Will we ever colonise other worlds?

Great Debates
41

Because there’s a benefit to doing so. Yes, it’s expensive, but the rewards are enormous, and if your job is in the city you save a huge amount of time and money in commuting costs.

The difference is that in current gated communities, you aren’t at risk of a horrible death if the oxygen generators stop working.

I’m not saying I want to go to Antarctica. I’m saying that the fact that NOBODY wants to go to Antarctica illustrates how ludicrous it is to think we’re going to colonize Mars, a place that makes Antarctica look like Club Med, and which is about one million times more expensive to set up a colony in.

42

My WAG is that we’ll see a few manned expeditions to Mars before 2050, then leave Mars alone for a few decades. The later half of the 21st century will see an outpost on and/or orbiting Mars and manned expeditions to the outer planets. We won’t see real colonies outside cislunar space until the 22nd century. Attemps at intersteller expeditions (generation ships, sleeper ships, embryo ships) will have to wait until the later half of this millennium.

43

Okay, but my argument wasn’t that large numbers of people will ever colonize Mars, or even the moon. I don’t know why someone would want to live on Mars either, unless they were a scientist or there are boat loads of dengi to be made off of asteroids or something. But orbiting colonies could be near earth Las Vegas’s, Wall Streets, who knows what all? There’s no action in Antarctica, but there is action in NYC, Los Angeles, London, etc, so people pay more to be where the cool jobs and things are. A well planned orbiting colony could be a much more hip, happening desirable place to live than Antarctica.

The oxygen generators giving out? Hm. I suppose we’ll work that out first.

44

I think we probably could mess it up that badly, maybe we will, but as the degree of mess increases, so does the difficulty of leaving (not that it was or will ever be simple anyway)

45

The thing is, all these cities were just cities for a long time before they became especially desirable.

As Neil Diamond sang, back when I was younger:

L.A.'s fine, the sun shines most all the time,
and the feeling is laid back
Palm trees grow and rents are low…

And they were, too, when he sang that.

NYC has kept on being a happening place for so long, only partially because of the stockbrokers and lawyers who can afford the primo rents, but just as much because there have been a series of marginal, hence inexpensive, neighborhoods that were colonized by artists and musicians and whatnot, and where immigrants without much money could open restaurants and make a go of it.

You can get the one, but not the other, in your space colony. It’ll be a gated community, not a happenin’ place.

46

How could we possibly make Earth worse than outer space? What could Earth become that would be more destructive to a habitat than vaccuum and radiation?

47

The vacuum is the ocean, not the port of destination. (not that I think we’ll ever make the voyage anyway)

48

Trouble is, by that standard the Moon is an undersea island, and Mars is a sandbar just barely rising above the ocean’s surface. Similarly for the moons of Jupiter, Saturn, etc.

And at least for now, it’s the Moon and Mars that the space-philes want us to colonize, for reasons that continue to elude me.

49

Good point, taken.

I guess it’s proposed as a stepping stone to either long-term human survival in space generally, or to colonisation of exoplanets, or both. I think it’s a bit of a pipe dream, but there’s no way to convince some people.

50

For those of you who feel humanity should stay on earth forever, I have a couple questions.

What population number can the earth support? I’ve read some articles which posit we’re already over populated and can’t sustain our current numbers in what most of us 1st worlders consider a decent lifestyle. I’ve read other articles which feel maybe 10 blllion is sustainable, somehow. What do you think?

Once you’ve got your number, please propose what measures we should enact to maintain it. If people don’t follow the rules, what measures should we enact to forcibly reduce our numbers back to the sustainable number?

China’s played around with population control, been criticized for it, and ended up with a surplus of men and a dearth of women. How do you propose enforcing world-wide population control, assuming people don’t voluntarily stop having babies which in my opinion, is about as likely as people voluntarily not having sex?

51

levdrakon, we’re not staying on Earth because we “should.” We’re staying here because there’s no other place to go. We simply can’t put a billion or two people on Mars. The results of over-population and resource depletion may be pretty horrible, but there’s no solution in space. It just doesn’t exist.

52

We probably don’t need to do anything. Birth rate tends to decline as nations become more industrialized and economically developed. Already, almost half the world has sub-replacement fertility rates.

53

Not right now, no. But who’s to say that we won’t be able to do it in 100 years? Or in 1000 years?

And I firmly believe that humanity should spread out from Earth to the stars.

54

I can’t rule out some completely unexpected change in physics, but it seems very unlikely that an FTL drive will ever exist. Even getting to a decent fraction of c takes appalling amounts of energy. And Mars isn’t going to suddenly become habitable, not in 100 years, nor 1000, nor 100,000.

The only way I can see space colonization becoming a reality is either

a.) We discover that everything we know about physics is wrong, or at least needs to be modified beyond all recognition.

or

b.) Humanity is modified into beings that can cope with airless environments, or can cope with 10,000 year journeys to the stars.

55

Without going through the whole thread (I’m typing this on my phone), I’ll say that yes…I think humans WILL colonize other worlds. In fact, I think its a good bet that at a minimum we will have a permanent research base on the moon in my lifetime. I’ve been seeing a lot of research and development lately wrt space travel, the problems with habitat on other worlds, etc. I’ve also noticed a lot of PR for this lately as well in places like Discovery Channel and Learning Channel (even History Channel). There is a new mini-series on one of those channels starting tonight IIRC on Mars in fact that I hope to catch.

Why would we want to go to the moon? Well, why would we want to put a up satellites and orbital telescopes? Why would we want to put research stations in Antarctica? Because there is a lot to learn, that’s why. Because it expands our knowledge, it expands our frontiers and it expands our capability to go further. There is a whole solar system out there full of goodies that potentially could be exploited…yet people are constantly saying that space exploration isn’t worth anything. It’s like people who said we would never need to drill in the deep ocean…yeah, there was oil there but what would be the point? There was a lot of oil close to shore. Until there wasn’t anymore.

