Space Colonies - a fantasy

[Sy Borg]

This is just absurd. We'd still be better off on Earth even after an asteroid strike.

...the depends on the size of the asteroid(s). Good thing Jupiter is relatively near by otherwise we and all higher life forms likely wouldn't be or wouldn't have made it this far.

[...]

JKlint is exactly right. Size matters. How remiss to make so much progress and then fail to plan for obvious threats.

It will take hundreds of years to terraform Mars. What will the Earth be like by then?

I do agree that space exploration will increasingly be a job for machines and it was a good observation that we will increasingly explore inner space, reshaping our bodies and minds.

[Jklint]

It will take hundreds of years to terraform Mars. What will the Earth be like by then?

What is inherently demoralizing in this statement (it would seem to me) is that we have to terraform Mars before we un-terraform Earth like parasites looking for another host knowing what we're doing to this one. It's almost a given that this is how we expect the future to unfold. We exist as parasites on this planet anyways but as "intelligent" parasites shouldn't we first attempt to make our relationship to planet Earth considerably more symbiotic since there is no certainty of succeeding on Mars or for how long? Remember between Mars & Jupiter resides the Asteroid Belt.

[Hog Rider]

It will take hundreds of years to terraform Mars. What will the Earth be like by then?

What is inherently demoralizing in this statement (it would seem to me) is that we have to terraform Mars before we un-terraform Earth like parasites looking for another host knowing what we're doing to this one. It's almost a given that this is how we expect the future to unfold. We exist as parasites on this planet anyways but as "intelligent" parasites shouldn't we first attempt to make our relationship to planet Earth considerably more symbiotic since there is no certainty of succeeding on Mars or for how long? Remember between Mars & Jupiter resides the Asteroid Belt.

To have a planet teraformed we would need a planet that had a similar size and a similar amount of solar radiation.

Mars cannot be terraformed. It is too small to sustain an atmosphere sufficient to create an atmospheric pressure. It is too far from the sun. There would be too little energy falling on the surface to ever be hot enough to sustain human life. The other problem would be that eventually all the gases introduced to create an earths type atmosphere would end up freezing at the poles creating glaciers of oxygen and nitrogen. Then there is the problem of gravity, which due to Mars' small size is around 38%. No one born there would ever be able to live on earth and a completely new species would have to be created to cope with the low pressure, low gravity and toxicity.

You simply can't introduce "artificial gravity", or increase the solar radiation. If you had that sort of god like power then you might was well more easily clean up the earth.

[Sy Borg]

Still no telecommunications so can only be brief. If absurdity is fair game then I call your argument naively blinkered. How many people will be on Earth in a few hundred years - even if we try to do all the right things? 50 billion? 100 billion? How would you see the future from there? Sustainable? If the population turns out to be much lower that those levels , what sort of issues would so drastically cull the population?

What gives Mars a chance of being terraformed and once *again* being a watery world with an atmosphere is not having billions of people.

To speak with such certainty that Mars will never be feasible is to forget how much can change in a few hundred years.

[Hog Rider]

Still no telecommunications so can only be brief. If absurdity is fair game then I call your argument naively blinkered. How many people will be on Earth in a few hundred years - even if we try to do all the right things? 50 billion? 100 billion? How would you see the future from there? Sustainable? If the population turns out to be much lower that those levels , what sort of issues would so drastically cull the population?

What gives Mars a chance of being terraformed and once *again* being a watery world with an atmosphere is not having billions of people.

To speak with such certainty that Mars will never be feasible is to forget how much can change in a few hundred years.

Are you trying to say that increasing human population will necessitate more land. I disagree. Only the mind bogglingly rich would be able to go to Mars; a a cool $billion each minimum. THe rich will always be able to find space on earth, or even in orbit where artificial gravity is a possibility. THose that need land will never have the cash to escape the earth.

You have not addressed the problems of terra forming I laid out, until you do, I'll assume it is as impossible as I suggested.

Surely you will agree that some things however possible, will never be desirable; and you will also have to agree I think that some thinks will never be possible. Permanent colonies on Mars lies between the two things.

[Eckhart Aurelius Hughes]

Indeed, surely our ability to feasibly terraform the likes of Mars will increase drastically as time goes on, much of which merely involves reverting Mars climate back to its old one. Mars has such great features for warming that the bigger risk in terraforming is likely making it too hot. But let's not forget that terraforming is just one of the many ever-improving technologies that are making space colonies and living on Mars more and more feasible as time goes on:

• Genetically-modified humans
• More fuel-efficient, cost-efficient travel, namely that using methods other than burning rocket fuel
• Space elevators
• 3D printers
• Better spacesuits
• Cyborgs

After seeing the exponential improvements in technology in the past couple thousand years, and especially since it is exponential in the past couple hundred such as that in telecommunications and electricity-generation and electricity-delivery, we can imagine the advancements and refinements in technologies such as those listed above will be so great that space colonies on Mars is far from our limits in a couple hundred years. We could come up with much harder feats that we can see we will likely be able to achieve.

