Colonization of the solar system

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The rapid advance of robotics and the success of the rather primitive robot explorers on Mars indicates it is much more practical and economic to set up robot colonies in space than send humans that require artificial environments and supplementary systems for protection and generating livable quarters and food production. A robot astronaut is already now set to assist humans in space (see http://www.universetoday.com/2010/02/04 ... s-detroit/ ) and this is only the most early effort in this direction. Once robots are in position they can construct copies of themselves from local materials and energy to make extensive efforts for whatever is demanded. Humans are relatively fragile in space and demand expensive and difficult auxiliary systems for sustenance compared to robots.

Another site worth a look is http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/07/1 ... technology

The off handed dismissal of terraforming a planet as a simple exercise to prepare habitation is, frankly, rather humorous. There is, of course, no way to ascertain the technical accomplishments of a civilization capable of interstellar travel but the difficulties of our own civilization in merely maintaining and extending life sustaining environments on this, our own planet, indicates the tremendous difficulties of managing a major planetary environmental change. It is impossible, also, to determine just how habitable the Moon might be to an undefined alien who might well enjoy low gravity and the lack of a atmosphere.

To become a Type 2 civilisation we would need to englobe the Sun in a Dyson swarm of some kind. Potentially we could have colonies from Venus to Titan and yet remain below Type 1.
Kardashev Scale

A space elevator would make things much easier, but it wouldn't be a good idea for Earth. As soon as fundies bombed the socket we'd have tens of thousands of miles of cable slamming into the ocean with horrible consequences for anyone nearby. Possibly with horrible consequences for everyone anywhere. Some kind of long launch accelerator would be a safer bet and (possibly) less of a technical challenge. Another alternative would be to use big Orions and just launch directly from the ground, but that carries its own dangers of proliferation and potential misuse.



Yep.



As with all conspiracy theorists, you fail to understand that the people who would have to be involved covering this sort of thing up are the very people who would most like to have it in the public domain. An alien moon base you can see from government pictures, but the entire scientific community of the world - who have just as much access to teh interwebs as you - is suppressing? Get real.

I personally prefer the idea of Space Colonies - O'Neil type cylinders.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O'Neill_cylinder

Also, the city of Masdar is being built in the United Arab Emirates. The city is being built using technology which was initially planned to be used for theoretical moon colonisation.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masdar_City

For human the work of terraforming Mars would take hundreds of years and involved great expense. Right now we cannot even terraform Earth. Terraforming mars would involve replacing a nearly all CO2 atmosphere with an Oxygen-Nitrogen atmosphere. Whence commeth the Oxygen. The only reason Earth has an oxygen atmosphere is the the work of cyanobacteria liberating oxygen from other compounds. The main compound would be water of there not a single drop has been discovered on Mars except near the poles and the amount there is not great enough to produce an atmosphere on Mars pleasing to humans. Then of course there is the lack of a magnetic field. The blast of solar radiation would soon undo any feeble human attempts to modify the atmosphere of Mars.

Mars lacks two essentials for terraforming -- enough water and a magentic field. How does human technology go about fixing that?

ruveyn

ruveyn

Yes, his brilliance is only matched by that of the sun.

Although exaggerated compliments make me more uncomfortable than verbal excrement terraforming the Sun would create more problems than it's worth.

How would one terraform a high mass gravity driven fusion reactor?

ruveyn

Yes, it's quite a challenge.

Since the atmosphere is only 6 to 12 millibars its not so much a question of replacing the 95% CO2 as much as it is adding O2 and, much more importantly since it blocks gamma rays and x-rays, the N2. Water could be decomposed by electrolysis for the O2, perhaps water from comets or other sources which are already not in a deep gravity well. N2 could be likewise taken from ammonia although getting that from places like Jupiter would be infeasible. The magnetic field cannot be remade, so during solar storms a weather alert would be necessary.

Do you have any solutions to these difficulties or just problems to enumerate?

Well, at least they'd have a lot more surface area on Mars even if terraforming were impossible.

Now that actually is impossible. As would terraforming Jupiter where, unlike Mars, the planetary magnetic field strength gets to be lethal.

Exactly the opposite.

Thanks for an actual contribution to this topic rather than just another stab at me to make yourself feel better.

The usage of robots is fine for a lot of things, and the one you linked to looks like it's designed to look somewhat humanoid. In manufacturing though, robots need not bear a semblance to humans, but I suppose the designer of these robots wants to live in one of Asimov's worlds.

We've already used robots to study most of the solar system though. I much rather have human exploration and colonization though than just forever sending robots, and no I don't mean sending people to planets or other celestial objects which would kill them or whatever other insult you could devise next.

Can't help you with the magnetic field part, but there are serious proposals to tow ice from the asteroids and the rings of Saturn and drop it onto Mars. However, this in itself won't generate an atmosphere - it'll help lock down the soil so there are no more planetary sandstorms, and if you take the time to separate the hydrogen and oxygen you can pump the oxygen into the existing atmosphere, but you'll need to find some way to either import gases or generate them locally. (That's why I was wondering if Mars' core is still molten - if there's magma, it should be possible to restart some of the volcanoes, which would then belch gases. You'd need to find some way of sequestering things like sulfur, of course, but building a giant catalytic converter is more a matter of engineering than basic science, which means it is possible of solution...)

OTOH, it would be a lot easier to use that water ice, solar heat, and mirrors to inflate an asteroid of appropriate composition into a modified O'Niell-style freespace colony. (Briefly, and greatly simplified, you drill a hole through the middle, stuff it with ice, weld endcaps back on, spin it on its long axis, then use mirrors to reflect solar radiation onto the surface of the asteroid. When the rock is soft and the ice melts, gaseous expansion will turn it into a giant rock bubble. Move the mirrors, let cool, then install airlocks and fill the inside with breathing air.)

And if there are any aliens with the technology to cross interstellar distances, and they come to our solar system looking for resources, why would they tool past all those ores and ices floating in space, utterly ignoring them, in order to try to take them from Earth, which has that hurking great gravity well to overcome??)

I think our current technology is inadequate to address the problems I have enumerated. One must know what the problems are before one can solve them. BTW, where would we get O2 from to add to the Martian atmosphere. Is there enough water on Mars to break down into O2 and H2? And even if we could the solar blast would strip Mars of its atmosphere anyway. There is no magnetic field to stop the sun from "sand blasting" the planet with high energy charged particles. Basically teraforming Mars like like shoveling sh*t against the tide.

ruveyn