# If we ever can travel to habitable planets in other solar systems- will we want to? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [October 29, 2010, 2:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-we-ever-can-travel-to-habitable-planets-in-other-solar-systems-will-we-want-to/558730 "2010-10-29T02:33:26Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![FuzzyOgre](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/a587f6/32.png) [@FuzzyOgre](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FuzzyOgre)\ **Post date:** [October 29, 2010, 8:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-we-ever-can-travel-to-habitable-planets-in-other-solar-systems-will-we-want-to/558730/21 "2010-10-29T20:47:19Z")
Just the other day I was thinking that if someone created a generation ship, I would certainly go if they would have me. Sure I’d never see another world, but guess what? Thats no different than now. Barring any accidents, I’d live to see the Kuiper belt for sure. I might even get to watch C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser gate. ---
**Author:** ![Damuri\_Ajashi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/898d66/32.png) [@Damuri\_Ajashi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Damuri_Ajashi)\ **Post date:** [October 29, 2010, 8:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-we-ever-can-travel-to-habitable-planets-in-other-solar-systems-will-we-want-to/558730/22 "2010-10-29T20:51:46Z")
It would take an impending disaster to get real live people ton take the journey to another planet. The only way we get humans on another planet is with a seeder von neumann probe. ---
**Author:** ![XT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/xt/32/456_2.png) [@XT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/XT)\ **Post date:** [October 29, 2010, 8:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-we-ever-can-travel-to-habitable-planets-in-other-solar-systems-will-we-want-to/558730/23 "2010-10-29T20:55:39Z")
[QUOTE=Chimera] The entire reason we don’t have colonies on the moon right now, and will never have the fanciful colonies spread through the solar system is really basic: Economics. There’s no money in it. A colony on the Moon isn’t going to pay for itself, let alone bothering with the economics of something in orbit somewhere else. [/QUOTE] “The entire reason we don’t have colonies in the new world right now, and never will have fanciful colonies spread through the continent is really basic: Economics. There is no money in it. A colony on the East Coast of North American isn’t going to pay for itself…you’ll have to constantly ship in everything they need from gun powder to steel to tea and everything in between.” I don’t see why a colony on the moon couldn’t become economical, in time (and I’d say that, given the possibility of terraform, Mars could certainly be a going concern in a couple of centuries, if we really wanted to make the effort). But even if it never did…well, our bases in Antarctica aren’t exactly profit turning propositions either, nor are they ever likely to be so. The solar system has vast natural resources…resources that dwarf everything that’s ever been on earth. Anything and everything that is needed is out there. It’s the getting to it that’s the trouble right now, not the fact that there is nothing worth going after. -XT ---
**Author:** ![Lemur866](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lemur866/32/434_2.png) [@Lemur866](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lemur866)\ **Post date:** [October 29, 2010, 8:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-we-ever-can-travel-to-habitable-planets-in-other-solar-systems-will-we-want-to/558730/24 "2010-10-29T20:56:49Z")
> [@xtisme](#): > > But there isn’t anything new or interesting to learn on Baffin Island, nor are there vast resources we could use there in the future. With the sort of attitude you and other like minded individuals have then the Europeans wouldn’t have ever bothered leaving the continent to look for other things…heck, our species would still be tooling around Africa scrounging for snacks. > > Sort of like saying that Africa would need to be filled up before that unrealistic colonization of the New World fantasy can really get rolling…right? 😛 > > -XT Except, if each _Homo erectus_ that walked out of Africa had instead needed a multi-billion dollar life support system, they never would have left Africa. Same as if it took a 100 million Pounds Sterling to ship a colonist to Virginia. If the Moon had a climate and ecology like North America, we’d have a colony there right now. But a ticket to the Moon would still cost millions of dollars. Plenty of people would be willing to pay that price. But we wouldn’t have millions of people there, we’d have thousands. There are plenty of people who’d be willing to buy a ticket to Alpha Centauri. But if the cost of a trip to Alpha Centauri exceeds the lifetime economic output of a person by several orders of magnitude, nobody’s ever going to afford it. Yes, of course we’ll be sending people to other planets even though it doesn’t return a profit, there are plenty of research stations on Antarctica. So someday we’ll have permanent bases on Mars and the Moon–when our global economic output is so great that we can fund Mars bases just because they’re cool. ---
