Author Topic: The urgency of creating a self-sustaining off-Earth presence  (Read 36756 times)

Offline Chris Bergin

Interesting topic subject, on request.

Everyone's input, small or large, would be appreciated by the person requesting the thread.

To first order: "How urgent is it to develop a self-sustaining off-earth presence?"

To second order: "How much time do we have to build a half-sustaining off-earth presence?"

This all plays into Elon Musk and Dr Hawking's desire to realize the human race's ability to become multi-planatary.
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Offline mr. mark

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Is it urgent...No.

What is important is the development of systems within SpaceX, NASA ect. to enable this to happen. Then and only then can this start to take place.

Offline mduncan36

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Is it urgent? Relatively speaking, yes. I'm no big prophet of doom but if you look at the likelyhood of extinction level events or just the growth of humanity on this planet our time is limited. Sometime between tomorrow and a hundred years from now it's going to be very important both that part of humanity has moved elsewhere and  we are exploiting resources over our heads.

Not only is this important for material reasons and the continuation of the species, it's important to the human spirit. Without exploration and discovery we will stagnate and die. Think of all the centuries that China spent as a closed society. Korea was once known as "the hermit kingdom" and failed to progress as a result. Who wants to have an entire planet like that?

In historical terms our time to make this happen is brief and it is very important that we take advantage of our open window to do so. It will not take long for the global problems of humanity to overwhelm us and deprive us of the chance to have a future.

Offline rklaehn

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I think it is pretty urgent. Not because we are running out of resources on earth, or because some environmental desaster threatens to make earth uninhabitable.

But there is a struggle going on between people that want to see mankind reach for the stars, and people that want to drag mankind back to the stone age: radical environmentalists, religious fanatics, marxists that are disgusted by mankind because marxism doesn't work, and just plain misantropes. 

To see how much influence these people wield over public opinion, you just have to read any german web forum discussing the planetary resources launch, like for example the heise.de news site for computer experts. Many posts there literally flow over with hatred for humanity. And these are well-educated people that work in information technology.

When I read the mars trilogy by kim stanley robinson, I thought the people preferring lifeless rocks over life were overdone. But these people exist. They are basically mainstream in germany. If you have a positive view of the future people think you are stupid.

A self-sustaining off-earth presence will obviously be created by people that love life and that love technology. Once that is accomplished, it means that the people that want to drag mankind back into the caves or worse will finally have lost. They might be able to drag everyone on earth back, but there will be some people that are forever out of reach.

Offline FinalFrontier

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Interesting topic subject, on request.

Everyone's input, small or large, would be appreciated by the person requesting the thread.

To first order: "How urgent is it to develop a self-sustaining off-earth presence?"

To second order: "How much time do we have to build a half-sustaining off-earth presence?"

This all plays into Elon Musk and Dr Hawking's desire to realize the human race's ability to become multi-planatary.


1. Is it urgent?

A: That all depends on the scale of time we are discussing here. Is it vital for the human race to continuing to exist in the universe in the long run? You bet. Is it vital that we start living on mars in the next 20 years? No its not.

2. How much time do we have to build a half-sustaining off-earth presence.

A: I suppose that's rather open ended. Something less then 4 billion years due to the sun of course, and the fact that the core will freeze in that time-frame as well. Or until "something happens" like a nuclear war or an asteroid impact.

As was said earlier, what is vital and urgent is that we start doing more in space, and that things like spacex keep building and keep going. Thats how you open the door to planetary colonization.
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Offline MarkZero

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From a larger perspective:

We are living at a very unique time in the history of the universe. It is the very first time any lifeform that we know of has even the slightest capability to leave its home planet at will, to make life multiplanetary. For all we know this might be the only chance that not just humanity, but any life at all, has to out-survive its home planet. I think it would be foolish not to make the most of it. And in order to make the most of it we should start as soon as possible, since on timescales longer than a few decades or centuries we don't know how long our capability for spaceflight will last.

Offline Rocket Science

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If we look at the cycles of mass extension events and their many underlying causes, there may be the possibility that it is already too late. There is no guarantee here on Earth or any possible inhabited planet that spaceflight has been developed in time to avoid a MEE.  Who knows it may have happened already in some other world…

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v471/n7336/full/nature09678.html

http://www.livescience.com/1752-greatest-mysteries-mass-extinctions.html
« Last Edit: 05/30/2012 08:45 pm by Rocket Science »
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Offline RocketmanUS

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To first order: "How urgent is it to develop a self-sustaining off-earth presence?"

That could be seen as LEO station , EML1/2, Lunar, Mars, ect.

I've posted on other threads already my concern for a small Lunar base to see if we can live outside of Earth. With that I would say now is the time to fund or foundations to get us to EML1/2 and Lunar ( all done in 10 years from now including a three year stay on the moon ). If all works out then Mars base followed by colony, possible EML4/5 and deep space exploration ( Jupiter and Saturn ).

Mars could be see as a new America off world.


To second order: "How much time do we have to build a half-sustaining off-earth presence?"

Til there are none of us left! We already have ISS, add in food crops and we are closer.

Edit:
End of World stuff, so what! It's more about being allowed to leave.
We have the ability to leave Earth. So if it is safe ( body can be health outside of Earth ) then we should be allowed to leave and live on another body in space or a large space station if we want to. We have been delayed to long and side tract from going just to Mars let alone colonizing Mars. We should have already been there before the end of 1999. To many start and stops of projects, money and time wasted!

We need a plan laid out before the public now and funded through to the first crew safely returned from Mars surface mission!
« Last Edit: 05/31/2012 05:56 am by RocketmanUS »

Offline IRobot

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Unless we develop a ship that can travel close to the speed of light, it is urgent. We might have a supernova going off less than 200 light years away from earth. So we need at least 1000 years to become a multi planetary system species, not a multi planetary species.

Offline Watchdog

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Theoretically, most of the dangers (e.g. global cosmic catastrophy, global nuclear war, invasion of an allien species/civilization or emergence of a potentially deadly virus causing a pandemy) could be overcome by a hidden, isolated terrestrical or maritime colony of about 100 people genetically represenative of the human species. From genetic analyses of mitochondrial genomes we know that mankind has passed at least one genetic bottleneck many thausend years ago. It is estimated that only a few hundred individuals survived those conditions erasing almost the entire species.

I am almost sure that some countries have already developed technologies in respect to survival of a nuclear war allowing small groups of individuals to survive dozens of years in isolation until the repopulation of the surface will become possible. Gene banks of seeds from a huge number of wild as well as cultivated species/varieties and cloned animal embryos already exist. Bioconservation is supported not only by cabable nations but also by international programmes.

The key enabling technology, enclosed mini-ecosystems, has been tried already two decades ago: Biosphere 2, and is now used as a museum for tourists and some ongoing science. We can solve most of the problems associated with human survival in case of an existential crisis right here on this planet.

Nevertheless, it would be highly desirable to have a colony on e.g. Mars, but I doubt that it really would be selfsustaining in the short run. The costs, however, will be at least one magnitude higher compared to any comparable effort at the home planet.
« Last Edit: 05/30/2012 08:43 pm by Watchdog »

Offline SpacexULA

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It is important, but not urgent.  It is the equivalent of a bullet proof vest for a police officer.

There are around 683,396 police officers in the US, last year was a record year for police deaths at 146.  That's a .02% chance that a police officer will be shot yet the vast majority of police departments require a bulletproof vest, anything less would be silly.

But to be honest I don't see any serious money being put forward till we have a Tunguska event in a populated area, which given how often asteroids of that energy level hit, and the percentage of the surface humanity now covers, it's only a matter of time.

« Last Edit: 05/30/2012 08:49 pm by SpacexULA »
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Offline peter-b

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Quote
To first order: "How urgent is it to develop a self-sustaining off-earth presence?"

To second order: "How much time do we have to build a half-sustaining off-earth presence?"

This is a question that has preoccupied me for at least the last decade.

Not a lot of people appreciate just how interconnected modern technological human society is, or how wide-flung the infrastructure that they rely on for their everyday survival. To within a close approximation, no-one in a developed society has the ability to even survive in the event of a relatively minor disaster. Consider, for example, the effect on a typical urban area of simply suspending all utilities (running water, electricity, communications), without any timely response from aid agencies. Most analyses that I am aware of suggest total loss of law and order within hours and widespread starvation, dysentery and cholera within days. Consider that in the UK, only 35% of the food consumed by the population is produced domestically. Any extensive breakdown in international trade would result in the majority of the population rapidly starving to death.

This fragility -- which is not widely appreciated -- exists in the context of a planet where multiple states have the capability of near-total destruction of human civilisation at less than an hour's notice. The population is growing, while natural resources -- fresh water, energy sources such as fossil fuels and fissionable elements, and valuable ores like coltan -- are in increasingly short supply. Every year, war and internal turmoil take hold of more countries, and every year, more nationalist political parties gain power and legitimacy, ratcheting tensions between nations ever higher.

And every year, climate change-induced extreme weather, pollution, desertification and deforestation make desperate people even more so. Even if the dangers of planetary impacts, supervolcanos, megaquakes, collapsing islands triggering massive tsunami, or accidentally released experimental superviruses are discounted, I genuinely believe that Earth's Final War will take place within my lifetime and that neither our civilisation nor I myself will survive it.

Creating a self-sustaining interplanetary presence is the only way that our civilisation and its accumulated knowledge will survive into the 22nd century. It is possibly the only way that our species will survive, in the event of a really serious nuclear war or a cometary fragment impacting the Earth. What is more, it would provide a useful safety-valve, both as a way for disaffected groups to "escape", and as a means for governments to distract populations from internecine troubles. And not to mention the applications of the required improvements in recycling, waste management, and use of scarce resources that could be applied directly to combating the issues of a growing Terran population.

In summary: I cannot think of any more urgent human endeavour; and 50-100 years maximum.
Research Scientist (Sensors), Sharp Laboratories of Europe, UK

Online Eric Hedman

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Since we don't know when the next mass extinction event will happen or what form it will come in, I think it is prudent that we make steady progress toward a sustainable off world presence.  If a super volcano goes off next year, we've already waited too long. 

The fact that Ana Krakatoa was recently upgraded in status to a super volcano may be cause for concern.  It is now bigger than Krakatoa was before it blew up and capable of a much bigger eruption.

http://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread541586/pg1

If nothing earth shattering happens for the next thousand years than an argument can be made that right now it would be a waste of money.  The point is we just don't know when the next threat to human survival will arrive.  Because of that I would rate the need for developing off world survival skills as an urgent need.

Offline Patchouli

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I say yes and it's been urgent every since we became capable of destroying our civilization in nuclear war.
Bio weapons also are concern and possibly even more dangerous then nuclear weapons.

Other serious threats asteroid impact though a strong space presence can prevent this and super volcanoes though pretty much the only thing you can do there is run away.

A crash program is probably not necessary at this point and can even be counter productive but instead we should work towards several short term easily reached mile stones.
« Last Edit: 05/31/2012 04:08 am by Patchouli »

Offline mduncan36

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I think it is pretty urgent. Not because we are running out of resources on earth, ...

But there is a struggle going on between people that want to see mankind reach for the stars, and people that want to drag mankind back to the stone age: radical environmentalists, religious fanatics, marxists that are disgusted by mankind because marxism doesn't work, and just plain misantropes. 

... They might be able to drag everyone on earth back, but there will be some people that are forever out of reach.

I too regard what you are saying as one of several major problems we face as a civilization. Many regard us as being too smart for our own good. The Luddites and the have-nots in this world represent a threat to progress. We may survive as a species but our ability to progress is seriously under threat. Our window to escape and continue will not likely remain open long.

Quote
To first order: "How urgent is it to develop a self-sustaining off-earth presence?"

To second order: "How much time do we have to build a half-sustaining off-earth presence?"

This is a question that has preoccupied me for at least the last decade.

Not a lot of people appreciate just how interconnected modern technological human society is, or how wide-flung the infrastructure that they rely on for their everyday survival. To within a close approximation, no-one in a developed society has the ability to even survive in the event of a relatively minor disaster. Consider, for example, the effect on a typical urban area of simply suspending all utilities (running water, electricity, communications), without any timely response from aid agencies. Most analyses that I am aware of suggest total loss of law and order within hours and widespread starvation, dysentery and cholera within days. Consider that in the UK, only 35% of the food consumed by the population is produced domestically. Any extensive breakdown in international trade would result in the majority of the population rapidly starving to death.
...
In summary: I cannot think of any more urgent human endeavour; and 50-100 years maximum.

Again here is another example of a threat we face that is more likely than we realize. We already survive on this planet by means of advanced technology. It is what makes large cities and industrial societies possible and without it everything will come crashing down. We hold a precarious balance between relying on technology and being it's master. After several million years of human evolution we have known this state for only the last couple of centuries or less. How can we know it will continue?

I'm not talking about making a national effort but to do any less than we do now to get ourselves out of our planetary cradle would be foolhardy. Hopefully somewhere out there is a Christopher Columbus to lead us to a newer world. I can not imagine we have more than a century to work with. Possibly much less.

Offline cro-magnon gramps

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In 1962 I was 14, and I remember the Cuban Missile Crisis as if it were yesterday; that night, waiting for the bomb, my brother and I lost our innocence; Mom and Dad could not protect us from everything;
Leap forward to Y2K, and “the end of the world”, it was less frightening to me, as I knew from IT people that I worked with that it would not happen to the extent that was predicted; if at all; but others didn’t have access to that knowledge, and I was on suicide call that night; no one I know, died that night; but the terror was real;
As a species we have only crawled up out of our caves and huts, given up our hunter gatherer ways, to embrace “civilization” and “farming” 9,000 years ago, just after the end of the last Ice Age; we are in an intermediate phase; and have just about used up the easily available resources on this planet; if it were not for our advance technological society, the resources that we need to exist, would be beyond our reach and we would have drifted back into the Stone Age, hundreds of years ago;
Regardless of what ‘Might’ happen in the way of a catastrophic event, we are coming to the limits of Earth’s ability to sustain our species; “The Bank Account” that we have been drawing on, is coming close to being empty, unless we find a fundamentally new source of energy, new resources and ways to feed and cloth the 9 Billion people that will inhabit this planet in 39 years;
Climate change is real, and has always been around; it happened 10,000 years ago with the last Ice Age and has been fluctuating ever since; regardless of who is to blame, it is happening now; and we are able to monitor it for the first time; Social and Cultural Upheaval is inevitable, and will be uncontrollable if we don’t have alternatives in place before the middle of this century; while there are many people working on those alternatives here on the planet, and a few far sighted ones working on Space alternatives, we need a “Manhatten” style project to kick start real change; bits and pieces randomly scattered about, competing against each other may leave us no time;
How urgent is it; Extremely Urgent; the Tsunami of 2004 and the earth quakes on the Pacific Rim last year are a small taste of what can happen; they didn’t matter when the human population of this planet was only a few million; but now that we are concentrated in some of the deadliest volcanic areas on this planet, the threat is huge; we have seen how Minor Volcanic Events, such as in Iceland, can affect whole regions, and how Solar Flares can knock out our Electrical Grid as it did in Canada’s province of Quebec; do we really need a Tunguska or Meteor Crater Event to prove that we are an endangered and vulnerable species;
Believe it or not, since the middle of the 20th Century, humanity has experienced the most profoundly peaceful times in the last 2000 years; the danger of dieing from wars has decreased with every decade, regardless of what some politicians and generals will tell you; the amount of co-operation amongst developed and developing nations has been phenomenal; for those, and for all the reasons I have given above, now is the time to push forward to become a Space Faring Species; I don’t say multi-planetary, as I feel that is too limiting; in some ways, it would be easier to build Space Stations, rather than try to live on inhospitable planets; but I don’t think we should ignore either;
To answer the last question, how long do we have to build a half-sustaining off world presence? I am not sure a half-sustaining presence would survive; it most certainly would be a finger nail clinging to the rock face of the cliff existence; much like the bottle neck that some think existed in South Africa when the rest of Africa became a desert and uninhabitable for thousands of years; not that that was the only time; it is only the most profound;
I would prefer a fully self sustainable presence, based on Space Resource Utilization, not dependant on Earth; whether it is 100 on an outpost or 10,000 persons scattered in groups through the solar system; so long as they were able to be Space Faring, and had a sustainable economic infrastructure, that is all that would matter;
Starting now, with something between what we have now and a full blown “Manhatten” project, we could be out there in a generation, (80 years) living, breeding, settling and exploring the Solar System out to the Oort Cloud, with the rest of Space Beckoning;

WE CAN'T PRESS REBOOT IF WE GUESS WRONG!!

edit, oopsi didn't read Chris opening post, but someone elses post, and saw half-sustaining; my apologies; but I think it still stands fairly well ;)
« Last Edit: 05/31/2012 05:40 am by cro-magnon gramps »
Gramps "Earthling by Birth, Martian by the grace of The Elon." ~ "Hate, it has caused a lot of problems in the world, but it has not solved one yet." Maya Angelou ~ Tony Benn: "Hope is the fuel of progress and fear is the prison in which you put yourself."