[Jklint]

Are space colonies the same as terraforming a planet? Space colonies I imagine to be these domed environments suitable for humans but extraneous to the rest of the planet which more or less remains the same. In short, you're terraforming only small localized regions of the planet which attempt to surmount the physics of the planet. I wouldn't deny the possibility of this happening but it doesn't make the planet as a whole habitable. The point being these two scenarios are completely different. The technology required for "space colonies" becomes mundane compared to actually terraforming a planet.

[Eckhart Aurelius Hughes]

Are space colonies the same as terraforming a planet? Space colonies I imagine to be these domed environments suitable for humans but extraneous to the rest of the planet which more or less remains the same. In short, you're terraforming only small localized regions of the planet which attempt to surmount the physics of the planet. I wouldn't deny the possibility of this happening but it doesn't make the planet as a whole habitable. The point being these two scenarios are completely different. The technology required for "space colonies" becomes mundane compared to actually terraforming a planet.

Colonization of the planet could go happen both through relatively worldwide engineering of the climate and living conditions of a planet or by creating living structures such as domes that protect one from the global environment. Even where planetary engineering happens, surely some degree of the other is also present. Even on Earth, we find great use or even need for shelter, sunscreen, clothing, artificial lighting, non-global landscaping, and various other individual gadgets to overcome the harshness of natural life on the Earth and in it's ever-changing climate.

How it actually plays out is not merely a matter of technology but of economics. The technology involved in one method is perhaps not the biggest factor. For instance, the technology involved in the manmade global warming being caused on Earth is quite simple and old, burning of fossil fuels. The technology behind the air-conditioning units and sophisticated home structures that go so far as even lives of people who cannot withstand the head (such as the elderly people who die during heatwaves if electricity goes out) is actually much greater. The decision we make as a species to continue to use domiciles with air-conditions rather than stop global warming isn't about the technology involved but the economic interests involved. The technology to feed the 18,000 or so children who die everyday from world hunger is and has been simple for a long time (put seeds in ground, water, and carry even by horseback to starving children), but the choice to invest in the expensive and relatively dangerous technology that brought man to the moon was made instead.

The technology involved in auctioning off Scarlett Johansson's used tissue paper on ebay is incredible. It involves not only the creation of the plastic that made up the bag that contained it but the organized fiberoptics of the world-wide-web and the technology of transportation. But that it auctioned off on ebay for $5,300 is really what makes it happen. The thing about economics is that value is subjective. Whether technology shall be used--or found--for feeding kids or coming up with the technology to go to the moon or for more terraforming mars rather than more domicile building on Mars is based a lot on who wants it more, like whether someone who has thousands of dollars to spare would rather have Scarlett Johansson's used tissue paper or Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie's breath in a jar which only sold for 530. Even if hypothetically the technology involved in selling Scarlett Johansson's used tissue paper was nearly 10 times as expensive to implement than that to sell Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie's breath in a jar, it would be more economically feasible to do the former. Of course, sometimes economic values are hard to predict. Whether a rich person prefers tissue papers or jars of breath is hard to say. But there is a lot of value in going to Mars so it will happen one way or another, and the particulars in the decisions involved in the economics of the first colonies will likely be based on things as arbitrary as the difference between used tissue paper and breath in a jar per one person's subjective whims.

[Hog Rider]

Indeed, surely our ability to feasibly terraform the likes of Mars will increase drastically as time goes on, much of which merely involves reverting Mars climate back to its old one. Mars has such great features for warming that the bigger risk in terraforming is likely making it too hot. But let's not forget that terraforming is just one of the many ever-improving technologies that are making space colonies and living on Mars more and more feasible as time goes on:

• Genetically-modified humans
• More fuel-efficient, cost-efficient travel, namely that using methods other than burning rocket fuel
• Space elevators
• 3D printers
• Better spacesuits
• Cyborgs

After seeing the exponential improvements in technology in the past couple thousand years, and especially since it is exponential in the past couple hundred such as that in telecommunications and electricity-generation and electricity-delivery, we can imagine the advancements and refinements in technologies such as those listed above will be so great that space colonies on Mars is far from our limits in a couple hundred years. We could come up with much harder feats that we can see we will likely be able to achieve.

I have outlined some very simple to understand problems involved with the idea that Mars could be terraformed and you have not bothered to deal with them.

[Sy Borg]

Actually Hog, you are yet to acknowledge that you were wrong in saying - with total certainty - that Mars being too small to have an atmosphere. Nor have you tried to address the fact that we will either outgrow Earth or the environment will become hostile enough to cause loss of life on an unprecedented scale.

Have you thought about Earth with 100 billion people or what would have to happen to prevent this?