**Author:** ![XT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/xt/32/456_2.png) [@XT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/XT)\ **Post date:** [October 29, 2010, 9:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-we-ever-can-travel-to-habitable-planets-in-other-solar-systems-will-we-want-to/558730/25 "2010-10-29T21:08:45Z")
[QUOTE=Lemur866] Except, if each Homo erectus that walked out of Africa had instead needed a multi-billion dollar life support system, they never would have left Africa. Same as if it took a 100 million Pounds Sterling to ship a colonist to Virginia. [/QUOTE] Except that things are relative. Relative to the amount of wealth and resources that Homo Erectus had, they DID need a multi-billion dollar life support system in order to trek on out of there. And the folks who wandered over to North America needed even more…and it probably cost them orders of magnitude more in terms of lives than if we went to Mars and colonized it. Same with the cost of transporting all of the goods and people needed to colonize Virgina. It was hugely expensive, relative to the wealth of the countries engaged in sending forth colonists when compared to the amount of wealth a country like the US has. > [@](#): > > If the Moon had a climate and ecology like North America, we’d have a colony there right now. But a ticket to the Moon would still cost millions of dollars. Plenty of people would be willing to pay that price. But we wouldn’t have millions of people there, we’d have thousands. It would cost hundreds of billions to put a colony on the moon, no doubt about it. And we’d start small (assuming ‘we’ ever get around to doing it)…a few hundred people at most there. But then, consider the size of the early European colonies in North America…only a couple of hundred people initially. Even by the time of the revolution North America was really sparsely populated (by Europeans anyway), and the colonies themselves were only just starting to get to the point where they were paying for themselves and making some money for their host countries (and only some of them). > [@](#): > > Yes, of course we’ll be sending people to other planets even though it doesn’t return a profit, there are plenty of research stations on Antarctica. So someday we’ll have permanent bases on Mars and the Moon–when our global economic output is so great that we can fund Mars bases just because they’re cool. I think that it won’t be just because they are cool, but because of the potential resources in the solar system, and the science that can be accomplished, the knowledge that can be gained. And I don’t think it will wait until the earth’s collective output is some pie in the sky future mega-tude…it will be when we simply decide that it’s time to go. I doubt it will be the US (though we might be involved in some other countries mission), but it will happen. -XT ---
**Author:** ![Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/13edae/32.png) [@Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stranger_On_A_Train)\ **Post date:** [October 29, 2010, 10:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-we-ever-can-travel-to-habitable-planets-in-other-solar-systems-will-we-want-to/558730/26 "2010-10-29T22:06:57Z")
> [@Whack-a-Mole](#): > > Even if we could live indefinitely in space-based habitats I see no reason why that would mean people wouldn’t want to be on a planet if they could. > > A planet offers all sorts of things you would not have in space. Oceans, lakes, beaches, mountains, forests, etc. to go have fun in. Can people on a space station afford to keep pets? Horses? > > Add to that a helluva lot more space on a planet to spread out versus a space station. Can people on the space station have a 4 bedroom house with a playroom in the basement and a living room and dining room? You are assuming that space habitats of the future will be mere extensions of existing space stations; tin cans strung together in series. This is no doubt reinforced by science fiction movies that portray life in space as a sort of expansion of living on board a naval vessel. In fact, the main reason space stations of present are constrained to the present size and form are due to the constraints imposed by space launch vehicle capability. Once you have the infrastructure to mine raw materials and manufacture finished construction materials in space, you would want to make a habitat large, as it offers lower cost, better thermodynamic self-regulation, better protection, and of course, far more living room. There is nothing that prevents you from making a spun habitat kilometers in diameter and length. I’ve previously [POST=9514841]proposed a long filament reinforced ice matrix spun habitat that could be readily produced from obtainable materials with minimal processing or labor. (You form the shell by inflating a really large balloon, spraying the ice/silica fiber on the interior surface with the occasional layer of long aramid or carbon fiber for hoop strength, and then spinning it to slowly expand while adding matrix to the interior.) A structure 4 km in diameter and 10 km long would give a livable area of ~125 sq km; about half the size of Cleveland. At a population density of 100 people/sq km–comparable to or less than many European nations–such a habitat could support 12 to 13 thousand people with open greenspace. The idea that there are many planets that offer “Oceans, lakes, beaches, mountains, forests, etc. to go have fun in,” is also misguided. Even if we do discover that worlds of the approximate size, density, surface gravity, et cetera are not uncommon, worlds that are actually habitable by human or animal life is vanishing unlikely. The specific combination of atmospheric composition, lack of toxic elements, and thermal limits that we’re evolved to tolerate is a very narrow band in the spectrum of possible environments. It is much easier to construct a habitat with a controlled environment than to attempt terraforming on a large, open planetary environment. Stranger ---