Offline Cinder

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If nothing else, everyone down here on the surface needs to get a dose of the Overview Effect, yesterday.
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Offline JohnFornaro

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Is it urgent? Relatively speaking, yes.

I think it is pretty urgent.

But there is a struggle going on between people that want to see mankind reach for the stars, and people ...[who don't.]

From a larger perspective:

We are living at a very unique time in the history of the universe. It is the very first time any lifeform that we know of has even the slightest capability to leave its home planet at will, to make life multiplanetary.

I've posted on other threads already my concern for a small Lunar base to see if we can live outside of Earth. With that I would say now is the time to fund or foundations to get us to EML1/2 and Lunar ... If all works out then Mars base followed by colony...

End of World stuff, so what! It's more about being allowed to leave. ...

Not a lot of people appreciate just how interconnected modern technological human society is ... Most analyses that I am aware of suggest total loss of law and order within hours and widespread starvation, dysentery and cholera within days.

Three intersting comparisons are the governmental responses to Katrina, Haiti's earthquake, and Fukushima.

“The Bank Account” that we have been drawing on, is coming close to being empty, unless we find a fundamentally new source of energy, new resources and ways to feed and cloth the 9 Billion people that will inhabit this planet in 39 years...

I've expressed the above ideas virtually every opportunity that I can. 

We have wasted forty years so far, depending on the honesty of our politicians to do the right thing on this topic and on many others.  It is a misguided dependency not based on fact; our politicians simply prefer to stay in power, and do not work toward the common good all that much.  I think there is some evidence to support a contention that we are being kept on planet.  The urgency to establish a lunar base is high, and is an absolute prerequisite for any colonization effort.

Could this thread be turned into a poll?
Sometimes I just flat out don't get it.

Offline aquanaut99

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Is our current industrialized civilization on planet Earth in danger of collapsing? Absolutely, and acutely, for all the reasons expressed above (overpopulation, resource depletion, conflict, over-dependancy on technology) but also due to a generalized feeling of disillusionnement about technology and civilization and the rise of both left- and rightwing antiscience movements.

Can a self-sustaining off-Earth presence save us? No. Why not?

Because we are out of time.

The above dangers are cumulating rapidly and are forming, IMO, a "perfect storm scenario" that will lead to the downfall of global industrial civilization (or, in a best-case scenario, the end of the current globalized world; at any rate, the world after the collapse will be much poorer and with lower standards of living).

This perfect storm scenario can come about as early as 2030 (according to some), but it will most likely happen before the end of the century. There is quite simply no way we could possibly set up a self-sustaining off-world presence that would require no input whatsoever from mother Earth and that would house a sufficiently large number of humans to form a nucleus of civilization independant of Earth. In fact, we don't even know if this is possible to do at all (we still don't know if humans can even reproduce off-Earth). And we aren't even capable of setting up completely self-sustaining independant communities on Earth (see the failure of Biosphere 2 as well as the lack of self-sufficiency of Antarctic outposts, which are the closest thing to off-world communities we currently have).

Sorry, but space won't save us. At least not from the incoming perfect storm. If we manage to survive that with our civilization more or less intact, THEN we might be able to settle space in a few centuries. Unfortunately, the chances of that are remote. The coming storm will, even in the best of cases, set us back by several decades. Unfortunately, we have already used up all the easily available resources on Earth. If we try to come back after the disaster, it will be much harder, because the required resources will be harder to come by.

I am not optimistic. I fear that space exploration is just a short episode attempted by humanity at its peak, and that soon enough the heavens will again become unreachable for us. And this time for good.

Offline spacenut

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I read a book several years ago, can't remember what the title was, but it that the US could sustain a population the size of China with our current standard of living.  How?

It said we would have to go to nuclear power.  Granite rock is 5% uranium and would we have plenty of granite to extract it from.

It also said we can grow most vegetables from greenhouses by having several crops a year instead of farms once a year. 

It also said better utilization in building homes, semi-underground, stone and masonary would use more abundant resorces than wood. 

It also said more people could live underwater in shallow offshore areas, deep enough to avoid hurricanes and storms, but not too deep, raising fish and mining underwater minerals.

Lots of ideas, and it may come to that. 

I agree with massive space exploration and colonization, but until money is available at the magnitude of military expense, we will not do it, unless private companies eventually do it. 

Mars can be colonized, it has water and a thin carbon dioxide atmosphere.  Plants can therefore grow there.  Don't know about other minerals.  The moon would have to import or manufacture water. 

Offline JohnFornaro

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Sorry, but space won't save us.

Of course not.  It is our actions that will save us.  Clearly there are any number of possibilities outside of our control, but these cannot be planned for any more than the extent we can know about and predict those possible events.  As it stands, we are not making the home planet a better place to live.  To me, this is evidence suggesting a greater urgency to create new governments in the new frontier.
Sometimes I just flat out don't get it.

Offline JohnFornaro

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If water and oxygen were the only needs on Mars/Moon...

Based on these requirements, it is 100% impossible to recycle the human exhaust products to put a large population (1 million people) on the moon / Mars.  Take the average human water consumption down an order of magnitude, it is still 100% impossible to do this. 

As to 1M people, you may be right, as Water is rare on either body, compared to Earth.
 
[Edit: 06-02-12.  There is a lot of water on Mars.  It's still rarer than on Earth, but also it is common enough that with a sufficiently powerful terraforming program, the water could be used to support some millions of people and their crops.  See below.]

However, there are millions of gallons of water in the lunar craters.  Some would be used for propellant, and not recyclyable.

However, any lunar or martian base will rely upon recycling both water and oxygen.

I haven't yet read an account of about how many people could live on either body, based on what is known about water on either one.

So you raise a good point of discussion, which I'll rephrase here:

Given the water and O2 limits to human habitation on either Mars or the Moon, about how many people could a colony be expected to support?
« Last Edit: 06/02/2012 01:56 pm by JohnFornaro »
Sometimes I just flat out don't get it.

Offline MEH53

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Basing any kind of assumption of consumption rates in a space colony on data baselined by US averages is a bit fatuous, don't you think?

If they expended 500 some liters of water a day on the ISS without reccovering it we would have to launch a resupply every day. I guess it depends on how you define "self sustaining" but to develop a minimum "space colony" based on a near closed-system would be somewhat less taxing on Mars' resources than a suburban community where people leave the water running while they brush their teeth.
 Obviously sustaining very large populations would require significant geoengineering (Kim Stanley Robinson can sod off, I'm not inventing mars versions of every word with an earth root in it). Unlike our more pessimistic compatriots though I don't believe that Earth is on the verge of a catastrophe, which is good because establishing a truly self-sufficient operation would take many generations.
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Offline Robotbeat

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There is urgency because we are currently doing pretty darned well as a species. This period of time when we are not terribly desperate and not completely at each other's throats may last decades or years, but there will be another world war sometime in the next few hundred years. Our economies ARE doing well (it's just political spinelessness that is keeping us from doing really well right now... consider Japan, which has a 4% growth rate in the midst of a global recession /because/ of reconstruction from the tsunami... if you have the political will, you can rebuild WITHOUT a disaster, too.... Heck, some have suggested that if we thought we found an alien threat, the gearing up for war would boost the world easily out of its current recession/depression). There is a lot of food (we're literally burning it here in the States).

The time to build investments and protections against disaster is when you're doing well, not when you're already desperate. Now is the time to invest in space infrastructure and research to allow us to become self-sustaining off-Earth and truly spacefaring.
« Last Edit: 05/31/2012 07:06 pm by Robotbeat »
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To the maximum extent practicable, the Federal Government shall plan missions to accommodate the space transportation services capabilities of United States commercial providers. US law http://goo.gl/YZYNt0

Offline rklaehn

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Is our current industrialized civilization on planet Earth in danger of collapsing? Absolutely, and acutely, for all the reasons expressed above (overpopulation, resource depletion, conflict, over-dependancy on technology) but also due to a generalized feeling of disillusionnement about technology and civilization and the rise of both left- and rightwing antiscience movements.

You are certainly correct about the anti-science movements. But I think you are too pessimistic. I think if we can keep the luddites from doing too much harm, we have a pretty good chance of not just surviving this century, but of making our technical civilization more sustainable.

Some of our technology is actually getting more robust. For example a civilization using widely distributed energy sources like rooftop photovoltaics is much less likely to be seriously affected by a large scale power outage. Add to that electric cars and mesh networking, and you have a pretty resilient civilization.

Also, the size of the "seedcorn" required for a technical civilization is getting smaller because of technologies like 3D printing. There are a few important puzzle pieces missing. It still requires a huge worldwide infrastructure to build modern microprocessors. But some progress is being made in this area as well.

Offline spacenut

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Just using recycled washing machine water and bath water to flush toilets cuts the water use in half.  This can be done now with a little additional equipment installed.  Sure it is "gray water" but for flushing who cares?

I know a guy in my town who built a semi underground home.  It cut his heating and air conditioning bills by about 90%.  Add a solar water heater and you almost cut out most utility bills. 

By switching vehicle fuel to compressed natural gas and diesel, that would cut out imported oil.  And that is not even using hybrids or hybrid diesel or hybrid natural gas.  Eventually algae oil will displace drilled oil and this would be carbon neutral. 

I also know of a farmer who had 400 acres.  His son went to engineering school.  This farmer grew some type of small veggie crop.  His son built a 10 acre 1,000' long green house and grew the vegetables in boxes ran on a conveyor belt that only moved one box length per 24 hours.  On one end he harvested the crop to sell to local grocery stores.  One the other end he put on a new box with seeds.  This system produced more of the vegetable than the plowing, planting, and harvesting of 400 acres.  He went from 20 migrant workers to harvest to 3 full time workers to operate the greenhouse.  Then he raised beef cows on the 390 acres, that produced an additonal profit.  Also, with the cow manure, he used as fertilizer in his green house.  The farmer saved money spent on chemical fertilizers and insecticides for the 400 acres which offset the costs of night lighting in the greenhouse and it's operation.  The additional profit came from the cattle. 

Lots of things can be done, it will just take time to change peoples thinking.  Crops can be grown in greenhouses on Mars as Mars has a 24 hour day like Earth.  Animals, especially chickens and/or rabbits can be also grown in buildings with their manure used a fertilizer for the Martian greenhouses.  Mars can also be mined once minerals are found.  A Martian colony can eventually be self sustaining.  Sure to go out you would need an oxygen tank and maybe a pressure suit, sealed transportation vehicles, etc.  With no life on Mars, there will not be any coal or oil, but only metals to mine.  The metals can be used for expansion or traded for Earth items made from things not found on Mars. 

The moon might be a different story except maybe at the poles, since it has a 14 day light, 14 day night cycle.  Plants would either have to adapt or be grown near the poles where there would be more light.
« Last Edit: 05/31/2012 08:19 pm by spacenut »

Offline bunker9603

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Knowing that it could take generations to accomplish an off world self sustaining society, would it be possible to take steps now to insure that the human race does not disappear all together?

I was thinking of DNA/Genetic samples that could be placed in orbit or sent to mars to keep them from harm? This way in the future maybe the human race could be cloned back into existence.


Offline A_M_Swallow

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{snip}

The moon might be a different story except maybe at the poles, since it has a 14 day light, 14 day night cycle.  Plants would either have to adapt or be grown near the poles where there would be more light.

Alternatively you grow the crops under artificial light.  Use solar arrays to charge up batteries.

Offline Warren Platts

There is no crisis. That said, the window when we have the economic and natural resource wherewithal to conduct a major push into space may be limited. Therefore, it would behoove us to quit pussyfooting around.
"When once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward, for there you have been, and there you will always long to return."--Leonardo Da Vinci

Offline Robotbeat

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There is no crisis. That said, the window when we have the economic and natural resource wherewithal to conduct a major push into space may be limited. Therefore, it would behoove us to quit pussyfooting around.
+1
Chris  Whoever loves correction loves knowledge, but he who hates reproof is stupid.

To the maximum extent practicable, the Federal Government shall plan missions to accommodate the space transportation services capabilities of United States commercial providers. US law http://goo.gl/YZYNt0

Offline Patchouli

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Also, the size of the "seedcorn" required for a technical civilization is getting smaller because of technologies like 3D printing. There are a few important puzzle pieces missing. It still requires a huge worldwide infrastructure to build modern microprocessors. But some progress is being made in this area as well.
It might be possible to implement some hard to produce electronics in easier to manufacture 1970s level technology if needed.
The price you'll have to loose the pretty GUIs we've have grown accustomed to.
But even a PDP-8E type machine would be powerful enough to run a 3d printer.
« Last Edit: 06/01/2012 01:20 am by Patchouli »

Offline Bubbinski

I'd say it's probably a very good idea to at least get started on the initial steps of creating self sustaining bases/outposts/colonies "out there" and maybe in Antarctica and undersea as well.  Human civilization has developed to the point where there is more freedom, more wealth, more technology, longer and better lives than ever before.  We need to "strike while the iron is hot".  I am optimistic about the human future, however, there are things that could derail or set back our move off the planet.  Things like the eurozone crisis, weapons of mass destruction, Carrington events, Tunguska events, supervolcanoes, Cascadia-type earthquakes, and cutoff of Mideast oil could make things "interesting" in a bad way.
I'll even excitedly look forward to "flags and footprints" and suborbital missions. Just fly...somewhere.

Offline Robert Thompson

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Offline rklaehn

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Global Village Construction Set
http://opensourceecology.org/wiki/Global_Village_Construction_Set

Interesting.