[Present awareness]

Actually Hog, you are yet to acknowledge that you were wrong in saying - with total certainty - that Mars being too small to have an atmosphere. Nor have you tried to address the fact that we will either outgrow Earth or the environment will become hostile enough to cause loss of life on an unprecedented scale.

Have you thought about Earth with 100 billion people or what would have to happen to prevent this?

Nature usually finds a way to create a balance, but humans are like a cancerous growth on the earth, (growth, for the sake of growth). In the past, wars and disease were the most effective ways of keeping the population in check. With the world health organization keeping a watch for disease, it's much harder for that method to take hold. Wars, nuclear meltdowns and perhaps the odd asteroid strike, may be the best hope left for the earth.

[Sy Borg]

Nature usually finds a way to create a balance, but humans are like a cancerous growth on the earth, (growth, for the sake of growth). In the past, wars and disease were the most effective ways of keeping the population in check. With the world health organization keeping a watch for disease, it's much harder for that method to take hold. Wars, nuclear meltdowns and perhaps the odd asteroid strike, may be the best hope left for the earth.

It's easy to see us as a parasite or a cancer. However, this time the invasive agent is more sophisticated than the one it's breaking down.

I see humans as part of the Earth - owned by the Earth. We don't know what the "correct" order of events is once a biosphere evolves to this point - or if there is a correct order of events at all. We don't know if the Earth will or won't implement "corrections" (nice word for heavy business) because we don't know what the Earth deems "correct".

My guess is that humans are shifting from an organic to a synthetic form - that organic life is a stepping stone towards inorganic life. We tend to romanticise organic life because it has some "nice toys" but, let's face it, organic life is savage, fragile, vulnerable and disgusting below the skin (sometimes above too).

If we become inorganic we will be more rational and less environmentally demanding (plus not needing food or excretion), although the processes leading us forward have been damaging. It's sad what we are doing to those who are "not in the club", ergo, dispossessed humanity and animals. Still, I don't see humanity as inherently bad. To me, the battle for territory where humans have so dramatically overwhelmed other large animals has been a battle of rival goods.

Nor do I think reversion is a great idea. The whole "enlightened humanity living at one with nature" myth. Been there done that. If it was so great we would have stayed there. Meanwhile, in Africa, the lack of coordination has resulted in new deserts. The lack of education (especially for women) means many more babies. Then you have infant mortality, greatly reduced lifespans, exposure to the elements, and everyone gets their own collection of parasites.

Whatever we may feel about it, humans will press onwards, in whatever form, for better or for worse.

[Eckhart Aurelius Hughes]

Indeed, surely our ability to feasibly terraform the likes of Mars will increase drastically as time goes on, much of which merely involves reverting Mars climate back to its old one. Mars has such great features for warming that the bigger risk in terraforming is likely making it too hot. But let's not forget that terraforming is just one of the many ever-improving technologies that are making space colonies and living on Mars more and more feasible as time goes on:

• Genetically-modified humans
• More fuel-efficient, cost-efficient travel, namely that using methods other than burning rocket fuel
• Space elevators
• 3D printers
• Better spacesuits
• Cyborgs

After seeing the exponential improvements in technology in the past couple thousand years, and especially since it is exponential in the past couple hundred such as that in telecommunications and electricity-generation and electricity-delivery, we can imagine the advancements and refinements in technologies such as those listed above will be so great that space colonies on Mars is far from our limits in a couple hundred years. We could come up with much harder feats that we can see we will likely be able to achieve.

I have outlined some very simple to understand problems involved with the idea that Mars could be terraformed and you have not bothered to deal with them.

A planet Mars size and distance from the Sun can and has already had present-Earth-like temperatures naturally, let alone by the nearly unimaginable technology of terraforming we will have at our hands in 100 years or a 1000 years. And terraforming is only one of the many emerging technologies each of which will make traveling to and colonization of Mars easier, technologies which we can expect to improve over the next century more than telecommunications and Earth-bound transportation has improved over the last century.

[Ascendant606]

Something interesting that I don't believe has come up in this discussion is that there already is a manned mission to Mars planned called Mars One.

[Jklint]

A planet Mars size and distance from the Sun can and has already had present-Earth-like temperatures naturally, let alone by the nearly unimaginable technology of terraforming we will have at our hands in 100 years or a 1000 years. And terraforming is only one of the many emerging technologies each of which will make traveling to and colonization of Mars easier, technologies which we can expect to improve over the next century more than telecommunications and Earth-bound transportation has improved over the last century.

The problem here is that Mars has "almost" no magnet field remaining which is required to maintain the kind of environment earth has. The greenhouse gases that must be generated by terraforming evaporate without that field. This makes the whole prospect extremely dubious unless we manage to reignite a "magnetosphere" on Mars. This would require a technology not likely to happen anytime soon or better expressed soon enough based on what we're doing to this planet. If we did possess that kind of technology we would almost certainly have the means to find a more "compatible" planet than Mars in another solar system for this kind of technological tour de force.