Can we colonize the moon?
csmonitor.com
csmonitor.com
[0] http://www.amazon.com/Welcome-Moonbase-Ben-Bova/dp/034532859...
http://www.amazon.com/The-Moon-Is-Harsh-Mistress/dp/03128635...
Best thing was that they went flying, like we went biking here on earth. It really got me longing to live there.
[1] http://www.philipmetzger.com/blog/affordable-rapid-bootstrap...
[2] Paper - http://www.philipmetzger.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2014/09...
I remember that crowd. They wanted to have self-reproducing machines on the moon by 2000. I asked, "how soon can you do it in New Mexico". They didn't like that.
To be fair, I'm not entirely fond of the idea of self-reproducing machines in New Mexico either. ;)
If we haven't been able to make our human civilizations sustainable here on
planet Earth (where we have the perfect conditions to do so), how will we
ever create sustainable environments in much harsher conditions such as on
the Moon or Mars ?Charles Stross wrote about this a few years ago [1]:
> Whichever way you cut it, sending a single tourist to the moon is going to cost not less than $50,000 — and a more realistic figure, for a mature reusable, cheap, rocket-based lunar transport cycle is more like $1M. And that's before you factor in the price of bringing them back ...
> The moon is about 1.3 light seconds away. If we want to go panning the (metaphorical) rivers for gold, we'd do better to send teleoperator-controlled robots; it's close enough that we can control them directly, and far enough away that the cost of transporting food and creature comforts for human explorers is astronomical. There probably are niches for human workers on a moon base, but only until our robot technologies are somewhat more mature than they are today; Mission Control would be a lot happier with a pair of hands and a high-def camera that doesn't talk back and doesn't need to go to the toilet or take naps.
[...]
> When we look at the rest of the solar system, the picture is even bleaker. Mars is ... well, the phrase "tourist resort" springs to mind, and is promptly filed in the same corner as "Gobi desert". As Bruce Sterling has puts it: "I'll believe in people settling Mars at about the same time I see people settling the Gobi Desert. The Gobi Desert is about a thousand times as hospitable as Mars and five hundred times cheaper and easier to reach. Nobody ever writes "Gobi Desert Opera" because, well, it's just kind of plonkingly obvious that there's no good reason to go there and live. It's ugly, it's inhospitable and there's no way to make it pay. Mars is just the same, really. We just romanticize it because it's so hard to reach." In other words, going there to explore is fine and dandy — our robots are all over it already. But as a desirable residential neighbourhood it has some shortcomings, starting with the slight lack of breathable air and the sub-Antarctic nighttime temperatures and the Mach 0.5 dust storms, and working down from there.
[1] http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2007/06/the_high...
At some point in the future Earth will be uninhabitable for humans. At that point, it will make plenty of sense.
> sending a single tourist to the moon...
All this focus on tourists seems like a strawman. Yes, there are people who would probably want to go to the Moon or Mars for a space-cation. No, that is not a primary reason for the existence of space programs.
Manned Moon and hypothetical manned Mars missions are not the endgame. They're stepping stones that hopefully lead to our escape from the solar system.
some random examples, applicable mostly to 3rd world countries - usage of crazy poisons for gold/other metals/minerals mining & processing. another thing is providing alternative fuel sources, so vast pieces of forests are not cut down. limits on fishing, and ban of "dragging nets on the floor and sweeping parts of ocean clean". and I could go on and on, i am sure everybody can come up with some useful stuff.
I am all for space exploration, being in open space is my lifetime dream, but let's stop being emotional for a bit and use our heads. focus on biggest problems, their causes, tackle that. even partial success will have massive impacts. and in parallel, let's explore in current ways, improving our technologies one step after another. Once we can send a manned ship on a budget that won't ruin an average country, let's go for it. Anyway, putting few people on our inhospitable neighbor ASAP won't save humanity from extinction...