This gets to another point: developing the techologies to survive in space will certainly help to make industrialized civilization more robust on earth as well. For example the german car manufacturer audi now has a project to make methane from water and carbon dioxide by using water electrolysis and the sabatier reaction. The idea is to use this to generate hydrocarbon fuels for internal combustion engines from regenerative energy (wind power) when there is spare capacity.
http://www.greencarcongress.com/2011/05/egas-20110513.html

Sounds familiar? This is basically the same approach proposed in the case for mars.

Another thing you will definitely need on a space colony is a machine that can produce arbitrary spare parts. Something like this http://www.eos.info/en/products/systems-equipment/metal-laser-sintering-systems.html

This will be very useful as well to reduce the complexity and interconnectedness and fragility of modern production methods. Instead of having a fragile supply chain around half the world, you need a few of these machines and a stockpile of different metal powders.

Offline Watchdog

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Knowing that it could take generations to accomplish an off world self sustaining society, would it be possible to take steps now to insure that the human race does not disappear all together?

I was thinking of DNA/Genetic samples that could be placed in orbit or sent to mars to keep them from harm? This way in the future maybe the human race could be cloned back into existence.

Most of the global disasters discussed under this topic are supposed to wipe out mankind without destroying the planets geological structure. Therefore, the survival of small groups of individuals in remote areas (e.g. Antartica, submarine or deep underground) is highly probable.

However, these small groups cannot survive in the long term or support a repopulation of the planet until they have the necessary technologies discussed in some contributions (e.g. global village construction set). Moreover, the global disaster may have destroyed the biosphere to an extent that only some microorganisms could survive and the planet will lack living conditions for decades or even centuries.

In order to bypass this longer period of time without human presence on the planet several independent centers may be established in "safe areas" including other celestial bodies. If we assume the following scenario the costs will be acceptably low compared to comparable "selfsustained crewed centers".

A collection of the most important species of plants, animals and microorganisms as well as a "starter set" of cryo-preserved human embryos will be neccesary to restart a new civilization. Robots could safeguard these centers against potential threats and continously messure the conditions until they meet the requirements to launch the process of repopulation.

Artificial uteri could grow up about a dozen embryos and nursing robots could raise the children until they can teach themselves about the history of mankind and the next steps in the repopulation process. All other activities would be organized by these first "newborns" using the available resources of the local centers. Energy supply is carried out by a natural gas turbine, wind driven generators, solar power stations (in storage) and a stand-by nuclear reactor.

Offline Celebrimbor

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Zeroth order: If you were to take fossil fuels out of the equation on Earth, how much of human civilization right here would be self sustaining?  If you take the point of view that fossil fuels are not really part of 'humanity' then we are not in fact self sustaining here on Earth, so we can't really talk about extending outwards...

Reducing our reliance on fossil fuels is easier and more urgent than extending a self sustaining presence outwards.

Of course, the environment of space, and the cost of launch brings home the truth about what self sustaining really means.  It is an excellent proving ground for technologies that close the loop.  If we can do it in LEO, we can do it almost anywhere.  For that reason, it is important - and, if you think fossil fuels are running out, urgent.

Offline rklaehn

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Zeroth order: If you were to take fossil fuels out of the equation on Earth, how much of human civilization right here would be self sustaining?  If you take the point of view that fossil fuels are not really part of 'humanity' then we are not in fact self sustaining here on Earth, so we can't really talk about extending outwards...

What about thorium? That is a fossil fuel, but it could drive a technical civilization for many million years. Or what about deuterium? It's also a fossil fuel, but it would last longer than the sun at current energy consumption levels. So not every fossil fuel is unsustainable.

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Reducing our reliance on fossil fuels is easier and more urgent than extending a self sustaining presence outwards.

Agreed. But there are many possible disasters or destructive tendencies that could wipe out industrial civilization that have nothing to do with resource depletion. The only safe way against those is to spread out as far as possible, as quickly as possible.

But the main driving force of space settlement for me is not to preserve something, but to create something. If you create a thriving ecosystem out of basically nothing except lifeless rocks and energy, that would be an accomplishment bigger than everything mankind has done to date.

It would not just ensure our survival, but also demonstrate that we are worthy of survival to every human being with a tiny remaining sliver of rational thought.

(There are some people, like these that are forever out of reach)

Offline awatral

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When I read the mars trilogy by kim stanley robinson, I thought the people preferring lifeless rocks over life were overdone. But these people exist. They are basically mainstream in germany. If you have a positive view of the future people think you are stupid.


Why do you say that?

I've thought that Muslim suicide bombers are scary,  but this would be much worse!



Offline aquanaut99

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When I read the mars trilogy by kim stanley robinson, I thought the people preferring lifeless rocks over life were overdone. But these people exist. They are basically mainstream in germany. If you have a positive view of the future people think you are stupid.


Why do you say that?

I've thought that Muslim suicide bombers are scary,  but this would be much worse!


He says it because it's true. The anti-science, anti-progress faction among us is growing ever stronger. Ever more people reject science as a force of good and believe technology is evil (even tho they are enjoying the fruits of that same technology) and wish for a return to "simpler times". We can speculate as to the reason for this phenomenon, but it is undeniable. If you don't believe it, just google around a bit. I see someone has already linked VHEMT, the ultimate anti-progress, anti-human organized group around (and whose stated goal is visible in the name "voluntary human extinction movement"), but there are many others as well, from lunatic left-wingers, over extreme environmentalists who value plants and animals more than human life all the way to all sorts of rabid religious radicals...
« Last Edit: 06/01/2012 11:28 am by aquanaut99 »

Offline rklaehn

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When I read the mars trilogy by kim stanley robinson, I thought the people preferring lifeless rocks over life were overdone. But these people exist. They are basically mainstream in germany. If you have a positive view of the future people think you are stupid.


Why do you say that?

I've thought that Muslim suicide bombers are scary,  but this would be much worse!

I know. These people scare me too. And at least in germany this kind of thinking is very dominant in the media.

I think that the basic psychology of both groups is surprisingly similar.

Here is a typical example from a german IT website:

http://www.heise.de/newsticker/foren/S-Genauso-hab-ich-mir-das-vorgestellt/forum-227237/msg-21746805/read/

So this is what conquering space looks like in capitalism. After we turned earth into a toilet, we do the same with space.

Mr. smith was right: mankind is a virus. "You move into a certain area and multiply and multiply until all natural resources are depleted. And the only way to survive is to expand to another area"

I hope that mankind wipes itself out before we conquer any peaceful civilizations.


There are hundreds of posts on that website that are not as extreme, but similar. And on other popular german websites it is basically the same. People that view human achievement and aspiration like planetary resources or spacex as something positive are definitely in the majority. I am not sure if it is just hatred of america and capitalism, or if it is more general.

Whenever I read stuff like this I ask myself why these people don't just kill themselves. But the good thing is that these people don't reproduce. Germany has the lowest birth rate in all of europe. Less than 1.4 children per couple on average. So after a few decades hopefully these idiots will have removed themselves from the gene pool. I can't wait.

Offline QuantumG

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What about thorium? That is a fossil fuel, but it could drive a technical civilization for many million years. Or what about deuterium? It's also a fossil fuel, but it would last longer than the sun at current energy consumption levels. So not every fossil fuel is unsustainable.

You might want to buy yourself a dictionary sometime.
Human spaceflight is basically just LARPing now.

Offline rklaehn

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What about thorium? That is a fossil fuel, but it could drive a technical civilization for many million years. Or what about deuterium? It's also a fossil fuel, but it would last longer than the sun at current energy consumption levels. So not every fossil fuel is unsustainable.

You might want to buy yourself a dictionary sometime.

You are right. I meant non-renewable.

Offline QuantumG

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You are right. I meant non-renewable.

Okay. And you probably mean "technological civilization" too.

The problem here is not so much the terminology as the whole mindset that somehow energy production is a natural process. Like there's a stream you can go to and collect electricity. It sounds preposterous, and we all know it is, but that doesn't stop anyone from talking about "natural resources".
Human spaceflight is basically just LARPing now.

Offline rklaehn

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You are right. I meant non-renewable.

Okay. And you probably mean "technological civilization" too.

I am not a native english speaker. But I heard the term "technical civilization" multiple times, so I think it is a perfectly valid term. See for example http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/199123/extraterrestrial-life/279245/Searching-for-technical-civilizations.

Quote
The problem here is not so much the terminology as the whole mindset that somehow energy production is a natural process. Like there's a stream you can go to and collect electricity. It sounds preposterous, and we all know it is, but that doesn't stop anyone from talking about "natural resources".

I know. The whole distinction between natural and man-made is completely artificial as well. But just because something is wrong does not mean that people keep thinking in these terms.

I have nothing against using solar power and wind power where it makes sense. But the underlying mindset of most people advocating "regenerative energy" is very dangerous. That is why I mentioned thorium and deuterium.

Offline peter-b

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I had an argument about this earlier today, but I think this is getting a little off topic.  ;)

To get back on topic, do people generally agree that we are at a moment in time where our civilisation has the technological base required to establish off-Earth colonies, but not the political will to do so?
Research Scientist (Sensors), Sharp Laboratories of Europe, UK

Offline rklaehn

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I had an argument about this earlier today, but I think this is getting a little off topic.  ;)

To get back on topic, do people generally agree that we are at a moment in time where our civilisation has the technological base required to establish off-Earth colonies, but not the political will to do so?

Yes. We are definitely at a technological level where it makes sense to start establishing off-earth settlements. The missing technology required will only be developed during the attempt.

And I think that in a way it is a good thing that space settlement is driven by private individuals except as some kind of government program.

I have been involved with many space projects from very small to very large, and one thing is for sure: the more politics gets involved, the less efficient the whole thing becomes. In the very largest EU projects it's all about geographical return, empire building and industrial policy, and actually accomplishing the goal of the program becomes less and less important.

I think there is nothing that could set back space settlement more than some kind of government effort on the level of the EU or even the UN.

Offline Robert Thompson

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I see someone has already linked VHEMT, the ultimate anti-progress, anti-human organized group around (and whose stated goal is visible in the name "voluntary human extinction movement"), but there are many others as well, from lunatic left-wingers, over extreme environmentalists who value plants and animals more than human life all the way to all sorts of rabid religious radicals...

I kind of took VHEMT for performance art. Too baldly infantile to actually be intended for rousing a following. Or, a piece of elegantly, eruditely stupid art to be horrified by, and then leave the museum, and go get a good dinner.

Offline aquanaut99

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I kind of took VHEMT for performance art. Too baldly infantile to actually be intended for rousing a following. Or, a piece of elegantly, eruditely stupid art to be horrified by, and then leave the museum, and go get a good dinner.

Oh no. I assure you, those who are true believers in the movement are 100% serious. Now, the movement itself isn't a real threat, since it is "voluntary" and will eliminate itself through its own actions.

The problem is, there are quite a few sympathizes who think that restricting yourself to the "voluntary" part is not gonna be enough to save Mother Earth from the Plague (us) and who advocate other, less voluntary, methods...

And we all know that nowadays it only takes a small fringe group of fanatics with access to the right materials to cause tremendous damage...
« Last Edit: 06/01/2012 01:15 pm by aquanaut99 »

Offline JohnFornaro

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Basing any kind of assumption of consumption rates in a space colony on data baselined by US averages is a bit fatuous, don't you think?

"Fatuous" is basically a synonym for "silly".  "Inaccurate" is probably a better term. 

Mr. Scott certainly overlooked that human water and air consumption would be recyclable on Mars, just as it is here.  But the consumption rates themselves would be approximately correct.  Even here on Earth, the rates of water consumption differ between couch potatoes and Olympic atheletes.  There should be no problem in starting with the UN figures for mission planning.

The larger issue for martian colonization would be finding and providing water on a desert planet.  Right now, there's only but so many people that Mars could support, allowing a technical assumption of capability for purposes of argument.

The question of urgency is multi-faceted.  The analogy here is my leaky roof.  I don't need to fix it today; it's not raining.  We don't need to solve our Earthly population problems today; the well off nations aren't yet starving.  At some point it will rain, and I will regret not fixing my leaky roof.  At some future point, the wealthy amongst us will also regret not solving our population problems.  (Speaking in a larger, general sense.)  Unless a few of the horsemen of the apocalypse, disease and famine, attend to our population, we are likely to keep on reproducing.  If we want to grow as a species, we'll have to expand the biosphere.

Since the lead time for population problems to become an emergency, and the lead time for colonizing Mars are both in the indeterminate future, an argument could be made that there's a certain amount of urgency for getting started on the difficult colonization problem.  Chris put it pretty well: "The time to build investments and protections against disaster is when you're doing well, not when you're already desperate. Now is the time to invest in space infrastructure and research to allow us to become self-sustaining off-Earth and truly spacefaring."

This is a good observation:
Also, the size of the "seedcorn" required for a technical civilization is getting smaller because of technologies like 3D printing.

At the same time, to quote the Architect in the Matrix movies:  "There are levels of survival which we are willing to accept."  If there were some sort of huge "crash" of terrestrial civilization, I'd guess there'd still be plenty of people and technological "seedcorn" left over here and there to start over.  All mankind really needs to start over is fire and some basic agriculture. Maybe also ItOuches.

There's other seedcorn technology too. Some guy in Japan has developed a machine
which melts and vaporizes polystyrene, polyethelene, and polypropylene.  It then condenses the gas to an oil which can be refined into diesel, kerosene, and gasoline:

http://www.flixxy.com/convert-plastic-to-oil.htm

http://www.blest.co.jp/seihin-english.html

What about thorium?

This question posed right after Celebrimbor asked: "If you were to take fossil fuels out of the equation on Earth, how much of human civilization right here would be self sustaining?"

You don't go from a sudden absence of fossil fuels to a thorium based economy without a lot of prior planning.  Your point is unclear.

Ever more people reject science as a force of good and believe technology is evil.

Yeah, I know.  But people, for some reason don't seem to get that science doesn't kill people; people kill people. Our politicians are people and it is their actions which do not work for the greater good, but rather for the good of the connected few.

We are definitely at a technological level where it makes sense to start establishing off-earth settlements. The missing technology required will only be developed during the attempt.
 
Precisely.  The attempt must simply be made, and the solutions derived along the way.  Colonization is risky and empirical, not safe and theoretical.  The current strategy of NASA is to reduce risk inordinately by excessive theoretical analysis, slowing down the timeline of accomplishment a great deal.  (Not even getting into the politics of profit.) (Yet.)

[When government is involved] actually accomplishing the goal of the program becomes less and less important.

Pretty much my assesment of current US policy:  Profit before accomplishment.
Sometimes I just flat out don't get it.

Offline jnc

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People that view human achievement and aspiration like planetary resources or spacex as something positive are definitely in the majority.

I think you meant "minority"?

Quote
But the good thing is that these people don't reproduce. .... So after a few decades hopefully these idiots will have removed themselves from the gene pool.

Alas, it's not in their genes, but in their 'programming' - and like prions, it can easily spread by contact. :(

(But I am getting off-topic - apologies.)


The problem is, there are quite a few sympathizes who think that restricting yourself to the "voluntary" part is not gonna be enough to save Mother Earth from the Plague (us) and who advocate other, less voluntary, methods...

IIRC, that's one more thing (eco-terrorism) that John Brunner invented in his novels decades before it actually happened...

