The Discovery Enterprise: Evacuate Earth

Today on Discovery Enterprise we examine a nightmarish scenario namely the
imminent countdown to the destruction of our home planet and our immediate
necessity to evacuate the Earth. In Evacuate Earth, we envision a scenario
in which a neutron star - tiny and incredibly dense- is flying straight
toward our solar system. When it arrives in 75 years, it will pull our
planets out of their orbits and shred the planet we live on. Our only choice
is band together, create a vast ship and a new drive to power it, and find a
new planet in the closest possible solar system to escape to. After a
journey of almost a century, the ship will deliver mankind's remnants to our
new home, and the human story will begin again.

http://www.discovery-enterprise.com/2013/02/evacuate-earth.html

On 2/12/13 9:56 PM, Alex Michael Bonnici wrote:

> Today on Discovery Enterprise we examine a nightmarish scenario namely the
> imminent countdown to the destruction of our home planet and our immediate
> necessity to evacuate the Earth. In Evacuate Earth, we envision a scenario
> in which a neutron star - tiny and incredibly dense- is flying straight
> toward our solar system. When it arrives in 75 years, it will pull our
> planets out of their orbits and shred the planet we live on.

OK, I was with them up to this point.

> Our only choice
> is band together, create a vast ship and a new drive to power it, and find a
> new planet in the closest possible solar system to escape to.

...And here it got silly. We don't need a planet to live on, and if we
did...

> After a journey of almost a century, the ship will deliver mankind's remnants to our
> new home, and the human story will begin again.

...we'd be screwed, because we can't (in the near future) build even a
small ship that could reach an extrasolar planet in under a century, let
alone take a significant fraction of humanity there.

Imminent destruction of our planet would be an impetus to give up
planetary chauvinism, not to find some other planet to cling to around
some other star.

(Alex, I'm not picking on you -- I know you didn't write this. And I
appreciate the pointer, despite the writers' lack of imagination.)

> The Discovery Enterprise: Evacuate Earth

>
> http://www.discovery-enterprise.com/2013/02/evacuate-earth.html

Very glitzy but why oh why do they insist on finding another gravity well to imprison mankind. Build the colony ships, lots of them and send them in all directions. If the descendants want to go the planetary way it is up to them but at least we have not put all our eggs in one basket. Even if there is no neutron star due in 75 years, lets do it anyway!

If you are evacuating the whole planet, you might want more than one ship.

On Feb 12, 2013, at 8:56 PM, Alex Michael Bonnici wrote:

I watched this the other day, like all such shows it's a bit of a mixed
bag.

On the plus side, the escape ark is an O'Neill cylinder propelled using
an Orion style engine.

On the down side, they launched everything from Earth in what appeared
to be 100ton lots, took about 60 years to build it (the Neutron star was
spotted 70 odd years before it got close enough to pull the earth to
bits), only built one and when they got to the destination system
planned on going down to the planet to begin again.

They also disparaged the "competing" alternatives like an antimatter
drive by having the rich people finance an antimatter drive ship,
launching it in one shot from Earth and having it blow up on the pad.

If I remember correctly they only planned on putting 250,000 in the ark
(picked by ballot).

I found myself getting annoyed at some of the things they did, as it
seemed a rather odd way of doing things when they could have done things
differently using in space resources and gotten a much larger percentage
of the population off the planet and far enough away from the Neutron
star to survive.

B

On 13/02/2013 17:40, Al Globus wrote:

Yes, I too have found it odd that even when thinkers correctly realize that a starship with any realistic propulsion system would, of necessity, wind up essentially being an O'Neill habitat, they then seem to utterly fail to understand that having such technology in hand would be a game-changer for what you would do on arriving at the other star system. It's also not widely appreciated that such technology makes all other star systems targets for settlement, not just the ones with Earthlike planets or Sol-like spectral features.

The idea of finding and colonizing an "Earth 2" in another solar system is such a ubiquitous feature of science fiction that it now has a very strong hold even on those attempting to do serious thinking about our future beyond Earth. It's a wrench for them to consider any other alternative.

Regards,

Mike Combs

On 2/13/13 7:32 AM, Combs, Mike wrote:

> Yes, I too have found it odd that even when thinkers correctly realize
> that a starship with any realistic propulsion system would, of
> necessity, wind up essentially being an O'Neill habitat, they then seem
> to utterly fail to understand that having such technology in hand would
> be a game-changer for what you would do on arriving at the other star
> system. It's also not widely appreciated that such technology makes all
> other star systems targets for settlement, not just the ones with
> Earthlike planets or Sol-like spectral features.

Indeed, it means that we wouldn't need to leave the Sol system just
because the Earth got ripped apart. We've got a nice steady sun, and
lots of raw materials (which would be even more accessible under this
scenario). Everything we need to live would be right here. We would
simply transform from a one-planet species, cooped up at one point in
space, to a cloud of millions of habitats, swarming around the solar system.

One wrinkle this neutron-star notion would bring is that it would make
all orbits quite chaotic. So our space colonies would need to be built
with strong engines, and perhaps be kept smaller and more maneuverable
than otherwise, as they'll need to be constantly moving around to avoid
collisions and gather resources.

