If somebody wants to live on another planet, or the moon, be my guest.
But there’s no reason why we can’t make this planet (the Earth) a reasonable place to live. After all, where else has life been found?
That’s a false reframing of the issue, though. We don’t have to manage the Earth’s climate. It manages itself adequately, Nature has already done the hard work for us. We just have to manage our impact on it. But in an isolated, confined ecosystem, we have to build it from scratch with a precisely crafted balance of organisms and resources. A quick survey of the famines and wildly fluctuating environment of the Biosphere 2 project shows that reproducing an earth-like ecosystem is extremely difficult. And the technical constraints are no less difficult than the challenges of of confinement psychology.
First, who said anything about eliminating all pollution? Not me. Definitely pollution is a problem nowadays, but clearly we aren’t dying off in vast amounts, so it’s a matter of making cleaner technologies and managing our resources better. It is somewhat amusing that you scoffingly use the term “magic technology” while you are simultaneously espousing interplanetary colonization, which clearly will require quite a bit of wand-waving before it becomes even remotely feasible.
Actually, we do have to manage the Earth’s climate. We do this by handling our impact upon it. It is we who are causing the planet to grow warmer. Biosphere 2 was a botched design from the get-go, and as such, it shouldn’t be used as an example of the difficulties of developing an enclosed habitat. The psychological factor also isn’t as serious as you make out, either. Human beings live in isolated small environments all the time with few problems. They’re called submarines.
Yet. If we don’t get a handle on global warming very soon, it seems likely that we will be dying off in large groups.
According to the World Wildlife Fund, we’re already outstriping the planet’s resources at an excessive rate. According to this study, even conservation and recycling aren’t going to be enough. Clearly, it is obvious that we’re going to have to find another source of metal off Earth, if we want our civilization to survive.
Actually, it’s possible now, just hugely expensive. A lunar colony made up of a relatively small group of individuals (say around 100 for starters) could use lunar soil to generate oxygen, hydroponic gardens for food. While on the Moon, they could mine silicon, build solar arrays, use an electromagnetic catapult to sling them into Earth orbit, from there, they could beam electricity down to the Earth via microwaves. Over time, this would gradually reduce our need for fossil fuels and lower our pollution levels, thus giving us a bit more breathing room on the Earth. It’d be a slow process, and expensive, but it could be done, without waiting for that fusion breakthrough we’ve been promised for the past 50 years, or cheap rockets, space elevators, and the like. Heck, the lunar colonists, could, given enough time, develop a system to safely drop large hunks of lunar ore on to the Earth to make up for the depleted sources of things like iron.
We ever get space elevators up and running, then we can cheaply get things to orbit, not only here on Earth, but on Mars as well. On Mars, dumping greenhouse gases into the atmosphere would be a good thing.
One potential benefit: if a race of technologically superior aliens are observing Earth in the hopes of sharing their technology with us, but only after we have achieved space travel.
At this point I need to point out that you’re assuming the maintenance of a first world lifestyle for every person on earth. That isn’t really necessary for the survival of the species. We have much experience living leaner lives than we do now. Yes, we’ve done some damage, but 6 billion people aren’t going to die off just because they can’t get SUV’s or flat-screen televisions. We have not even begun to scratch the surface of sensible transportation, energy alternatives, cutting down needless consumption, sustainable habitats, etc. All of which, by the way, would be critical design principles for interplanetary colonies. If you’re saying we can’t do it down here, why do you think we can do it up there, under much more difficult conditions?
Right. Instead of the fusion breakthrough we’ve been promised for 50 years, we would now be waiting on a giant iron ore-slinger for the next 100 years. Not a terribly compelling argument.
Anything that does not outright violate the laws of physics is more feasable than changing human nature. Interplanetary colonization does not outright violate the laws of physics. QED.
The Viking colonists of Greenland (to take just the most obvious example) would beg to differ.
For obvious reasons, a policy of deliberately sabotaging the economic prospects of most of the world population is not compatible with the long-term survival of the species – the civilized portions of the world are simply too vulnerable to (to take the most obvious example) terrorist disruption.
And that’s just the pragmatic argument, not even touching on the fact that to advocate such a policy is to sink to a level of evil that makes Adolf Hitler look like a naughty little boy who should be smacked soundly upon the wrist and sent to bed without dessert.
No, it’s not. The problem is, however, that people seem to think that it is necessary. You going to strike a blow for the planet and swear off modern conviences?
We also have a lot of experience living without things like antibiotics. We tend to live a lot shorter lives without them.
No, but they are dying because of the pollution we’ve caused by those things, and as more and more people demand them, that number is going to grow.
It’s quite often easier to start over from scratch than it is to try and rework what you’ve already screwed up. We don’t know the level of damage we’ve done to the Earth. Nearly every day there’s a news story saying that the estimates for global warming were wrong and that things are worse than originally thought.
Because we can eliminate things like nations which ignore environmental safeguards, and we won’t have people saying that it’s their right to pollute as much as they want.
Except the ore slinger can be built with off-the-shelf technology, practical fusion power can’t.
Other than petroleum and other fossil hydrocarbons (which we can’t expect to find in outer space), are there any mineral resources of which Earth’s supply is actually threatened with depletion?
