Question The Earth is scheduled for demolition

[Artlav]

More no, than yes. What is mildly interstellar? Relativistic speeds? Just a bit higher than escape velocity from the solar system? Coming from outside the Galaxy, though no asteroids should be that?

That's 80 km/s which is fairly fast compared to the average velocities of stars in the solar neighborhood.

About that fast. Though unlikely, it's not impossible, and assuming tweaks the probability.

My theory is the ISS crew will cannibalize fuel from derelict satellites and pack up for Mars.

To what end? No food, little air and water, a couple of asexual women. They proably won't even make it that far.

"WE DID IT FOR THE LULZ. PRAY YOU'RE NOT THE NEXT WE TARGET"

Better to remove "OURSELVES", will sound much more interesting, no?

dig 2 kilometers into Northen or Center Tibete (*) and get Svalbard and other genetic/information vaults into the Flak-style-bunker that would be built there. Better also bring some 50 or more people. I doubt that the any impact would damage severely the installations unless the mountains were directly hit.

"-Below us is a typical failed core class planet, unlike it's sister world closer to the star there is a moon around it, resulting in a much thinner atmosphere. It appears that the planet was hit by a moonlet about quarter the size of it's moon, causing total melt-down and re-solidification, creating eerie, continent-like structures on it's surface. Another dead world, incapable of supporting life either in the past or in present. Next..."

In essence, how are some hypotetical aliens going to figure out where and even if to dig for the information?
Even more, how could they figure out what all these carbon compounds means?

every powerplant would join power to antennas all over the world in strategic positions that would send the information/genetic sequences into all the universe creating something like the Mother of All Omnidirectional Radio Emmiters: luckily there's an alien race that likes to preserve all biodiversity out there and re-create us.

"-And in this cage we can see a curious planet-surfasic creature made out of below-equilibrium polimer compounds. The curious part is that it was constructed from the background EM noise of our neighbor galaxy, thus becaming the proof of superfractal universe theory. Many investigations were perfomed on the creature in effort to uncover its secrets, but none shown any exceptional characteristics. Althrough it seems equipped with a chaotic resonator of sufficient capacity for self-awareness, no signs of intelligence of level comparable to our own was observed..."

Does not sound like a survival or hope of meaningfull existence to me. We are nothing without our knowledge and our past, just a curiosity in some alien zoo.

 

[sunshine135]

I guess that would mean no Orbiter 2012?

One can only imagine how humanity would degrade in that period. Who, with any more than 3 years of income, would bother to work? As the days approached closer and closer to D-Day, the Earth would devolve into total chaos, mass hysteria, panic, and grief. Good luck with your beer party- good luck finding any beer!

 

[Hartmann]

Two years is a very short time to do an effective saving operation.

The only way could be launch all supply as they can to the iss with a selected crew ,with samples of adn, and historic data of mankind in a durable support .

After of the event the remaining of the space station and the crew could stay forever (probably death) until some alien civilization arrive to the solar system and know about our world.

With more time, a decade or more, could be possible make a moon , mars , or titan colony, or a big spacecraft for a selected crew with the objective of mars or titan .

with all money of all countries dedicated to the space exploration,
(no defense budget, war economy, data recopilation, and a lot of hard work for everybody)

 

[vonneuman]

Now, what we need to do is 1. build an base on the moon several meters below the ground.not to house people, not enough time, but to house all human knowledge. The information would need to be stored in a vacuum, easy in space. The base would need to be able to transmit the information back to Earth in the event someone is alive after it is over. The base would need to be found some how, some kind of solar powered deacon would do.
2. Find a lawn chair, a nice beach, and a cold drink to watch the show.

 

[The 2-Belo]

If the news were broken right now, I can expect that most humans would not be able to handle such news in the first place, and you would most definitely see the immediate commencement of worldwide riots, mass murders, collective wild drunken partysex, work stoppages, stockpiling of assault weapons... the complete breakdown of human society. Don't stuff yourself onto the commuter train tomorrow in a suit to go to work... do anything you want! In three years, we're all toast, so who cares if you go out and break stuff and waste a couple people? And you know they're likely going to be coming for you, too, so make sure your HK-93 is cleaned and oiled!

