Space Colonization and Existential Risk Wednesday, Dec 6 2006
risks 4:51 pm
If all goes well, NASA could have a permanent moon base by 2020. This is hopeful, because it’s a step towards putting our eggs in more than one basket. At the Lifeboat Foundation, there is a general consensus that setting up autonomous colonies outside of Earth’s atmospheric envelope is an urgent priority, even more urgent than traditional lofty goals, like curing cancer. If the 250+ members of our Scientific Advisory Board is any indication, quite a few people are on the same page about this.
For a colony to qualify as a true “Lifeboat”, it requires enough people to provide a bare minimum of genetic, racial, and skillset diversity – 200 individuals, preferably 2,000. Men, women, and children would all need to operate in harmony with maximum safety and minimum conflict. To be truly autonomous, a Lifeboat would need years worth of supplies – computers, medical equipment, robotics, food, water, recycling systems, and in the longer run, industrial facilities that can process raw materials into useful products. To avoid the need for constant resupplying from earth, a space or lunar colony would need to have very efficient recycling processes, and eventually start growing its own food.
Al Globus, a prominent advocate of space colonization who works at the NASA Ames Research Center, argues convincingly that we should build space colonies in orbit rather than on the Moon or Mars. Rapid resupply, continuous solar energy, better communication with Earth, and the availability of 1g artificial psuedogravity are all cited as good reasons to choose orbit rather than Mars or the Moon. In particular, children that grow up in the 1/6g or 1/3g environments of the Moon or Mars would lack the musculature necessary to function in 1g environments, making it extremely difficult or impossible for them to visit the Earth, which could be a problem.
By arguing that we ought to be setting up colonies on the Moon or Mars rather than in orbit, NASA is wasting taxpayers’ time and money.
In my view, the first priority of space colonization should be to create a viable backup of the human race. Stephen Hawking, a relative newcomer to the field of risk analysis, has proposed traveling all the way to other star systems, which, as grandiose and visionary as it sounds, barely confers any risk avoidance benefit above and beyond a space station situated at a Lagrange point.
Can we get the risk avoidance benefits of space simply by setting up colonies deep underground, or on remote Pacific islands? Unfortunately, probably not. The main reason is that, without full autonomy, and with such tempting access to the surface and the rest of the world, a subterranean Lifeboat is not likely to be fully secure, with people and goods constantly going back and forth, eliminating the point of setting up the colony in the first place. Also, the majority of the biomass is deep underground – if a destructive self-replicator were developed that thrives anaerobically, it could affect underground colonies in a profound way.
And who really wants to live a mile under the ground? With advanced VR, it could become more palatable, but it’s hard to imagine 2000 men, women, and children excited about spending their lives in a hole in the ground, much less a hole that you aren’t allowed to leave and has to be sealed practically airtight. The prospect is right out of a dystopic Phillip K. Dick novel. I, for one, would pass.
Burt Rutan, developer of SpaceShipOne, the first private vessel to reach space, made the following predictions in late 2004:
* Within 5 years 3,000 tourists will have been to space.
* Within 15 years sub-orbital tourism will be affordable, and 50,000 people will have flown.
* Within 15 years the first, expensive orbital tourist flights will have happened.
* Within 25 years orbital tourism will be affordable.
Al Globus states that if these estimations are roughly correct, he’d expect to see the first orbital colony built within 50 years, around 2055. Of course, various factors could slow or speed this up. Continuing private investment in space, popular support for organizations like the Lifeboat Foundation, and advances in molecular nanotechnology could bring the dream of space colonization radically closer – with a lot of hard work and exponential progress in science and technology, perhaps we could “break vacuum” on the first space colony in the early 2030s or even before. It would do humanity a great service, and might even be regarded as our greatest accomplishment this side of the Singularity.
Speaking of the Singularity, artificial superintelligence is possibly the only conceivable risk that would put even space colonies in danger of destruction. An AI with great robotics capabilities and optimization power, but lacking a goal system that assigns special status to sentient beings, could easily start remaking the Earth in its own image, not even conscious of inadvertantly taking numerous lives. For example, an AI designed to optimize a factory for making more widgets might realize that it could make the most widgets if it converted all the matter in the solar system into widget factories. Because advanced AI, once developed, could quickly become capable of thinking and acting millions of times faster than us meat puppets, by the time we realized what was going on and called a meeting, our atoms would be duly rearranged to maximize our god-given widget-making potential. Widgets, 1, Humanity, 0.
