Space versus politics

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Sand
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23 Jan 2011, 1:32 am

Tollorin wrote:

Sand wrote:

Why the hell would anybody in his right mind want to live in a hole in a rock in space when there is a fantastic planet right here?

Because some do no fit here and feel that they are on the wrong planet. :lol:

This is the first steps that are the harder ones. We must go to the point where we could built infrastrusctures in space using the ressources of space. Once we get the factories to make alloy and components from the HUGE amount of metal of asteroids and be able to grow plants there, the rest is easy and we would be able to built huge ships and colony. Of course the hard part is get to that point.

It's the hard part I'm talking about. A great many people have this odd concept that humans can be easily removed from this very thin surface ecology where they evolved which is about a mile thick which envelops our planet and placed where there is no air or heat or gravity or water and high radiation and somehow prosper. All sorts of diseases and body malfunctions occur right here on Earth when conditions aren't right on the button. Inside an orbiting rock it quickly becomes impossible. I have never heard about anybody so distressed with life on the Earth's surface that they want to live at the bottom of a coal mine and. believe me, life there would be far pleasanter than in a hollowed out asteroid. And the finance necessary to reach this version of hell is way beyond the reach of even the richest individual today, not to speak of the necessary technology.

iamnotaparakeet
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23 Jan 2011, 2:19 am

Macbeth wrote:

You could replace the word "space" with similarly oceanic references, and complain that it would make a wonderful novella akin to the scientific fantasies of Mr HG Wells, and you could easily be a late 19th century traditionalist mithering about Darkest Africa. Optimism and need drives discovery. Doom-saying never gets anything done. It wasn't "realistic" to circumnavigate the globe until it happened. It wasn't "realistic" to create a device that could destroy whole cities. It wasn't realistic to get to the moon. Until it happened. Its not as if we lack the understanding of what we need, or are blind to things we lack. Its just a matter of creating or working towards those things.

Besides, would anybody really be heartbroken if a colony of hugely rich people failed? Let the obscenely rich pave the way with THEIR bodies for a change. I believe Douglas Adam touched on that theory with his ship full of hairdressers...

(+10!)^2 in awesomeness points here. Curmudgeons do little more than serve as pessimistic speed bumps... and I am otherwise a pessimist but more regarding the actions of people toward other people rather than regarding a person's ability to apply their faculties of thought toward technological innovation.

iamnotaparakeet
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23 Jan 2011, 2:32 am

Sand wrote:

no air or heat or gravity or water and high radiation.

There's no air under water and, compared to sea level, the pressure differential can be far greater than the necessary pressure differential for 3psi O2 inside a spacecraft and the vacuum outside. Such things as air tanks and submarines, like the USS Nautilus, have allowed humans to be in such an extremely hostile environment.

No heat though? There is certainly no convective heat gain, nor loss, but it is totally radiative heat loss. Within orbit of Earth a spacecraft is still well within the habitable zone and can still gain heat from the sun's light.

Gravity, as has been repetitively stated, can be substituted with centrifugal force.

Radiation can be shielded against. During times of solar flare activity the crews of ships could go within a room shielded with lead, such lead necessarily brought up in piecemeal shipments from Earth or about 25 times larger shipments from the moon if mining and processing facilities are ever built.

Sand
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23 Jan 2011, 2:40 am

iamnotaparakeet wrote:

Sand wrote:

no air or heat or gravity or water and high radiation.

And, I assume, you feel there would be great enthusiasm for people to spend their entire lives locked in a submerged atomic submarine.

ikorack
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23 Jan 2011, 2:46 am

meh, a place built for human habitation will likely have more impressive living spaces than the first systems used. leisure comes later and no one expects 'civilians' to live in a plain ole metal box.

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23 Jan 2011, 2:47 am

richardbenson wrote:

spacetravel is expencive son! thats why they dont do it today, also what is left to prove?
we been to the moon, mars is a next possible cause but not during this recession!