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Offline Lar

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Only a fool keeps all their eggs in one basket.

The Fermi paradox (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_paradox ) suggests that we do not have much time at all to transition to a spacefaring, multisystem civilization. We may be at a cusp where this window (we all hope is) opening is our one and only chance.

Governments are not going to do this sort of thing, unless there is an extinction event clearly visible on a short time horizon, and probably not even then.

Thank goodness for the internet bubble and dotcom billionaires it created. How wonderful that some want their legacy to be more than foundations and charitable works.

"I think it would be great to be born on Earth and to die on Mars. Just hopefully not at the point of impact." -Elon Musk
"We're a little bit like the dog who caught the bus" - Musk after CRS-8 S1 successfully landed on ASDS OCISLY

Offline cro-magnon gramps

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as much as I think the Dot Com and Computer TECH Billionaires are great, don't forget that there are the likes of Bigelow, James Cameron and the President of Coca Cola, who are also out there kicking down the walls; it is my hope that with the success of SpaceX yesterday, two things will emerge; a substantial shift in the number of launches in SpaceX leading to more innovations using existing and low hanging fruit tech; and an increase 2-4 years down the road in the number of Billionaires who are inspired today, to get looking for projects towards feeding the technological revolutions that are required to bring us to a level of Overall Technological Preparedness that we can move out to the Solar System in the 1000s;
     as it has been pointed out, Governments and Government Run Projects do NOT have an incentive to succeed in the near term, unless there is a visible threat on the Horizon (World Wars); while Old Space Contractors are innovators and have the expertise to go from LEO to BEO, they won't because there has been no incentive, ROI, for their investors or Board of Directors, unless there was a Government Contract; that is the difference with the NU Space Contractors, they are willing to go and build first, without the Government Contract, (yes NASA saved SpaceX's a$$ back a few years ago, when the US Government saw a Visible Threat to one of it's projects; but now they have a momentum to work with outside of the US Government); with enough NU Space Contractors in various aspects of Space Development, like an eco-system with it's various niche parts, it could work, just as well as a "Manhatten" style Government Project. without the visible threat of mass extinction;
Gramps "Earthling by Birth, Martian by the grace of The Elon." ~ "Hate, it has caused a lot of problems in the world, but it has not solved one yet." Maya Angelou ~ Tony Benn: "Hope is the fuel of progress and fear is the prison in which you put yourself."

Offline baddux

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It is not urgent at all to establish any colonies beyond earth. Even after nuclear war and all polar ice melted and forests turned into deserts the earth would still be very convenient place compared to all other places that we know existing.

Also what comes to extinction, humans are the last species of all animals on earth to go extinct. I think it is measured in thousands of individuals of when the species is endangered so I cannot figure any situation that could actually threathen human existence. (close supernova and sun going off or extremely active would kill us anyway)

It would be fun and cool though to have sustaining off-earth presence  :D

Offline JohnFornaro

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Saw that video.

Excessive safety procedures.  Somehow the little greenhouses are fine while sitting on their velcro table, but cannot be disposed of without an elaborate procedure, designed largely for children, it would appear.  Should the greenhouses be broken, and soil or fungus be released into the ISS, sure, that would be a problem for the filtration system.  But that breakage cannot be prevented by his wearing gloves, mask and goggles.  If breakage were indeed such a problem, why then were the greenhouses made so fragile? 
Carefully pick them up with your bare hands, put them in a zip lock bag and put the bag in the ISS waste container.

Ironic that they could not get good growth, since the experiment had been done in 1973:

http://archive.org/details/MSFC-0102081

From:

http://history.nasa.gov/SP-401/ch5.htm

Quote
Schlack and Wordekemper analyzed their data after the mission and found that plant growth was first observed on the 4th day after seed planting, somewhat slower than expected for Earth-grown rice. Growth then progressed at a normal rate, but the direction was extremely irregular and inconsistent, with stems for some reason making 1 80-degree turns away from the light and many plant tips demonstrating curled patterns. The stems seemed to exhibit no phototropic effect.
...
From photographs as well as Gibson's observations, Schlack set about the task of reconstructing the growth patterns of the roots and stems of each seedling. Of the 24 seeds planted, only 10 developed. This is a number which is close to the germination ratio of 12 out of 24 observed in the control group planted on Earth.

The longest stems to develop in testing on Earth were approximately 2 inches long. It is interesting that one leaf from compartment 4 of the Skylab container grew to 4.2 inches. While it was impossible to measure precisely the leaf and root dimensions or growth rates from photographs, the results indicated that the Skylab rice plants grew as fast or faster than the Earth plants after the seeds had germinated.

To me, this particular experiment points to some kind of failure with some aspect of the experimental regimen on ISS.  Plants will certainly grow in zero gee as has been previously proven.  For some reason, they're not studying plant growth all that much.  Probably not seen as urgent, after all.
Sometimes I just flat out don't get it.

Offline Robotbeat

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The anti-science and anti-progress brigade is really bad. In Germany in particular, I suspect it may be because of historical reasons. In America, it may be because of a stagnant middle class who doesn't see any real possibility of improvement and instead just hears a lot about what can go wrong. The whole anti-nuclear movement is illustrative of how people become irrationally afraid of something because they don't understand it. Or even worse, because of the little knowledge we do have (we have incredibly powerful instruments that can measure infinitesimal radiation levels in tuna from Fukishima, far below the natural radiation inherent in all tuna from Potassium, etc), people are just automatically afraid. People are far more afraid about nuclear power plants than they are about tsunamis and other natural disasters, even though SEVERAL orders of magnitude higher deaths occurred from the tsunami than the nuclear radiation itself (in fact, I don't believe anyone has died so far from Fukishima's radiation).

Put the word "natural" in something, and they'll think it's totally fine. Powerful herbal or (much worse) "homeopathic" "remedies" are passed off as totally safe, but as soon as you mention genetic engineering, people go out of their minds with fear. I'm no fan of how genetically modified seeds are /designed/ to be sterile, etc, and of the foolish "intellectual property" reasons for it, but genetic engineering (done wisely) has enormous potential for improving our economy, diet, food security worldwide, and reducing mankind's ecological footprint on the planet.

Nuclear and GMO are two powerful tools for mankind's development that can be used for great good and (on the whole) much better for the environment compared to the alternatives, but we are stymied by illogical fear, but also a collective belief in our own helplessness (especially the middle class).

What bothers me aren't the people promoting renewable energy but those who are fighting against large renewable energy projects like wind farms, solar farms, hydro plants, geothermal power plants, etc, that can really make a significant difference in getting us off of old power sources (BTW, us in the States have the luxury of being able to live off of coal electricity for centuries, it's the rest of the world that will be more desperate... and I believe renewable/nuclear is a lot cheaper in the long run). We have the tools! We didn't get to be the apex species of this planet by being afraid of doing what needs to be done. And by the way, ALL life desires to succeed and conquer new territories. We have the foresight to be careful about conserving wilderness and enjoying and protecting other species, etc, but this religion of self-hate is quite destructive.
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Offline jnc

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The whole anti-nuclear movement is illustrative of how people become irrationally afraid of something because they don't understand it. Or even worse, because of the little knowledge we do have (we have incredibly powerful instruments that can measure infinitesimal radiation levels in tuna from Fukishima, far below the natural radiation ... people are just automatically afraid.

I like to take such people outside in the middle of the day and point up and say 'Gee, do you realize you're looking at a giant unshielded thermo-nuclear reactor - and that very large numbers of nuclear particles from it are passing through your body right now!!' Always good for a reaction!

Of course, I don't tell them that the particles I'm thinking of are neutrinos - and that they could be a mile underground and it won't hardly affect the flux... :)

Noel
« Last Edit: 06/01/2012 07:10 pm by jnc »
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Offline Lar

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I've expressed the above ideas virtually every opportunity that I can. 

Me too... sometimes I just don't get why people don't get this.
Quote

We have wasted forty years so far, depending on the honesty of our politicians to do the right thing on this topic and on many others.  It is a misguided dependency not based on fact; our politicians simply prefer to stay in power, and do not work toward the common good all that much.  I think there is some evidence to support a contention that we are being kept on planet.  The urgency to establish a lunar base is high, and is an absolute prerequisite for any colonization effort.

Could this thread be turned into a poll?

I agree with everything you say about politicians, sadly. But I'm not sure that a lunar base is *mandatory*... I could see a scenario in which Planetary Resources or some similar entity kicks off space industrialization using only asteroid resources and we just expand out into the Asteroid Belt.
"I think it would be great to be born on Earth and to die on Mars. Just hopefully not at the point of impact." -Elon Musk
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Offline rklaehn

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If water and oxygen were the only needs on Mars/Moon...

Average consumption/usage of ONE US human per day:
Water:  575 liters/day - total usage [1]
            2 liters/day - consumption w/ typical humidity on Earth
Oxygen: 360 liters/day - healthy adult at rest [2]

References:
1. United Nations Development Program - Human Development Report, 2006
2. Normal Hemodynamic Parameters and Laboratory Values, Edwards Lifesciences LLC, 2009.

Based on these requirements, it is 100% impossible to recycle the human exhaust products to put a large population (1 million people) on the moon / Mars.  Take the average human water consumption down an order of magnitude, it is still 100% impossible to do this. 

Now add the additional requirements of food, supplies other consumables (2-ply toilet paper).  As they say in NY... fuhgedaboudit.

First of all, you don't "consume" water but just use it. It is pretty easy to recycle most water. And second, there is an ocean of water on mars, both in the regolith and in the polar ice caps. Even if you would not have a closed water cycle, mars could support millions of humans for the forseeable future.

Offline Warren Platts

The anti-science and anti-progress brigade is really bad. ...  this religion of self-hate is quite destructive.

Guys, the thread topic isn't about the joys of scientism and how neo-Luddites are ever-so-deplorable. It's about whether there should be a sense of urgency when it comes to building an off-Earth presence. All I see is a whole lot of question begging.

The main idea seems to be that we need off-world presence in order to prevent the extinction of Homo sapiens:

1. Frankly, the idea that there is an urgent need for off-world space colonies in order to prevent the extinction of Homo sapiens is hysterical, in the Chicken Little sense of the word. On the timescale of individual lifetimes, the risk of extinction is for our practical purposes essentially zero.

2. Anyways, what's so bad about extinction per se over and above the individual deaths that entails? What if all the females on the planet just happened to say "We've had enough!" and decide to stop reproducing?  Humanity would be extinct within a century, no doubt, but no one's individual rights would be violated, everyone alive gets to live out their 4 score of years and dies a natural death. What's wrong with that picture? Nothing, as far as I can tell....

3. So the focus shouldn't be on preventing extinction per se, but rather on preventing catastrophes with the potential for cutting short the lives of billions of individual persons right here on Earth. Space colonies do little if anything in this regard. Indeed, the entire idea seems to be "So long suckers! Good luck!" This is not a justification for diverting the economy into subsidizing space colonies. (Note: asteroid mitigation does not require space colonies.)

4. Further, if the goal is to prevent catastrophes, it's not immediately clear that technology is the necessary solution. Cavalierly dismissing the problems associated with, for example, nuke plants and GMO's is simple-minded in the extreme. Arguably, we dodged a bullet at Fukushima, and then there's the problem of nuclear proliferation. How many times have 3rd-rate countries developed nuke bombs under the cover story of developing nuclear energy? If a regional nuclear war ever starts, who's account shall we charge that to? Similarly GMO's are no panacea: it seems the main effect of Round-up ReadyTM GMO's is to spread herbicide resistance genes to the very weeds we are trying to destroy, thus in the end making weed control harder and more expensive than ever!

5. Even if we grant that extinction per se is a bad thing, it's not clear space colonies are going to prevent that. There are natural catastrophes whose effects are measured in hundreds of light-years. The Andromeda galaxy is set to collide with the Milky Way shortly. Moreover, evolution stops for no one: Homo sapiens will eventually give rise to weird post-human cyborg creations we would hardly recognize as having anything in common with us. Do we now have a duty  to ... them! I don't think so...

6. And in any case, science tells us that the lifetime of the universe itself is limited, thus revealing our vain desires for immortality for what they are: pure vanity.

7. Even if you grant a moral premium to extinction prevention over and above individual lives cut short, if you work it out mathematically, we are already spending way more on space travel than is justified by the risk mitigation we are getting in return.

8. Therefore, since (a) it's not clear that extinction per se is a bad thing; (b) space colonies do little to prevent natural catastrophes on Earth; (c) the inordinate desire for space colonies is both a symptom and cause of scientism, and thus arguably increases the risk of high-tech catastrophes on Earth, then the conclusion that we must divert trillions of dollars, euros, yen, and yuan per year by governmental fiat in order to promote the existence of space colonies is a complete non sequitur.

Bottom line: face it: the only justification for space colonies is because space colonies are cool; therefore, space colonies must pay their own way.

Good Luck! So long suckers! ;D
« Last Edit: 06/01/2012 09:15 pm by Warren Platts »
"When once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward, for there you have been, and there you will always long to return."--Leonardo Da Vinci

Offline JohnFornaro

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I've expressed the above ideas virtually every opportunity that I can. 

Me too... sometimes I just don't get why people don't get this.
Quote

We have wasted forty years so far, depending on the honesty of our politicians to do the right thing on this topic and on many others.  ...  The urgency to establish a lunar base is high, and is an absolute prerequisite for any colonization effort.

I agree with everything you say about politicians, sadly. But I'm not sure that a lunar base is *mandatory*...

It is true that it is my opinion that a lunar base be a pre-requisite for a colonization effort.  "Mandatory" is another thing entirely.  Just a bit of a quibble.

...second, there is an ocean of water on mars, both in the regolith and in the polar ice caps. Even if you would not have a closed water cycle, mars could support millions of humans for the forseeable future.

If you could provide some evidence for how much water is up there, and a fairly valid estimate of how much of it could be accessible in the next twenty to fifty years, then we could have a discussion on how many people could live up there.

Clearly, Mars is not the water world that is Earth.  If anything, I'd call it, uhhhh, dry land.  There would be some remarkably finite number of people who could live there.  I don't know how many that could be, but so far the thread has baseless speculation on what that number could be.

What if all the females males on the planet just happened to say "We've had enough!"

End of the world fer shure.
« Last Edit: 06/01/2012 08:32 pm by JohnFornaro »
Sometimes I just flat out don't get it.

Offline Warren Platts


What if all the females on the planet just happened to say "We've had enough!"

End of the world fer shure.

I suspect Mother Earth will get along just fine without us.
"When once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward, for there you have been, and there you will always long to return."--Leonardo Da Vinci

Offline rklaehn

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If you could provide some evidence for how much water is up there, and a fairly valid estimate of how much of it could be accessible in the next twenty to fifty years, then we could have a discussion on how many people could live up there.

We all have the same sources available. There is widespread discussion about how much water is frozen beneath the surface, but there is a consensus that a significant fraction of the polar ice caps is water ice.

From the wikipedia article:

Results, published in 2009, of shallow radar measurements of the North Polar ice cap determined that the volume of water ice in the cap is 821,000 cubic kilometers (197,000 cubic miles). That's equal to 30% of the Earth's Greenland ice sheet or enough to cover the surface of Mars to a depth of 5.6 meters (dividing the ice cap volume by the surface area of Mars is how this number is found). The radar instrument is onboard the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.