I don't think anyone would be able to ready any space vehicle while this is all going on.

 

[JamesG]

I think it will depend alot on how the news is broken and specifically if effective leadership steps forward (along with effective security forces) to focus populations on the goal of saving a viable human colony elsewhere. Yes there would be problems, but I don't think that complete anarchy would break out. Look at New York on 9/11, or Japan or Germany in the aftermath of WW2.

The moon would take a likewise pummeling from any "repaving" event on Earth. Debris impacts and disrupted tidal forces are likely make any base on or under the lunar surface risky. Best places would be Mars or the belt major bodies.

In probably less than a million years, the Earth surface would resettle, solidify, and stratify back into the geo, hydro, and gas layers we are familiar with. It might resemble its primordial origins, but most of its mass would be retained. If a viable human population (10K+) were able to get away, then by the time the planet healed, they would be well suited to "terra form" to rapidly get it habitable again instead of waiting the billion years or so for nature to re-do it.

 

[Ark]

Putting aside the jokes, there's pretty much two ways it could go: Everything falls apart and people do nothing useful, or the governments of the world pool resources to find a solution.

Assuming the latter, forget new technology, mass production of existing launchers is thrown into overdrive, with almost all of the developed world's manufacturing capability retooled to build Shuttle-Cs, Energias, and whatever other high-capacity boosters are made with off-the-shelf tech. A frenzied mass exodus of people and supplies are shot towards the moon on outrageously accelerated timetables. Success rates of 30-50% are considered good. Massive ecological damage results from around-the-clock rocket launches and crashes.

Actual people being sent to the Moon are fairly limited, with most lift capacity given over to machinery for manufacturing consumables and supporting farming. Large amounts of genetic material (sperm and eggs) are frozen and shipped for future use, because the people that actually escape won't have a suitably diverse gene pool.

In the end, all but a small handful of humanity gets wiped out. Those that survive are faced with building a livable, sustainable, expandable settlement in the most inhospitable place we've ever been, with no promise of assistance outside what they can make for themselves. They might make it, they might not. Either way, IMO it's the best-case scenario.

 

[Andy44]

Massive ecological damage results from around-the-clock rocket launches and crashes.

The planet's about to get wiped out and you're worried about a few rocket launches harming the environment. Priorities, man.

 

[Ark]

The planet's about to get wiped out and you're worried about a few rocket launches harming the environment. Priorities, man.

Exactly, any kind of ecological consequences from the epic-scale production and launch frequency is meaningless. I don't know what exactly it would be, though, but I figure a Shuttle launch times however many per day times the year, year and a half of full-time launching you'd get after retooling everything.

 

[Andy44]

I really don't think that even if you launched two shuttles a day you'd get much enviro impact compared to the millions of cars and megawatts of powerplants out there. Rockets are a drop in the bucket, even in the frenzy of escaping a coming disaster.

 

[Ark]

It wouldn't necessarily be just from rockets. What would we do except initiate violent exploitation of any and all natural resources to fuel mass rocket production? I figure a serious, worldwide effort would be something akin to US military goods production in WW2. We wouldn't need new cars, new computers, new sofas and new toys. Everything would be dedicated to either direct production of rockets, or production of food, fuel, and other commodities needed to support the people making the rockets. Wouldn't energy useage and pollution soar to an exponentially huge peak right before the end?