Even if space exploration never pays off (which I think is a ridiculous proposition in the long run) it’s worth doing just to expand our knowledge. Mars is worth going too just to solve the technological problems OF going there for humans…and for what we would likely find. One manned mission would increase our knowledge order of magnitude over what all the robot exploration for the past few decades has told us. It’s worth going just for that IMHO.

-XT

56

xtisme, The OP mentioned colonizing other worlds, which to me means large poplulations, say in the millions, or at least 100,000’s. (If it’s to solve the problems levdrakon mentions it would have to be at least in the 100,000,000’s.) I don’t think he was talking about a base or an expedition. It’s possible, maybe even likely that we may someday build a semi-permanent base on the moon, or that we may send a manned expedition to Mars. But colonization isn’t going to happen.

57

The point is that the environment on any planet other than Earth is so hostile that it is impossible, short of dropping an asteroid on ourselves, for us to screw up the planet to the extent where it would be desireable to move to another one. If we had to, we could build protective environments on Earth that don’t need to be blasted off into space and shipped 1,000,000 miles.

People settled in what is now New York City because of it’s location. It is at the mouth of the Hudson River and connects to the Long Island Sound and the Atlantic Ocean. Waterways, as you know, serve as transportation highways and cities often form at their mouths as transportation hubs. As people made their way to the New World to seek their fortunes, many continued to settle in New York to trade, work on the waterfront and so on. As cities grow, they continue to attract more people.

The same could happen on another planet, except that there are no fortunes to be had. It is far too expensive using any currently imaginable technology to ship passengers and supplies around the solar system. Go to the Wiki link on bulk carrier ships I posted earlier. A sustained colony any larger than a research station will require thousands of tons of supplies. How will they get there? What could possibly attract thousands or millions of people to live there?

And will these colonies ever be self sustaining? The inhabitants will always be trapped in their domed bubble. More than likely, these colonies will become like the old ghost towns out in the west that dried up with the mining profits.

58

Thing is, suppose the population on Earth grows to unbearable levels. So they’ve gotta go somewhere. How about Mars? Why not ship a couple billion people to Mars, or the Moon, or wherever, and they’ll set up domed/underground cities there.

Except, again, if you’re going to live on Mars or the Moon, or a space station, you’re essentially commiting yourself to live indoors for 99% of the rest of your life. In a closed ecology. You’re going to have to grow food there, generate electricity there, build everything you need there, recycle the air, recycle the water.

If millions people can live in a self-sufficient closed-ecology underground Martian city, why can’t they do the same thing except on Baffin Island? If our engineering advances to the point where we can build cities on Mars to house our excess population, that same city can be built on Baffin Island for 1/100th of the price and be 10 times safer.

Every bit of food, heat, water and air on a Mars colony would have to be produced by that Mars colony. Except Baffin Island has free air, it’s much warmer than Mars–it has water in liquid form for half the year! If your dome cracks on Baffin Island you break out the parkas, not the space suits.

I’m just asking the space-colony optimists to imagine the cost of building a self-sufficient arcology on Baffin Island. It would be a tremendous cost. You think rents in New York City are expensive? Now imagine the cost of transporting that entire arcology to the Moon, or Mars. Where every pound of stuff moved into earth orbit costs hundreds of dollars. Well, if economic growth continues at 3-4% averaged over a century or two, Martian tourism won’t be out of the question, just like tourism to Antarctica or tourism to the summit of Mt. Everest isn’t out of the question today. Sure, it will cost the equivalent of millions and millions of 2007 dollars, but maybe in 2207 that might be within the grasp of an upper-middle class professional person looking for the experience of a lifetime.

But it won’t be the answer to overcrowding on earth, because if you can build that trillion dollar tourist city on Mars you can build a 100 similar cities on Baffin Island and Antarctica to house the wretched refuse of our teeming shore, for the same price tag as that one Martian city.

59

I disagree with those figures: for Earth-like planets, perhaps a thousand at most to form a colony. You simply need enough to ensure genetic diversity. The population will, of course, grow explosively - think of each woman having 10+ children - if it survives at all. Some colonies will succeed, some colonies will fail.

60

How can you say that? We’ve been to the moon, we’ve got people in the ISS and we’ve got working probes on Mars. Of course there’s somewhere to go. We’ve been there and sent back pictures to prove it. The earth’s orbit is littered with satellites and I’d bet you do something today you couldn’t without a satellite. No where to go?

the OP asked about a significant human presence, sometime in the next 90 years or so, or ever. Ever is a pretty long time and significant doesn’t to my mind mean 100,000’s or millions.

I’m not big on colonizing planets because I think that’s a waste of time, at least for a long time. But colonizing space is doable. Expensive and complicated, but doable.

I’d rather humanity spent 100 trillion dollars learning how to strip-mine the moon and turn it into a few more million square miles of usable land area then spend 100 trillion dollars constantly playing fixit here on earth.

I have some problems with your cite. First of all, the claim that “half the world lives in nations with sub-replacement fertility,” needs a cite to back it up. The article also doesn’t seem to address the issue of health and declining fertility rates. Some of the countries mentioned with low fertility, is this due to increased prosperity, or ill-health, or other reasons not mentioned? The article even says, “Widespread availability of pornography through the Internet and other mass media channels can satiate the sexual desires of men and reduce sexual intercourse, thereby reducing fertility.”

Okay.

The article also goes on to say decreased fertility is actually a problem,

So it sounds like we need an increasing population, yet are quite possibly already beyond the point where we can sustain an increasing population. What to do, what to do.