821,000 cubic kilometers should be enough for a long time, even if you could somehow "consume" it.

Offline RocketmanUS

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Does this thread have anything to do with this thread?

Mars One
http://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=29053.15

Offline Warren Platts

821,000 cubic kilometers should be enough for a long time, even if you could somehow "consume" it.

Yes, and how does does the presence of all this water create an "urgency" for Mars colonies?
"When once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward, for there you have been, and there you will always long to return."--Leonardo Da Vinci

Offline go4mars

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"How urgent is it to develop a self-sustaining off-earth presence?"
While I am generally an optimist, planning for low probability, high-risk outcomes is worthwhile. 

There are the obvious concerns, like the next Burckle crater, the orbital mechanics that strongly suggest we will enter a resurgent ice age in the relatively near term, things like Yellowstone caldera, issues like a Fukishima area earthquake bringing down the remaining pools, pandemics, or war/shenanigans from the folks who own the central banks of the world, concern that global debt levels will trigger hyperinflation and associated chaos. 

My chief concern stems more from a financial liberty point of view.  Will people be allowed to get individually wealthy in the future?  Or will they have accumulated money stripped from them to put toward whatever someone else deems to be the greater good?  The clear trend globally for more than a century has been toward increased taxation which doesn't encourage ambitious personal objectives.  Do it while we still can...

Also, philosophically, if you are going to do something, then you might as well do it with a sense of urgency.  There is never a guarantee of tomorrow and seeing the work of your hands is more fun than sitting around thinking about it.  Why wait for our grandkids to maybe do it some day? 

"How much time do we have to build a half-sustaining off-earth presence?"
half-sustaining?  As in most needs are met by local sources with occasional imports from Earth?          My personal belief is that we have a short window before an economic unravelling.  Beyond that, I don't think the replacement "powers" will be as amenable to 'allowing' non-government forays into space.  And the rulers of that era might reign a good long while before the next shift in empire.  Disruptive technology would be helpful.  Short of that, we could really use a large-scale reusable system that can create pockets of economic and political independence outside the reach of terrestrial note-makers.  A revolution in energy (fusion power) would help too. 
« Last Edit: 06/01/2012 09:26 pm by go4mars »
Elasmotherium; hurlyburly Doggerlandic Jentilak steeds insouciantly gallop in viridescent taiga, eluding deluginal Burckle's abyssal excavation.

Offline peter-b

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I actually can't believe that someone is making the argument that extinction of the human species wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing.  ::)

Homo sapiens is the most advanced species in the known universe, and the only technological species in existence. For our species to go extinct, whether due to a man-made disaster or otherwise, wouldn't just be bad, it wouldn't be a tragic waste of potential that would set back the progress of life in the solar system by millions of years.

Just as we should have the responsibility to make sure we don't kill off other species of animal and plant on Earth, we have the obligation to preserve our species!

Sheesh.
Research Scientist (Sensors), Sharp Laboratories of Europe, UK

Online Eric Hedman

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A question to ask is - What kind of catastrophes would off world colonies help us to survive as a species and when are they likely to happen?

If you look at the possibility of a each of the following:

1 - Asteroids and comet strikes - This in the near future would not lead to an existential threat.  The worst case I think is possible in the next couple of centuries is something that creates regional devastation but humanity would recover even if it took a couple of centuries.  Creating a defense against smaller more likely NEOs won't require colonies.

2 - Super volcanoes -  The last eruption that killed a significant portion of the human race happened in 525 AD in the spot that Krakatoa erupted in the late 19th century and is credited by some historians for triggering the dark age.  It created two years of sun obscuring clouds of ash that killed indirectly roughly a third of the people on earth.  The geological record shows that at this spot a major eruption happens every couple of thousand years or so.  This could happen next week or a few thousand years from now.  If it happened now it would destroy for a few years of agricultural production killing billions.  We would recover without space colonies, but would take many centuries recover from.  If the Norris geyser basin erupts like it did 700,000 years ago, space colonies my be the only way for humans to survive.

3 - Nearby Super Nova - It will take a long time (many millenia) before we have any chance of spreading out far enough into the galaxy to guarantee human survival.  (no urgency on this one)

4 - Biologic threats (natural & man made) - Two of my grand parents caught and survived the Spanish flu in 1918.  It killed 4 or 5 percent of the human population.  The black plague killed higher percent of some areas it hit.  I'm no biologist, but I have listened to some people who have played one in movies and on television.  The threat here comes down to will a new virus pop up that can in the world of modern medicine quickly spread and kill a high percent of the population.  And if it does appear, will it die out after a pandemic?  Or will it keep coming back?  Having enough people off world would definitely help in this case.

5 - Global Nuclear War - The threat has been lessened, but it is not gone.  Regional nuclear wars are more likely, but won't wipe out the human race.

I know there are more, but they are a good enough list for discussion purposes.  Out of the list there are threats to the survival of our species that having self sustaining colonies would be very wise to have in case they happen.  Some threats such as a nearby Super Nova (hopefully remote possibilities) would be so overwhelming that no colony would help in the slightest.  But there are lesser threats and it would be useful to have our eggs in multiple baskets.

If none of these threats happens in the next ten thousand years, we will be luck and there is no urgency.  If a super volcano erupts in three hundred years, we're wasting time and need to get moving.  The issue is that we don't know what will happen.

Evolution is about survival of the species.  Species either adapt to changes in their environment or they die off.  We've evolved the ability to anticipate threats to our species.  I believe we need to use that ability.

In New Orleans it would have been wise to have better levies in place before Katrina.  If Katrina had tracked a hundred miles east or west of where it hit, there probably would not have been as great an urgency enhance the levies since 2005.  With existential threats, you do not have the option of taking the hit and reacting after the fact.

Offline peter-b

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Quote
4 - Biologic threats (natural & man made) - Two of my grand parents caught and survived the Spanish flu in 1918.  It killed 4 or 5 percent of the human population.  The black plague killed higher percent of some areas it hit.  I'm no biologist, but I have listened to some people who have played one in movies and on television.  The threat here comes down to will a new virus pop up that can in the world of modern medicine quickly spread and kill a high percent of the population.  And if it does appear, will it die out after a pandemic?  Or will it keep coming back?  Having enough people off world would definitely help in this case.

In 1918, we did not have millions of people flying all over the world every day, and we did not have such enormous international supply chains just to supply everyday necessities. A plague as virulent as the Spanish influenza could spread far faster than in 1918 in the modern world and cause much more severe network effects.

And your optimism about the threat that nuclear war presents seems unjustified, IMHO, especially given the way that international tensions have been escalating more quickly over the last couple of years after the relative lull during the 1990s and early 2000s.
Research Scientist (Sensors), Sharp Laboratories of Europe, UK

Offline Warren Platts

1. I actually can't believe that someone is making the argument that extinction of the human species wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing.  ::)

2. Homo sapiens is the most advanced species in the known universe, and the only technological species in existence. For our species to go extinct, whether due to a man-made disaster or otherwise, wouldn't just be bad, it wouldn't be a tragic waste of potential that would set back the progress of life in the solar system by millions of years.

3. Just as we should have the responsibility to make sure we don't kill off other species of animal and plant on Earth, we have the obligation to preserve our species!

Sheesh.

1. Bad for whom? Or what? Dieing a violent death at a young age is bad, to be sure. But extinction has no necessary connection with dieing young. If we want to prevent unnecessary death, then we should be spending our resources on preventing and mitigating catastrophes here on Earth. Spending trillions of public money so a tiny minority can have a get-out-of-jail-for-free card is a misallocation of resources. 

2. Progress of life in the solar system?!? Do you think an elephant or an ant cares whether we spread our human DNA on Mars or not? Nothing lasts forever, my friend. The extinction of the human race is only a tragedy in the eyes of romantic idealists. Nature does not care.

3. I agree we have a duty to preserve endangered species--here on Earth! We have no duty to spread elephants to Mars. To the extent that that humans are an endangered species ( :D), we have a duty to preserve them in their critical habitat, and that's here on Planet Earth.
« Last Edit: 06/02/2012 03:19 am by Warren Platts »
"When once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward, for there you have been, and there you will always long to return."--Leonardo Da Vinci

Offline Jorge

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And your optimism about the threat that nuclear war presents seems unjustified, IMHO, especially given the way that international tensions have been escalating more quickly over the last couple of years after the relative lull during the 1990s and early 2000s.

"Relative lull during the ... early 2000s". Heh. Guess I was imagining that bit of unpleasantness that started in September 2001.
JRF

Offline Warren Platts

A question to ask is - What kind of catastrophes would off world colonies help us to survive as a species and when are they likely to happen?

If you look at the possibility of a each of the following:

1 - Asteroids and comet strikes - This in the near future would not lead to an existential threat.  The worst case I think is possible in the next couple of centuries is something that creates regional devastation but humanity would recover even if it took a couple of centuries.  Creating a defense against smaller more likely NEOs won't require colonies.

Deflecting dinosaur killers doesn't require space colonies either.

Quote from: Eric
2 - Super volcanoes -  The last eruption that killed a significant portion of the human race happened in 525 AD in the spot that Krakatoa erupted in the late 19th century and is credited by some historians for triggering the dark age.  It created two years of sun obscuring clouds of ash that killed indirectly roughly a third of the people on earth.  The geological record shows that at this spot a major eruption happens every couple of thousand years or so.  This could happen next week or a few thousand years from now.  If it happened now it would destroy for a few years of agricultural production killing billions.  We would recover without space colonies, but would take many centuries recover from.  If the Norris geyser basin erupts like it did 700,000 years ago, space colonies my be the only way for humans to survive.

Space colonies would not be in a position to do much to help out Earth in the event of a major catastrophe. In addition, our hominid ancestors somehow managed to survive the the Norris geyser basin--all with mere stone tools.


Quote from: Eric
3 - Nearby Super Nova - It will take a long time (many millenia) before we have any chance of spreading out far enough into the galaxy to guarantee human survival.  (no urgency on this one)

I agree there is no urgency here, given that spreading our DNA throughout the entire galaxy may not even be technically possible.

Quote from: Eric
4 - Biologic threats (natural & man made) - Two of my grand parents caught and survived the Spanish flu in 1918.  It killed 4 or 5 percent of the human population.  The black plague killed higher percent of some areas it hit.  I'm no biologist, but I have listened to some people who have played one in movies and on television.  The threat here comes down to will a new virus pop up that can in the world of modern medicine quickly spread and kill a high percent of the population.  And if it does appear, will it die out after a pandemic?  Or will it keep coming back?  Having enough people off world would definitely help in this case.

A large percentage of people could die, but with 9 billion people on the planet, it's hard to imagine that no one would be immune to the disease, even if modern medicine was behind the curve. People off-world will not be able to help.

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5 - Global Nuclear War - The threat has been lessened, but it is not gone.  Regional nuclear wars are more likely, but won't wipe out the human race.

A global nuclear war would be awful, but it would be unlikely to cause an extinction of Homo sapiens. If it got that bad, the war would most likely spread to space as well.

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I know there are more, but they are a good enough list for discussion purposes.  Out of the list there are threats to the survival of our species that having self sustaining colonies would be very wise to have in case they happen.  Some threats such as a nearby Super Nova (hopefully remote possibilities) would be so overwhelming that no colony would help in the slightest.  But there are lesser threats and it would be useful to have our eggs in multiple baskets.

It's hard to see how a colony on Mars is going to be able to lend much more than moral support to Planet Earth in case it ever got creamed. The more likely scenario is that if Earth took a big hit, support for Mars would evaporate, and it would be the Mars colony that would go extinct in the event of a crisis on Earth.

Here are some words of wisdom regarding the eggs-in-one-basket platitude:

Quote from: Andrew Carnegie
The concerns which fail are those which have scattered their capital, which means that they have scattered their brains also. They have investments in this, or that, or the other, here, there and everywhere. "Don't put all your eggs in one basket" is all wrong. I tell you "put all your eggs in one basket, and then watch that basket like a hawk." Look round you and take notice; men who do that do not often fail. It is easy to watch and carry the one basket. It is trying to carry too many baskets that breaks most eggs in this country. He who carries three baskets must put one on his head, which is apt to tumble and trip him up. One fault of the American man is lack of concentration.
« Last Edit: 06/02/2012 03:18 am by Warren Platts »
"When once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward, for there you have been, and there you will always long to return."--Leonardo Da Vinci

Offline mikegi

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The extinction idea is probably the worse justification for MSF. It's fringe stuff and makes you easy to dismiss.

All the doom-and-gloom stuff on this thread is ridiculous. People have been saying the same thing, with different words and different villians, since we first appeared. There are probably cave paintings and etched stones with similar themes.

Far more likely is that someone, somewhere, will come up with a workable theory of electrons. Probably within 100 years and hopefully before I kick the bucket (which will be considerably less than 100 years!). When that happens many of the scfi dreams will become reality. Until then we'll be stuck in the "Sh*t Happens" quantum mindset...
« Last Edit: 06/02/2012 04:25 am by mikegi »

Offline Robotbeat

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And your optimism about the threat that nuclear war presents seems unjustified, IMHO, especially given the way that international tensions have been escalating more quickly over the last couple of years after the relative lull during the 1990s and early 2000s.

"Relative lull during the ... early 2000s". Heh. Guess I was imagining that bit of unpleasantness that started in September 2001.
I'm pretty sure he was talking about Russia, who holds most of the rest of the nuclear weapons in the world. Russia had lost basically all of its geopolitical muscle until the last ten years or so. It's global nuclear war that we are concerned about (with respect to this conversation about species survival). Losing a city or two to nuclear terrorism is insignificant compared to a full nuclear exchange between the US and the Soviet Union and the allies of both. One is an existential threat to civilization (and maybe even humanity) itself, the other is "just" really, really bad.
Chris  Whoever loves correction loves knowledge, but he who hates reproof is stupid.

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Offline Oberon_Command

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Quote
Bottom line: face it: the only justification for space colonies is because space colonies are cool; therefore, space colonies must pay their own way.

What about colonizing space for the sake of learning to colonize planets, in general? After all, if we can colonize Mars, surely we can re-colonize Earth if something happens to it. If we can learn to terraform Mars, surely we can learn to terraform Earth. If we can build worlds, does this not imply that we can fix worlds, too?

Homo sapiens is the most advanced species in the known universe, and the only technological species in existence. For our species to go extinct, whether due to a man-made disaster or otherwise, wouldn't just be bad, it wouldn't be a tragic waste of potential that would set back the progress of life in the solar system by millions of years.

I happen to agree with you, but for the sake of argument I will pretend that I do not. Your post implies several things without any apparent justification: that technological species are more valuable than non-technological species, that "potential" (what is the definition of this?) is valuable and can be wasted, and that "progress of life in the solar system" (what does this mean?) is something valuable. I hope I am stating the obvious when I say that not everyone has the same values. Frankly, I'm surprised that anyone would find that fact surprising!

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It's hard to see how a colony on Mars is going to be able to lend much more than moral support to Planet Earth in case it ever got creamed. The more likely scenario is that if Earth took a big hit, support for Mars would evaporate, and it would be the Mars colony that would go extinct in the event of a crisis on Earth.

Wouldn't that depend on how self-sustaining the Martian colony would be? If they're heavily depending on a supply chain of sorts from Earth, then yes, it would evaporate, too, if Earth went. What level of self-sustainability would a Martian colony have to attain if it were to not disappear if Terran civilization disappears?

