If a gate suddenly appeared near Earth how would we cope?

[Gingerbread Demon]

How would present day 2021 Earth cope if a large gate like a stargate or an Expanse ring appeared nearby to Earth, say a little further out than the Moon, and we sent in probes and found habitable worlds on the other side of the gate.

How would this change things on Earth in this present time, do you think space travel would suddenly get a kick in the pants even more and more development of ships and rockets would take place?

 

[Nerys Myk]

Been watching the Expanse?

 

[Sci]

Well, I imagine it would stimulate both national space programs and the spaceflight industry if an inhabitable exoplanet were to suddenly become easier to access than Mars.

 

[Asbo Zaprudder]

Perhaps somewhat like in Gateway and the rest of the Heechee saga by Frederik Pohl? I would like to see it adapted if The Expanse finishes its run at the events corresponding to the end of book six.

 

[FreezeC77]

Unless the gate was blockaded and prevented anyone from getting through I think we would see something similar to when the Americas were made known to Europe. You would likely see groups of like-minded people want to create new worlds with their belief systems.

 

[Gingerbread Demon]

Been watching the Expanse?

YES and it's bloody good, Finished the first 4 seasons and what a ride.

 

[Aragorn]

Would we get a Contact scenario where fanatics will try to blow up ships that are intended to fly through them?

 

[BillJ]

How would present day 2021 Earth cope if a large gate like a stargate or an Expanse ring appeared nearby to Earth, say a little further out than the Moon, and we sent in probes and found habitable worlds on the other side of the gate.

How would this change things on Earth in this present time, do you think space travel would suddenly get a kick in the pants even more and more development of ships and rockets would take place?

A few would turn their eyes to the stars, the rest of us would continue to kill each other as usual.

 

[Oddish]

Ooooo, a gate! Would it be painted white? Dark green? Natural wood? Would it have decotative trellises on it? Flowers carved into it? A latch?

 

[The Wormhole]

I imagine many would view it as a perfect opportunity to get the fuck away from this plague infested world.

Just to get infected with much worse alien viruses.

 

[CorporalClegg]

I'm sure the latchkey generation would cope just fine.

 

[Oddish]

Reminds me of John Ringo's "Live Free or Die". An alien gate appears over Earth and the alien transmission says: "I know what you're going to ask. Yes, anyone may use the gate. No, no destroying the gate." Basically, in a sarcastic kind of "we've done this a hundred times before" way, it answers every question the President wanted to ask.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

^

srsly though, either Earth would in fact destroy the gate, or we'd kill ourselves off in a panic. There's no way in hell we would actually trust whoever built the gate.

The natural course of action would be to assume hostile intent, since the risk of not doing so would be too great.

 

[Vger23]

I think everyone would shit their pants in uncontrollable panic and horror.

 

[JirinPanthosa]

In real life we'd probably bury the hell out of it before we pissed off any alien empires.

If that weren't an option, it'd be much harder to cover it up than it is on TV. Most people would probably react in fear and fearmongers would use it to control them. Powerful people would spin it into economic opportunity and try to make deals for their technology so they can be in charge of selling it to Earth.

After the initial panic wears off, I think aliens would outsource their labor to Earth. Where they can pay humans a fraction of what they need to pay their own people and without all the pesky safety regulations.

 

[diankra]

Even if it was in LEO it would take a major investment to get more than a dozen people to it.
Meanwhile the impact on Earth societies of having proof after a superior extra-terrestrial technology appear like that... would be massive, in unexpected ways. The most predictable is that lots of people would go online with 'proof' that it was a hoax by Bill Gates.

 

[Gingerbread Demon]

I think you're on the money with the hoax angle.. I mean they blame poor Bill for coronavirus so yeah blame him for a giant stargate appearing in the sky, why not?

Obviously the USA will try to take control of it /s (I'm kidding)

 

[Sci]

If think if we really want to know how humans would react to some form of alien contact today, we should look to how human societies reacted to coming into contact with one-another for the first time historically, especially if those cultures did not at the time fully understand the other culture to be the same species as their own.

Interestingly, such contacts never led to the kind of mass hysteria people here are supposing.

 

[FPAlpha]

^

srsly though, either Earth would in fact destroy the gate, or we'd kill ourselves off in a panic. There's no way in hell we would actually trust whoever built the gate.

The natural course of action would be to assume hostile intent, since the risk of not doing so would be too great.

Reminds me much about Woods' character in Contact, automatically assuming malicious intent and it turns out the aliens using that transport system knew this would happen initially but also it would work out in the end.

Personally i believe it would heighten geostrategic and geopolotical strains as nations would fire up their space programs to be first through the gate and claim what's on the other end as their own.

There would be an attempt at a peaceful solution and international effort but some totalitarian and powerful nations like Russia and China might do their own thing.

 

[publiusr]

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