Because of the 21st century superthreats of AI and artificial life, we will not be able to rest truly easy, even when an autonomous space colony is orbiting above us. From the perspective of a recursively self-enhancing widgetmaking AI, that colony would look like just another tasty little matter nugget, perfectly suited for integration into the newest cutting-edge widget factory. Without inbuilt cognitive delimiters that assign diminishing marginal utility to the construction of each new widget factory, this poorly programmed UnFriendly AI (UFAI) would be just as excited about the twenty trillionth widget factory as the first.
For this reason, it is just as important, if not more so, to invest humanity’s resources in Friendly AI, cognitive systems that recognize us as sentient beings and respect our volition, even given complete read/write access to their own source code. Whether or not such a goal is possible is room for endless dualistic debate, but if the qualities of kindness and compassion really correspond to certain cognitive structures, and are actually not magical, inexplicable auras given to us by God, then it’s only a matter of time before we understand them in sufficient detail to create software systems that display these qualities.
This is not just a blue-sky transhumanist idea. Since Turing, computer scientists and the lay public have been fascinated with the idea of humans getting along with superhuman machines. The idea has been taken seriously in the United States Congress, where Ray Kurzweil testified that he expects superhuman artificial intelligence within the next thirty years. Congressman Brad Sherman, (D-CA), agrees that the issue deserves much more attention, as do mainstream risk analysts like Fred C. Ilke, and superstar VC Peter Thiel. For many who have given the issue serious examination, it’s not a matter of if it needs to be dealt with, but how.
As educated First Worlders who happen not to be starving, it’s our responsibility to start preparing solutions now, not later. This is not something that should only be attended to by dedicated scientists. Like the movement to stop global warming, it needs support from the media, teachers, the government, and the public. Here are a few things that you, specifically, can do to help:
1. Get informed. The complexity and newness of these issues can be overwhelming to anyone without a prior exposure to the subject. Thankfully, those who write about these topics are some of the clearest communicators in the scientific community, and strongly realize the importance of raising awareness on a global level. I recommend the writings of Christopher Phoenix, Nick Bostrom, and Eliezer Yudkowsky. Of course, you need only keep an eye on news headlines to see that prominent intellectuals like Stephen Hawking and Sir Martin Rees are concerned about existential risk.
2. Get engaged. Thanks to the proliferation of weblogs and personal websites, news and analysis is becoming a massively distributed, grassroots phenomena. There are hundreds of blogs that focus on the future, both the benefits and risks it might pose. By my standards, many of them paint a naively rosy picture of the coming century, but there are still many worth reading, and of course the vast majority of them encourage comments. Some of my favorite futurist blogs include Mike Treder’s CRN blog, Phil Bowermaster and Stephen Gordon’s Speculist, and Brian Wang’s Advanced Nanotechnology. Of course, there’s nothing stopping you from starting your own blog and blowing all these guys away. If you can chew gum and walk at the same time, you can probably start a blog.
3. Get serious. Accomplishing anything big requires serious people, serious time, and serious money. We’re not actually going to accomplish anything if we sit around chatting about how great it would be if someone else would work to fight existential risk. The few organizations engaged in activity of value are composed of people who are putting their financial security and professional reputations at risk by working full-time for ventures that depend on the foresight and regular contributions of their supporters. The least non-specialists can do is join the organizations and adopt a pattern of charitable donations. Also, supporters can offer contacts – friends or friends of friends that can help us get our message out into the media, or offer expertise useful for fleshing out and implementing mitigative strategies. Have a friend who is interested in global risk mitigation but has a few questions to ask? Refer them to us. And if you live in or around the Bay Area, I invite you to join me in San Francisco for lunch anytime.
