The Case For Space Colonization

[steve_bank]

The analogy to past exploration fails.

We had and have problems with the relativity simple ISS. The idea of a large self supporting rotating system in space is a pipe dream. Such a large rotating structure would have dynamics problems as a start.

And the question of cost and reward. Space X can launch to LEO far cheaper than NASA can. Free market competition works, completion has lowered cost.

Risk/reward is low for spice colonization of any kind.

Basic engineering analysis

1. What is the specific goal
2. How much will cost in toto.
3. What is the potential reward.

The shuttle showed the problem with building one offs or milted numbers. It is impossible cost wise to go through normal development and wring out. Back in the 90s NASA predict red high probability of death on the first Mars mission. In the 80s when I was a reliability beginner I read a summary of the shuttle reliability report. Catastrophic failures were predicted.


And last but not least is the social issues. The closest thing on Earth is the wintering crew at McMurdo base. I read NASA has looked at it.

Put 100 TO 1000 humans on Mars long term and what happens to mental health? What happens when the novelty wears off and a monotonous routine kicks in?

Do you sterilize them people or allow the possibility of a pregnancy? Do we allow a potentially contentious mix of religion and other beiefs?

It is far more complex than the Star Trek show.

I grew up on scifi from Tom Swift to Heinlein. The 60s space program was inspirational.

The first questing remains, what is the goal?To go because it is there is not sufficient. A car was sent into space on a whim while we have health care and education problems. We are not yet wise enough to colonize space, we'd be exporting humans as we are.

If you are standing on a a rotating structure as in Space Oddyssy, will all your organs including your eyes experience 1g down?

 

[LordKiran]

We will not see space colonization on a large scale until there is a financial need for it.

The most I can imagine will be asteroid mining and 'Oil Rig' type setups for particularly rich deposits of rare metals planetside. I doubt we'll see permanent settlements of people in our lifetimes.

 

[humbleman]

The analogy to past exploration fails.

We had and have problems with the relativity simple ISS. The idea of a large self supporting rotating system in space is a pipe dream. Such a large rotating structure would have dynamics problems as a start.

And the question of cost and reward. Space X can launch to LEO far cheaper than NASA can. Free market competition works, completion has lowered cost.

Risk/reward is low for spice colonization of any kind.

Basic engineering analysis

1. What is the specific goal
2. How much will cost in toto.
3. What is the potential reward.

The shuttle showed the problem with building one offs or milted numbers. It is impossible cost wise to go through normal development and wring out. Back in the 90s NASA predict red high probability of death on the first Mars mission. In the 80s when I was a reliability beginner I read a summary of the shuttle reliability report. Catastrophic failures were predicted.


And last but not least is the social issues. The closest thing on Earth is the wintering crew at McMurdo base. I read NASA has looked at it.

Put 100 TO 1000 humans on Mars long term and what happens to mental health? What happens when the novelty wears off and a monotonous routine kicks in?

Do you sterilize them people or allow the possibility of a pregnancy? Do we allow a potentially contentious mix of religion and other beiefs?

It is far more complex than the Star Trek show.

I grew up on scifi from Tom Swift to Heinlein. The 60s space program was inspirational.

The first questing remains, what is the goal?To go because it is there is not sufficient. A car was sent into space on a whim while we have health care and education problems. We are not yet wise enough to colonize space, we'd be exporting humans as we are.

If you are standing on a a rotating structure as in Space Oddyssy, will all your organs including your eyes experience 1g down?

The way I see it, the only main problem is surviving going out of earth.

You can invent the most advanced machines taking you to another galaxy, or immense spaceships traveling in space for decades or centuries.

The problem of why we can't even live on the Moon for a year is the influence of gravity. We still can't imitate the earth's gravity environment in a spaceship which allows our bodies to survive like if we were on earth.

Going to outer space is killing us slowly in just a few months. Our bodies deteriorate very bad in outer space and for that reason, in order to protect astronauts, they must stay at the space stations no more than six months.

Even so, at their return many of them must have to stay in recovery more than a year. An experiment leaving an American and a Russian astronaut for a year in the space station caused the retirement of the American astronaut. He came back in such a bad shape that his resignation was obvious.

NASA and others can talk to talk about colonies in other planets, however reality says that we just can't make it by now until we find the way to overcome the change of gravity experienced in outer space.

 

[untermensche]

If humans are totally dependent on human technology for survival then they likely will not survive long.

