After reading A City on Mars by Kelly and Zach Weinersmith I think a O’Neill Cylinder spinning spaceship for artificial gravity type is more achievable than planarity colonisation.
But the main point of the book, and I am fairly convinced of the more I think about it, is that it is a lot of effort and risk for not a lot of gain and we are entirely unprepared for space colonisation.
Ringworld.
Fix our own planet first
How to survive in space: Develop ways to survive in space only first. Once you manage that all the other problems are trivial compared and you don’t have a single point of failure (aka our planet) anymore. Isn’t that obvious?
Neither. There’s plenty of room and resources here on Earth. I think it’s fine to do space exploration and even have research bases on moons and other planets, but I just don’t see the imperative for colonization.
A quote attributed to a few people, Heinlein and Pournelle for two, “If you can get your ship into orbit, you’re halfway to anywhere.” Both space and planets have shared and their separate problems to solve. In my head I prefer the image of most populations moving into habitats in space, customized to their preferences, with smaller settlements on various bodies for their own purposes. In my realistic view I don’t see us getting that far before we get bogged down with all the problems we’ve created on this planet. The window to a permanent space civilization might have already shut. A sad thing, as a 70s kid I grew up convinced we were full speed into some version of what scifi had sold to me.
Space colonies. That way they can be dropped to earth to start colony independence wars.
Europa tea party!!!
THE YEAR IS UNIVERSAL CENTURY 0079
Huge sci-fi lover here. But at the same time, colonization of space for humans is possibly impossible without avatars. The human body evolved here, and it’s a vessel that works here the best. To colonize other worlds, it’s more economically viable to send machines, create biologically synthesized new species (taking dna from local species there), and then transfer consciousness to them. Similar with Avatar, but without having to have the spaceships arrive in the planet full of humans. Humans remain on earth, and they project their consciousness somewhere else, in an instant due to entanglement.
That’s not how entanglement works
Yes.
Seriously, we should be doing both as long term space habitats can serve as a way to reduce the cost of moving cargo around.
do you mean moving it around the ‘city’ internally? Or do you mean moving it to and from the habitat?
Terraforming other planets would be astronomically more challenging than fixing our own planet and we don’t seem to be able to get our shit together to do that. Even if we are capable of terraforming other planets, it would take many centuries at minimum. O’Neal cylinders are far more likely to work once we start industrializing the moon.
If the colonization strategy is the Moon then Mars, I expect humanity would have the technology needed to colonize Mars easily while terraforming occurs.
The problem with an O’Neil Cylinder is bringing up enough processed material to build one.
The problem with an O’Neil Cylinder is bringing up enough processed material to build one.
One possible solution is a moon base. The moon is full of titanium and iron.
And then you could launch the stuff out of a weaker gravity well with no air resistance.
I don’t see the application of an O’Neil Cylinder within the Earth and Mars gravity wells given how expensive they would be to build next to better places to grow crops.
If one does get built, I would expect it in orbit around Jupiter or Saturn to support activity there.
C) Undersea habitat domes!
Colonizing Antarctica would be more reasonable than that.
deleted by creator
I don’t think space habitats any significant distance from Earth will be possible. Mitigating the increased radiation will be tough enough just trying to get to Mars, much less trying to stay in space out that far. At least on Mars we can hang out in old lava tubes or something.
Yes and first century peasants couldn’t imagine the idea of reading comments and responding to them on a magic lit up rectangle that knows when you touch it and where and exchanges the information involved invisibly through the air even passing through solid objects.
If that’s what you think, then you severely underestimate human technological innovation.
i think you underestimate human ingenuity and the time frames involved.
Is this sub-populated mostly by Facebook people? Some of the answers really feel like it.
All these answers are so killjoy and boring. Like yeah we should strive to make our own planet better, but why not also do this? Building habitats on other worlds doesn’t prevent us from caring for this one.
Plus maybe trying to make a liveable environment in space can give us new insights in preserving the one at home. Like how solar panels have come from space exploration.
All these answers are so killjoy and boring.
Yes, fantasizing about billionaires fixing everything by making good on their bullshit marketing pitches is very exciting to credulous people.
Building habitats on other worlds doesn’t prevent us from caring for this one.
If you believe that there’s some magic means to have zero emissions launches into space that are in any way self-sustained without further launches to keep throwing resources after spent resources from an increasingly polluted, depleted, and warming Earth, sure, you can huff that hopium deep and hard and ignore the worsening material reality all around you.
Plus maybe trying to make a liveable environment in space can give us new insights in preserving the one at home.
You’ve bought deeply into billionaire bullshit and their bogus promises, especially as privatized space travel in the west becomes increasingly vanity tourism and marketing stunts. The accomplishments of such companies’ underpaid and overworked workers achieve are not for the common good, nor can they be because they are publicly subsidized private companies seeking to maximize profits and expand their own venture capital appeal, and nothing more.
You seem to be letting your hatred for Musk confuse you about space exploration. NASA and other governmental agencies do very important work when it comes to space exploration
You seem to be conjuring an imaginary psych degree so you can concern troll. Fuck off.