 

[JamesG]

It wouldn't necessarily be just from rockets. What would we do except initiate violent exploitation of any and all natural resources to fuel mass rocket production? I figure a serious, worldwide effort would be something akin to US military goods production in WW2. We wouldn't need new cars, new computers, new sofas and new toys. Everything would be dedicated to either direct production of rockets, or production of food, fuel, and other commodities needed to support the people making the rockets. Wouldn't energy useage and pollution soar to an exponentially huge peak right before the end?

we could easily do it. The only real question would be if we had enough time switch production to this emergency "lifeboat" program. For example the existing shuttle fleet does not have the numbers nor tun around time to support a "2 flights a week" pace. Even production of new carbon copies of STS or other heavy lift couldn't get done in under a year I don't think.
Most likely course would be massive nuclear "Orion" ships.

 

[jedidia]

The only real question would be if we had enough time switch production to this emergency "lifeboat" program.

Actually, I see another real question: Will Billy Everyday working at the factory put up with the Idea of working his arse off for the next three years, just to get blown to smithereens anyways while someone else makes his way off with his hard work in a heroic effort to preserve humanity that may or may not fail, or will he rather quit his job and get drunk?

 

[T.Neo]

I think some sort of survival plan would be possible. If we can go to the Moon and back in 10 years from no spaceflight experience at all for a political cause, we could manage to send a viable amount of payload and humans a safe distance from Earth providing that the survival of humanity is at stake.

We have at least the technological *concepts* for escape plans, if not the actual hardware.

And motivating the workforce for the project should be easy enough; there are many methods. They might be horrible, and probably even prohibited by international law, but they'll work.

 

[Linguofreak]

"-Below us is a typical failed core class planet, unlike it's sister world closer to the star there is a moon around it, resulting in a much thinner atmosphere. It appears that the planet was hit by a moonlet about quarter the size of it's moon, causing total melt-down and re-solidification, creating eerie, continent-like structures on it's surface. Another dead world, incapable of supporting life either in the past or in present. Next..."

In essence, how are some hypotetical aliens going to figure out where and even if to dig for the information?
Even more, how could they figure out what all these carbon compounds means?

I'm somewhat more pessimistic than Dig Gil about the possibility of any installation on Earth's surface surviving, but I think we might well be able to place artifacts on the moon (or, depending if the impact geometry is unfavorable for survival of artifacts on the moon*, in solar orbit), that would be noticeable enough if there are/will be any aliens out there capable of coming to visit.

*Saturn's moon Enceladus is just about in the size and mass range we're talking about. At 80 km/s, it would have 2.7 times the energy needed to overcome the moon's gravitational binding energy (the energy needed to blow the moon apart and make sure it's gravity didn't bring it back together). In other words, it could hit the moon first, blow it to smithereens, and *keep on coming*, hitting the Earth while still having most of its energy. However, since it has a lower density than the moon, it would have to be a grazing collision for this to happen. A direct collision would just result in the whole Moon/Enceladus assembly blowing apart in all directions, although something tells me a good chunk of the moon would probably end up flying this way.

Direct collision or not, and regardless of whether anything actually hit Earth, simply Enceladus hitting the moon at 80 km/s would be more than enough to obliterate life on Earth. Assuming that all the energy were released evenly over the course of a day, the event, as seen from Earth, would be around 1500 times brighter than the sun. Realistically, it would be much brighter at first and would then fade off, so it would probably be much brighter than 1500 times the sun for the first few seconds/minutes/hours, remain brighter than the Sun for a few days, and then fade away over the course of weeks.

---------- Post added at 13:36 ---------- Previous post was at 13:02 ----------

I think some sort of survival plan would be possible. If we can go to the Moon and back in 10 years from no spaceflight experience at all for a political cause, we could manage to send a viable amount of payload and humans a safe distance from Earth providing that the survival of humanity is at stake.

We could send a decent number of humans to a safe distance, but it wouldn't really buy them much time. There aren't any other Earthlike planets within a few years (or even decades) travel time at the speeds we can achieve, and long-term survival in space without support from the infrastructure of such a planet is pretty much impossible.

 

[T.Neo]

We could send a decent number of humans to a safe distance, but it wouldn't really buy them much time. There aren't any other Earthlike planets within a few years (or even decades) travel time at the speeds we can achieve, and long-term survival in space without support from the infrastructure of such a planet is pretty much impossible.