Supporters of organizations working to fight existential risk have a big, hairy, audacious goal – a world where the threat of human exinction has been lowered to zero. So despite all the doomsaying and apocalyptic warnings, we’re actually quite more optimistic than your average guy on the street, who accepts global risk as a fact of life, something to be ignored lest it give us a bad day. I’d love to be alive in 2050, or 2100, and say, “hey, we did it, the threat is over.” Like the lowly Horseshoe crab, which has been going strong for 400 million years now, humanity – or whatever we choose to become – deserves to live long and prosper.
I agree about the need to set up autonomous colonies. But I would start on Earth, where we can build one sooner and cheaper. A space/moon colony may reduce more risk but the cost per marginal reduction in risk is probably much higher. Biotech may pose the most immediate existential risk; to significantly reduce it, you don’t need severe environmental isolation as much as severe social isolation. When nanotech matures to become a real risk in a few decades, then a moon/space colony could be more cost-effective.
“If all goes well, NASA could have a permanent moon base by 2020.”
You seriously expect that the government is going to follow through on a sixteen-year-long promise? That covers three, four, or five presidencies and eight Congressional elections; but more importantly, it includes a tremendous amount of technological advancement and attitude change. Using Kurzweil’s projections for general technological change, America (if there is one) in 2020 vs. 2006 will be roughly similar to America in 1935 vs. America in 1985. If F.D.R. had proposed a grand project in 1935, to be completed fifty (or even sixteen) years later, in all likelihood it never would have been finished due to the intervening war, Cold War, and various new domestic issues.
“To avoid the need for constant resupplying from earth, a space or lunar colony would need to have very efficient recycling processes, and eventually start growing its own food.”
Food for a colony of ~200 people could be easily supplied from Earth. Industrial production, however, would require iron, copper, nickel, silicon, carbon and a whole bunch of other materials that would have to be obtained somewhere. Just look at Earth: we easily mine and produce ten times as much tonnage of industrial metals, chemicals, etc. than food, and ours isn’t even dehydrated.
“that we should build space colonies in orbit rather than on the Moon or Mars.”
Okay, some of the problems with this:
- There are no raw materials in orbit. Everything, every metric ton, has to be hauled up from Earth in a very energy intensive process. In comparison, the Moon has large quantities of iron, titanium, aluminium, silicon, oxygen, potassium, and the like sitting there at any spot on the surface, and Mars has every element of significance to industry and biology in quantities comparable to Earth’s.
- No long-term radiation shielding. Sure, we can stay up there for a year or two, but living people’s entire lives would be fairly hazardous in such an environment. And don’t even think about hauling up radiation shielding from Earth; such material could mass several metric tons per square meter, for every occupied square meter of the orbital base.
- There is no continuous solar energy in orbit unless you go fairly high up. LEO sure as hell doesn’t get continuous solar energy.
- High-speed communication is a non-issue for any established base on the near side of the Moon. We transmitted television live using 1960s technology. Mars would require multiple large antennas to maintain access when the base goes away from Earth, but large antennas are hardly unrealistic technology even by the primitive industrial standards of an early Mars base. And of course, you can always use pulsed-lasers.
“barely confers any risk avoidance benefit above and beyond a space station situated at a Lagrange point.”
Stellar distances buy time in the event of a hostile AI. Even lightspeed communications would take four years to reach Alpha Centauri, giving anyone there time to work on a countermeasure.
“made the following predictions”
You of all people should know how often predicting the future fails miserably. It’ll happen when there’s the will to make it happen, which is not right now as most people are famously clueless about large projects. The space-advocacy organizations really need to get backing from millionaires, the next best thing to popular will.
“and are actually not magical, inexplicable auras given to us by God,”
Mathematically proving that quantum electrodynamics (which pretty much governs all human and other small-scale behavior) is Turing-computable would make an excellent graduate thesis; it would essentially prove that humans are Turing-equivalent.
“Like the movement to stop global warming, it needs support from the media, teachers, the government, and the public.”
The global warming people have an annual budget of over ten billion dollars for research and advocacy, and we still haven’t done much about it, or even agreed on a realistic solution.
I agree with jason that the first place to try building an autonomous colony is here on earth. There have been some early attempts to build materially closed environments in the past, but they were largely unsuccessful and their small ecosystems collapsed.
