Bring on the space colonies.

[Anh_Minh]

So? Build several colonies. And any planet killer that'd hit the moon won't hit the Earth, so we'd be safe.

It's about not putting all your eggs in the same basket, not about ensuring everyone's survival.

[anavelgato]

Just look at macross.
There they hade no colonies , and the hole earth was wiped out by aliens.
only 50.000 left.
So after the war they made huge number of colonies , cloned the remaining 50.000 so that they got billions or more humans and move them far away from earth and on the moon etc.
Just so that if some killer alien , comet etc would kill the earth there would still be humans left.
And btw the scary part , for what we know there could be killer astroids heading our way rigth now , because 1:Space is a huge ass place 2:We mostly have observatories in only high tech countries , and thats about under 50% of the sky covered.

[tritoch]

It would be much easier to prevent an asteroid from hitting the colony since the colony doesn't have the gravitational pull the Earth has.

Simply by applying Newton's law, an asteroid can be veered off course by a highly place explosion. You don't have to worry about anything else since there's no gravitational pull or that pull is minimal compared to Earth which sucks anything that gets close to it.

[anavelgato]

And the astroid would mostly hit the moon or earth.
The only way i see a colony beeing destoryed by astroid is if it comes into the path of the astroid as it's heading for earth.

[Anh_Minh]

Not to be pessimistic, but if genocidal aliens come our way, colonies won't help us much if we lose the war. They're much more vulnerable than the Earth where you can at least try to hide.

Also, what is this with clones? Compared to just having sex, or even artificial insemination, it's a rather inefficient way of making human beings.

[anavelgato]

In macross they hade clone machines , that is you just cloned yourself and a clone came out of a machine.
Still it helps more to have colonies , then having only one planet.

[Commander 598]

You can't find miners willing to work in space unless you pay them insane amounts of money, mass driver or not.

This is where you have forgotten... It's space. Lots of people want to go to space and if there's a cheap one way ticket, they'll go. Quite frankly they're all sick of watching NASA's overpaid test pilots and biologists going up and doing jack squat.

Not to mention that people would go to get away from everyone else and the adventurous types who are always found in hanging around third world no-wheres.

How do you supply the workers in space with the materials they need to do their job if NASA or whoever is the one that launches these rockets can only launch a space rocket once every 3 years?

You shouldn't use the space shuttle as a base for what it takes to send stuff up. It is horribly ineffecient.

The only sensible way a colony could grow on its own, would be a colony that produces a product that could be sold back at Earth for huge profits; and no, you would need something better than copper ore to give them a competitive edge.

Originally Posted by Another Board

Consider a small S type asteroid 1 km in diameter - a run-of-the-mill asteroid. It will mass ~2 billion tonnes. Of that 200 million tonnes will be iron, 30 million tonnes high quality nickle, 1.5 million tonnes of cobalt, and 7,500 tonnes of mixed platinum group metals. For the platinum metals alone, this thing is worth 150 billion dollars. The iron is another 20 billion. The nickle is 660 billion. The cobalt is 11 billion.

So your everyday, common as dirt asteroid is worth $840 billion dollars. And I can set up a Mars mission that will then start kicking these back to us for between 50 and 100 billion. That's a 1681% return.

[anavelgato]

Originally Posted by Commander 598

This is where you have forgotten... It's space. Lots of people want to go to space and if there's a cheap one way ticket, they'll go. Quite frankly they're all sick of watching NASA's overpaid test pilots and biologists going up and doing jack squat.

Maybe people that makes 40-50000$ a year wont go , but what about the poor people that only makes 1000$ a year.
"Go here and make 50000$ instant with 40000$ to follow every year" , it will be like the new "new world".
People that has lost hope , or don't like where they live can get a new chance.
And as you mention the adventurer. Just look at how much money some people are putting into space tourism , and the "test" pilots that go up in the untested machines.
And the outsold tickets to space tourism.

People do want to go to space.

There is even better to produce stuff i space then on earth.
From wikipedia "The ultraclean vacuum of space allows the creation of very pure materials and objects. The use of vapor deposition can be used to build up materials layer by layer, free from defects." = profit.


Like a nuclear reacors, CO2 power etc. You cold dump whatever waste in space.

[Vallen Chaos Valiant]

"Go here and make 50000$ instant with 40000$ to follow every year" , it will be like the new "new world".
People that has lost hope , or don't like where they live can get a new chance.

That's what I am saying; to get people to start moving into space, they need the lure of cold, hard cash. The fact that they would live and work under horrible conditions and in constant threat of death, could only be balanced by money.

Living conditions and safety will improve after the initial decade or so. Simulated Earth-like environment colonies would appear only after that.
Usually, it's when you stop hearing about space workers dying every second week on the news.

(note: you won't know what kind of safety measures to implement until you try things like space mining and space colony construction for a long period of time. Quite a few people will die as the time goes by, but each death bring along new safety measures. You will be amazed at how long it took historically, before people discovered it was a good idea to wear something as basic as a hard hat in a construction area... FYI, it was between 1931-1936, in the construction of the Hoover Dam.)

[anavelgato]

But the astronauts/kosmonauts etc have found out what works to a point.
So there is not going to be that many deaths.
But it's going to be a dangerous job for shure , like the first oil rigs.
But we have learned from all that , so it's not going to be a totally new start.

[Vallen Chaos Valiant]

Originally Posted by anavelgato

But the astronauts/kosmonauts etc have found out what works to a point.
So there is not going to be that many deaths.
But it's going to be a dangerous job for shure , like the first oil rigs.
But we have learned from all that , so it's not going to be a totally new start.

