Hacker News Reader

Comment by sandworm101 | Hacker News Reader

>> crew would probably be awake at all times for repairs etc

If the ship requires human crews to conduct regular repairs, then the ship probably won't last long enough to get where it is going. A ship that is going to last for 10,000 years will need to be built like an Egyptian pyramid, solid enough to last forever and be functional despite millennia of erosion. Putting someone on that pyramid to conduct repairs might sound good, but after 10,000 years those repairs would become just another source of erosion. The activities of that one person would wear down any system with which they interact.

View on HN

Erosion in space is much different than on earth. Even the rovers left on the moon 50 years ago should in theory still work.

And it’s silly to think about. Who cares. 300 years from now people will be taking trash out in mars and people will be picking it up. We will spread our disease at least within out universe.

There's no biosphere on Mars, nothing alive there, our Terran notion of pollution makes no sense on Mars.

Our Terran notion of pollution makes no sense anywhere without Terran compatible atmospheres.

The above poster is talking about physical erosion by human interaction. There are ruts worn into solid rock in many parts of the world with old roads that are only 1000 or 2000 years old. Over 10,000 years anything that is touched by humans will be worn away to no material at all.

Those areas received a lot of traffic, and the rocks in question are not particularly durable as durable rocks such as quartzite are much harder to use in large scale construction projects.

Except the batteries on that rover are long dead. Many, if not all, of the plastic and paper insulators exposed to vacuum are now brittle and broken. All labels or painted surfaces are likely bleached white. Differential expansion during lunar daylight cycles has likely snapped a few things here and there too. Fifty years of exposure to static electric charges on the moon has put lunar dust in all sorts of places it doesn't belong. Powering up the electrical systems would be interesting/scary. Any metal parts that have been touching each other, again in vacuum, are now contact/cold-welded together. The wheels might still turn, but the bearings are likely shot. And that is all before any talk of micrometeors.

Depending on the speed of an interstellar craft, even trace amounts of dust between stars could be a source of significant erosion over a long enough period of time.

In a ship with 20 million parts, 19.9 million can probably be automated, but there’s simply 100k parts that can’t always be fixed 100% in advance.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com