He has Musk Derangement Syndrome 🤣🤣🤣
Too much time reading clickbait
Meh I dislike Musk as well but I don’t let that cloud my judgement of his companies or science/engineering in general.
I don’t let that cloud my judgement of his companies
That says a lot about you, then. The guy’s a fascist but you don’t care because
muh bazingamobiles and space crap!Polly’s Tenet: “I can excuse anything from anyone if it means my treats arrive on time”. My parrot is literally more disciplined than these settler shitstains.
He isn’t even the guy behind any discovery his manifold bought-up companies make. He’s just the nepobaby failspawn of blood emerald mining company money in South Africa; and as far as I’m concerned, that makes anything that comes out of his companies while he helms them fruit of the poison tree.
We do not support, uplift, or patronize colonizers, slavers, resource-extracting thieves, or any combination of the three in this house.
He isn’t even the guy behind any discovery his manifold bought-up companies make.
Then stop obsessing on him maybe? The thread was supposed to be about space stations and stuff.
“DAE le Musk Derangement Syndrome?”
Techbros are burning the world down in swathes to fuel their theftboxes at best, and artificial lovers at worst, Neuralink just fucked some guy’s brains up, Cybertrucks keep failing left and goddamn right, but sure, let’s just chalk all this up to “Musk Derangement Syndrome” jesus fucking christ I hate you techbro settlers. Please die young of something preventable.
Techbros are burning the world down in swathes to fuel their theftboxes at best, and artificial lovers at worst, Neuralink just fucked some guy’s brains up, Cybertrucks keep failing left and goddamn right, but sure, let’s just chalk all this up to “Musk Derangement Syndrome” jesus fucking christ I hate you techbro settlers. Please die young of something preventable.
lol this sounds like you have smoke coming out your ears writing it
Can you string together 2 sentences without culture war tropes?
Culture war is when a person points out the chauvinism inherent in cracker fantasies about colonizing the stars because there is nowhere left to colonize here without just admitting to themselves they just want to subjugate everyone and everything on earth and above.
@frauddogg@hexbear.net is 100% correct in every single comment they have made in this thread.
I can’t really even add anything to this other than say they right fuck off.
Removed by mod
We all know what NASA research is really for.
My grandpa helped design and test the tech for ballistic missiles while working as a private contractor for a now defunct aerospace corporation under contract with NASA.
If he was still alive I would say he gets the wall too.
Space exploration isn’t unique to capitalist systems.
Drej Queen, Earth yearns for the Cleansing Light of extermination
Drej words for "I think I’ll just sit back and watch these ignorant humans burn their own planet down while fantasizing about escaping it for now.’
Why would people want to focus more on things we can actually do right now and would improve our lives instead of completely unfeasible pipe dreams? I don’t understand.
Isn’t there space for both? Why not try multiple avenues? Why have this negative view on everything? Wouldn’t you say the airplane and the car have tremendously improved humanity, even with all its downsides? Or the cellphone?
I bet at the time of their inventions you would be opposing it because “billionaires are bad and this industry is going to explore the working class”. Guess what? Yes billionaires are bad and explore people and you (all of us) should be fighting against that, not against scientific and engineering inovation.
Every industry exploits the working class under capitalism.
Are we colonizing planets or building habitats in space right now or any time in the perceivable future, though? No, so beyond a fun thought experiment or sci-fi material, it’s not an idea worth giving any serious thought towards.
Right because innovation materializes itself when we want … We just flicked our fingers and airplane, cellphone and others just appeared.
Who are you to tell what we should or should not pursue?
Are we pursuing colonizing planets or building space habitats in any serious way?
Isn’t there space for both?
No. Flatly. You do not get to eject any more human garbage into the cosmos from which we came-- you already have WHOLE FUCKING ARRAYS of busted up satellites and pieces of rockets and a bunch of other more shit floating in high orbit that you have no plans to go retrieve, mind you; fuck would you propose making even more for? Other than the narcissistic techbro flex, I mean?
There is no way you are this upset about piece of metal existing on Mars, littering the rocks. You’re upset about something else and transferring it.
It physically enrages me every time I look into the night sky ad have to question how much of what I’m seeing up there is just dead space junk. I grew up considering the cosmos more beautiful, and honestly, more sacred than even the ocean that perpetuates our planet. So no, it actually does anger me that people just brazenly throw around ideas of doing what they’ve already done to Earth to other planets, and honestly fuck you for trying to minimize that rage.
Are you a psychiatrist? Do you have ANY kind of accreditation or doctorate to make such a call? I don’t know how you got a lemmygrad account; but I can only take it to mean the moderation there really is slipping.
It physically enrages me every time I…
I’m starting to suspect it doesn’t take much to physically enrage you 😄
All these answers are so killjoy and boring
Fuck you, the planet is literally on fire and you bazinga-assed techbros want to talk about escape plans. FIX WHAT YOU FUCKED UP FIRST.
the planet is literally on fire
Nah.
You can ignore catastrophic global warming and actual fucking wildfires of unprecedented frequency and scale if you think being a Reddit-tier pedant will protect you.
What do you mean?