The reason humans survive now is because they are not totally dependent on human technology for that survival. In this situation even faulty technology that breaks down all the time can be very beneficial.

 

[barbos]

There are no reasons why low gravity or radiation have to be health problem. We can create drugs which counter these effects.
Problem is that unless Mars is terraformed into something interesting people would not like living there.

 

[Bronzeage]

The analogy to past exploration fails.

It doesn't fail at all, if we consider colonization and not just our current extra-planetary explorations. Exploration has always been for the purpose of discovering something which is of great use. This was new lands, or something the new lands produced. The real goal was wealth.

Up to this point, we have been using surplus wealth, compiled by government taxation, to fund space exploration and develop the basic technology. This might be compared to a middle ages royal court that builds more efficient sailing ships for defense and then uses them for exploration. Eventually similar ships will be built by private enterprise, in search of commerce. As of today, the only commercial use of space, is for communications. It's the only place where a person can stand and see almost half the entire planet. People will pay for that vantage point and it's well worth it.

The colonization of space will be like any other colonization in the past. Someone will think there is money to be made and is willing to spend a fortune to find out how much. Nothing new there.

 

[bilby]

There are no reasons why low gravity or radiation have to be health problem. We can create drugs which counter these effects.
Problem is that unless Mars is terraformed into something interesting people would not like living there.

The first Europeans in Australia didn't like living there. They nearly perished, for lack of food (or rather, lack of food they could reliably recognise, coupled with the presence of stuff that looked like it might be food, but wasn't, and an inability to imagine that the locals might have anything helpful to say on the matter).

Their response was to tear it all down and start again with familiar stuff imported from England.

The city of Sydney today looks a lot like an English city. It's the result of angliforming.

Terraforming is almost certainly a prerequisite for a Mars colony. But that's OK, we can do that. We don't even need to commit genocide to do so, which makes a refreshing change.

 

[beero1000]

There are no reasons why low gravity or radiation have to be health problem. We can create drugs which counter these effects.
Problem is that unless Mars is terraformed into something interesting people would not like living there.

The first Europeans in Australia didn't like living there. They nearly perished, for lack of food (or rather, lack of food they could reliably recognise coupled with the presence of stuff that looked like it might be food, but wasn't).

Their response was to tear it all down and start again with familiar stuff imported from England.

The city of Sydney today looks a lot like an English city. It's the result of angliforming.

Terraforming is almost certainly a prerequisite for a Mars colony. But that's OK, we can do that. We don't even need to commit genocide to do so, which makes a refreshing change.

There are also fewer things actively trying to kill you on Mars! I'm sold.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

If humans are totally dependent on human technology for survival then they likely will not survive long.

The reason humans survive now is because they are not totally dependent on human technology for that survival. In this situation even faulty technology that breaks down all the time can be very beneficial.

For all practical purposes we are totally dependent on human technology even now. No technology, I would still have air. That's it.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Terraforming is almost certainly a prerequisite for a Mars colony. But that's OK, we can do that. We don't even need to commit genocide to do so, which makes a refreshing change.

I disagree--terraforming Mars would require a major space presence--plenty of people living off-Earth. The colonies come first.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

There are also fewer things actively trying to kill you on Mars! I'm sold.

Exactly. While the off-Earth environments are deadly most of the threats are basically passive. Earth has wind events that routinely kill people. Sometimes thousands of people. No other easy colonization target has dangerous wind. Earth has quakes that kill, sometimes tens of thousands of people. No other easy colonization target has meaningful quakes.

The only active threat in most of space is flying bits.

 

[Jokodo]

There are also fewer things actively trying to kill you on Mars! I'm sold.

Exactly. While the off-Earth environments are deadly most of the threats are basically passive. Earth has wind events that routinely kill people. Sometimes thousands of people. No other easy colonization target has dangerous wind. Earth has quakes that kill, sometimes tens of thousands of people. No other easy colonization target has meaningful quakes.

The only active threat in most of space is flying bits.

Mars has no winds???

 

[DBT]

Maybe the very need to cooperate to survive in a hostile environment would inspire a greater sense harmony and respect...or else everyone just ends up killing each other like at Easter Island.

 

[bilby]

There are also fewer things actively trying to kill you on Mars! I'm sold.

