Just in time
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Fantasy was always fantasy
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We had EVE Online, which i never bothered with so my info here is 2nd hand, but in that game you could fly space ships and engage in a fantasy sci-fi MMO universe.
People were working in banks there. Full on 9-5 jobs in a game about space.
Eve is still kicking. Good game, but why the hell would people want to work in a bank? I mean there were a few headlines about it basically being a massive scam and the guy who did it, bought himself an entire fleet. And dared people to get him.
Eve attracts a certain type of people.
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Life has a tendency to spread when new environments are available, yes.
But beyond this planet, there are no other environments. You might say the rest of the universe is antivironment. There is a wide range of possible conditions, of radiation and tempurature, gravity and molecular composition. Life requires a very very narrow and specific set of those conditions to continue.
Going from one continent to another, within the same atmosphere, with the same underlying set of conditions, is not all that much of a change. Actually leaving the planet? Permanently? And without just dying in the attempt? That would require a level of organization, long term planning (like, centuries long term), and resource management that we as a species have yet to demonstrate.
I disagree that life requires a narrow set of conditions to continue. What I believe is the case is that life requires specific conditions to begin, but once it exists, it is incredibly resilient. There are extremophiles which could reasonably survive in the vacuum of space, and from a more anthropocentric perspective, humans have proven ourselves to be remarkably resilient in the face of climatic tests. Sure, the most inhospitable of earth conditions is a paradise in comparison to something like Mars as it exists now, but we adapted to those when the height of technology was a flint knapped hand-axe. It’s safe to say that the technological aspect of humanity has come a long way, and our ability to survive in and adapt to the conditions of bodies other than earth improves steadily day by day as the wheel of technology turns ever-faster (to say nothing of outright space habitats, which we could absolutely reasonably build with our current understanding of physics). I don’t mean this as a glorification of human industry; rather, I mean to say that ingenuity, adaptability, and tenacity are fundamental characteristics of our species - it’s why we’re here today.
I will also note that there’s no guarantee that there aren’t habitable worlds in other solar systems, and no reason to assume that they couldn’t be found. Even within our solar system, there are planets which, with sufficient effort, could feasibly be colonized near to our current tech level (looking at you, Venus. I know Mars gets all the attention but you’re my one true love).
And, indeed, I wonder if you’ve proven the fundamental point yourself with your observation on organization and long term planning. After all, is it perhaps possible that the very reason we have never demonstrated that level of resource management in our modern, industrial world is itself capitalism? Such a duplicative, wasteful structure is fundamentally inefficient, and more to the point, is fundamentally at odds with the communalist nature of humanity. We are a species which, historically, shares, and just the mere fact that we have convinced ourselves that selfishness is in our nature does not make it true. Additionally, centuries of planning becomes a lot more reasonable when humans reach the point of living for centuries, which is a prospect that I think a lot of people ignore the (relatively speaking) imminent nature of.
All that is to say: we are a species of firsts, and typically when we are met with a survival challenge on a physiological level, we conquer that with technology. Clothing, fire, tools, and planning allowed us to conquer the arctic despite a body plan which is adapted for equatorial living, why should we assume we won’t also eventually rise to this technical challenge in the long term? I have no idea what that intermediary period will look like (except that it will likely be, at minimum, equally unpleasant for us as it is at present), but if history shows us anything it’s that we eventually pull through. Humanity tried to migrate out of Africa several times before it stuck, populations died out, and we find fossil remains which have genomes entirely unrelated to anyone not from Africa, but the notable thing is that we kept on trying anyways.
We’re just stubborn like that.
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At least we have air conditioning
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Yeah Like who would kiss in full armor. She's not even kissing the guy she's just missing the metal.
OG heavy metal fan.
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Hah, as if the current fucked up trajectory will ever bring us to a future of high tech space exploration.
The way things are going Mankind is vastly more likely to end up in some Dystopia were society has regressed to outright Feudalism and the most technological advanced stuff are at best mass distraction devices or some kind of ML-based social mass manipulator, possibly just the implanted equivalent of slave shock-collars and the systems to control large number of those.
If even just a tiny fraction of the money spent in stock-buybacks was spent in space exploration we would already have space stations in Mars and be extracting minerals from the Asteroid Belt.
We're not currently evolving, we're devolving.
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Didn't show 'mind the size of a planet, but stocking shelves'.
But, I guess I'm happy to be here.
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In the first pictures, the knight would clearly be of the "upper" class. Your chances of being some peon in a field are much, much higher.