55billion for the ship alone might be feasible but you have to add the infrastructure and r&d costs too.
and for what? to doom your children to a life indoors, a morale hazard nowhere discussed so far!
edit: typo
This is patently false. You should probably stick with commenting about things you are qualified to do so on.
when did we do some serious space travel in the last decade(s)? and i don't think the hop to moon or living in a tiny space station comes anywhere near the experience we need for real missions.
We've solved the "can people live in tiny quarters for long periods of time...in spaaaace?" problem with the ISS and numerous earth-based missions.
We've solved the "can we accurately and remotely steer a craft out to the edge of the solar system?" with numerous probes and robots, such as Voyager, the various Mars rovers, and others.
We've solved the "can we land on another body and then come back with the crew and samples" problem.
That's all the empirical proof that we need other than, you know, doing them all at the same time for like a Mars mission or something.
If you read the wiki page about Mars Direct, you'll see that this is a much more modest proposal that doesn't require that kind of technology. With mostly proven technology and multiple launches over a number of years you can have a semi permanent Mars base with a few people on it.
Are you suggesting humans will damage the planet that much?
I find it difficult to imagine we can damage the Earth to such a degree that is is easier to try and settle Mars than undo the damage on Earth.
I want manned outposts on Mars as the next person. I like to think that the challenge of doing it is enough justification to undertake such an endeavour.
Of course, if that's what you're planning for, the much more sensible plan is to wait for about a billion years, and see if either A) Technology has made this cheaper or B) We've already died for some other reason.
Yes. Now that the nuclear genie is out of the bottle, I would imagine that total human annihilation will happen sooner rather than later. The only way to guarantee survival of the species is to take to the stars and spread out.
It does if you want to have an insurance policy against a planet wide catastrophe.
i think the effort and money would be better invested in earth itself: affordable renewable enery sources pose one of the greatest challenges of our time. in my opinion all money poured into mars missions is a waste and should be used to make progress in other fields.
as for asteroids: a) the mars is as likely to be struck by an asteroid as earth and b) its imho a better idea to build defenses to prevent that.
Incidentally, the kind of impact that it would take to wipe humanity out will almost certainly result in an astronomical amount of debris being strewn into space. So the Martians will be fucked too.
No an asteroid stick that wiped out humans on earth would not cause a significant amount debris to hit Mars.
Misses a fairly big point - it's about backup for the species. The same reason people put backup tapes in another building when a walk down to the basement is a pain in the butt already. Backups in the basement don't help when the building burns down.
Sorry, colonizing Mars just doesn't make sense and it probably never will. At least not until we have progressed to the point that we have the resources to terraform planets at will. And even then, it will probably make more sense to just live in space.
Actually, there is one very specific scenario in which colonizing Mars is a great idea: if you're in the business of selling space travel to governments.
a quality of life far below that of a prisoner in a second world country
for the people staying behind, you get to pay exorbitant sums of money so
that people other than you get to survive an asteroid impact
...make more sense to just live in space
What's the crux of your disagreement? If you dropped all the other arguments, which one would you hold onto?
> What happens when more people than expected get pregnant in your space colony?
i'm assuming "more than expected" means "too many people to support given the circumstances". the answer of what to do in this situation is pretty obvious if there are no other options -- do a necessary unpleasant thing: abort the pregnancies or have a few other people volunteer to die [0].
people have figured this out in other societies. for example, people on the isolated island of Tikopia developed a society that was able to self-regulate population [1].
to be clear: i do not think this sounds like a wonderful state of affairs. but if you are in such a situation, and there are no other options left, what else can you do?
to get back to the more general point -- sure, it seems like a reasonable idea to have a colony on another planet, if we can figure out a way to do that sustainably and resiliently, to reduce risk if we "lose" the Earth somehow. But let's think that through: how hard would it be to establish a colony on another planet that could support itself, and recover/flourish, without external support, in a scenario where the Earth was lost? Probably pretty hard! I guess it depends upon the scenario. If some virus kills off the human population of a planet without otherwise doing too much damage, maybe it is possible to re-settle it, which allows some of the people from your colony a chance at restarting life in a kinder environment. If somehow you lose the whole ecosystem on earth that supports human life, then perhaps resettlement is not an option. Then there are risks that might wipe out both earth and the colony in one hit [2].