To be able to live in space for significant periods of time as vanilla humans we would need a fully automated agriculture system, and nanotech based manufacturing systems much more advanced than we have today, all being carefully monitored and controlled by intelligent computer systems.
Ultimately, as transhumanists advocate, the solution to long term human viability out in space is to ditch our fragile earth-centric bodies and design something new from scratch which is far more capable and durable. There is no real need to fear a robotic takeover, because in the distant future the robots will be us (re-engineered humans).
I think one of the problems with autonomous colony attempts have been that the environments have been too small, too light and underpowered.
We can see that some islands with not huge populations have sufficient agriculture to sustain themselves.
Nasa sending up 10-100 tons with rotating crews of 4 guys is not going to cut it, but it is better than nothing. Plus around 2020-30 China, Japan and India will probably be up there too.
A colony attempt needs to have a fairly big nuclear reactor or be able to mass produce solar cells on site.
Plus if the colony has supplies to last over one hundred years and manufacturing facilities and power then they would have time and capabilities to develop the means to make what they need if they are not autonomous at the time.
We need to try the ocean, underground and space locations.
the Nasa back to the moon plan is so scaled back (slightly modified and updated Apollo era stuff) that I think they can do it by redirecting their current 17 billion budget which they will around 2010 retiring the wasted money for the shuttle and ISS.
Nasa is doing some good stuff. If they could put more into some of the NIAC work. Plus they are now enabling some of the commercial ventures.
“If you can chew gum and walk at the same time, you can probably start a blog.”
Hey, come on. You also have to be able to type!
Excellent discussion! An autonomous ocean platform(s) (say in either the Pacific or Indian Ocean[s]) would be a good first-approximation (and you’d probably have sufficient volunteers to populate it), but for two stand-out problems: (1) Politico-military vulnerability. Unless backed by a very strong global public consensus—making it virtually an unthinkable *taboo* to attack or blockade such an oceanic platform—it could be attacked and perhaps even overrun by someone of Krazy Kim’s ilk, say. (2) It would vulnerable to specially-engineered airbourne pathogens. Use of dome-tech and other techniques can partially (perhaps near-totally) compensate for this, but unless the whole damn thing is domed (and for an optimal, ideal, final-stage autonomous ocean platform, we’re talkin’ at least several hundreds, if not thousands, of square miles), then there’d have to be some sort of early detection and monitoring tech already deployed. Indeed, this would be true, even *if* the whole damn thing *were* completely domed-over. Breathable air still has to come-in from *somewhere*: So there’d need to be sophisticated filtering processes in place. One natural advantage of such an ocean platform is that it could use seawater, with its naturally relatively somewhat stringent (i.e., harsh[er]) ph, as part of that filtering process.
But for more robust artifical life (AL) and nano-”goos” of whatever “color”, one would need very sophisticated “active sheild” countermeasures. And, even so, for these more dangerous problems (which will, of course, become a problem at the same time as, or shortly after, bio-tech pathogens) the *best* place for an “ARK” is off-planet & out-of-atmosphere. Hence the desirability of LaGrangean-point colonies. But Tom (McCabe) is right, of course (as usual): As soon as feasible, we want to get the necessary resources *from the *Moon** (and perhaps, eventually, the asteroid belt). Get the resources and move them around in 0G or 1/6G instead of using beaucoup energy just to haul the “stuff” out of Earth’s gravity-well. Ergo, a Moon-based mining-&-processing establishment (which could be mostly cybernated) would be the way to go. Now, of course, cybernated operations notwithstanding, one could still have the place “peopled” to some extent, but you’d want to shuttle ‘em into artificial (“pseudo”) G environments every once in while to maintain proper terrestrial bone-&-muscle mass. So I’m all for the Moon base project. Same goes for Mars. And, again, Tom is absolutely right, other than the time-lag *per se*, there ain’t a problem with robust *communication per se* back-&-forth with Mars; and, *a fortiori*, the Moon as well!
