Will we ever colonise other worlds?

Great Debates
81

Xtisme, I know all those obstacles can be worked around. But it will be incredibly expensive and difficult to do, especially for a colony of several thousand people. I’m all for a research station or two, though even that looks unlikely in the near future, and there’s probably little research a man could do that a robot couldn’t. But a moonbase would be pretty cool.

Say we can grow a plant or two in lunar soil. I’m guessing this was done by adding fertilizer. So you have to ship enough fertilizer to the moon to grow enough plants to feed a colony of several thousand people. Hydroponics is another option, but then incredibly precious, irreplacable water will be used. And that’s just one problem.

82

But Levdrakon, think for a minute. Yes, I can imagine giving Mars colonists the tools to create a Mars colony. They can set up factories on Mars, they can manufacture building materials from Martian regolith, they can manufacture air, they can melt ice, they can build UV lamps to grow crops with, they can power everything with nuclear reactors.

We can do that on Earth too.

As for the contention that we’ll need more metals, the problem with that is that there are plenty of metal oxides in the Earth’s crust, it’s just that they aren’t economically feasible to exploit, because the cost of digging them up and smelting them is greater than the sale price of the raw metal.

Thing is, most of the iron ever mined is still in use. Steel mills are the biggest recycling centers in existance, only we don’t call them recycling centers because they generate a profit. So it isn’t like we run out of metal one day, we have a steadily growing stock of metal that is instantiated in different ways depending on our mood. And while we prefer to smelt hematite, if the price of steel rises enough there are all kinds of low-grade ores that become economically viable. The price per ton of steel is going to have to increase by several orders of magnitude before shipping steel back from the asteroid belt can compete with low grade ore from Earth…even if there were solid gold asteroids it would be hard to make a business case for exploiting them…because increasing the supply means plummeting prices.

If we have plenty of energy, we can create any amount of metal we like. Or even better. Why make a metal car when you can make it out of carbon composites, with a single crystal diamond engine block?

83

[QUOTE=Lemur866]
But Levdrakon, think for a minute. Yes, I can imagine giving Mars colonists the tools to create a Mars colony. They can set up factories on Mars, they can manufacture building materials from Martian regolith, they can manufacture air, they can melt ice, they can build UV lamps to grow crops with, they can power everything with nuclear reactors.

[/QUOTE]

Yes, but there are a brazillion steps to take before you get to produce your own lightbulb without anything coming from Earth. Think of every part of every machine and the machines that make the parts for those machines. All the way down to regolith.

84

Why go to space?

  1. Set up large scale orbiting solar collectors to provide energy to particle colliders which turn the electrical energy and hydrogen into anti-matter. The anti matter is produced at a net loss of energy, but it is the most powerful rocket fuel you could ever want… and asides, the sun is pumping those photons anyway.

  2. Use anti matter to power increasingly fast and sexy spacecraft. Eventually taking the trip to mars in a week.

  3. Consumerism. People go to mars because it’s fancy. The elderly who refuse or are past the limits of life extension technology travel to mars because it’s easier on the heart and joints. Religious sects travel there to be closer to god or farther way from the earth bound heathen. Poor people travel there because it’s a frontier and a chance to be on the ground floor. Rich kids go for their birthdays, honeymooner’s go for low gee sexualbatics, broken hearted lovers go for a chance to start over… who cares. If it’s possible to get there people will go.

As for the cost, once automation and nano fabrication makes the average person’s life one of leisure, what else are you going to do with your money?

85

[QUOTE=Lobohan]
Why go to space?

  1. Set up large scale orbiting solar collectors to provide energy to particle colliders which turn the electrical energy and hydrogen into anti-matter. The anti matter is produced at a net loss of energy, but it is the most powerful rocket fuel you could ever want… and asides, the sun is pumping those photons anyway.

  2. Use anti matter to power increasingly fast and sexy spacecraft. Eventually taking the trip to mars in a week.

  3. Consumerism. People go to mars because it’s fancy. The elderly who refuse or are past the limits of life extension technology travel to mars because it’s easier on the heart and joints. Religious sects travel there to be closer to god or farther way from the earth bound heathen. Poor people travel there because it’s a frontier and a chance to be on the ground floor. Rich kids go for their birthdays, honeymooner’s go for low gee sexualbatics, broken hearted lovers go for a chance to start over… who cares. If it’s possible to get there people will go.