Quote
Losing a city or two to nuclear terrorism is insignificant compared to a full nuclear exchange between the US and the Soviet Union and the allies of both. One is an existential threat to civilization (and maybe even humanity) itself, the other is "just" really, really bad.

Er, you do know that the Soviet Union no longer exists, right? And over what are the US and Russia going to go to nuclear war? What motivation do the nuclear nations have for using their stockpiles?
« Last Edit: 06/02/2012 04:57 am by Oberon_Command »

Offline Jim Davis

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There are two issues which haven't been sufficiently discussed in this thread.

1. The title of the thread implicitly assumes that it is indeed possible for humanity to thrive off-Earth. The vast majority of humanity has yet to be convinced of this (to be generous; most think the idea silly) and probably won't be until it is actually demonstrated so trying to use some possible future catastrophe as motivation is almost certainly doomed to failure. This issue is never adequately addressed by space advocates because space settlement has formed such a large part of their thinking for so long it is taken for granted. The issue is still very much an open question and treating it as settled will cause nothing but confusion and worse when dealing with non space advocates. 

2. But even if it is accepted that it is possible to thrive off earth we still have the problem of determining what fraction of humanity would have to be living off planet before we can be confident that humanity could survive a worldwide catastrophe that kills everyone living on earth. The comments here seem to assume that that fraction can be relatively low and that it can be achieved relatively quickly, say by the end of the century.

I don't think that it is obvious that it can. In space it will be necessary to have the resources of an advanced technological civilization to thrive, at a minimum like the one we have now. Advanced technological civilizations require an enormous number of specialized skills to sustain themselves and hence a vast number of humans that have these skills. I find it difficult to believe that greater than 90% of humanity can be wiped out without civilization collapsing in short order. But the collapse of civilization will doom any space residents so I think we're looking at a minimum of 10% of humanity living off world before we can even begin to speak of off earth settlements providing any insurance against terrestrial disaster.

I submit it will take a very long time before 500 million - 1 billion people are living off earth even in very optimistic scenarios. I think we're looking at many centuries if not millennia before that happens.

Any scheme that takes that long to come to fruition can't be considered urgent. It would be like pleading with George Washington that it is urgent to begin development of the atomic bomb at once because if the British get the bomb first the revolution is doomed.



   

Offline SpacexULA

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I don't think that it is obvious that it can. In space it will be necessary to have the resources of an advanced technological civilization to thrive, at a minimum like the one we have now. Advanced technological civilizations require an enormous number of specialized skills to sustain themselves and hence a vast number of humans that have these skills. I find it difficult to believe that greater than 90% of humanity can be wiped out without civilization collapsing in short order. But the collapse of civilization will doom any space residents so I think we're looking at a minimum of 10% of humanity living off world before we can even begin to speak of off earth settlements providing any insurance against terrestrial disaster.

Two females as genetically different as possible, say a Bantu from South Africa, and a Mayan are enough if you assume a genetically combed batch of preselected sperm and you select for only female offspring for at least 10 large generations of children.  The longer they only have females the more healthy the final stock will be. 

As long as they have the skill sets required to permanently maintain their settlement where ever they are, then their is really no reason for them to hurry back to the more advanced job skill sets.  Humans can teach a lot to themselves.  If you allowed people 2000 years ago unlimited access to the 2012 internet the well learned would reconstruct much of our technology very quickly.

It is going to take many many generations of humans off planet before there are as many off planet as their are on, only for the reason that no matter how cheap it gets to ship humans off planet it's always going to be cheaper to raise them in location. 

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Offline rklaehn

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There are two issues which haven't been sufficiently discussed in this thread.

1. The title of the thread implicitly assumes that it is indeed possible for humanity to thrive off-Earth.

There is no basic physical law that precludes it. The only way to find out if we can make it work is to attempt it.

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The vast majority of humanity has yet to be convinced of this (to be generous; most think the idea silly) and probably won't be until it is actually demonstrated so trying to use some possible future catastrophe as motivation is almost certainly doomed to failure.

I think nobody is trying to blackmail the world into giving a significant portion of world GDP to space settlement by using catastrophic scenarios. That will never happen anyway. The vast majority of mankind just does not care, and they will continue to not care long after there are many thriving civilizations in the solar system.

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The issue is still very much an open question and treating it as settled will cause nothing but confusion and worse when dealing with non space advocates.

Of course it is an open question. But the only way to answer this question is to attempt settlement. You will never get a definitive answer from theoretical debates. 

Quote
2. But even if it is accepted that it is possible to thrive off earth we still have the problem of determining what fraction of humanity would have to be living off planet before we can be confident that humanity could survive a worldwide catastrophe that kills everyone living on earth. The comments here seem to assume that that fraction can be relatively low and that it can be achieved relatively quickly, say by the end of the century.

I don't think that it is obvious that it can. In space it will be necessary to have the resources of an advanced technological civilization to thrive, at a minimum like the one we have now. Advanced technological civilizations require an enormous number of specialized skills to sustain themselves and hence a vast number of humans that have these skills. I find it difficult to believe that greater than 90% of humanity can be wiped out without civilization collapsing in short order. But the collapse of civilization will doom any space residents so I think we're looking at a minimum of 10% of humanity living off world before we can even begin to speak of off earth settlements providing any insurance against terrestrial disaster.

I think that is way too high. I think for example the US or germany would be able to survive on its own just fine. And that is a more or less random selection of people, facilities and resources just by geographic proximity.

If you would have a mechanism where the most competent individuals could self-select for a settlement, you could reduce the number of people significantly. And as I mentioned before, there are various technologies like 3d printing that have the potential to reduce the size of the seedcorn if used appropriately.

You don't have to be able to produce everything in any case. For example it will be a long time until an off-earth civilization will be able to manufacture modern microprocessors. But many things can be done with much more primitive processors. And for the few things where you need computing power, you could just have a stockpile of 1000000 robust modern microprocessors (space-hardened PowerPCs or ARM?), which would last until your civilization has grown enough to have indigenous capability in this area.

But again, the only way to find out the minimum size of a "technical civilization seed" is to attempt it.

Offline rklaehn

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If you allowed people 2000 years ago unlimited access to the 2012 internet the well learned would reconstruct much of our technology very quickly.

I think this is too optimistic. If you read the wikipedia article on steelmaking and everything that is linked from there two levels deep, are you able to build a foundry? No way.

There is a lot of knowledge that is difficult to transfer using electronic media. It is probably possible to condense everything needed to build a technical civilization into a few terabytes of easily accessible lessions (like IKEA assembly instructions :-), but nobody has made the attempt yet.

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It is going to take many many generations of humans off planet before there are as many off planet as their are on, only for the reason that no matter how cheap it gets to ship humans off planet it's always going to be cheaper to raise them in location. 

Sure, but I always thought that establishing an independent settlement would be a multi-generational project. And once you get exponential growth going it can be pretty fast.

Offline rklaehn

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821,000 cubic kilometers should be enough for a long time, even if you could somehow "consume" it.

Yes, and how does does the presence of all this water create an "urgency" for Mars colonies?

It doesn't. Never said it does. But somebody claimed that there is not enough water on mars to support a civilization. And that is definitely false.

Offline Jorge

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Classic "Quadrant 2" per Covey: Not Urgent/Important. The quadrant, according to Covey, people should work on before it migrates to Quadrant 1 (Urgent/Important).
JRF

Offline Warren Platts

I don't think that it is obvious that it can. In space it will be necessary to have the resources of an advanced technological civilization to thrive, at a minimum like the one we have now. Advanced technological civilizations require an enormous number of specialized skills to sustain themselves and hence a vast number of humans that have these skills. I find it difficult to believe that greater than 90% of humanity can be wiped out without civilization collapsing in short order. But the collapse of civilization will doom any space residents so I think we're looking at a minimum of 10% of humanity living off world before we can even begin to speak of off earth settlements providing any insurance against terrestrial disaster.

Two females as genetically different as possible, say a Bantu from South Africa, and a Mayan are enough if you assume a genetically combed batch of preselected sperm and you select for only female offspring for at least 10 large generations of children.  The longer they only have females the more healthy the final stock will be. 

I'm sorry, but this is just embarrassing to read. This is the sort of stuff that causes the space community to be perceived as lunatic fringe group in the same bin as UFOologists. A Bantu and a Mayan?!? lol! Really, some women's studies major ought to write a dissertation deconstructing space dork discourse. She (or he) would have a field day....

At any rate, the hard part isn't avoiding inbreeding depression--after all, it doesn't take a very big freezer to store a million human embryos--the hard part, as Davis points out, is maintaining the cultural knowledge base required to maintain a 100% artificial environment.
"When once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward, for there you have been, and there you will always long to return."--Leonardo Da Vinci

Offline Warren Platts

The extinction idea is probably the worse justification for MSF. It's fringe stuff and makes you easy to dismiss.

All the doom-and-gloom stuff on this thread is ridiculous.

I agree 100%. The extinction argument at best is mere, naive fantasy. At worst, it's a disingenuous attempt to use fear-mongering in order to cajole taxpayers into forking over bazillions of dollars for pet projects that can't be justified any other way.

If there is an urgency of creating self-sustaining off-Earth presence, it's going to be found in the competition between rival factions of people here on Earth. Whoever gets up there with the mostest and firstest is going to get first dibs on whatever resources and strategic advantages that may be found in space, such as they are.

Thus, there is no urgency for humanity as a whole to create self-sustaining off-Earth communities. But, for example, if the USA wanted to maintain its per-eminence in space, given the numerous other actors nipping at their heals, then there is some urgency if they want to be the first to get back up there, and to be prepared to stay. Naturally, it would be advisable to live off the land as much as possible, and reduce inputs from Earth to a minimum.
« Last Edit: 06/02/2012 09:47 am by Warren Platts »
"When once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward, for there you have been, and there you will always long to return."--Leonardo Da Vinci

Offline JohnFornaro

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If you could provide some evidence for how much water is up there...
...
From the wikipedia article:

Results, published in 2009, of shallow radar measurements of the North Polar ice cap determined that the volume of water ice in the cap is 821,000 cubic kilometers (197,000 cubic miles). That's equal to 30% of the Earth's Greenland ice sheet or enough to cover the surface of Mars to a depth of 5.6 meters (dividing the ice cap volume by the surface area of Mars is how this number is found). The radar instrument is onboard the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.


821,000 cubic kilometers should be enough for a long time, even if you could somehow "consume" it.

Ouch.  On the one hand, I'm accustomed to not looking at the "oracle" first, unless I'm lazy.  Here, all I can claim is that I was even too lazy to do this!

So.....

Based on these requirements, it is 100% impossible to recycle the human exhaust products to put a large population (1 million people) on the moon / Mars.  Take the average human water consumption down an order of magnitude, it is still 100% impossible to do this.

.... somebody else is going to have to own up  their mistake.  I edited my lazy mistake above.

I actually can't believe that someone is making the argument that extinction of the human species wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing.

And the defense of the notion, "bad for whom?" is pretty darn paltry.

The extinction idea is probably the worse justification for MSF. It's fringe stuff and makes you easy to dismiss.

"MSF" being manned space flight?

The fringe quality of the extinction idea also applies to the current taxpayer funded killer asteroid missions.  Point being, either the idea is bad in both cases, or good in both cases.

Quote
Bottom line: face it: the only justification for space colonies is because space colonies are cool; therefore, space colonies must pay their own way.

What about colonizing space for the sake of learning to colonize planets, in general? After all, if we can colonize Mars, surely we can re-colonize Earth if something happens to it. If we can learn to terraform Mars, surely we can learn to terraform Earth. If we can build worlds, does this not imply that we can fix worlds, too?

Absolutely, in general.  A colonization effort is a human choice.  Period. 

If one wants to argue "destiny", then one must also argue "divinity".  If one wants to leave out that latter term, then one is compelled to argue that colonization should be attempted "because it's there", which is a variant on the "cool" argument.  There's no escaping the conclusion that we have choices and that we use free will to consciously decide between them.  There's no "scientific" compulsion at all in attempting colonization.  Free will is completely arbitrary.

Quote from: Oberon
Quote from: peter-b
Homo sapiens is the most advanced species in the known universe ... For our species to go extinct ... would be a tragic waste of potential that would set back the progress of life in the solar system by millions of years.

... for the sake of argument I will pretend that I do not [agree]. Your post implies several things without any apparent justification: that technological species are more valuable ... that "potential" ... is valuable and can be wasted, and that "progress of life in the solar system" ... is something valuable. I hope I am stating the obvious when I say that not everyone has the same values. Frankly, I'm surprised that anyone would find that fact surprising!

The problem that you're running into here is that free will has no justification.  It is a concept that stands outside of the limited "scientific" realm of "survival of the species".

Your devil's advocate argument is correct, I'd say.  There can be no "scientific" justification that there could be a non-scientific value to homo sapiens as a species.  The "scientist" can only ask that extinction of the human species is "bad for whom?" but not ever answer it.

Quote from: Oberon
Quote from: Peter-B
It's hard to see how a colony on Mars is going to be able to lend much more than moral support to Planet Earth in case it ever got creamed. The more likely scenario is that if Earth took a big hit, support for Mars would evaporate, and it would be the Mars colony that would go extinct in the event of a crisis on Earth.

Wouldn't that depend on how self-sustaining the Martian colony would be? ... What level of self-sustainability would a Martian colony have to attain if it were to not disappear if Terran civilization disappears?

Well, that mostly depends on how many people live on Mars, as Oberon touches upon.  If it is in the millions, it would be more likely to be completely self sustaining, not "half way" sustaining.  Of course, if Earth should take a hit before those millions are up there sustaining themselves, then all bets are off on the whole extinction thing.

What would the minimum level be?  Good question.  From an engineering standpoint, I'd say we shouldn't be satisfied with the minimum sized colony, but hey. 

We should attempt colonization because we can.

Quote from: Oberon
Quote from: Peter-B
Losing a city or two to nuclear terrorism is insignificant compared to a full nuclear exchange between the US and the Soviet Union ...

Er, you do know that the Soviet Union no longer exists, right? ...

Well, he means Russia.  Too much literality can cause one to lose the larger point.

There are two issues which haven't been sufficiently discussed in this thread.

1. The title of the thread implicitly assumes that it is indeed possible for humanity to thrive off-Earth. ...

2. But even if it is accepted that it is possible to thrive off earth we still have the problem of determining what fraction of humanity would have to be living off planet before we can be confident that humanity could survive ...

3. I submit it will take a very long time before 500 million - 1 billion people ...

Any scheme that takes that long to come to fruition can't be considered urgent.   

4. It would be like pleading with George Washington that it is urgent to begin development of the atomic bomb at once because if the British get the bomb first the revolution is doomed.

1.  True.  When I discuss this, I usually say that we should attempt colonization, and that we should make the attempt immediately.  It is never far from my awareness, that the effort may not be possible, for health reasons.  Success will have to be demonstrated empirically, and it will never be demonstrated theoretically.  This thread does not get into the question of what should we do if colonization should fail because of health reasons.

2.  I disagree.  If the attempt is successful for health reasons, then an economy can be started, and a new government will follow.  The goal is not satisfaction of an arbitrary extinction assumption, it is the satisfaction of a freely chosen human act of will to expand into a new frontier because they can, and for no other reason.