> The idea of finding and colonizing an "Earth 2" in another solar system
> is such a ubiquitous feature of science fiction that it now has a very
> strong hold even on those attempting to do serious thinking about our
> future beyond Earth. It's a wrench for them to consider any other
> alternative.

Quite so, and that's unfortunate. In the long run, I doubt it matters
-- when the time comes, orbital colonies WILL happen, because they are
so much more sensible than any alternative. Planetary colonies will
happen too, for romantic reasons, and that's fine. But when human
population numbers in the trillions, I doubt most of those will be
living on planets.

Still, the focus on finding an "Earth 2" is a distraction. It makes
most people think that moving off Earth is something to consider
thousands of years from now, instead of in this century, and therefore
not something to really strive for.

--- In spacesettlers, Joe Strout wrote:

> We've got a nice steady sun, and lots of raw materials
> (which would be even more accessible under this scenario).

Ooooo, now there's a thought! If the Asteroid Belt contains enough material to build habitats totaling three thousand times the Earth's surface area, then how many times Earth can you build with the materials of the shredded Earth? I'm thinking hundreds of thousands if not millions.

From: sailor.barsoom

> Ooooo, now there's a thought! If the Asteroid Belt contains enough material to build habitats totaling
> three thousand times the Earth's surface area, then how many times Earth can you build with the
> materials of the shredded Earth?

I remember reading a SF story (I think it was in Omni) about a distant future where they wanted to build a Dyson Sphere. This would require transmuting so much of the matter of Jupiter that they realized the heat generated would be a problem for orbital habitats throughout the system. So they needed to start by building a complete shell around Jupiter, and had calculated that the mass of the Earth (just about the only rocky body still in existence) would be just about the right amount of building material... if they could just do something with the pesky minority who still insisted on living there.

Regards,

Mike Combs

Am 14.02.2013 17:50, schrieb sailor.barsoom:
> --- In spacesettlers, Joe Strout wrote:
>
> > We've got a nice steady sun, and lots of raw materials
> > (which would be even more accessible under this scenario).
>
> Ooooo, now there's a thought! If the Asteroid Belt contains enough
> material to build habitats totaling three thousand times the Earth's
> surface area, then how many times Earth can you build with the materials
> of the shredded Earth?
If you are speaking of the film, who should build them? The billions
left on Earth would be dead, when the materials of the Earth would be
available and the rest of 250000 heading towards an other star.

Wouldn't this materials be a ring around this neutron star?
I guess this star is on a fast transit and would be away some years
later taking the ring with it.

A better project, when humanity had 75 years time before the impact
would be, to build several habitats from materials already in space on
asteroids instead of sending all the materials up from Earth and start
with the evacuation of Earth years before the impact happens with the
first habitat, whereby the people already evacuated could build further
habitats for those yet staying on Earth.

Best wishes

Frank

I'm thinking hundreds of thousands if not millions.

On 2/14/13 12:25 PM, Frank wrote:

>> Ooooo, now there's a thought! If the Asteroid Belt contains enough
>> material to build habitats totaling three thousand times the Earth's
>> surface area, then how many times Earth can you build with the materials
>> of the shredded Earth?
> If you are speaking of the film, who should build them? The billions
> left on Earth would be dead, when the materials of the Earth would be
> available and the rest of 250000 heading towards an other star.

I don't think we were still talking about the film. We're talking about
more realistic scenarios.

> Wouldn't this materials be a ring around this neutron star?
> I guess this star is on a fast transit and would be away some years
> later taking the ring with it.

No, it's highly unlikely the neutron star would actually capture much
material. It would just generally tear things up as it passes through.
A shredded Earth would probably either form a thin ring around the
Sun, with a denser bulge where the Earth used to be.

> A better project, when humanity had 75 years time before the impact
> would be, to build several habitats from materials already in space on
> asteroids instead of sending all the materials up from Earth and start
> with the evacuation of Earth years before the impact happens with the
> first habitat, whereby the people already evacuated could build further
> habitats for those yet staying on Earth.

Yes, exactly right. And I think the point of this thread is, there are
plenty of materials to build new habitats -- even more so if Earth is
destroyed.

Best,
- Joe

Right, so here's hoping.

Tim

--- In spacesettlers@yahoogroups.com, Joe Strout wrote:

--- In spacesettlers, Frank wrote:

> If you are speaking of the film, who should build them?

The several million people who survived the neutron star because they followed the plan you outline below, instead of what they do in the show.

> The billions left on Earth would be dead, when the
> materials of the Earth would be available and the rest
> of 250000 heading towards an other star.
>
> Wouldn't this materials be a ring around this neutron
> star?
> I guess this star is on a fast transit and would be away
> some years later taking the ring with it.

Now that I hadn't thought of. I sort of figured the tidal forces ripped the Earth (and Mars and Venus as well, which is why the show wasn't all about terraforming?) apart, but didn't actually hit our planet.

> A better project, when humanity had 75 years time before
> the impact would be, to build several habitats from
> materials already in space on asteroids instead of
> sending all the materials up from Earth and start with
> the evacuation of Earth years before the impact happens
> with the first habitat, whereby the people already
> evacuated could build further habitats for those yet
> staying on Earth.

Yes. Exactly the plan I wish the show had been about. Now, I have to say that I haven't seen it yet. If I've missed something (like, say, fifteen minutes devoted to why terraforming isn't the big solution), then sorry. I will get to it.