No astronaut have ever needed to work under a financial bottom line, using the bare minimum equipment in order for the company to turn a profit. Whatever the astronauts faced, the miners will face worse. We can't even prevent mining/oil rig deaths on Earth even today, with all our fancy equipment.

Anyway, my point is the miners would become the human sacrifices who willingly gets themselves in danger for money. Their deaths causes advancement in protection. In order for mass space colonisation to proceed, it needs to get safe enough for people to be willing to send their 10 year old child up there. And that won't happen until space-colony living is at least as safe as living on solid ground.

[tritoch]

Actually figuring out how to get to space frequently and less costly = increase the survival rate because of better supply chain

/nod

[Knightmare213]

Has anybody thought about the possibility that the humans are not 'made' for space life?

I mean, the humans, and our ancestors, lived here for 65 million years. And the only place we lived so far, yes, Earth with its solid ground and gravity. In other words, we had evolved to live here on Earth. Do we even have the great idea that every single human being is capable of living in space and the space colonies? The astronauts for NASA are specially trained to living in space. But never forever, because your bones will weaken in a non-gravity enviroment and as soon as you take that step on Earth after two years...*SNAP* your bones will break.

Also, the theories that we can actually build space colonies, like O'Neill's Island-2 design and the Dyson Sphere, are theories. None of them are practical and maybe nenver will be.

It might even be impossible to go to the Earth for several reasons: money, dangerous enviroment of space and other planets and moons and us, the human factor that we were built to live on Earth, not in space.

[Anh_Minh]

Who gives a damn what we were made for? Whatever it was, it certainly didn't involve electricity, industry, or even agriculture.

There are real problems with living in space, that's true. It just means we'll have to exert our ingenuity to solve them. Before we get some kind of "artificial gravity" in place (probably by making the colonies rotate), it'll just mean the workers won't be able to stay too long before going back to Earth. It's not like they'll want to stay forever. What's the point of making big bucks without even a convenience strore to spend them in?

[Commander 598]

Of course, you could create a small station or two in lunar orbit with a rotating section and rotate crews out every now and then.

I mean, the humans, and our ancestors, lived here for 65 million years. And the only place we lived so far, yes, Earth with its solid ground and gravity.

What? You don't think that if you put a floating city in the sky(As in Earth's atmosphere), that people wouldn't go live there? Human beings will always want to go farther... We wanted to fly like birds for centuries, we've done that. What's next? Space. I'd also like to point out that we're not made for living in deserts either, but we manage.

Also, the theories that we can actually build space colonies, like O'Neill's Island-2 design and the Dyson Sphere, are theories. None of them are practical and maybe nenver will be.

I don't think anyone has managed to effectively disprove any of them.

[Wandy]

love how simple comments started to turn into large topic debates
I doubt that space colonies will be as high tech as we think they would be >_>

[C.A.]

Originally Posted by Azami

love how simple comments started to turn into large topic debates
I doubt that space colonies will be as high tech as we think they would be >_>

No, they will be much more high tech than we would ever think of lol

People tend to think that technology we use in daily life is fairly simple and we take them from granted. But the manufacturing process of these daily items, are actually so incredibly advanced.

Quoting someone working on a golf ball making factory:

The technology we use to create golf balls is no different from the Aerospace Industries. Just that NASA creates a billion dollar satelite each year, we use the same technology to create 2000 golf balls per minute.

Just heard this on a Discovery Channel documentary called 'How do they do it', which tells you how everyday products are created, how everyday processes are done and how amazing they are.

I can't really describe the stuff they mention on the documentary because they're too sophisticated lol

[Slayerx]

Originally Posted by Knightmare213

Has anybody thought about the possibility that the humans are not 'made' for space life?

We were not meant for a lot of things... living in deserts, living in frozen tundras, travelling across oceans, flying through the air, dive to the depths of the ocean... We were never meant to do any of that and yet we did it anyway... the only difference with space is the challenges we must over come

But never forever, because your bones will weaken in a non-gravity enviroment and as soon as you take that step on Earth after two years...*SNAP* your bones will break.

And this is why sceintists are developing theories and technology to create artificial gravity... so no, we won't have orbiting space colonies till after we develop that tech, but so far there is nothing saying that such technology is impossible

And the moon and other planets already have gravity

It might even be impossible to go to the Earth for several reasons: money, dangerous enviroment of space and other planets and moons and us

And with technology, many of these challenges may be overcomed
The only reason it may not seem like it is because we just haven't devloped the tech... These same things were probably once said about living in harsh places, flying, traveling to space, and so forth...

[C.A.]

Originally Posted by Slayerx

And this is why sceintists are developing theories and technology to create artificial gravity... so no, we won't have orbiting space colonies till after we develop that tech, but so far there is nothing saying that such technology is impossible

The easiest way to create artificial gravity has long been demostrated in the Gundam multiverse, a large spinning cylinder - the colonies we've always been seeing.

In terms of forces, gravity is just a pull in one direction, meaning a push in the opposite direction. A spinning cylinder generates a centrifugal force, a force thats pushing away from the centre. Thats why colonies in Gundam have cities built in the inner wall of the cylinder, the contents are pushed against the wall by centrifugal force, it becomes artificial gravity.

By adjusting and monitoring the spin rate of the cylinder we can create centrifugal force to match the gravity pull of Earth.

[monster]

Nevermind, I confused it with centripetal acceleration.