3.  Here, I think you err by saying the journey of a thousand miles can never be started in principle, because the first step is so much smaller than the thousandth step.  Any colony will be started with four to eight people, and will have to be sustained by the conscious actions of the Earthly team that is continuously supporting that effort.  Of course the political thing, not the technical thing, is the showstopper at the moment, but hopefully, private efforts will eventually suceed.

BTW, for a government that is theoretically the best thing going here on Earth, ours certainly gets in the way of just about everything, doesn't it?

4.  Well, I think it's more like arguing that George Washington shouldn't declare independence because not everybody agrees with the declaration.

Of course it is an open question. But the only way to answer this question is to attempt settlement. You will never get a definitive answer from theoretical debates.

Absolutely.  And perhaps terrestrial governments should simply not be involved.
Sometimes I just flat out don't get it.

Offline aero

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Maybe we should forget about Mars because of the risk that in the future a Mars government may become a high tech enemy of Earth government. Maybe the risk of an extinction event war between Mars and Earth is greater than the risk of other types of extinction events.

Totally tongue in cheek!
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Offline cro-magnon gramps

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Maybe we should forget about Mars because of the risk that in the future a Mars government may become a high tech enemy of Earth government. Maybe the risk of an extinction event war between Mars and Earth is greater than the risk of other types of extinction events.

Totally tongue in cheek!

I think that scenario has been done a few hundred times in the past 100 years ;D
 
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Offline mikegi

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The extinction idea is probably the worse justification for MSF. It's fringe stuff and makes you easy to dismiss.

"MSF" being manned space flight?

The fringe quality of the extinction idea also applies to the current taxpayer funded killer asteroid missions.  Point being, either the idea is bad in both cases, or good in both cases.
I imagine that killer asteroid missions are several orders-of-magnitude less expensive than a Mars colony. Of course, if they discover than we're about to be slammed with a killer asteroid I'm not sure what we can do about it other than panic (insert scene from a Bruckheimer movie here ... or maybe the one from Airplane!).

Offline peter-b

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I imagine that killer asteroid missions are several orders-of-magnitude less expensive than a Mars colony.
That's extremely debatable. If we spend "lots" of money (probably only tens of millions of USD per annum, TBH) on thorough surveying and analysis of possible impactor threats, then the chance of catching a threat a long time in advance would be high, and low cost mitigation options could be adopted, such as a gravity tractor. If a threat is detected late -- for example, with less than ten years notice -- then options for diverting the impactor become either much more expensive or much less reliable.

Note that the above only applies to NEOs. Very-long-interval uncatalogued comets, or objects on hyperbolic trajectories through the solar system, would be very hard to spot with a good lead time even with systematic deep space survey capabilities far in advance of what we currently have. If something like that was spotted and posed a significant threat, there would be no choice but to execute some sort of huge crash programme to intercept it, and that could well be orders of magnitude more expensive than a Mars colony, depending on the energy of the orbit that needed to be reached and the amount of equipment that needed to be got there. In that sort of situation, having the support of large amounts of preexisting orbital infrastructure and extremely routine launch capability would be incredibly helpful.

Surveys of small bodies in the inner solar system is exactly the sort of thing that someone wanting to mine them for resources would need to do. A major market for those resources (esp. fuel) would be BEO human spaceflight and settlement. Both NEO resource extraction and human off-Earth settlement would require relatively large amounts of orbital infrastructure and routine launch capability.
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Offline Warren Platts

I actually can't believe that someone is making the argument that extinction of the human species wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing.

And the defense of the notion, "bad for whom?" is pretty darn paltry.

This is what I actually wrote:

1. Bad for whom? Or what? Dieing a violent death at a young age is bad, to be sure. But extinction has no necessary connection with dieing young. If we want to prevent unnecessary death, then we should be spending our resources on preventing and mitigating catastrophes here on Earth. Spending trillions of public money so a tiny minority can have a get-out-of-jail-for-free card is a misallocation of resources.

As I thought I pointed out with my little thought experiment, if people voluntarily stopped reproducing, extinction would ensue, yet no one would be harmed. Therefore, even if extinction is bad, it is not the case that extinction per se is bad for individual humans.

Since extinction isn't bad for individual humans, then For whom, or rather what is extinction bad for? It's not bad for the universe or Planet Earth or life itself or Mother Nature. They don't care. So I guess if extinction is bad for anything, it's bad for Homo sapiens qua the superorganism. As such, I'm prepared to say it has a good-of-its-own (although many philosophers would debate that), and even that this good-of-its-own is worthy of a certain amount of moral respect.

However, a species, to the extent that it is real at all and not a mere category, it is an entity that can neither think nor feel nor suffer. It's "good" pales in comparison to the individual goods of billions of individual persons. I'm all for preserving endangered species, but not at the cost of cutting short the lives of billions of individual persons.

Thus, what's truly bad about dinosaur killers and supervolcanoes and GRB's is not the risk of extinction, it's the billions of individual lives that would be cut short.

Therefore, we should not go off half-cocked, demanding that society dedicate itself to a Manhattan-style Project dedicated to building a huge Mars colony in order to provide a hedge against extinction on Earth.

Therefore, if we really want to spend large sums of cash in order to hedge against unlikely but devastating catastrophes, that money would be better spent not just on dinosaur-killer deflection strategies, but also on means to ensure survival even in the event one hits. After all, there is no means of preventing supervolcanoes from exploding.

What's so bad about such events is not the immediate aftermath of the impact or explosion--it's the cessation of most photosynthesis for several years and the famine that ensues--as has already been pointed out in this thread.

Of course, the "solution" proposed here is to set up a big, expensive Mars colony so that even if everybody on Earth starves to death, at least Homo sapiens won't go extinct.

But a more obvious solution would be to simply do what Joseph instructed Pharaoh to do thousands of years ago: lay up a 7 year supply of grain so that even if there are global crop failures lasting several years, people won't starve to death. Meanwhile, do the engineering to figure out what it would take to feed 10 billion people using artificial lighting if necessary, and how fast such a capability could be ramped up.

These sorts of solutions are so obvious--and they directly address the true badness of dinosaur killer impacts and supervolcano explosions. That's why I say that promoters of the Chicken Little argument for spending bazillions on Mars colonies are disingenuous: they can't justify their pet project any other way, so they must resort to fear-mongering....
« Last Edit: 06/03/2012 06:56 am by Warren Platts »
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Offline Robert Thompson

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do the engineering to figure out what it would take to feed 10 billion people using artificial lighting if necessary

This is a pretty big sentence. Can you expand on this.

Offline Warren Platts

I hope we can lay the Chicken Little argument for pie-in-the-sky Mars colonies to rest, and move the conversation to something that's more interesting IMO.

We need to walk before we can run. Before we go building huge colonies on Mars, probably it would be a good idea to build a permanently manned research station on the Moon whose research focus would be on ISRU. The goal would be to reduce inputs from Earth as much as possible, starting first with mining water ice, producing rocket fuel, and growing food. Then start working on ever more sophisticated manufacturing techniques.

Such a station, though modest, satisfies the subject criterion of the original post: it would be a more or less self-sustaining off-Earth presence.

 Thus, I think a more interesting question than whether there is an urgency to building a grandiose Mars colony for the purpose of avoiding extinction is to ask Is there or should there be an urgency for building a permanently manned Lunar ISRU research station for the purpose of being the first to do it?

Taking a step back from humanity as a whole, we can ask that question from our perspective as freedom-loving citizens of Western Civilization, or more narrowly, from the perspective of NASA, the agency.

Taking the latter view first, I must say that there are many observers who evidently watched the recent SpaceX spectacular success with a bit of rue:

Quote
Not everyone was in a congratulatory mood, though. “The reality remains that SpaceX has spent hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars to launch a rocket nearly three years later than planned,” Sen. Richard Shelby (R-AL) told the Huntsville Times. “The ‘private’ space race is off to a dilatory start at best, and the commercial space flight market has yet to materialize.” ...

While [Buzz Aldrin and Rusty Schweickart] expressed congratulations for the berthing, other retired astronauts have been more skeptical of commercial ventures. Their criticism—and their recent silence—did not escape the notice of journalist Miles O’Brien during a commercial space panel Saturday at the International Space Development Conference (ISDC) in Washington. “I haven’t heard any of the ‘national heroes’ congratulating Elon Musk,” he said. “It would be kind of nice and gentlemenly if they would.”

http://www.spacepolitics.com/2012/05/28/congressional-and-other-reaction-to-the-spacex-dragon-berthing/

Similarly, a large part of the plot of Bill White's Platinum Moon revolves around the egg on NASA's face that resulted from a private company sponsored by a rogue billionaire getting back to the Moon before NASA.

Face it, whether one likes to admit it or not, NASA is in an unannounced space race not only with the likes of China and Russia to see who will get back to the Moon first with humans, but also with private, Western companies. People who are in love with NASA as an organization have got to be feeling a little heat lately. As long as there were no rival players that could match NASA's prowess in space, the institution could coast along comfortably and justify it's $9B/year HSF budget. But if other players start outdoing NASA at what it does best, questions will inevitably be raised as to why have a NASA HSF program at all.

Thus, even if I were an Iron Law bureaucrat, I would start thinking about an urgent need to do something to justify my continued existence. Thus, if NASA could just get it's act together and establish a more or less self-sustaining off-Earth presence on the Moon, that would go a long way toward reestablishing NASA's preeminence space. But there's really not a whole lot of time left: it's measured in mere years now, not decades any more.

Is there or should there be a sense of urgency for NASA to get back to the Moon and build a permanently manned ISRU research station?
« Last Edit: 06/03/2012 04:42 am by Warren Platts »
"When once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward, for there you have been, and there you will always long to return."--Leonardo Da Vinci

Offline Warren Platts

do the engineering to figure out what it would take to feed 10 billion people using artificial lighting if necessary

This is a pretty big sentence. Can you expand on this.

10 billion people

200 kg of rice would feed a person for a year.

You could hope to get 4 kg/m2 in an intensive indoor op.

Thus total area would be 500,000 km2--about the size of Spain.
(I cannot find a figure for the global total indoor area of all buildings).

Figure 1000 W/m2

Total wattage = 5 x 1014 Watts

Current total electricity capacity = 5 x 1012 Watts

So it does not add up, I must admit....


"When once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward, for there you have been, and there you will always long to return."--Leonardo Da Vinci

Offline 93143

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10 billion people

200 kg of rice would feed a person for a year.

You could hope to get 4 kg/m2 in an intensive indoor op.

Thus total area would be 500,000 km2--about the size of Spain.
(I cannot find a figure for the global total indoor area of all buildings).

Figure 1000 W/m2

Total wattage = 5 x 1014 Watts

Current total electricity capacity = 5 x 1012 Watts

So it does not add up, I must admit....

Hmm...  Using Polywell, assuming it lives up to its promises, we have 8.7 MeV per reaction, yielding (at 80% system efficiency with direct electrical conversion) about 6.1e13 J/kg of isotopically pure boron-11.  Use rate is therefore about 8.2 kg/s worldwide, or roughly a million tonnes of B2O3 per year (natural boron is ~80% boron-11).  This is maybe a fifth of current worldwide production of boron minerals, and results in several times as much helium as the current worldwide estimated rate of consumption.

Still, that's a lot of reactor capacity to dedicate to vertical farming...

Plants don't use the full spectrum of sunlight (this is why they are green).  How much energy could you save by only supplying the frequencies they need?
« Last Edit: 06/03/2012 08:09 am by 93143 »

Offline Warren Platts

10 billion people

200 kg of rice would feed a person for a year.

You could hope to get 4 kg/m2 in an intensive indoor op.

Thus total area would be 500,000 km2--about the size of Spain.
(I cannot find a figure for the global total indoor area of all buildings).

Figure 1000 W/m2

Total wattage = 5 x 1014 Watts

Current total electricity capacity = 5 x 1012 Watts

So it does not add up, I must admit....

Hmm...  Using Polywell, assuming it lives up to its promises, we have 8.7 MeV per reaction, yielding (at 80% system efficiency with direct electrical conversion) about 6.1e13 J/kg of isotopically pure boron-11.  Use rate is therefore about 8.2 kg/s worldwide, or roughly a million tonnes of B2O3 per year (natural boron is ~80% boron-11).  This is maybe a fifth of current worldwide production of boron minerals, and results in several times as much helium as the current worldwide estimated rate of consumption.

Still, that's a lot of reactor capacity to dedicate to vertical farming...

Plants don't use the full spectrum of sunlight (this is why they are green).  How much energy could you save by only supplying the frequencies they need?

Hm. Just a few years back there was a lot of hope that LED lights at the right frequencies could radically reduce the wattage necessary to grow stuff. They never quite lived up to the hype; however, these guys claim to be able to double the production per watt over conventional HID (High pressure sodium and metal halide) lighting.

Plus, I was thinking of 4 harvests per year; using fast growing strains and transplanting of seedlings, production per square meter could probably be doubled.

Moreover, I was thinking at first of 2000 calories per day. However, people can survive on 1000 cal/day, if they don't do much, although that's not healthy for the long term. But between those 3 things, that's an order of magnitude increase in performance. Further improvements in productivity and lighting can be expected in the future.

Even so, it's clear that it would be tough to feed the world's population on artificial lighting alone; such indoor gardens would have to supplement and stretch out a global strategic grain reserve. Right now, global grain production is ~300 kg/capita; so a lot could be done in that area.

If you figure $0.25 USD/kg, it would cost $500B to lay up 1 year's supply (2000 cal/day), not counting the cost of the storage facilities. Thus, a 7-year supply would cost on the order of $3.5T.

So for the cost of a self-sustaining Mars colony for 10,000 people, we could provide a 7-year food reserve for 7 billion people. If we're worried about global catastrophies, which is the better investment?
"When once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward, for there you have been, and there you will always long to return."--Leonardo Da Vinci

Offline Watchdog

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do the engineering to figure out what it would take to feed 10 billion people using artificial lighting if necessary

This is a pretty big sentence. Can you expand on this.

10 billion people

200 kg of rice would feed a person for a year.

You could hope to get 4 kg/m2 in an intensive indoor op.

Thus total area would be 500,000 km2--about the size of Spain.
(I cannot find a figure for the global total indoor area of all buildings).

Figure 1000 W/m2

Total wattage = 5 x 1014 Watts

Current total electricity capacity = 5 x 1012 Watts

So it does not add up, I must admit....


The positive message from this estimation is that between 10 and 100 million people could survive a global disaster based on the current rate of production of electricity.... if measures are undertaken to organize this effort...

Offline MikeAtkinson

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Maybe you could actually look up what he said before commenting on it?

You do have access to the most fantastic information access system ever devised, use it.
I did, I went to his website.  There is a marketing hook to buy his next book that is self described as 'controversial'. 

So then I go to the Google search page.  Typed in Stephen Hawking on Colonization.  Eventually I get a second (or third) hand account of his theory that we need to colonize space because one of his greatest fears is that aliens (from the movie Independence Day) are going to invade the planet.

He is very serious about telling us to "run and hide" from a fear of something that we have no proof exists.  Although we've been talking about Mars and the Moon on this forum, Hawking wants to travel to the nearest star system.... NOW!