Exactly. While the off-Earth environments are deadly most of the threats are basically passive. Earth has wind events that routinely kill people. Sometimes thousands of people. No other easy colonization target has dangerous wind. Earth has quakes that kill, sometimes tens of thousands of people. No other easy colonization target has meaningful quakes.

The only active threat in most of space is flying bits.

Mars has no winds???

None that we would need to worry about. The atmosphere is very thin; high winds on Mars can raise a bit of dust, but they wouldn't blow down a tent, much less a building.

The downside of this is that aerobraking and parachutes are both fairly useless when landing on Mars; that's why many of the recent probes have used novel landing solutions.

 

[bilby]

Terraforming is almost certainly a prerequisite for a Mars colony. But that's OK, we can do that. We don't even need to commit genocide to do so, which makes a refreshing change.

I disagree--terraforming Mars would require a major space presence--plenty of people living off-Earth. The colonies come first.

Why? Most of the work needs no human intervention on-site. What good are humans when terraforming? What can they do to advance the goal that can't be done by ROVs or robots?

 

[Bronzeage]

Terraforming is almost certainly a prerequisite for a Mars colony. But that's OK, we can do that. We don't even need to commit genocide to do so, which makes a refreshing change.

I disagree--terraforming Mars would require a major space presence--plenty of people living off-Earth. The colonies come first.

Why? Most of the work needs no human intervention on-site. What good are humans when terraforming? What can they do to advance the goal that can't be done by ROVs or robots?

The old "40 acres and a mule" plan is not going to get it done.

 

[Wiploc]

[h=2]The Case For Space Colonization[/h]

The best cases I know of:

1. The saying about not keeping all of your chickens in one basket.

2. A book title (I think it was a book title): Never again enough people.

 

[DBT]

''Never again enough people'' suggests no restriction or limit to the expansion of human populations?

 

[Jokodo]

[h=2]The Case For Space Colonization[/h]

The best cases I know of:

1. The saying about not keeping all of your chickens in one basket.

There's a point to this

2. A book title (I think it was a book title): Never again enough people.

This, however, if it means what I think it does, demonstrates mathematical illiteracy, sorry to be so blunt.

No amount of spreading out, at any feasible or non-feasible speed, will change the fact that, at a constant non-zero growth rate, we'll come to the point where we hit carrying capacity on all worlds that can be reached by then. For example, with a growth rate of 1% pa (slightly below the current population growth rate of 1.1%), we'll have to accommodateone earth's worth population per star system within ~1860 light years in about 1860 years. It gets much worse at more realistic speeds (at anything much under 0.1c, we'd have to get rid of more people than we can we can put there by the time we reach our closest neighbours), and superluminous speeds wouldn't really help either, just delay that point.

ETA: The stellar density in our corner of the galaxy is 0.004 stars per cubic light year. The volume of the area that can be reached in a given time is 4/3 * pi * velocity * time. The number of stars within that volume is that figure * stellar density, so that's cubic growth. The expected population over time, however grows exponentially at <growth rate>^time (say 1.01^1000 for the population in 1000 years at 1% growth).

 

[bilby]

There's a point to this

2. A book title (I think it was a book title): Never again enough people.

This, however, if it means what I think it does, demonstrates mathematical illiteracy, sorry to be so blunt.

No amount of spreading out, at any feasible or non-feasible speed, will change the fact that, at a constant non-zero growth rate, we'll come to the point where we hit carrying capacity on all worlds that can be reached by then. For example, with a growth rate of 1% pa (slightly below the current population growth rate of 1.1%), we'll have to accommodateone earth's worth population per star system within ~1860 light years in about 1860 years. It gets much worse at more realistic speeds (at anything much under 0.1c, we'd have to get rid of more people than we can we can put there by the time we reach our closest neighbours), and superluminous speeds wouldn't really help either, just delay that point.

ETA: The stellar density in our corner of the galaxy is 0.004 stars per cubic light year. The volume of the area that can be reached in a given time is 4/3 * pi * velocity * time. The number of stars within that volume is that figure * stellar density, so that's cubic growth. The expected population over time, however grows exponentially at <growth rate>^time (say 1.01^1000 for the population in 1000 years at 1% growth).

Yup. Interplanetary or even interstellar colonisation does nothing to fix the population problem.

Fortunately, education, access to effective contraception, and growing wealth appear to be more than sufficient to solve that problem within either our existing range, or with a greatly expanded range out into space.

And we needn't worry about running out of people even if we colonised many new worlds - automation means we don't need lots of people in order to thrive.