Poll: Space Colonization

[Pandalisk]

what if we print more money but dont tell anyone so the rates stay the same but we have more money (it may sound stupid but think about it )

Mr cookie your thinking outloud! welcome to the executives table

just what the universe needs a plague of selfish primates who cant even live peacefully on a single planet spreading out amongst the stars

i know it'll be great wont it!

 

[Ben Legend]

Space.... the final frontier....

I want to go into space. I just hope its like Mass Effect. =D

 

[similar.squirrel]

Terrestrial wars are easier, and the people getting rich off of them have no intention of funding something like space travel.
Too risky and expensive.

 

[torylva]

sub-zero aint a problem due the warmth sheilds on the ships, radiation aint so high that it cant be sheilded by the days tech, atmoshpere CAN be created now, it take time (about 10.000 years) but we can also go into a bubble shell to use it for sheilding for the space heat and such, gravity is the problem due we dont know what gravity acutally is, we know what it do and how it effects but know why or how it works. right now its thought about dark-matter that is a kind of matter that is gravity. well thats it for me.

 

[Aur0ra145]

Do it, only awesomeness could result.

 

[Rolling Thunder]

just what the universe needs a plague of selfish primates who cant even live peacefully on a single planet spreading out amongst the stars

Peace is for the weak, coward.

 

[Cargando]

One problem: there's these things called Cosmic Rays. The Sun give them out, i think they're a form of radiation anyway on Earth we're protected from them because of the Earth's magnetic field. In space, no. They can travel through metal, rock, planets, whatever. The point is if you get hit by one you die. Maybe we could start on the moon, but anywhere like Mars is a no-no.

 

[somekindarobot]

The real reason that space colonization hasn't taken off is that there aren't that many resources in space that are scarce enough on Earth to justify the cost of bringing stuff to space and back. The only real resources I could think off would be of value would be solar energy collected from space beamed towards Earth, and He-3 on the moon. I personally think He-3 is a vastly overrated as an energy source since there really isn't that much on the moon, the technology to fuse it efficiently doesn't exist yet, and possibly never will, and even if fusion is achieved it is probable that deuterium-tritium fusion is more efficient anyway. So maybe lunar colonization, which is in the works already, could work, but I'm skeptical about anything beyond that.

Titan actually has high amounts of fossil fuels.


I imagine the moon will be a recycling center using compost to terraform and other materials to expand. It would kind of be a jump point since it's gravity is easier to escape. It's easier to go to the moon first and then leave for somewhere else then just a straight path. Especially if we make it a space elevator. (Look up the "space elevator", it's so cool!)

The moon cannot be terraformed as it doesn't have the gravity to sustain an atmosphere. As for Titan, we would need to run pretty low on fossil fuels without having developed a better energy source in the meantime. Do you have any idea how far Titan is? I am also aware of space elevators, and the means to make them are, as of now, pure speculation.

 

[grimsprice]

one major problem. have you seen what it takes to get the space shuttle into space? if we had a better way to get into space.... say a carbon nanotube cable with an elevator then hell yes. but right now it takes entirely to much fuel to get a tiny amount of swag into space. let alone the important stuff.

 

[ZeroMachine]

Dude, you have no idea how much I would love to be up in space typing this from my space colony laptop, watching my space colony TV, and playing my space colony XBox

But, as xmetatr0nx said, it's a matter of when. We're quite some time away from colonizing even just the moon, never mind another whole planet. And even when we can start, we'd be limited to Mars. Any planets closer to the sun would be to hot and dangerous, and Jupiter and Saturn are obviously impossible to colinize. And to go further than our own solar system... if the technology is ever even possible, we're probably at the very least a millenia away from that.

Ah... damn... I want my own Black Hawk... or Firefly ship... Excuse me, while I go nerd out and dream of space travel.

 

[Azraellod]

Go for it. Get all the dumb bastards in the world to stop fighting and put that money to exploration, and we're set.

lousy human nature, spoiling the potential for greatness in these ideas.

if we did manage this, some jerk would then take advantage of this and send out a secret reserve of troops to take whatever he liked.

and that is why people will never disband their armies. because not everyone else will.

 

[Jedoro]

Go for it. Get all the dumb bastards in the world to stop fighting and put that money to exploration, and we're set.

lousy human nature, spoiling the potential for greatness in these ideas.

if we did manage this, some jerk would then take advantage of this and send out a secret reserve of troops to take whatever he liked.

and that is why people will never disband their armies. because not everyone else will.

Nothing wrong with keeping a military, but it costs a lot more to go to war than to just keep it around and trained.

 

[Jenkins]

Humankind is like a bacteria growing in a Petry dish, we will soon grow so much we will die in our own toxins.

Edit: wooo pulitzer Laureate( or how ever the bugger you spell it.

 

[SebZero]

We should only attempt it after we've established the worldwide currency of credits.

 

[MasterSqueak]

I see only one way for space colonization (or indeed, any travel further than we've already come), and that is a Star Trek-like utopia, where Earth is unified, and there's no such thing as war, poverty, racism etc. Only then will we have the recourses needed to colonize anything at all.

Or if aliens invade and we kill them and steal their stuff, and then do it again a few decades later only underwater.

That's how it happened in X-Com.

 

[Aardvark]

Just figure a way to make it profitable to ship people off-world and let the free market do the rest. Pretty soon, we'll be looking for new galaxies to infest.

 

[paragon1]

I think someone should pull an Ozymandias (preferably without the killing millions of people thing. I'm hoping that people will be living on Mars before I die.

 

[paragon1]

just what the universe needs a plague of selfish primates who cant even live peacefully on a single planet spreading out amongst the stars

Hey, we have to put up with it. Why should the rest of existence get it so easy?

 

[Fenring]

Ever since I was little, I've always hoped that I'd see the day man reached another star. Now, I'd just be glad to live long enough to see man go back to the moon.

Space travel is on the back of everyone's minds, at least here in the US. Not that I can blame them. We're in the middle of two wars, we have more debt than we have dirt, the unemployment rate is sky-high, and we have two hostile countries that want to build nuclear weapons.

Any sort of major advances in space exploration will have to wait at least a decade when all this has passed, and only if any new problems don't show up. Or something major happens, or is discovered, where space exploration becomes a necessity worth the investment.

Still, I'm hopeful that one day someone proves Einstien wrong, and invents an FTL drive.

Just wanted to say this reminded me of my childhood reading Dune and 2001 and watching Startrek and Babylon 5. Those were some of the happiest days of my life.

We should go back to space, the main reason we don't are we won the space race and no one wants to be an astronaut any more. Space, while for the most part empty, is filled with potential for our species.

 

[AvroLancaster]

I think we need to start the process now, get the infrastructure and technological base down pat, and then, in 200+ years when we can finally pull it off, we'll be ready for when it will matter/be feasible.

I wouldn't want to live off Earth though, my family's here, my roots are here, and I already live in Canada... why would I want to go to a colder place?