BigTuk said:
kael013 said:
BigTuk said:
You do realize the prospect for long term colonization on other bodies is slim to none right?
I mean do you know the host of ways the human body starts failing once it leaves the earth's shell? Our bodies were designed from the ground up to work in this environment. Think I'm talking bull. consider this. and I've always said this. Before you colonize a planet colonize the bottom of the sea. You'd have to deal with many of the same problems, minus the issues caused by gravitational differences causing things like 'weakened immune systems' , 'Space diabetes', Spinal dislocation' 'bone thinning', the list goes on.
And that list will never get shorter unless we actively try to colonize other planets. There's a goal and challenges blocking us from achieving said goal; we'll overcome those challenges before achieved the goal - most likely with technological advancements or innovations created by [i/]studying[/i] the challenges. That's how it works. And at that point we don't even need to colonize planets: we could just build space stations big enough to house nations.
You have no concept of what that means do you? Let me put it this way. We can't even keep cruise ships from becoming cesspools of infection and vomit.
Yes, because Cruise Ships are the absolute height of human achievement, technology, and sustainable permanent habitat efforts. They are certainly not cut rate hotels built into a boat with absolute minimal standards of cleanliness and emergency preparedness.
In other words:
Step 1: Study and overcome physical and environmental challenges.
Study requires a century or more of research and the ability to actually have bodies to study. In case you haven't noticed.. when things go bad in space travel.. bodies are pretty much at best charred remains.
Ok, I am just confused at the first statement. Where are you getting this figure of a century of study? Are you assuming all scientific endeavors require 100+ years?
And the second part, when things explode you get charred remains. When other things go wrong, when the environment is bad, you get bodies that will be excellently preserved for years while you take your time retrieving them.
Step 2: Develop habitats that mimic Earth's environment, are self-sustaining, and provide for growth.
How much growth? also you're forgetting the biiiig one. Gravity. It's the difference in gravity that screws with us and unless science finds some magical way of altering the gravity of an object without also altering it's mass. Not gonna happen. Trust me that's something they're working on anyway, since that would have a pretty big effect on life without space travel.
Even if we can't create artificial gravity we don't actually need to. all we need to do is create a gravity like force. This can be achieved by rotation. The only significant barrier at this moment is that the space station would need to be very large. This is a problem right now because of materials cost but should not be in the future because of asteroid mining.
As for the other things, we can already sufficiently mimic Earth and solar power and asteroid mining can take care of sustainability. Growth is easy: make another space habitat. There is a lot of room in the void of space.
Step 3: Grow by colonizing celestial bodies or expanding said habitats(like a city building a suburb).
It takes light a 3 year trip to make it to the nearest star. Said star has no inhabitable planets either , you have to go at least 10 LY to find something that looks like it may be potentially habitable. Here's an idea. Sign up with the navy and spend 6 months on a nuclear sub. Just spend 3 months living and working on one. Add, higher stress levels, more cramped living space along with space diabetes and hopped up super bacteria and you've just experienced space travel and colonization.
Colonizing the actual celestial bodies is actually completely unnecessary and probably a bad idea. Once we can make sustainable earth like space habitats why would we ever need to go down to a planet? Any system with an asteroid belt is easily habitable and asteroid belts are thought to be extremely common.
OT: "There's no single rationale" is the stupidest excuse I've ever heard. So we should stop doing something because everyone has their own reason to do it? If we used that philosophy for everything we'd never get anything done.
Yup...and the people who see differently are the ones calling the shot. Perhaps they may be seeing something you can't. Like that it boils down to. Spend lives, and billions in resources to chase what could be a dead end. or devote those resources to developing things here to the point where we can plod along comfortably for another ten thousand or so years.
What they are seeing is that they are elected based on short term results. "This investment will pay off in 50 years!" is an easy way to ensure you don't get reelected.
After all. if we can't create self sustainability *here* we have no chance of doing it out there. So as I have said. FOrget space travel let's work on stuff down here first then once we've figured out how to colonize the ocean floor then we can talk about colonizing another planet. Same problems but much easier to to do the 'fail-increment-fail' cycle, and faster. It'll take us about a hundred years if we all put our heads to it... or more.
Colonizing the ocean floor would be way harder than creating a viable space station habitat. It is far easier to deal with the harsh environment of space than the harsh environment of the ocean depths. The biggest barrier we have right now to a viable space habitat is the cost of getting anything we build up to space. Material cost will become much less of an issue once we figure out asteroid mining. In fact, sustainability will be much easier in space because it will be a much more controlled situation. For example, we don't have to worry about pollution because we can just vent it into space.
There are significant barriers but not nearly as significant as you seem to think.