As for the cost, once automation and nano fabrication makes the average person’s life one of leisure, what else are you going to do with your money?
[/QUOTE]
Hell, once we get the stargate system running we’ll all be vacationing at that kick ass resort orbiting Tau Ceti.

86

[QUOTE=Larry Borgia]
Hell, once we get the stargate system running we’ll all be vacationing at that kick ass resort orbiting Tau Ceti.
[/QUOTE]

I don’t believe anything I mentioned violates the laws of physics does it?

I also don’t think there was a time limit placed on it, what do you suppose life will be like in ten thousand years if civilization doesn’t’ fall?

87

[QUOTE=Lobohan]
I don’t believe anything I mentioned violates the laws of physics does it?

I also don’t think there was a time limit placed on it, what do you suppose life will be like in ten thousand years if civilization doesn’t’ fall?
[/QUOTE]

Sorry, my post was pretty sarcastic. But while anti-matter, say, doesn’t violate the laws of physics, it’s extremely speculative, to say the least, that we’ll be able to manufacture it in large quantities.

Actually, now that I think about it, I’m sure I’ve read an article by some physicist (Kip Thorne?) which speculated on the feasability of wormholes. But the author admitted he was woolgathering.

No we don’t know what life will be like 10,000 years from now. Your techno-utopia may come true, or the tattered remnants of humanity may be living in caves, or organic life may be replaced by artificial life, or whatever.

88

[QUOTE=Larry Borgia]
…or the tattered remnants of humanity may be living in caves, or organic life may be replaced by artificial life, or whatever.
[/QUOTE]

In my opinion, that is probably more likely. :smiley:

89

[QUOTE=Lemur866]
Why do you imagine each woman would have 10 children?
[/QUOTE]

Because the women of a new colony world will have to have many children, simply so that sufficient survive. Many of the women will die in childbirth. There will be limited support from Earth - follow-up supply ships, for example - but the colonists won’t be able to radio Earth for advice on each and every problem. Colonists will be supported in their old age - should they reach it - by their children. No Social Services, no Medicaid, no pension. For the first few generations, farming and its support services will be about as far as it goes simply because the colony won’t be able to support any other specialisation. Give it a few hundred years and you’re laughing, but the initial hump is very tough.

90

[QUOTE=Lemur866]
But Levdrakon, think for a minute. Yes, I can imagine giving Mars colonists the tools to create a Mars colony. They can set up factories on Mars, they can manufacture building materials from Martian regolith, they can manufacture air, they can melt ice, they can build UV lamps to grow crops with, they can power everything with nuclear reactors.

We can do that on Earth too.
[/QUOTE]
And we can pollute the crap out of earth and make it a rotten place to live and we can pollute the crap out of space and make it… what again?

It’s a lot easier to learn to live in an artificial habitat and if you screw it up - oops. Make a new one or fix the old one. Either way, not impossible.

Screw up the earth and how you gonna fix it? It takes 100’s, if not 1,000’s of years to fix our mistakes, and we are so not going to stop making mistakes anytime in the next 100+ years.

91

[QUOTE=levdrakon]
And we can pollute the crap out of earth and make it a rotten place to live and we can pollute the crap out of space and make it… what again?
[/QUOTE]
But, as we keep explaining, the existence of space colonies doesn’t affect Earth population or pollution levels at all. The choice isn’t “pollute Earth OR pollute space”. It’s “pollute Earth OR come up with Earth-based solutions to the pollution”. Any theoretical space colonies are out of the equation entirely.

Artificial habitats are far LESS forgiving than Earth’s biosphere. Screw it up and oops, you’re DEAD. No do-overs.

And how exactly does the existence of space colonies protect us from screwing up Earth’s environment? Space colonies wouldn’t reduce the Earth’s population one bit and the cost per pound of moving anything over millions of miles means that we won’t be able to relocate manufacturing off-planet either.

