That was before we had proof of them and governments admitting they exist.
Again, not saying they're aliens. But they're real. They're up in our skies.
That's not a conspiracy anymore. That's out in the open.
United States Craft of 'Non-Human Origin' Have Been Retrieved by the US DoD and Others for 80 Years, Congressional UAP Whistleblower Reports Confirm.
- Thread starter Bacle
- Start date
Again, not saying they're aliens. But they're real. They're up in our skies.
That's not a conspiracy anymore. That's out in the open.
This has a lot of assumptions that are based off of Science fiction/humanity and our development.
We don't know how their tech trees may have developed, or how their tech works. There is no reason to assume they'd follow even close to similar tech paths as we have.
Seeing as this scenario deals with tech we dont understand, It could actually be trivially easy to do interstellar travel, and we just haven't figured it out yet. They could be studying us, they could be vacationing here. They could be doing any number of things. Maybe we have some sort of resource that is valuable to them? Maybe they just have fun watching us kill each other. This could be the alien equivalent to a night out on the town. "Hey gorglesmuck, I'm a bit bored tonight, you wanna grab some tickets to earth and watch some monkeys kill each other? They're on the verge of another world War, this could get good any minute now!"
Hell. They could Even be benevolent and feel a duty to stop us from destroying ourselves.
They might not even be alive. People look over the idea that this could be drones or AI doing who knows what.
It's possible, if there are aliens visiting, that they aren't even THAT far ahead of us. So us looking like bacteria or ants in comparison? Perhaps, but perhaps not.
Hell, depending on what the tech is, we might even be further along in some areas.
I criticized you for basing your thinking on sci-fi but I'll use that as an example. In Project Hail Mary, the alien he ran into out in space, in a ship, didn't have computers.
That's because their minds were far more mathematically functional. They didn't need computers. Everything we used computers for, they could do in their heads. So we were further ahead with technology, in some regards.
They also came from a very dark world and didn't use light to see. They used sound. So they developed very differently.
My point being, try to look at this from a non human lense. You're comparing them to us, but they could be very, very different.
Again I have to mention, so that I am absolutely clear, I am not claiming we ARE being visited by aliens. I just don't buy into the majority of reasons given as to why or why they wouldn't be visiting.
paulobrito
Well-known member
Our lizard overlords ancient warship has been found?
Carrot of Truth
War is Peace
The biggest issue is that everyone assumes aliens will think like humans. I think HP Lovecraft was likely far closer to the truth than most. Basically I am of he opinion that any intelligent alien life will be, well alien and incomprehensible.
hyperspacewizard
Well-known member
Let’s assume because of the way evolution works or god design that aliens are similar enough to us they aren’t completely beyond understanding how much money and effort do we as a species place in studying the life of our planet and if we had interstellar travel and found a species way below us technologically wouldn’t we want to study them and if the travel was cheap enough wouldnt at least a couple of us try to mess with them for the lols
i think intelligent beings need a vast drive and curiosity to even have space travel in the first place
the whole idea that aliens wouldn’t be excited or at least interested in studying us or at least gawking seems absurd to my mind and to me says something about the people who came up with that thought experiment maybe they are overly cynical or lack much curiosity
i think intelligent beings need a vast drive and curiosity to even have space travel in the first place
the whole idea that aliens wouldn’t be excited or at least interested in studying us or at least gawking seems absurd to my mind and to me says something about the people who came up with that thought experiment maybe they are overly cynical or lack much curiosity
Carrot of Truth
War is Peace
I dunno man most people hope for Star Trek but I fear the reality will be Xeelee Sequence.
hyperspacewizard
Well-known member
I don’t exactly think of Star Trek I’m more thinking of people who study monkeys or dolphins or whales. look if they can travel to other star systems conquering us would be a huge waste of time and resources there’s basically an endless amount of resources out there the only reason to mess with other life is for entertainment and scientific study
Batrix2070
RON/PLC was a wonderful country.
How is the loss of resources? Instead of wasting time finding deposits, mining them and finding workers.
You conquer the area where the resources are, there are already ways to extract them and there are workers. You just make sure those resources go to you for the most part, leaving some leftovers for the conquered.
That's how every conquest mechanism has worked for centuries. If the aliens have been waging wars among themselves over resources, which is more than likely, they'll just take the line of least resistance as they always have.
That is, instead of getting resources, steal from whoever has them.
I think people need to consider that alien might come to our solar system for the same reason life as we know it exists here; we have a stable, non-mega-flaring single G-type star, and those are actually rather rare in the universe.
Most systems have more than one star, and many single star systems are flaring red dwarf stars, which is much less hospitable.
Just from a perspective of radiation exposure, we are a more friendly neighborhood to do repairs or waystations in than most star systems.
We are certainly worth an automated probe or two.
Most systems have more than one star, and many single star systems are flaring red dwarf stars, which is much less hospitable.
