetary civilization ... which is still debatable since it's so unsustainable!  However, we DID achieve Step Zero for the interim, since it does allow us to achieve Step One if we so desire it.)

Once Humans are established as an interplanetary race, the race is invulnerable to planetary events like a single asteroid strike or GRB-atmosphere effect.  However, Humanity would still be vulnerable to Sol-based and higher-GRB/supernovae-based threats.  Remaining solely within Sol's system is not a survivable option for aging with the universe.  True, it does essentially and automatically give at least 1 billion years of survival over at most 100 million on the Earth.  But even that will end.  A super-GRB or nearby supernovae will put an end to Step Two.

To ensure Humanity survives with the aging of the universe, it must take Step Three:  seeking of interstellar transportation systems.  By then -- and again, if they put their minds to it -- Humans should have found a way to stop all aspects of the aging process.  That will help immensely if interstellar transportation remains a centuries-long effort for each hop.  Even then, there is a way to reduce passenger-subjective time to a certain or practical minimum by creating relativistic slingers and catchers at each source and destination star.  These extreme linear accelerators will be millions of miles long and use enormous stores of energy to sling payloads up to 99%+ of lightspeed ... while the energy load can be recaptured at the catcher when it decelerates the payload.  It'll still take 4.3 years to get to Alpha Centauri, but the passengers need only experience several months of that time due to time dilation effects.

Once Humans figure out how to use the resources of a solar system to establish interstellar transportation systems, they merely have to do what they do best:  be fruitful and multiply.  That's Step Four.  Then, even a supernova within the Milky Way can't kill Humanity.  The only things then that could kill the race would be:

1. Hyper-GRB ... an event in the core of our galaxy or between certain hypermasses causes such a strong burst of radiation that tens of thousands of lightyears are sterilized
2. War ... where one part of Humanity (or another spacefaring race) tries to kill off Humanity.
3. End of the Universe ... some scenario which involves contraction or dissolution of all matter in the universe.
4. Vacuum Phase Change ... which might happen if our current vacuum is NOT at its lowest energy state.

We can do something about #1 since we can use relativistic effects to get out of the Milky Way; using 1g constant acceleration, a ship can reach the Andromeda galaxy (2M LY) in about 30 years, ship time.  True, I'm hard pressed to imagine a propulsion system that could produce 1g for 30 years.  But imagine a linear accelerator that is extremely large -- the length of several diameters of a solar system.  Inside the launch area of this Intergalactic Launcher is another accelerator (like one of the then-standard ones used to toss payloads from star to star), packed for compression of length, also packed with fuel for itself to operate, and finally packed with a payload of a Human colony.  This huge package would be whipped towards Andromeda at .99c or more.  When the package gets inside Andromeda suitably near a target star, it unpacks the accelerator, charges it with the fuel, and then fires itself in reverse to the vector of initial motion.  This would put the payload (the colony) at a dead stop (with adjustments) in Andromeda, and will sent the accelerator onward on the original vector but at an even higher energy.  The new colony could then proceed (using assumed long-lived Humans) to the nearest star and then restart the star-jumping process anew.

We can do something about #2 by placing Humans far and wide so that warfare would be unable to find all the Humans.  Given the hugeness of interstellar distances and the even more enormous volumes they outline, this shouldn't be too difficult.  As they say in war:  "don't bunch up".

We can't do anything about #3 and #4.  If the end of the universe dissolves matter itself, we will quite simply go out with it.  The phase change (unlikely, but possible) will be much worse, since we'll never see it coming (as it immediately follows any light wave it produced) and will be much less able to stop it or adjust to it since it will involve a basic change to spacetime.

As a Texas oilfield geology type person (and queer downright-communist liberal Dem-O-crat), I'm most intrigued by the condensates of Titan.  Shallow gravity well, hydrocarbon rain, seas of natural gasoline and FUCK SHIT THAT'S AN OXYGEN TANK DON'T OPEN IT YOU IGNORANT FU######################################
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But to continue: there's everything an advanced civilization needs already in local space: energy, metals, breathable gases, plenty of room, stable Lagrange points, and so on.  The barrier is the native ignorance of our kind, who believe that space is a black place a bit larger than the earth, which is itself about the size of Nebraska and its surrounding states.

>>37
Indeed, we're still several centuries from the necessary infrastructure, but it's not impossible in the future.  True, but they're still surviving longer than those on earth, even if by a few days or hours.  I think it'll make an awesome show.  Hilton "omg, like this spaceship is even smaller than my jail cell; I'm sooo claustrophobic".  Cheney slaps her.

Good assessment overall, but you assume technologies that are centuries away, if they are even possible.  Given the previous posts, humans probably won't even live that long XD.

I feel the need, the need for weed!

Marijuana MUST be legalized.