92

[QUOTE=Pochacco]
But, as we keep explaining, the existence of space colonies doesn’t affect Earth population or pollution levels at all. The choice isn’t “pollute Earth OR pollute space”. It’s “pollute Earth OR come up with Earth-based solutions to the pollution”. Any theoretical space colonies are out of the equation entirely.
[/quote]
You keep trying to put space colonies into the equation, not me. Las Vegas isn’t a solution to earth’s pollution or population problem either, but it’s still there because apparently lots of people want it there, and spend ungodly amounts of money there.

No, screw up and it’s "oops, CO2 levels a bit high today, better correct that. Try that on earth. But if you’re concerned about the all your eggs in one basket problem, then I’ll just go and build twenty colonies. How many earths you gonna build?

Did I say it would? But it could help. Solar power satellites, etc. How much of a modern human’s standard of living depends on energy? Plus, opening up space gives earth’s youth somewhere to go when their parents have used up where they came from. Why have humans traditionally migrated anyway, for shits & giggles?

Look, I’ll say this for like the millionth time. You want to stay on earth, you tell me how to solve earth’s population problem. I’ve given you someplace to expand. Maybe you won’t be able to move there, but your kids might, or your kids’ kids.

All you “stay on earthers” can do is cry “stay on earth, you can’t go to space!” Not a single on you has even the tiniest idea what to do about population, polluition, or global warming. Not one single tiny idea. Not one.

Me and a couple of my buddies here have a few ideas about what to do in space, though.

93

[QUOTE=levdrakon]
Plus, opening up space gives earth’s youth somewhere to go when their parents have used up where they came from. Why have humans traditionally migrated anyway, for shits & giggles?
[/QUOTE]
So are you proposing a mass migration or not? Upthread you said you’d send a tiny handfull of people and sex would do the rest. Now you’re saying that extraterrestrial colonies will be a destination for emigrants. Which is it?

Having “someplace to expand” does NOTHING to address Earth’s population problem. I don’t know why you keep laboring this point.

And neither do you. Because “emigrate to space” doesn’t address those problems. It’s just a distraction.

What’s your business model then? Because otherwise it’s just a fantasy. You might as well say you’re going to solve Earth’s problems by inventing teleportation or anti-gravity.

94

[QUOTE=Contrapuntal]
North America is about 3000 miles from Europe. The closest identified planet is 15 light years from Earth, and we have no idea whether that planet can support human colonists. This comparison is useless. At 5,000,000 miles per hour it would take almost 600 years to get to the closest star; more than three times that to get to the closest planet. If the original colonists in America faced a voyage of over 1800 years, even if they had ships that sailed at .7% of the speed of light, I daresay that we would not be “sitting here today talking … about it.”
[/QUOTE]

Te closest identified planet to Earth is either Mars or Venus. They’re far closer than 15 light years but I reckon this was a typo on your part?

95

Pochacco, look. We’re on a ship. It may or may not be sinking. I see an island and I want off the ship. I’m grabbing some supplies and swimming for that shore. There could be dinosaurs living there for all I know, but I’m gonna find out.
You: “How does that save the ship?”
Me: “I dunno, your problem.”
“But how does that save the ship?”
“I dunno.”
“But how does that save the ship?”
“I dunno.”
“But how does that save the ship?”
“I dunno.”
“But how does that save the ship?”
“I dunno.”
“But how does that save the ship?”
“I dunno.”
“But how does that save the ship?”
“I dunno.”

Doesn’t this get tiring after awhile? Jumping ship and swimming to the shore doesn’t prevent the ship form sinking, doesn’t prevent the ship from not sinking but just in case the ship does sink I hope I made it to the nearest shore in time.

96

[QUOTE=Pochacco]
You might as well say “We’ll solve the problem with magic wands!” Just because we can imagine something and give it a techy-sounding name doesn’t mean that it’s actually possible to construct.
[/QUOTE]
But it’s probably possible to construct something if we see it in nature, and we do; living creatures. Just as birds showed that heavier than air flight was possible, life shows that self-reproducing machines are possible. The ones demanding “magic” in this argument are the ones who claim that it can’t be done, that there’s something special and undetectable about life that we can’t ever duplicate.