Just from a perspective of radiation exposure, we are a more friendly neighborhood to do repairs or waystations in than most star systems.
We are certainly worth an automated probe or two.
Doomsought
Well-known member
If aliens actually showed up, it would be more like Colonel Perry arriving in Japan than ET or close encounters. Toys, games, artwork, silk and other exotic natural cloth, these are what aliens would be interested in. They would need to be traded in bulk in order to justify the cost of interstellar travel.
The other reason for them to show up is missionaries.
The only kind of alien that would try to avoid attention would be smugglers and other criminal. Even then, it would be in our governmnets interest to publish the fact if such aliens got caught.
The other reason for them to show up is missionaries.
The only kind of alien that would try to avoid attention would be smugglers and other criminal. Even then, it would be in our governmnets interest to publish the fact if such aliens got caught.
It's fun to imagine they've already taken over by taking over key positions, and have had us unknowingly mining resources for them for decades.
Another fun one: they're from here. Lizard people living in mountains. Been living alongside humans this whole time. Maybe still using us for resources. Running things like a shadow government.
Edit: I have been trying to stay serious on the subject, but by Sci fi focused mind is too tickled by the fun ideas not to post about it lol
LordsFire
Internet Wizard
You do not understand how resources in space work.
For anything other than organic matter, there is more of it in space, than at the bottom of planetary gravity wells. Asteroids, planetoids, comets, there are larger deposits of any industrial metal, heavy metal, or precious metal, than you can wrap your mind around out there.
And whatever tech level you are at (unless you follow the very specific sci-fi principle of using things like Stargates to travel directly from one planet's surface to another), it is easier and cheaper to find and harvest such materials in your own solar system, just floating around, and then harvest and refine them, than it is to go all the way to another system, go down a gravity well, fight someone else for them, drag it back up out of the gravity well, and go home.
To try to communicate to you how sharp the disparity is, the moon is on average about 380,000 kilometers from Earth. Once you're already in orbit, it is comparably easy to travel to and from the moon, as it is to cross 2000 kilometers of ocean on the surface of the Earth. This is a very rough equivalency, but once you are up and out of the gravity well, things are so immensely much easier.
You like Gold? Platinum? Uranium?
How would you like an asteroid or planetoid with solid chunks of the stuff the size of mountains? It's just sitting there, waiting for the taking, nobody's going to fight you for it.
Oh, you do want biomatter? Well, you're in luck, because sunlight is free in space (sometimes painfully so), and water ice is also pretty common, especially in comets. Pick it up as you please, and hydroponics for whatever kind of life you already have is fairly easy. You can also electrolyze it to separate the Oxygen out if that's what you need to breathe.
The Silicon and Carbon that make up the key elements of dirt can also be found in space, they're not exactly uncommon, so you're good to go there too.
Bottom line, if you are technologically advanced enough to travel interstellar distances, you aren't going to have any need to conquer other people for raw materials. There may be all kinds of other reasons, but the Romans would have been better served trying to import Iron from Hawaii, than aliens would be trying to use Earth as a resource mine.
Batrix2070
RON/PLC was a wonderful country.
And you don't understand, simple laziness and cultural habits. Yes, it's all cool, only that you have to work at it, you have to organize it.
And here, you're conquer weaker race, forcing them to work for you and only reaping the profits.
If they rebel, you pacify them. There's a reason I said the aliens would take the easiest path. Because it's easier to force someone else to work than to earn it yourself.
The same thing happened on Earth for centuries, why bother extracting raw materials, when all you have to do is conquer those who extract them?
Anyway, this whole thing assumes one important mistake. Why do you think technical sophistication precludes conquering others for resources? When precisely the simplest way to get resources has always been to conquer and steal from the conquered.
Especially since you can use a conquered race in all sorts of ways. For example, force it to exploit its entire star system. This way you increase the profit of a particular system.
We are too concerned about the cost of interstellar travel, because for us it is a huge scale.
For a space civilization? This one, by the time it leaves its star system, will probably be so proficient in the subject of space travel that it actually won't even think about it. Ot, operational costs.
Note that as a rule, few people try to find stray resources. Much more common was the seizure of existing deposits.
The conquest of the Americas is a good example, first occupying areas already inhabited by civilizations already having extracted deposits. Only then did the expansion go into sparsely populated and empty areas.
And this is more how space conquests will look like, first one will look for a reasonably advanced civilization in order to, based on its planet, organize mining in the system.
Using already existing resource extraction to facilitate the search for and extraction of resources that for the time being are lying idle.
What you're proposing works when the space system is empty or civilization is so primitive that it's not worth bothering with. Actually, it's even doubtful that it will be noticed, after all, you don't pay attention to ant colonies, do you?
But once there is something serious, it is better to eliminate the competition. Because, after all, you'll be in the system for centuries, during which time an alien race might evolve enough to try to snatch up your resources. Without realizing it's doing it.