But as for the Alpha Centauri thing, remember it’s approximately 4.5 *light*-years distant. Even using a sophisticated ramjet, say, you’re still not gonna reach there in anyhing less that approx. 5-6 yrs, as you’ve gotta give the thing time to accelerate up to near-light speed. Plus, I doubt we’re gonna build a ramjet (and/or other tech for gradually reaching near-c speed) anytime soon (not in the next 10-15 yrs anyway). So were talkin’ even slower—much slower—travel time to Alpha Centauri and/or other relatively near-by star-systems. But if they’re movin’ that slow, non-friendly robotic craft could probably overtake them, if not fairly soon-on, then at least eventually. So the whole near-star-system thing, despite Tom’s correct point as-far-as-it-goes, is ultimately MOOT for the foreseeable future. Which does indeed mean, folks, NOTE BENE, that we’re back to the importance of (META)FRIENDLY A(G)I. ‘Cause, as just discussed, we ain’t gonna (be able to) **have** several light-years distance between a life-boat population and a robotic onslaught dedicated to transforming their protoplasm into “widgets-du-jour”!!
Tom: “Mathematically proving that quantum electrodynamics (which pretty much governs all human and other small-scale behavior) is Turing-computable would make an excellent graduate thesis; it would essentially prove that humans are Turing-equivalent.” Spot-on! One gets the impression that, e.g., both Dave Deutsch and Hans Moravec (and, I suppose, Frank Tipler as well, come to think of it) implicitly presume that humans are in fact Turing-equivalent and Turing-computable.
Bob Mottram: “To be able to live in space for significant periods of time as vanilla humans we would need a fully automated agriculture system, and nanotech based manufacturing systems much more advanced than we have today, all being carefully monitored and controlled by intelligent computer systems.
Ultimately, as transhumanists advocate, the solution to long term human viability out in space is to ditch our fragile earth-centric bodies and design something new from scratch which is far more capable and durable. There is no real need to fear a robotic takeover, because in the distant future the robots will be us (re-engineered humans).” PRECISELY!! Well-said!
Brian Wang: “A colony attempt needs to have a fairly big nuclear reactor or be able to mass produce solar cells on site…We need to try the ocean, underground and space locations.” Also, again, absolute spot-on and well-said. As for nukes, I’m already “sold” on thorium, thanks to you, Brian, as well as Michael (A.) As for the underground thing, Brian (and Tom, you, too, for that matter), you keep up with this stuff much, much better than I do: What are our current underground excavation capabilities? That is, How much can we carve-out in what timeframe and with what cost(s) (both energy and financial)? And, also, what are the conjectured/projected capabilities and costs of nanotech excavation? Of course, at least in-principle, we could also just use already-existing caves (such as Carlsbad, say) and/or deep mining sites…
THANK YOU ALL, and especially you, Michael A., for being able to chew gum while walking and/or typing…
“What are our current underground excavation capabilities?”
World coal production is around 5 billion metric tons, as well as 1.1 billion metric tons of iron ore and 120 million tons of calcium carbonate. This is done at considerable expense (in the billions of dollars), and such materials are quite common and concentrated, so there’s not a huge sorting problem adding to the expense. Gold, for example, has a yearly production of only around 2,500 metric tons, yet millions of tons of ore must be mined because gold is found in only the occasional scattered grain.
Great read !
The largest benefit I see in a moonbase as opposed to a orbital base is that a moonbase would be more self reliant out of necessity sake. The first big mistake though and the whole project would be scrapped.
Great read Michael,
Thanks!
>underground excavation
I think in terms of something fairly large and deep but controlled think of the Channel tunnel
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Channel_Tunnel
It was dug at the rate of 2,400 tons of soil per hour. 150 feet below sea level.
Modern Coal mining is not precise and mine shafts are less used now. In the US the big thing is mountain top removal, where they blow away the top dirt and then scoop out the coal.
Some stats on deep mine shafts
http://hypertextbook.com/facts/2003/YefimCavalier.shtml
Big natural and artificial underground chambers:
Largest cave is the Sarawak chamber The Sarawak Chamber measures 2,300 feet (700 m) long, 1,300 feet (396 m) wide and at least 230 feet (70 m) high. The chamber is so massive it could hold 38 football fields or 10 jumbo jets nose-to-tail in it.
The ATLAS cavern, 55 m long, 40 m high and 35 m wide (also located 100m below the surface) is the largest man-made underground structure in the world.