**Author:** ![Nobody](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/94ad74/32.png) [@Nobody](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nobody)\ **Post date:** [October 29, 2010, 10:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-we-ever-can-travel-to-habitable-planets-in-other-solar-systems-will-we-want-to/558730/27 "2010-10-29T22:21:44Z")
It seems to me that if we want the human race to go on, then eventually we’ll have to move to one or more other planets in another solar system, or create livable space stations, or else die out when the sun grows large and destroys the Earth as well as other planets in our solar system. Of course that won’t happen till what, millions of years from now, maybe even a billion or so (sorry, I’m not sure on the specifics), so by that time we will have advanced far enough technologically that we can do it. ---
**Author:** ![XT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/xt/32/456_2.png) [@XT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/XT)\ **Post date:** [October 29, 2010, 10:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-we-ever-can-travel-to-habitable-planets-in-other-solar-systems-will-we-want-to/558730/28 "2010-10-29T22:34:45Z")
Figure out when the next time the continents will consolidate into another super-continent. While I don’t know if all humans will die, certainly it’s going to be rather catastrophic to the vast majority of us (assuming we are here 300-400 million years from now). We’d have to survive multiple ice ages, whatever global warming has in-store for us, possibly nuclear war and reality shows, and probably a couple of really big rocks slamming into us to make it that long. I’d say that’s going to be the top end of our species though, time wise, if we don’t move some of our population to other places. -XT ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [October 29, 2010, 10:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-we-ever-can-travel-to-habitable-planets-in-other-solar-systems-will-we-want-to/558730/29 "2010-10-29T22:50:55Z")
We think of progress as always upwards, but it’s quite possible that our descendants will, at some point, lose our current technology. What happens to people living on those self-contained space habitats then? If we really want to ensure the survival of our species, we should be putting folks in places that can naturally sustain human life, without maintenance. In lots of such places, in fact, in case a gamma ray burst or comet impact or whatever wipes out a planet. ---
**Author:** ![XT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/xt/32/456_2.png) [@XT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/XT)\ **Post date:** [October 29, 2010, 11:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-we-ever-can-travel-to-habitable-planets-in-other-solar-systems-will-we-want-to/558730/30 "2010-10-29T23:12:36Z")
Assuming we ever get to the point where extra-solar colonies are possible and practical I’d say we’ll be beyond technological regression…once we get a few colonies out there. Even if something nasty happened to the Earth, the technology would still be available to the colonies, who would eventually spin off colonies of their own, and so on. I remember reading somewhere that once a civilization is able to start building colonies in star systems other than their own that they could spread through a given galaxy in a few million or 10’s of millions of years (it was an argument demonstrating that since no one seems to have done this in our own galaxy that it’s unlikely that anyone would ever get the technology to do so). -XT ---
**Author:** ![ralph124c](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/8797f3/32.png) [@ralph124c](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ralph124c)\ **Post date:** [October 29, 2010, 11:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-we-ever-can-travel-to-habitable-planets-in-other-solar-systems-will-we-want-to/558730/31 "2010-10-29T23:29:06Z")
When we have evolved into purely electronic life, physical resources will become irrelevant. When wedon’t need to eat and breath, colonizing planets won’t be an issue. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [October 30, 2010, 12:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-we-ever-can-travel-to-habitable-planets-in-other-solar-systems-will-we-want-to/558730/32 "2010-10-30T00:23:07Z")
> [@ralph124c](#): > > When we have evolved into purely electronic life, physical resources will become irrelevant. When wedon’t need to eat and breath, colonizing planets won’t be an issue. But, we will have to explore them, to carry out our divine mission of exterminating all messy organic life in the universe. ---
**Author:** ![Babale](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/babale/32/15666_2.png) [@Babale](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Babale)\ **Post date:** [October 30, 2010, 1:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-we-ever-can-travel-to-habitable-planets-in-other-solar-systems-will-we-want-to/558730/33 "2010-10-30T01:13:36Z")
I was just thinking about how I would have loved to have been born 200 years ago in the 1800s, back when Man could still adventure. If we develop some sort of extra-dimensional mechanism to send people to other planets and find a planet capable of sustaining human life, I’d grab a few guns, some building equipment, mining equipment, and a couple of books on iron working and hop on through. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [October 30, 2010, 1:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-we-ever-can-travel-to-habitable-planets-in-other-solar-systems-will-we-want-to/558730/34 "2010-10-30T01:23:04Z")