As for a reason; eventually small bases will be set up here and there; for scientific purposes or national ego or a vision for the future ( not everyone is as short sighted as we are these days ), or something else. And they will grow in size by good old fashioned reproduction if nothing else, as has been pointed out. And once it grows large enough, it’ll become self sustaining and grow on it’s own.

No, it’s unlikely that millions of people will be shuttled off into space, but it seems unlikely that no one, ever, will ever try to plant a colony that can grow on it’s own.

As for reasons to do so, there are several that have nothing to do with economics. Despite what Americans seem to generally prefer to believe, profit is not the sole and only motivation for human behavior; we aren’t Ferengi. Species survival, for one; a self sufficient colony on Mars could let humanity survive any world-wrecking disaster on Earth. National ego is another; I could easily see a future colony being set up in some future version of the Cold War race to the Moon, and surviving and growing afterwards.

As for the practical problems of survival, those will diminish as technology advances; what’s hard or impossible for us now will be done by something you buy casually a century from now. Much less several centuries.

97

[QUOTE=levdrakon]
Did I say it would? But it could help. Solar power satellites, etc. How much of a modern human’s standard of living depends on energy? Plus, opening up space gives earth’s youth somewhere to go when their parents have used up where they came from. Why have humans traditionally migrated anyway, for shits & giggles?
[/QUOTE]
You have a chicken/egg problem. When you migrate to space, somebody has to get there FIRST and spend ungodly amounts of resources to build the area you’re going to live in. This is a stark contrast to “traditional migration”, where you’d wander off to someplace distant, grab your hatchet, chop down some trees, and live off the land until you had your house built and your farm set up. You can’t “live off the vacuum”.

So, the fanciful notion of people migrating to space to get a new start or so that they can get away from anti-religious-persecution laws is a complete non-starter until somebody with more motivation and more money goes out there and makes the habitat. They’ll have to do this for commercial reasons, and there’s no commercial reason to go into space until after we’ve made earth considerably more inhospitable and costly to work on/with than the place we’re going. Add to this the fact that, unlike cases on earth where towns would grow and spread out from commercial or entertainment centers, there is no ‘spreading out’ from a space station or mining colony. There’s as much space there as the industrialist created to house his employees, and that’s IT. So, your shiftless migrating populations are still screwed.

[QUOTE=levdrakon]
Look, I’ll say this for like the millionth time. You want to stay on earth, you tell me how to solve earth’s population problem. I’ve given you someplace to expand. Maybe you won’t be able to move there, but your kids might, or your kids’ kids.
[/QUOTE]
What population problem? No, seriously. We’ve already discussed how the human population is stabilizing, and there’s loads of available and relatively hospitable land in africa, greenland, antarctica, etc for us to fill up. I really don’t see the problem. At worst, we’ll get localized areas where population pressures get too great and disease or war will spring up and “fix” the issue. Regrettable, but it’s not going to kill off humanity either.

And it’s been pointed out that even if you ship up enough people to have them breed like rabbits and fill up your “made from vacuum” space stations and colonies, siphoning those few people will have exactly zero impact on earth’s population problems. So this is a pure red herring, and every time you trot it out you demonstrate that you have no REAL reasons to present as to why anyone would even bother to build a vacation home in space, much less a colony of any kind.

[QUOTE=levdrakon]
All you “stay on earthers” can do is cry “stay on earth, you can’t go to space!” Not a single on you has even the tiniest idea what to do about population, polluition, or global warming. Not one single tiny idea. Not one.
[/QUOTE]
Actually, the thing that’s shouting “stay on earth” the loudest is the ufathomable harshness of space, with earth’s gravity well singing the chorus.

Oh, and:
Population: not a problem.

Pollution: it’s not a fatal problem, but if it gets even close to being one, it would be orders of magnitudes easier easier and cheaper to ship the pollution out into space than to ship people out there, since the pollution doesn’t need to be kept alive.

Global Warming: Hard to say if we’ll wait so long to fix this that this will become a fatal problem. If it does, it would be orders of magnitudes easier to put regulated domes on earth and defend them from the mobs of poor people than it would be to truck the domes up to space. (This would also solve the population problem, eventually.)