The main underground chamber (UK: Dinorwic Power Station.) is the largest man made chamber in Europe, at 179 metres x 24 metres x 60 metres high. Communications are through a total tunnel length exceeding 16 kilometres, much of it around 10 metres in diameter- ample for a two lane road. The electricity travels in underground cables for up to 11 kilometres before overground transmission lines appear.
Big open pit mine
Some pictures and stats on underground mines 50,000 tons of ore per day is big for a single underground mining operation. Moving 700,000 tons of material from a (open pit) mine per day is big.
[...] 11 – Space Colonization and Existential Risk “If all goes well, NASA could have a permanent moon base by 2020. This is hopeful, because it’s a step towards putting our eggs in more than one basket.” (tags: survival futurism diaspora risk existential species human orbital Moon Mars colony space) [...]
The Strategic Petroleum Reserve oil is stored in naturally produced salt caverns, suggesting it would be very expensive to build 0.1 km^3-size containers either above or below ground.
[...] Accelerating Future » Space Colonization and Existential Risk [...]
“Rapid resupply, continuous solar energy, better communication with Earth, and the availability of 1g artificial psuedogravity are all cited as good reasons to choose orbit rather than Mars or the Moon.”
How easy would it be to supplement the Moon’s 1/6 g with some pleonasmic artificial pseudogravity? Surely just a matter of building and powering a large centrifuge and living in it.
Superb further discussion! Thanks much, guys (especially Tom & Brian)! Yeah, duh!! I should’ve thought of the Chunnel! Demonstrative of how much we can do even with current tech. And thanks, Brian for the mention of and link to the Sarawak cave. It would seem to dwarf even Carlsbad, which is, if I’m not mistaken the largest natural cave in the Western Hemisphere (or, at least, the North American Continent…, but I don’t recall South America having anything comparable, but I might be mistaken…). So we do have the ability to consider underground facilities.
But, Brian, the politicos (aka politicians, aka political weenies) may not allow lifeboat programs to proceed on ALL THREE fronts (off-planet, autonomous-oceanic, and underground)—if any—because they’ll WHINE about the cost(s) and the “redundancy”. Plus, it WILL be expensive, and damn-well SHOULD come at the cost of other, more-or-less utter porkbarrel crap—but the Demopublicans (aka Gambinos) and the Rebpublicrats (aka Genoveses) won’t put up with very many (if any) of their porkbarrel, rent-gathering, RICOesque “Oxes” being “gored”. Ergo, good luck getting much if any lifeboat financing from these turds.
On the trustworthiness, integrity, and honor of politicians:
http://www.markfiore.com/animation/gops.html
Hey, Tom: That’s cool, indee priceless (at the risk of sounding like a MC commercial!). THANKS much for posting that. I’m amazed at the self-proclaimed(!!!) “classical liberals” who think Dubya and is gang of neo-fascists are worthy of their support!! Gimme a break!! There are very few—if indeed ANY—politicians, whether in DC or in the various Union-State capitals, that are not corrupt (or at least chickenshit) to some significant extent. I very highly recommend Aaron Russo’s “advocmentary”, *America: Freedom to Fascism*, available for both viewing and purchase at http://www.freedomtofascism.com/
And check this out: Patrick Conlon over at bornagainredneck.blogspot banished me from his blog just for broaching the possibility that Dubya and his cronies are not beyond-criticism, especially from a “classical liberal” perspective (which is what Patrick professes to be). Hey, Patrick, I really meant no disrespect, man, but hey, aren’t you a bit close-minded??!!! NOT what one would expect from a true “classical liberal.” But then again, with all due respect to Lu von Mises, one the greatest (and still underappreciated) economists of all time, was said to have a rather closed-minded streak and a rather tempestuous temper!! Go figure…
Oh, and yet again!!, y’all should really get up-to-speed on the actual nature of, and law pertaining to, the federal income EXCISE tax. See Pete Hendrickson’s excellent site, http://www.losthorizons.com/Newsletter.htm and view his excellent 20-minute video covering the essentials at http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6994111921004029996&hl=en
Ciao for now…
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