See the reports I linked to in response to Brain Wreck’s comments. We’re running out of everything. Metal prices are shooting up as fast as gas prices because of the increased demand that the industrialization China and India are making. That’s a process which is only going to accelerate.
Oh, and we could “mine” things like methane and various hydrocarbons on Titan. Of course, we don’t have a practical way to ship them to Earth (or even mine them), so there’s not much point.
Bingo. I’d guess that weather satellites have more than paid for the expense of the space program many times over, just by themselves. As a former resident of Louisiana, I was sure glad I knew where those suckers were at all times.
Anyone lost somewhere - or anyone who would be lost if he didn’t have GPS, would say there were tangible benefits also.
As for manned spaceflight. Maybe the change in thinking about the earth from the famous Apollo VIII picture? If not, it’s still early. I wonder what the benefit of airplanes would be 10 years after the 1903.
The report you linked to, while it makes some interesting points, seems a bit on the rough side. It says things like: “Researchers studying supplies of copper, zinc and other metals have determined that these finite resources, even if recycled, may not meet the needs of the global population forever,” which doesn’t really say anything. “Finite” resources, by definition, will not last “forever”.
In fact, it gives just two figures of metals that are considered in no immediate danger of becoming scarce, and suggests that platinum “may” become rare in the future…in fact, it suggests that everything “may” become scarce. Will anything? They just don’t know, at least that’s what the report says. Nor does it say whether the scientists calculated that number from known deposits, known deposits reachable with current technology, known deposits it is economically feasible to get at, or what have you.
Can you provide a cite for any of the basic industrial resources (save crude oil) becoming scarce in the near future with any amount of certainty?
I don’t have time to find anything definitive, but this and this both agree shortages are coming.
Mind you, there’s supposed to an asteroid out there that has more titanium on it than exists on Earth, so it’s not like we’d need huge amounts of asteroids to keep us going. How we’d get them to Earth in a profitable manner is another matter.
There are untapped mineral resources in outer space. There are also untapped mineral resources in Antarctica and Greenland. They remain untapped because nobody has found a way to make mining operations profitable in an environment where expensive life-support systems are necessary and you have to dig through a mile of ice before you can even scratch the dirt. But even so, wouldn’t it be much cheaper to mine Antarctica than to mine the Moon or the asteroids and get the minerals back to Earth? Why mine the Moon before Antarctica is played out?
Aren’t there treaties in place to not exploit the mineral resources in Antarctica? I thought it wasn’t developed because of those treaties, not because of any technical limitations on extracting those resources.
-XT
Any foreseeable large-scale human presence in space is going to depend on permanent settlers living in closed-cycle habitats, whether sitting on a planet’s surface or floating free as space colonies in high orbit. Launch costs will make a “ship everything in and rotate people regularly” approach unaffordable So why hasn’t something as elementary as a human-algae recycled atmosphere been demonstrated yet?
I think you’ve got it backwards. The Antarctic Treaty System exists mainly because no country sees enough practical value in Antarctica to do anything but make a reasonable compromise over it. The Protocol on Environmental Protection forbids mineral extraction for non-scientific purposes, but I confidently expect any signatory would renegotiate or repudiate it if there were money to be made.
As for mining Greenland – that would require leave of no government but Denmark’s. Yet it still doesn’t happen.
Well, thats your opinion I suppose. Personally I think it was the an attempt to stem ANOTHER land/resource grab by the various major powers (especially, at the time, the Europeans).
I don’t really see why, if one were to disregard environmental concerns (and since there is no native population, and if a country were willing to break treaty anyway), that the resources there couldn’t be exploited if a nation REALLY wanted too.
YMMV BG
-XT
Because Antarctica is a protected scientific preserve, and what ecosystem exists there is fragile.
Mining an asteroid in space does not increase pollution nor damage the landscape, inviting the wrath of ecological protests. You can strip mine an asteroid for every last ounce of common and precious metals, radioactives, et cetera, leaving behind a dispersed cloud of dust, without dealing with environmental impact statements or threatening keystone species. Getting materials mined from a near Earth asteroid back to Earth is not an expensive undertaking, relatively speaking; it’s all “downhill”, and provided that you’re not in a big hurry to ship them back, a low-energy Hohmann transfer can put it at the right position and speed with minimal effort. If you can rig some kind of low energy constant thrust–say, using solar-powered eletrostatic thrusters pumping powdered slag at propellant–you can even improve on that, despite the low efficiency and impulse of such motors. Getting there, on the other hand–and with enough manpower and equipment to set up mining operations–would be a phenomenal task, vastly more difficult than a Moon shot or unmanned interplanetary capsule.
It’s not economically feasible today, nor is there the kind of demand for common metals (or sufficient need for precious ones) that it would be worthwhile for a private commercial entity to spend the three or four decades of development to create such capability; plus, a sudden glut of materials would devalue them as a commodity (unless carefully doled out by a cartel) so from a business standpoint it doesn’t even make that much sense. But from the perspective of continuing human development and expansion, particularly into space where it costs so much to lift stuff up out of Earth’s gravity well, it makes perfect sense. But this is many decades, if not a century or more, into the future.
Stranger