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In the first pictures, the knight would clearly be of the "upper" class. Your chances of being some peon in a field are much, much higher.
A pitchfork still could kill a knight in armor. And then you have a horse and armor
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You'd be working the fields.
You'd be working the ice hauler.
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this is extra funny when someone laments like this in Ukraine. Compared with some of our "too late" periods - we're having it good.
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A pitchfork still could kill a knight in armor. And then you have a horse and armor
Horse thievery is a hanging offense, hanging offense.
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Hah, as if the current fucked up trajectory will ever bring us to a future of high tech space exploration.
The way things are going Mankind is vastly more likely to end up in some Dystopia were society has regressed to outright Feudalism and the most technological advanced stuff are at best mass distraction devices or some kind of ML-based social mass manipulator, possibly just the implanted equivalent of slave shock-collars and the systems to control large number of those.
If even just a tiny fraction of the money spent in stock-buybacks was spent in space exploration we would already have space stations in Mars and be extracting minerals from the Asteroid Belt.
We're not currently evolving, we're devolving.
wrote last edited by [email protected]Assuming that space ships like in sci Fi are even physically possible. That's a tall ask. Momentum and energy are a bitch.
Also money can't buy "progress"
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You'd be working the fields.
You'd be working the ice hauler.
REMEMBER THE CANT
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You won't be a knight, more like a farmer.
I don't like farms, no thanks. So much bugs. My grandparents, while working on the farms, got bitten by some worm that sucks your blood, ouch, don't want that.
(Also if you are conscripted in medieval era, knives and swords and arrows hurt like hell, at least a bullet is a quick clean death)
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Do we think that’s actually true, though? Life, all life, has a tendency to spread out when a niche is open in a new environment which it can fill, and there’s nothing shown there that isn’t technically within the bounds of humanity. Before capitalism, before humans were even Homo sapiens, we were already migrating out of Africa and into Eurasia. The drive to explore is, in my opinion, deeply human, and nothing says that the model of that exploration or expansion needs to be capitalistic. We wouldn’t have colonized the world in prehistory if it did.
wrote last edited by [email protected]'The drive to explore' is from Star Trek. To boldly go where no one/man has gone before!
The US retold its origin story (the expansion West) through Westerns in the 50's. Particularly because the US won the space race, tv, and Hollywood, retold a future origin story expanding into space.
Many American people I come into contact with online really seem to have bought it, even though Star Trek portrays a communist society. The cognitive dissonance seemed to be on a national scale.
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Assuming that space ships like in sci Fi are even physically possible. That's a tall ask. Momentum and energy are a bitch.
Also money can't buy "progress"
wrote last edited by [email protected]Using materials obtained outside the Earth's gravity well, we can make much larger ships than if we have to launch them from the surface of the Earth. Of course that requires some kind of materials processing facilities in space, which is depending on stuff like Moon bases and the years of development of materials science in low and zero-gravity environments possible in those.
Further, the Apolo Program has most definitelly shown we can buy progress. Not "beyond the known principles of present day science" progress (so, no amount of money is going to get us FTL travel) but certainly Engineering progress (so solar sail towed asteroids, moon mining, moon-based nuclear reactors, mass drivers to push loads from the Moon surface into orbit, alternative ship designs using materials found outside the Earth's surface and/or low weight designs such as the insuflable space stations that were at one point suggested and even test at a small scale, and so on).
It wasn't by chance that what I suggested was asteroid mining and Mars stations rather than interstellar travel - the money wasted in the Iraq invasion alone over the decades since could have built the infrastructure needed, to get the engineeringe experience required to be able to do the former, not the latter (as that indeed requires a kind of progress that we cannot buy).
Instead, we have Facebook, over the counter credit derivatives and LLMs.
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You're in the good times right now.
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You won't be a knight, more like a farmer.
I don't like farms, no thanks. So much bugs. My grandparents, while working on the farms, got bitten by some worm that sucks your blood, ouch, don't want that.
(Also if you are conscripted in medieval era, knives and swords and arrows hurt like hell, at least a bullet is a quick clean death)
wrote last edited by [email protected]Yeah, I wanna sit in full plate armor and make-out... sounds fun. No, I wouldn't even want to live in a 17th century castle! Just living in a modern apartment, in a modern neighborhood is vastly more comfortable than a dank, dark, non-AC, poop in a chute 17th century castle.
Oh but we can sit around a campfire. Thats not so bad at least.
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Horse thievery is a hanging offense, hanging offense.
Well I guess that's something you should consider before you kill a knight
