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No need to leave though, we have unlocked gene tailoring and we should we able to research glandular acclimatation now, right?

Considering how unlikely even the most ideal world would be to cater to the exact conditions we've evolved to adapt to, I'd say "more habitable than earth" is impossible without extreme terraforming of a lottery ticket planet.

The competitive pressures involved for life evolving on a super-abundant planet would probably produce many types of life that would be very unpleasant to humans, to say the least. One of the reason that people were ever able to flourish in the first place might be because of how "mediocre" the planet is.

We come from a deathworld bro, atleast if you get tricked into listening to the ai slop science fiction on youtube. Our strong bones and creativity will crush the puny garden worlders into the dust!

I am sure you're trying to be quirky and relatable.

First off the article is a confused mess Wolchover wrote for groceries trying to catch Adam Frank / Avi Loeb's positivism zeitgeist so subscribers feel smart even though she barely grasps the idea of superearths but trots out the Anthropic Principle running counter to a finely-tuned universe with attometer / "2% tolerances". It all boils down to we might not be the only game in town but we still can't prove it… YET!!!!111ELEVENTY

To address your query, I am happy to be anywhere. Imperium deathworld, some Lucas monobiome, or something different that supports life. Life, as it is currently known is rare and precious. If you want more because of an aching dissatisfaction from curiosity or oligarch desire, save some entropy for the rest of life by keeping it quiet, which I shall do now.

Oxygen is a highly efficient electron acceptor. Anything requiring tons of energy to power a big brain will scarcely find a suitable replacement. The same properties that make it a good source of energy, also make it dangerous. Most of the metabolic stress comes from oxygen. It is a double-edged sword.

If these worlds had biomes it would be imoral to colonize, because for the indigenous population already living there our arriving could mean a world-ending event for them. We have to be very careful these are sterile worlds before sending missions.

I love the space program. The argument that it provides good ROI in terms of incidental technology R&D is weak and even counterproductive.

There is some return on that investment but it's necessarily much lower than ROI for direct investment in the needed non-space technologies. I do think there's some argument that we wouldn't spend the R&D at all without the space program, but that's speculative and still doesn't make the ROI worthwhile IMHO.

What makes the R&D worthwhile is space exploration itself. That is of incredible value itself. If you start trying to justify the cost with incidental tech development, you implicitly agree with the framing that space exploration really isn't worthwhile and needs other benefits to justify it - you undermine what you believe in. It's like humanities professors who argue that a history degree has good value in the job market - it does somewhat, but they are accepting the framing that their field and college education has no other value but early career employment and income, instead of life-changing understanding and skills (really embarassing for humanities professors who should understand framing better than anyone!).

How many dystopian sci fi films feature some background ad campaign to go “off world” as an extreme measure the wealthy are able to take, or desperate indentured servants are shipped off to work.

Maybe as an interstellar program where your great grandkids will be the ones that reach the promised land will attract a different clientele tho

Let's assume such worlds exist.

How long will it take to reach them?

I mean, it would be a finite problem set, but who is going to pay attention when life span is at 120 years, give or take?

The answer is actually yes if you're willing to wait.

Interstellar travel is not impossible, no matter what anyone tells you. We know how, it's just wildly impractical. We've barely even left our own planet, and we've managed to throw a few chunks of metal out of our solar system so far. We lack the industrial capacity to build an interstellar ship, we do not lack the physics.

Yes but none of them are especially pleasant. The least unpleasant way would be some kind of photonic rocket as it gives you the highest possible exit velocity and thus efficiency. Matter - antimatter annihilation produces photons that can be used for this. Antimatter collection and storage is an issue, engine and ship design is an issue, radiation is an issue, in space construction is an issue. But plausible? Sure, I guess. The ISVs from the Avatar movies of all things are the closest to what this would look like.

Well, even if we could not reach such a planet in a reasonable time yet, a research like this could still be very useful for many reasons.

It could help us learn how our habitable environment works and operates, it might be applicable for terraforming or habitat construction.

There is also a non-zero chance of some sort of life, possibly intelligent developing in such an environment (as proven by our sample size of 1). That life can be active at the moment (from our PoV - light speed and all) or was active in the past, so we should look for bio signatures or even signs of mega scale engineering.

Generation ships with plasma sails, probably.

Yes, easy assuming multi-generational arcologies.

There are plenty of designs that get you to 0.1c or above if you are Kardashev 2, things like light sails powered from the Dyson sphere.

Nothing plausible for anyone living today AFAIK.

It wouldn’t be that fun to live on one. The article says picture paradise, but we’re talking about potentially 1.5-2g with a dense atmosphere; we’d feel terrible all the time. Also whatever biology is in that planet is probably not compatible with us; we likely wouldn’t be able to eat it. Finally once you land, you’re screwed and stuck there. Traditional chemical propellants barely work for our planet, we’d need new ways of taking off for higher escape velocities.

We are at least 1000 years away from being anywhere close to this.

Sure, just not the same human that launched from Earth.

The Cologne Cathedral in Germany was started in 1248 and finished in 1880. That's 632 years.

>given what we know about physics at the present?

No.

My hypothesis has always been, hey, have enough kids out there, and sooner or later, they'll learn enough about the physical sciences to at least explore far away worlds. (If not go there in person.)

But yeah, expecting we can get there with what we currently know is a bit naive. We need to, <gasp>, horror of horrors, fund more research.

And you'd better be fucking thankful you were allowed even that much, you filthy pleb.

  - what I assume every org with a site like this's management thinks

Both attribution and claim are false. The budget for HWO was cut in the admin’s budget proposal, but congress rejected that cut and it remains funded. The proposal for cuts came well after Musk left the administration.

Good news! https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50067414

All I've found so far is black materia.