[0] edit: or, maybe in this hypothetical future technologically advanced spaceship society people have figured out contraception and family planning and this is situation that will not happen.
[1] https://expandyourbrain.wordpress.com/2011/05/23/we-the-tiko...
[2] e.g. a really lucky close shot from a gamma ray burst? some kind of coordinated multi-planet misanthropic terrorist plot?
But they came, why? Money.
We will need more rare earth metals then earth can supply, its just matter of time.
So in the medium term I expect human settlement of the solar system in much the same way you've got human settlement of the Gulf of Mexico or North Sea due to all people living on the drilling platforms.
And in the long term I wouldn't be surprised if technology makes living on other planets much easier or non-human people end up settling outside of Earth.
A small number of people residing there for scientific and commercial reasons is exactly what a colony is.
I didn't know this. But anyway, I live by the Great Salt Lake, and it's more like the Great Salt Puddle. Would that amount of water really sustain a colony? I suppose the base would have the most efficient water facilities ever invented, but still, it wouldn't last for long unless the water was recycled forever.
(I see, later, they refer to finding such ice as 'prospecting for gold' - I'm optimistic about our future in space, but this water situation is tricky. Ship it up there, maybe?)
Colonies will recycle their water. The ISS already partly recycles its water.
Unless you have a space elevator...
I am thinking about just one spaceship which could go back and forth between some asteroid and a moon orbit. It shoots the water down to the moon, so that it does not even have to touch-down and take-off again. How much energy would be needed for such a mission? Probably it would be a very complex mission to get right, but once it is established you might have water for free on the moon.
Colonizing the Moon only makes sense if the water is there. If we're going to harvest water from asteroids, we should colonize them instead.
Well, can't you recycle ~100% of it? So you really only need to ship the maximum amount of water that will be in use at any one point.
It really doesn't make sense to take water with you. Just colonise somewhere that already has it.
Sending water & fuel to the ISS from the Moon is cheaper than sending it from Earth if you take a long enough view.
Just imagine how useful some Moon uranium would be!
It's too late to remove the dividing lines on earth
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effect_of_spaceflight_on_the_h...
Yes, unfortunately. Currently almost all but the gravity can be taken care of by artificial means. The closest extraterrestrial destination for humans is now the planet Venus.
There have been a lot of studies showing that zero gravity[1] is reasonably unhealthy, but there is a lot of room between earth gravity and zero gravity. At what point does lower gravity become unhealthy? 90% earth gravity? 10% earth gravity? 1% earth gravity? Nobody knows; no research has been done. We need to get some experience with it.
It doesn't seem reasonable to speculate that anything less than 100% earth gravity will be unhealthy. Gravity itself can be a significant and damaging stress on the body; a bit less gravity may actually improve health, not hurt it. For this reason, it's also not reasonable to speculate a linear slope between "healthy at 100% earth gravity" and "unhealthy at zero gravity". The slope is very likely non-linear, but nobody knows what it looks like.
Some space medicine people I've talked to speculate that lower gravity is probably harmless, up to the point where fluids stop flowing downhill. Your body relies on gravity to redistribute fluids throughout your extremities; in zero-gravity, this no longer happens, and a lot of weird things start happening as a result. If this is the case, then lunar gravity (1/6th earth gravity) should be just fine to live in. But, again, we don't know, and all the zero-gravity experiments in the world won't tell us. Until we get some proper low-gravity experience, it's a big question-mark.
1: Technically, "micro-" gravity, since "zero-" doesn't exist in reality. But it's very, very, very micro -- like, 1/1000th earth gravity or less.
I think there is some hope that low-but-not-zero gravity will have less pronounced effects in the long run.