The recession will pass though. Space travel need not be for "proving" anything. After enough economic infrastructure is built in orbit to become self-sustaining, it will allow for further growth, more jobs, more consumers able to afford to both invest and spend, more places able to be seen - perhaps in person walking on the surface of Mars or in a cruise ship touring the outer solar system. After the proper hydroponics stations and other facilities are constructed, such awesomeness as being able to see the solar system in person would finally be possible, and space would finally be available to more than just a relative handful of lab techs and pilots selected by the bureaucratic space agencies of our nations and in a truer sense than the low earth orbit in which most astronauts to date have visited.

iamnotaparakeet
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23 Jan 2011, 2:51 am

Sand wrote:

And, I assume, you feel there would be great enthusiasm for people to spend their entire lives locked in a submerged atomic submarine.

I'd even find that cool, however if said submarine were retrofitted to be made into a spaceworthy vehicle that would be even cooler. Have two of said craft tethered together laterally and apply tangential force and you'll have artificial gravity aboard the ships.

iamnotaparakeet
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23 Jan 2011, 2:55 am

Sand wrote:

Tollorin wrote:

Of course the hard part is get to that point.

It's the hard part I'm talking about.

Of course it's the hard part that you're emphasizing. That's the easier source of discouragement from which to spread it around like a disease. The hardest part of starting any business is getting it started.

Sand
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23 Jan 2011, 3:02 am

iamnotaparakeet wrote:

Sand wrote:

Tollorin wrote:

Of course the hard part is get to that point.

It's the hard part I'm talking about.

No. The hardest part is solving the very difficult problems and finding out the effort is worthwhile financing.

iamnotaparakeet
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23 Jan 2011, 3:10 am

Sand wrote:

iamnotaparakeet wrote:

Sand wrote:

Tollorin wrote:

Of course the hard part is get to that point.

It's the hard part I'm talking about.

No. The hardest part is solving the very difficult problems and finding out the effort is worthwhile financing.

No, the hardest part is answering the objections of curmudgeons who refuse to realize that most of the technological solutions necessary are already available. Finding a way to explain to people with deaf ears is the difficulty there. Damn the curmudgeons, full speed ahead.

Inuyasha
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23 Jan 2011, 3:37 pm

The problem is what if there is a disaster? A trip to send relief to Mars would be over a year. Everyone could be long dead before help arrives.

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23 Jan 2011, 3:41 pm

Long before sending people to Mars, infrastructure would already be there building rocket fuel and growing hydroponics. I recommend to anyone curious about how a Mars mission might go down to check out the Mars Direct program or read Dr Robert Zubrin's work, The Case for Mars

iamnotaparakeet
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23 Jan 2011, 3:48 pm

Inuyasha wrote:

The problem is what if there is a disaster? A trip to send relief to Mars would be over a year. Everyone could be long dead before help arrives.

That's one reason why a sound infrastructure needs to be started. Fail-safes and backup need to be present so as to be ready in the event of emergency, and such fail-safes need logistical support at the ready. Building the infrastructure ought to start in Earth orbit and expand outwards. Eventually, we could have stations orbiting the sun at radii between the trajectories of Earth and Mars and at different locations so as to have minimal travel time in between the sets of locations.

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23 Jan 2011, 3:51 pm

In the situation of a natural disaster on Earth such as an Earthquake, we don't have the issue of needing space suits to walk around outside. If there were any form of disaster on a lunar colony, they might have only hours or days of air supply. Would be even worse on Mars, because it takes a lot longer to get to Mars.

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23 Jan 2011, 3:53 pm

Vigilans wrote:

I'll add that to queue of books to read. Thanks.

Macbeth
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23 Jan 2011, 3:55 pm

Inuyasha wrote:

The problem is what if there is a disaster? A trip to send relief to Mars would be over a year. Everyone could be long dead before help arrives.

Multiple redundancy. That is what its for. So that only the most extreme circumstance would kill everyone: the kind of circumstance that would kill everyone regardless of how close help is.

Besides which, that has been no obstacle to other human ventures. We can't "rescue" people from submarines or mine-shafts particularly easily but we still sink them both.

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