IndyFront
Well-known member
As was pointed out earlier though, we cannot know for sure they will think like us or possess similar physical attributes. What if it was a multidimensional being that was folded up into spacetime like origami, and could kill you without even touching you physically. We would literally be play things to it, I don't think it would view us as simply a "lesser civilization" at that point but something far more alien to it, like a virus is to us
LordsFire
Internet Wizard
Wow.
You literally completely ignored the entire content of my post.
Did you even read it?
Batrix2070
RON/PLC was a wonderful country.
We are talking about a civilization, similar to us. Struggling for resources. In such a scenario, normal rules fly out the window and never return.
Yes, I have read. And I found it to be wrong. Based more on, to my mind, wishful thinking resulting from looking at the whole thing from a technical matter resulting from knowledge of the availability of resources according to estimates.
I, on the other hand, deal with a completely different issue, concerning more general but nevertheless more decisive decisions about what to do in the event of an encounter with a relatively advanced alien race on another planet. (Us, for example by another.)
Based on historical knowledge, I note that, as a rule, the preferred way to acquire resources was to conquer or trade with those who had them. Even despite the fact that they have them under their noses.
Wide, the example of Russia. It sleeps on resources but prefers to take them from others because it's easier that way. Any extraction of its own resources, however, relies more on what it has gained from others.
Or just conquering the Americas, occupying inhabited areas to have a base to get more resources.
Bear Ribs
Well-known member
People dramatically overestimate how much good stuff there is in the asteroid field. All of the asteroids in the Solar System, combined, amount to about 4% of the Earth's crust, or 3% of the moon. Ceres, Vesta, Pallas, and Hygiea, the four largest, are about two-thirds of the entire belt all by themselves. Ceres is mostly water and carbon with minimal metals, that's 39% of the entire asteroid belt gone right there. Vesta doesn't have any serious metal deposits, it seems to be compositionally similar to granite with some olivine deposits. Pallas is water and carbon like Ceres, though more carbon and less water. Hygiea is... wait for it... mostly water and carbon. If we keep going down the list, Davida is carbon and water, Sylvia is rock and water, Cybele is water with probably silica dust, and we're not 100% sure about Bamberga but it looks to be nonmetallic rock at this point. Nearly the entire belt is tied up in the big fifteen or so with the rest being puny rocks, and almost none of the big ones have any appreciable metal content.
Some elements, particularly heavy ones like gold and iridium, are indeed present in larger percentages than on Earth in a few asteroids, Psyche is notably packing a huge amount of gold (also it's 1% of the entire asteroid field all by itself). This tends to excite us here on Earth because we have a relative scarcity of gold and said element has a long and glorious romantic history, but if the aliens don't happen to have a yen for gold, platinum, iridium, or a handful of other dense elements, Earth is going to have more, and given that most of the metallic asteroids are effective dust motes in comparison, Earth is going to be much easier to extract resources from, especially if you have dumb apes to mine it for you.
Some elements, particularly heavy ones like gold and iridium, are indeed present in larger percentages than on Earth in a few asteroids, Psyche is notably packing a huge amount of gold (also it's 1% of the entire asteroid field all by itself). This tends to excite us here on Earth because we have a relative scarcity of gold and said element has a long and glorious romantic history, but if the aliens don't happen to have a yen for gold, platinum, iridium, or a handful of other dense elements, Earth is going to have more, and given that most of the metallic asteroids are effective dust motes in comparison, Earth is going to be much easier to extract resources from, especially if you have dumb apes to mine it for you.
posh-goofiness
Well-known member
For the interested:
Discussion on the various details about mining. Theoretical ship info, the value of C-type (carbon), S-type (silicon), and M-type (metallic) asteroids. Discussion of the viability of hauling stuff up and down gravity wells vs long-term outposts on the asteroid itself. Accessibility of asteroids based on distance from gravity wells. Discussion on profitability and legality of asteroid claims.
Asteroid mining in the context of solar system colonial expansion: strategies, costs, benefits. Why you might want to mine small asteroids preferentially over large asteroids. Loosely following topics from NSS Roadmap to Space Settlement (3rd Edition 2019): Table of Contents - National Space Society
Discussion on the various details about mining. Theoretical ship info, the value of C-type (carbon), S-type (silicon), and M-type (metallic) asteroids. Discussion of the viability of hauling stuff up and down gravity wells vs long-term outposts on the asteroid itself. Accessibility of asteroids based on distance from gravity wells. Discussion on profitability and legality of asteroid claims.
Asteroid mining in the context of solar system colonial expansion: strategies, costs, benefits. Why you might want to mine small asteroids preferentially over large asteroids. Loosely following topics from NSS Roadmap to Space Settlement (3rd Edition 2019): Table of Contents - National Space Society