[QUOTE=levdrakon]
Me and a couple of my buddies here have a few ideas about what to do in space, though.
[/QUOTE]
So do I; I’ll fly in starships and fight against the evil empire, with my wookie co-pilot and my jedi buddies.

More realistically, I’m afraid that getting yourself killed sucking vacuum wouldn’t do enough to help solve earths problems to be worth doing it.

98

[QUOTE=begbert2]
So, the fanciful notion of people migrating to space to get a new start or so that they can get away from anti-religious-persecution laws is a complete non-starter until somebody with more motivation and more money goes out there and makes the habitat. They’ll have to do this for commercial reasons, and there’s no commercial reason to go into space until after we’ve made earth considerably more inhospitable and costly to work on/with than the place we’re going.
[/QUOTE]
So you are saying that in all of future human history, no one will ever again fund something expensive for non-commercial reasons? Politics, religion, idealism; everything but the profit motive is dead, in your opinion, and will never return even unto the end of time ?

And realistically within a century and probably sooner, we’ll just need to drop some self replicating robots off to build the infrastructure.

99

[QUOTE=levdrakon]
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?
[/quote]

Look at the map on that page, it shows that almost every developed nation has a sub-replacement level fertility rate. That’s a fact, not an opinion. Life expectancy in most of those nations are higher than the US, so it’s probably not due to “ill-health.” More likely it’s because of wide availability of contraception and abortion, greater career/social opportunities available to women, high cost of raising and educating a child in a developed nation, etc.

Okay what?

Actually it says it may be a problem. Japan and Germany are doing reasonably well economically, despite the declining population, so maybe it isn’t a problem. Also, if a declining population is bad, that probably means we need a stable population - not necessarily an increasing population.

Even if population does grow in the future, population control and “colonization” of inhospitable parts of the Earth (ocean floor, deserts, etc) will be far easier than space colonies. Yes, in theory it’s possible to build an orbital colony that can house millions of people. But it’ll always be easier to build an undersea or arctic colony of that size. Even if we pollute the atmosphere to a point where we can’t breathe, it’s easier to build a sealed dome on Earth than in space.

That said, I think some day there will be human colonies on other planets, possibly even in other star systems. We’d need genetically engineered plants that can survive in the existing environment and slowly change it to an earth-like environment, or possibly self-replicating machines that can do the same. But I suspect it will be populated by a relatively small number of people, certainly not enough to make a noticeable difference in the earth’s population.

100

[QUOTE=levdrakon]
Pochacco, look. We’re on a ship. It may or may not be sinking. I see an island and I want off the ship. I’m grabbing some supplies and swimming for that shore. There could be dinosaurs living there for all I know, but I’m gonna find out.
You: “How does that save the ship?”
Me: “I dunno, your problem.”
“But how does that save the ship?”
“I dunno.”
“But how does that save the ship?”
“I dunno.”
“But how does that save the ship?”
“I dunno.”
“But how does that save the ship?”
“I dunno.”
“But how does that save the ship?”
“I dunno.”
“But how does that save the ship?”
“I dunno.”

Doesn’t this get tiring after awhile? Jumping ship and swimming to the shore doesn’t prevent the ship form sinking, doesn’t prevent the ship from not sinking but just in case the ship does sink I hope I made it to the nearest shore in time.
[/QUOTE]

This is a stupid analogy. Here’s a better one:

“I want to get off this ship and go colonize that island out there on the horizon”.
Me: “Well, all we got is this tiny rowboat you can use. You have about a 99% of making it. There’s no resources on that island. No food. No water. It’s really more of a rock than an island. You’ll have to keep sending supplies back and forth in these crappy rowboats. Good luck with all that.”
Or, how about it’s easier to fix whatever is wrong with the boat than to try and take pieces of it to build a brand new one a thousand miles away?
Here’s the deal: using any forseeable technology we might posess in the next 50 years, we can ship about a standard shipping container full of stuff to the Moon or Mars for millions of dollars a pop. I don’t care what the problems are here on Earth, you cannot establish a colony on another planet of any significant size with those costs and shipping volumes. Population problem here on earth? Build larger buildings. It doesn’t matter if people live on Mars or Earth, all the food will need to come from farms on Earth. You’ll just waste 1000x as much energy getting it off planet.