You don't need an Earthlike planet for long-term survival, just some water and sunlight. And a large enough capacity to produce spare parts for habitation and power generation structures.

Provided you could let them survive for a few years or decades until they could land on Mars or the Moon (if the suface is conducive to landing/semi-permanant habitation) where they could survive long enough to produce a self-sustaining in-situ industry.

Of course, I'm talking really big city-sized Orion nuke ships (they're okay now since Earth gets fried anyway). And you can reduce crew size dramatically by storing preserved eggs and sperm (or perhaps even embryos for implantation) aboard.

 

[Urwumpe]

You don't need an Earthlike planet for long-term survival, just some water and sunlight.

Not even Algae can survive on just this. Maybe you should think again about what is really needed.

 

[SiberianTiger]

Our knowledge of artificial biospheres is still mostly embryonic. Even a simple thing like oxygen producing / CO2 consuming is running into problems when tested against a real artificial environment. Another problem is a quickly spreading harmful germs infestation, displacing the biotas we would like to have. Very little is done to study birth and growth in artificial biospheres.

Thus far, we can't live without the natural biosphere, and a generation-ark's crew is pretty much doomed because of this.

 

[Linguofreak]

You don't need an Earthlike planet for long-term survival, just some water and sunlight. And a large enough capacity to produce spare parts for habitation and power generation structures.

You need an expensive industry to provide everything that Earth provides for free. It is a topic that's debated alot, but my general feeling is that the economics of it just don't work out. On Earth air is too cheap and ubiquitous to meter, and gravity holds it down for you. In space, you have to manufacture it, clean it, etc, and you have to build pressure vessels to keep it in. And, unlike on Earth, the best places to find water in space are where there's not much sunlight, and the best places to find sunlight are where there's not much water. And even where you do find the resources you need, there's lots and lots of "empty" in between. Everything we take for granted here, air, water, energy, shelter, terra firma, gravity, radiation protection, etc, has to be manufactured.

Provided you could let them survive for a few years or decades until they could land on Mars or the Moon (if the suface is conducive to landing/semi-permanant habitation) where they could survive long enough to produce a self-sustaining in-situ industry.

It's not certain if the surface of Mars or the moon would be better than building a can in orbit.

Of course, I'm talking really big city-sized Orion nuke ships (they're okay now since Earth gets fried anyway). And you can reduce crew size dramatically by storing preserved eggs and sperm (or perhaps even embryos for implantation) aboard.

While Orion drives are certainly possible with current tech, you certainly couldn't a "city sized" one within three years.

 

[T.Neo]

Not even Algae can survive on just this.

Well, of course you'll need organic material, etc. which that is carried and recycled aboard the ship. And the ingredients for such are not unique to Earth.

Thus far, we can't live without the natural biosphere, and a generation-ark's crew is pretty much doomed because of this.

Granted, we do not yet have the required data to build a successful self-sufficient biosphere. The system aboard the ship would not be intended for indefinate survival, just for a few years of mulling around the inner solar system until reaching a suitable body for landing.

But the question is: do you want to die, or have a small chance of survival?

EDIT:

You need an expensive industry to provide everything that Earth provides for free.

Yes, but an expensive industry certainly beats greeting obliteration with open arms. My general belief is that it does work (or else it wouldn't be given the attention that it has by countless scientists), although we'll never be sure until we actually try it out.

It's not certain if the surface of Mars or the moon would be better than building a can in orbit.

Well, at least on the surface of a celestial body you have matter which can be used for food, fuel, shelter etc. It's hostile and you do have to "pay" to get resources, but it has advantages over empty space.

While Orion drives are certainly possible with current tech, you certainly couldn't a "city sized" one within three years.

I think you'd be surprised what would be possible if the collective output of humanity was channeled into a single project.

Either way, I do doubt you'd be able to do so in 3 years. Maybe 10, certainly 20. But 3 is somewhat short.