> [@Babale](#): > > I was just thinking about how I would have loved to have been born 200 years ago in the 1800s, back when Man could still adventure. > > If we develop some sort of extra-dimensional mechanism to send people to other planets and find a planet capable of sustaining human life, I’d grab a few guns, some building equipment, mining equipment, and a couple of books on iron working and hop on through. Check out [_Contquistador,_](http://www.amazon.com/Conquistador-Alternate-S-M-Stirling/dp/0451459083) by S.M. Stirling. ---
**Author:** ![Nobody](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/94ad74/32.png) [@Nobody](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nobody)\ **Post date:** [October 30, 2010, 1:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-we-ever-can-travel-to-habitable-planets-in-other-solar-systems-will-we-want-to/558730/35 "2010-10-30T01:28:41Z")
I’d love just to go up to a current space station and spend a few days there. If we started colonizing other worlds and I could afford to go, and convince my wife to go, I would so be there. I’m sure there are a lot of others like me who would want to go just because of how cool we think it sounds. Unless we get wiped out first, eventually we’ll have space stations like B5 or Deep Space 9, or something like that. How I envy the people who will get to live on them. ---
**Author:** ![alphaboi867](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alphaboi867/32/3898_2.png) [@alphaboi867](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/alphaboi867)\ **Post date:** [October 30, 2010, 5:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-we-ever-can-travel-to-habitable-planets-in-other-solar-systems-will-we-want-to/558730/36 "2010-10-30T05:04:48Z")
> [@ralph124c](#): > > When we have evolved into purely electronic life, physical resources will become irrelevant. When wedon’t need to eat and breath, colonizing planets won’t be an issue. And eventually an eccentric transhuman-AI-entity (or group) will get all nostaligic and want to settle a garden world (either an existing one or a terraformed one) with biological humans and play god(s) while they build a civilization. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [October 30, 2010, 5:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-we-ever-can-travel-to-habitable-planets-in-other-solar-systems-will-we-want-to/558730/37 "2010-10-30T05:34:18Z")
> [@alphaboi867](#): > > And eventually an eccentric transhuman-AI-entity (or group) will get all nostaligic and want to settle a garden world (either an existing one or a terraformed one) with biological humans and play god(s) while they build a civilization. Or maybe that already happened. ---
**Author:** ![Lust4Life](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/ecc23a/32.png) [@Lust4Life](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lust4Life)\ **Post date:** [October 30, 2010, 12:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-we-ever-can-travel-to-habitable-planets-in-other-solar-systems-will-we-want-to/558730/38 "2010-10-30T12:51:55Z")
> [@Lumpy](#): > > It’s not that the human race will have given up exploring or expanding; it’s that we will have moved so far away from being dependent on a natural environment that when we do find one it will be irrelevent. This honestly reminds me of a bloke I knew who got himself a state of the art music system, T.V. and video(It was a few years ago) and his wife was a good cook. He was completely content at home and saw no reason to go on nights out or go away on holiday. His wife left him much to his surprise, but not to anyone elses.. ---
**Author:** ![Babale](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/babale/32/15666_2.png) [@Babale](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Babale)\ **Post date:** [October 30, 2010, 4:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-we-ever-can-travel-to-habitable-planets-in-other-solar-systems-will-we-want-to/558730/39 "2010-10-30T16:47:53Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > Check out [_Contquistador,_](http://www.amazon.com/Conquistador-Alternate-S-M-Stirling/dp/0451459083) by S.M. Stirling. Will definitely try to get my hands on that book, but just the plot summary sounds awesome. Actually, this surprises me… I read _Timeline_ a few years ago, and thought that the guy who stayed behind was a complete idiot… But if I went back to the 1800s, I’d definitely stay there. ---
**Author:** ![Grumman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/43a26b/32.png) [@Grumman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Grumman)\ **Post date:** [October 30, 2010, 5:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-we-ever-can-travel-to-habitable-planets-in-other-solar-systems-will-we-want-to/558730/40 "2010-10-30T17:53:00Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > We think of progress as always upwards, but it’s quite possible that our descendants will, at some point, lose our current technology. No, it is not. Once we’re capable of harnessing extraplanetary resources, nothing short of _massive_ depopulation has any chance of making us lose ground. > [@](#): > > If we really want to ensure the survival of our species, we should be putting folks in places that can naturally sustain human life, without maintenance. Nonsense. It’s not the species that’s important, it’s the individuals that make up the species. Unless the colony makes humans on Earth more likely to survive and vice versa, all you’re doing is doubling the chance of mass death and halving the casualties. You’re breaking even, nothing more. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-we-ever-can-travel-to-habitable-planets-in-other-solar-systems-will-we-want-to/558730.md?page=1)