So all my brief searches never find direct info from him.  And what the media has transfered is a self-described as "irreverent, sarcastic and ironic account" of what Hawking is perhaps saying. 

Hawking is just trying to sell sensational statements that play on the Earth's fears of unknown-unknowns. 

I certainly have more respect for his works in real physics.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-17852_3-20003358-71.html

So I have to double down on my question...  does anyone know what this guy is really saying (so I don't have to buy his books to find out)?

Quote
when asked about the outcomes of meeting intelligent life elsewhere in the universe. Hawking said the discovery of other intelligent life would be the biggest scientific breakthrough in history, but then compared alien creatures visiting the earth to Europeans encountering Native Americans for the first time: "that did not turn out well for the native Americans."

He was asked about aliens! I'll ask you the same question: What do you think the outcome of meeting intelligent life elsewhere in the universe will be?

Offline InvalidAttitude

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Extinction triggering events proved quite rare (and I mean RARE) so far and
a half-devastated Earth still would be hundred times more friendly for life than Mars (or any other place in the Solar-system). Therefore its simply too weak driving force to invest a huge amount of effort for colonization.

I think any kind of self sustaining settlement require a near post-scarcity state of world where this project is easily affordable. Any sooner attempt doomed to failure.


Offline mduncan36

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Catastrophic events are rare on a human timescale but over time they are inevitable. What is most likely is that humanity will become so preoccupied with staying alive on this planet that escaping it will become impossible. Some of you are turning what should be a general goal for humanity into an absurd "project" to move all of us to Mars. I don't think that is what the question is about.

Offline Bill White

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I suggest re-phrasing the question:

Can advocates of creating a self-sustaining off Earth presence articulate sufficiently urgent reasons to locate a funding source capable of making the attempt?

There are many potential sources of funding each of which will evaluate the level of urgency differently.

Also, there is a different sense of urgency in that whichever subset of humanity best accomplishes the creation of a self-sustaining off Earth presence will dominate human history for centuries thereafter. Which languages will be spoken by the settlers, for example.

Whether that "matters" is an existential question without a right or wrong answer but if advocates of space settlement can persuade a funding source that this is a legitimate motivation, then perhaps this becomes a legitimate motivation.

EML architectures should be seen as ratchet opportunities

Offline colbourne

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So far we have not detected any life away from Earth.

It could be seen that we have a duty to the universe to preserve a living  ecosytem. Whether that includes a human presence is debatable.

If there was no other life in the universe I would suggest sending out millions of probes with the ability to reach other star systems and spread the seeds of life.

The same argument also applies to spreading intelligent life.

What we dont want to do is send probes that could  lead to the extinction of existing life.

We are pretty sure that there is no life remaining on the Martian surface so sending humans to Mars would be a sensible step in increasing the diversity of life in the universe.

Offline rklaehn

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I suggest re-phrasing the question:

Can advocates of creating a self-sustaining off Earth presence articulate sufficiently urgent reasons to locate a funding source capable of making the attempt?

There are many potential sources of funding each of which will evaluate the level of urgency differently.

Also, there is a different sense of urgency in that whichever subset of humanity best accomplishes the creation of a self-sustaining off Earth presence will dominate human history for centuries thereafter. Which languages will be spoken by the settlers, for example.

Whether that "matters" is an existential question without a right or wrong answer but if advocates of space settlement can persuade a funding source that this is a legitimate motivation, then perhaps this becomes a legitimate motivation.

I think elon has it right: the only people that can reasonably be expected to pay for settlement are the settlers themselves. So either the cost has to come down to where an upper middle class family can fund the whole thing by liquidating all their assets, or it won't happen at all.

If people fund their own settlement, the question of urgency becomes moot. Obviously it is urgent for the settlers themselves, otherwise they would not risk their lives and spend all their money. And from the people that don't share the passion for space: they are welcome to spend all their assets elsewhere.

Offline rklaehn

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Re: The urgency of creating a self-sustaining off-Earth presence
« Reply #100 on: 06/03/2012 04:31 pm »
So far we have not detected any life away from Earth.

It could be seen that we have a duty to the universe to preserve a living  ecosytem. Whether that includes a human presence is debatable.

If there was no other life in the universe I would suggest sending out millions of probes with the ability to reach other star systems and spread the seeds of life.

The same argument also applies to spreading intelligent life.

You work from the assumption that life is better than non-life. A very reasonable assumption, which I share. But an assumption nonetheless. Not everybody shares that assumption.

The most common arguments against it have been metioned on this thread:

- the universe will not last forever, so prolonging the existence of mankind or life itself is ultimately futile

- as long as no individual life is cut short, there would be no harm done if the human race would die out

- preserving life on earth is much easier, so let's not get distracted by moving a tiny minority of people into space.

I find these arguments incredibly misantropic and depressing, but there is nothing logically wrong with any of them. The subject of whether space settlement is valuable is a question that can not be answered by logic. I have decided for myself that it is important, and I am willing to spend all my assets and energy to try to make it happen. But that is a decision that can only be made on an individual basis.

Offline colbourne

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Re: The urgency of creating a self-sustaining off-Earth presence
« Reply #101 on: 06/03/2012 05:38 pm »
The urgency is probably very high ,in that if we do not try to expand of the planet in the next 100 years , it is probable that we never will.

Population growth is going to make raw materials and  fuels very expensive.

Governments will redirect their resources to preventing starvation and the wars that will result.

Assuming that there are no major plagues, natural disasters or  nuclear wars humans will probably survive in a limited sense for a long time but we may revert back to a pre-industrial era with the population reduced to  number equivalent to that 2000 years ago.

If we decide that we dont want to expand life of the Earth and there is no other life in the universe, it is very likely that life will end with the death of life on Earth.
That would make me feel personally very guilty.

Offline peter-b

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Re: The urgency of creating a self-sustaining off-Earth presence
« Reply #102 on: 06/03/2012 09:21 pm »
This may be a useful analogy to explain why a self-sustaining off-Earth presence is necessary (although it maybe doesn't address the "urgency") question.

You have a datacentre, where the servers contain data essential to your Internet business. It's situated near a river which is known to severely flood the town every hundred years or so, and it's been 130 years since the last serious flood. You do your best to proof your server farm against flooding (or other disasters such as power surges that kill RAID controllers), by good datacentre design, redundant UPS and climate control, fire suppression, etc. This is of course very expensive! You invest a lot into this, since if the disaster-proofing works, it will minimise any interruption to your business.

Nevertheless you also, at significant ongoing expense, carry out full off-site backups to a neighbouring town every night so that if a disaster does happen, you will be able to put your business back together after you have repaired your facilities. Of course, you hope that you will not need your off-site backup, and that your precautions will be sufficient -- but if they're not, you have a plan B.

We need plan A (contingency plans for natural disasters on Earth). We also need plan B (viable population elsewhere).
Research Scientist (Sensors), Sharp Laboratories of Europe, UK

Offline Warren Platts

I agree that global strategic grain reserves and Mars colonies are not mutually exclusive.

It's just that those who profess to worry about comet impacts and supervolcanoes only talk about Plan B, as if that is the only strategy, thus proving that comet impacts and supervolcanoes are not in fact high on their list of worries, and that they are in fact more worried that they will die of old age before humans set foot on Mars.
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Offline go4mars

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Re: The urgency of creating a self-sustaining off-Earth presence
« Reply #104 on: 06/03/2012 09:26 pm »
the only people that can reasonably be expected to pay for settlement are the settlers themselves...
I would be happy to pay a small portion of every tax dollar toward a government organized colonization project even if I knew I wouldn't be selected to go, and even if I thought there were better and more efficient ways to do it.  Though I would much prefer a scenario where I could cash out my assets and buy a ticket to go. 

when the Big One finally hits, 7 billion individual human lives ought to go quietly into that dark night, happy in the thought that there are 10,000 space dorks on Mars who will carry on the flame....
Actually, I would have some level of comfort and hope knowing that although the earth was doomed that there was a back-up ecosystem on Mars which might one day return to the earth.  Similar idea to being a parent.  You know you are going to die, but its nice to know that your kids are likely to live on and do whatever it is they choose to do in your absence.  And their kids etc...



An interesting thought to leave on this thread...
http://www.biogeosciences.net/3/85/2006/bg-3-85-2006.pdf
« Last Edit: 06/03/2012 09:27 pm by go4mars »
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Re: The urgency of creating a self-sustaining off-Earth presence
« Reply #105 on: 06/03/2012 09:34 pm »
Even a long journey begins with a single step. Establishing a self-sustaining off-Earth presence will require many tons lifted from Earth into space, so since we don't have unlimited funds our first steps must contribute towards reducing the cost of lift.

Reducing costs requires innovation and creation of infrastructure. To motivate that we should reward those who innovate and develop capabilities. Governments can provide a little of that, but most of those rewards will need to come from private wealth.

What will motivate those who privately hold wealth to part with it in support of what's needed for cheap lift? One possibility is highly speculative investment, but for that (long story short) there must be a way for the investors to capture the value their investments create. There's little evidence they can do that.

Thus I believe it really will be tourism that drives the industry that will eventually lead to people living off-Earth with slowly increasing amounts of self-reliance. Jim Bell has a take on this that's worth reading, nicely tied to the upcoming Venus transit:

Not Necessarily Your Last Venus Transit!
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jim-bell/-venus-transit_b_1557551.html
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Offline peter-b

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Re: The urgency of creating a self-sustaining off-Earth presence
« Reply #106 on: 06/03/2012 09:36 pm »
I agree that global strategic grain reserves and Mars colonies are not mutually exclusive.

It's just that those who profess to worry about comet impacts and supervolcanoes only talk about Plan B, as if that is the only strategy, thus proving that comet impacts and supervolcanoes are not in fact high on their list of worries, and that they are in fact more worried that they will die of old age before humans set foot on Mars.

You'll have noted, of course, that my main concern for mankind is global thermonuclear war, which I consider to be quite likely to occur in the 2150-2250 timeframe due to increasing scarcity of fresh water and fossil fuels. In that event, strategic grain reserves would be obvious targets of priority during the initial conventional stages of the conflict, as a psychological tactic intended to reduce a state's willingness to escalate to nuclear warfare.
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Offline FinalFrontier

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Re: The urgency of creating a self-sustaining off-Earth presence
« Reply #107 on: 06/03/2012 09:37 pm »
The anti-science and anti-progress brigade is really bad. In Germany in particular, I suspect it may be because of historical reasons. In America, it may be because of a stagnant middle class who doesn't see any real possibility of improvement and instead just hears a lot about what can go wrong. The whole anti-nuclear movement is illustrative of how people become irrationally afraid of something because they don't understand it. Or even worse, because of the little knowledge we do have (we have incredibly powerful instruments that can measure infinitesimal radiation levels in tuna from Fukishima, far below the natural radiation inherent in all tuna from Potassium, etc), people are just automatically afraid. People are far more afraid about nuclear power plants than they are about tsunamis and other natural disasters, even though SEVERAL orders of magnitude higher deaths occurred from the tsunami than the nuclear radiation itself (in fact, I don't believe anyone has died so far from Fukishima's radiation).

Put the word "natural" in something, and they'll think it's totally fine. Powerful herbal or (much worse) "homeopathic" "remedies" are passed off as totally safe, but as soon as you mention genetic engineering, people go out of their minds with fear. I'm no fan of how genetically modified seeds are /designed/ to be sterile, etc, and of the foolish "intellectual property" reasons for it, but genetic engineering (done wisely) has enormous potential for improving our economy, diet, food security worldwide, and reducing mankind's ecological footprint on the planet.

Nuclear and GMO are two powerful tools for mankind's development that can be used for great good and (on the whole) much better for the environment compared to the alternatives, but we are stymied by illogical fear, but also a collective belief in our own helplessness (especially the middle class).

What bothers me aren't the people promoting renewable energy but those who are fighting against large renewable energy projects like wind farms, solar farms, hydro plants, geothermal power plants, etc, that can really make a significant difference in getting us off of old power sources (BTW, us in the States have the luxury of being able to live off of coal electricity for centuries, it's the rest of the world that will be more desperate... and I believe renewable/nuclear is a lot cheaper in the long run). We have the tools! We didn't get to be the apex species of this planet by being afraid of doing what needs to be done. And by the way, ALL life desires to succeed and conquer new territories. We have the foresight to be careful about conserving wilderness and enjoying and protecting other species, etc, but this religion of self-hate is quite destructive.


I have to agree with you 100% on this one. Way too much denial and undue fear, being fueled by the media on both sides, against renewable sources of energy particularly the nuclear industry, not to mention against alot of new technology as well out of nothing more then what amounts to ignorance.


My feeling is if we could educate people properly then this wouldn't be a problem. Base level k-12 is where people tend to be the most pliable, and in this country its an abomination, a disgrace even, the state that our public school system is in right now.

Ever see "jaywalking" with Jay Leno where they go up and ask people really basic questions but they either don't know or they answer with something that is totally ridiculous? That makes me ashamed every time I see that, and its that sort of ignorance that is the reason for 95% of the problems in our country right now.

It all goes back to education, if people understand these things shallow preconceived notions portrayed in the media cannot take hold, but when they don't its very easy to say "Well LOOK  IT LEAKS SEEE NUCLEAR IS BAD MAN ITS BAD GET RID OF IT/ rage" ect. And the media (or anyone for that matter) can use that same sort of *preys on ignorance* argument against virtually any form of positive change or progress. Look at the health care fight for a more recent example of how the media on both sides made it look satanic to want to try something different. And alot of people fell for it rather then researching the ideas that were out there themselves.


IMO the root of most of humanity's, not just America's, problems is education. If we truly want to exceed our current level of science and technology in a large enough manner to better our own planet AND go to other worlds, we need to seriously re-vamp how we are educating people, because right now its a joke.
« Last Edit: 06/03/2012 09:43 pm by FinalFrontier »
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Offline FinalFrontier

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Re: The urgency of creating a self-sustaining off-Earth presence
« Reply #108 on: 06/03/2012 09:42 pm »
I agree that global strategic grain reserves and Mars colonies are not mutually exclusive.

It's just that those who profess to worry about comet impacts and supervolcanoes only talk about Plan B, as if that is the only strategy, thus proving that comet impacts and supervolcanoes are not in fact high on their list of worries, and that they are in fact more worried that they will die of old age before humans set foot on Mars.

You'll have noted, of course, that my main concern for mankind is global thermonuclear war, which I consider to be quite likely to occur in the 2150-2250 timeframe due to increasing scarcity of fresh water and fossil fuels. In that event, strategic grain reserves would be obvious targets of priority during the initial conventional stages of the conflict, as a psychological tactic intended to reduce a state's willingness to escalate to nuclear warfare.


If we can't ultimately figure out a way as a society as a whole to solve many of our most basic, yet most great engineering and technical challenges such as:

1. Fuel and energy
2. Food and water
3. Living space
4. Prosperity/jobs

Then the ultimate outcome will be a war over remaining, or perceived to be remaining resources.

The reason I say "perceived to be" is because I am of the opinion that just such a war may be far nearer in the future then you think. If current trends are any metric, we are heading towards a cliff.
3-30-2017: The start of a great future
"Live Long and Prosper"

Offline Chris Bergin

Thread has collated what the thread requester needs. No need keeping it open now our more "colorful" members have decided to join in.
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