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Sunday, September 6, 2009

«Lolcats Greater Than Space Travel»

Perfect video to follow Caturday1...

And yeah, I know how annoying this guy is to some of my readers. This isn't exactly one of his "less annoying" videos, either. So if you don't want to watch it, the general idea is we'd rather sit around and laugh at lolcats than develop space-age technologies.

I can has space hotel?


But really, it's not realistic to expect that level of technology yet, even if we were more driven toward those goals (and we should be). Just because some old movie had vastly overestimated the advancement of our technology does not mean that we should be able to meet its fictional timeline.

Granted, we should be further than we are, and do kinda have the attitude that the moon was "good enough". It is imperative for the long-term survival of humankind that we move to other planets and eventually, other star systems. Right now we have all our eggs in one basket. If something were to happen to that basket, mankind goes extinct.

We should at least try to live long enough to develop an artificial intelligence. Perhaps that AI will have the wisdom to diversify its existence, if humans fail to see the need to.

1: Specifically around the 2:05 time index in the video.

3 comments:

  1. I wasn't clear on if that was a sermon against video games or an admonition to invent warp drive.

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  2. First thing I noticed: They didn't have interstellar travel in 2001. Last I checked, Jupiter was in our solar system.

    Second, it's not that nobody cares about space travel, it's just a much harder problem. 2001 was written at a time when the integrated circuit had just been invented. Your PC could probably outperform all the computers on earth at that time, combined; replacing the computer on the Apollo with a graphing calculator would be an upgrade.
    Space travel, on the other hand, is as expensive as ever. This is, admittedly, partly a political problem: some possible improvements were killed by "OMG! Nuclear bad! Radiation scary!". But mostly, it's the fact that any rocket needs an incredible amount of energy to leave earth, and we still don't have the technology to build anything better than a rocket.

    But still, is it too much to ask for a (mostly) self-sufficient colony off of earth before I die? It's the first rule of computing: if it's really important, you should have an off-site backup. And what's more important than the human species?

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  3. @ Looney: I'm pretty sure it was pro-warp drive.

    @ Nathaniel: I don't know the story behind 2001 Space Odyssey. But yes, you won't need warp drive to reach Jupiter in a timely manner.

    I was just reading something about this... We do currently have the technology to build a space elevator that would work on a planet with gravity equal to or less than Mars. However, we still need stronger, lighter materials than we currently have to build a space elevator on Earth.

    I agree with you. I'd like to see at least a permanent colony on the moon in my lifetime.

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