Author Topic: Will people ever colonize space? Will technology allow it to be profitable?  (Read 97725 times)

Offline CitizenSpace

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It's a matter of the willingness to spend said money. So it's a question of money. There's 72 trillion dollars going around worldwide. 45 trillion of that goes around in countries with an active space programme (I'm only counting the US, China, India, Russia and Europe). The world spends several times more on any single one of the big sports than it does on space. A few billion per year to support a moon base, or even a few times more to support a mars base is nothing. Quatar spends more on organizing the next olympics than the ISS has cost in its entire existence. But why would Joe Sixpack spend that on space exploration, if even most of the people (including me) on this forum, all interested in space exploration, don't pay for L2 membership, or support other space initiatives?


Your argument struck me hard. Makes a lot more sense when you put it that way. So it is a question of money, but really more of a question on how said money is used and the willingness to use it. By the way, how the heck are you all so good at arguing a point with so much information? Is google implanted in your head or something? :D

We've been at it for quite a while, that helps. Although my numbers might be outdated sometimes. And this forum is kind of my outlet for my urge to discuss things. People I know usually get bored pretty quickly or start using defending unsubstantiated opinions that can't even be true at the same time.

As for the 90 years old: I'm hoping so as well. I'm also still in my twenties. Once we've proven people can survive a little further from earth, I'm hoping for a snowball effect where more and more people become interested, more money is spent, so more technology is developed more quickly, resulting in new capabilities, improved safety and more comfort. Which means even more people become interested. But that is a hope, not a substantiated opinion. Which often gets to be called 'unsubstatiated, not viable, OT' over here. But it is why I advocate setting the bar low: concentrate on nearby destinations, incrementaly maturing technology to a point where we can safely operate for months/years without assistance from earth. All the while costs are dropping and more ventures become profitable. Later missions to further locations can profit from improved safety, lower costs and bigger budgets.

This is what I was trying to get at. And going straight from Earth to Mars sounds like a really bad idea. In orbital living (like that of the ISS but in terms of 5-10 year stays), space hotels and other such orbital ventures is a much better way to go at first, simply because we know more about it then living on Mars.
« Last Edit: 04/30/2014 03:28 am by Lar »


Offline cordwainer

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Agreed, Doug. Space colonization is not like colonizing the Americas. The environment in space is far less hospitable and resources are more difficult to utilize, most of what you need you will have to bring with you which is why I agree with the assessment that much of the exploitation of space resources will be done through automatons. That being said though for some roles humans will be cheaper and more capable. For on orbit repairs (particularly delicate repairs) a manned space shuttle or orbital garage is going to be better than an automated tug. Due to communication lag, atmospheric or solar interference having someone locally managing, repairing and servicing those automatons. Also having a human crew to service those machines means you don't have to build very complicated automatons that have redundancy and self repair capabilities. The biggest cost in commercial and scientific applications in space is the operation of the payload/vehicle/package not the launch costs so reducing the cost of space operations using a hybrid of manned and unmanned tools may be more cost effective. Particularly if you are only sending small numbers of humans for short stays in space. As these temporary settlements become more complex and capable of exploiting mined resources for sale on Earth rather than just ISRU then you have the incentive to put a lot more humans into space. Specifically if you have such complexity then you would also have the capability to produce a lot of the things humans need to survive in space at that point like air, water, shelter and electricity.

Offline JohnFornaro

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Thank you Hernalt!  SRI's work rox!  The best part being the pragmatic manufacturing of a small cubic truss.  That's news you can use.

Freitas and Drexel, in their nano-robot work, focuses on the most itty bitty robots imaginable, where the devices are able to move individual atoms at a time, and that at phenomenal speeds.  If you hunt around on the googols, you can probably find his animation of building a laptop, where the video starts out at macro scale, progressively zooms into nano-scale, and then the view progressively backs up and backs up until you see the laptop emerge from the nano-factory.

I couldn't find that one, but here's this one:



F&D's video, and this one too, suffer from the same inconsistency, illustrated in the screen shot.  If the ping pong balls of the individual cabon atoms are shown discreetly, what could possibly be the virtually continuous sub-stratum of material transporting these atoms hither and yon?

Of course, these guys want funding, and like everybody else, don't sweat the practical details involved when claiming that their work transcends all other work.

But anyhow:

The term "nano" can be viewed from a macro scale perspective.  But the term "nano" is just too MTM* for me.

It's more easy to imagine a million of these 1/4" square devices building a martian mothership, in an additive fashion, alongside "traditional" robots and gasp, humans.  This could roughly imply a mile long spacecraft.  The point being that these quarter inch robots could be very useful.  Spacecraft will not be built like printed circuits.

What SRI should do next is not to miniturize their robots further, but to develop a panoply of tools that they could use, and to vastly increase the surface they could work upon, and other issues of scaling up the machines to build large scale structures in space, not to build single use demos on a table.

*MTM.  More Than Moore.  I poop you negative.  This is the latest buzz term in April's Military & Aerospace Electronics mag.
« Last Edit: 04/30/2014 01:58 pm by JohnFornaro »
Sometimes I just flat out don't get it.

Offline Astrosurf

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I believe mars will be profitable, it has  resources, the first people to go there will be farmers, and miners, a lot of people will probably go to mars as in a 1870s gold rush  some will make it rich, many will probably die horribly on the surface, or underground in some Martian mine.

my guess is early Martians will just strip dead rovers and dead landers from their elements and then pawn them for a  ticket to earth

 lets be serious here though, they aren't doing anything and they could be put to better use

Offline francesco nicoli

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you just said "farmers"?

Bloody hell. We don't even know how much water is in that hellish desert and you think farmers will go there as in a gold rush? Can't be serious, friend.

Offline cordwainer

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Personally, I'm with Larry Niven when it comes to my opinions on Mars colonization. Mars gravity well is huge compared to other nearby terrestrial bodies like the Moon, NEO's and asteroids.(Mars=0.38G, Moon=0.16G that's two and half times stronger) Part of the incentive of mining is being able to easily transport mined materials from one body to another and back to Earth in the microgravity environment. Even Phobos would be a better mining prospect than the surface of Mars if we are looking at transportability of resources. Mars may get colonized eventually but from a profit incentive ROI other planetary bodies are more suitable.

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