6 ms·

How Close Are We To Colonizing Space?

23 points by icey 17y ago

stcredzero 17y ago
We could've done it with 1970's technology. The primary hurdle is economic. (Fast Mars missions would've been feasible with Project Orion's nuclear propulsion. Background radiation would be a lot worse now, however.)
- berntb 17y ago
  Since it seems we could have had viable colonies outside the atmosphere by now, this should have implications for Fermi's Paradox. If Fermi's Paradox comes from a limiting factor "removing" civilizations (a physics experiment, etc), it should need to destroy a whole solar system and not only a planet. Otherwise it would only remove the fraction of civilizations that didn't develop an Orion before that experiment. IIRC, NASA killed Orion politically? They might have exterminated humanity -- for job security...
  - tphyahoo 17y ago
    wasn't it the 1963 nuclear test ban treaty? basicaly, after that, you could only detonate nukes during peacetime underground, right? and orion would have been detonating them not-too-distant from earth when ramping up for interstellar voyages.
    - randallsquared 17y ago
      No. Kennedy was shown a design for an Orion well before that, and was freaked out by the possibility of one hovering over an enemy city, per Ted Taylor, the project leader. The test ban treaty signing might have actually been partially a result of Orion, rather than an unrelated activity that shut it down.
  - rbanffy 17y ago
    Actually, it's good they killed the Orion. Can you imagine a streak of detonating nukes all the way to LEO?
    - berntb 17y ago
      >>Actually, it's good they killed the Orion. Extreme, world changing (in more than one way) and mind blowing (also in more than one way!) technological marvels might not be your cup of tea? Edit: I might add -- if you can't handle tea, stay with the boiled water... >>Can you imagine a streak of detonating nukes all the way to LEO? I can imagine it -- all the way to Saturn's moons, by way of the asteroid belt. What a beautiful dream. But certainly, a careful analysis of the failure modes might be considered prudent. An infrastructure outside the atmosphere would easily arguably be worth at least a small increase in cancer risk. (Today is a different matter of course, since it would be detrimental to lots of very expensive satellites' health.)
      - rbanffy 17y ago
        Don't get me wrong. I would love the aircraft-carrier sized spacecraft and the sheer demonstration of power of it reaching orbit and leaving to deep space. What I don't like is the huge EMP destroying electronics across half a planet and the fallout making three-eyed fish. Orion is great, but we would have to find cleaner propellants if we really want to build a lot of them ;-) It's also unclear how many we could propel with the amount of fissiles we have on Earth.
        berntb 17y ago
        >>It's also unclear how many we could propel with the amount of fissiles we have on Earth. Was that a joke? Can you give a reference which discusses how many thousands ton of nukes that are limiting...? (Hint, not that much uranium is needed for those bombs. Also, from what I've read -- if the Uranium prices go up a bit, there will be much more mined.)
        rbanffy 17y ago
  - hugh_ 17y ago
    I'm guessing that civilizations on some other planets probably have a much easier time of colonizing space than we do. We have the misfortune of finding ourselves in the only vaguely-habitable rock in our own solar system, but some other systems must have multiple habitable planets, even multiple life-supporting ones. Imagine if the moon had been several times bigger -- it would have an atmosphere, and thanks to panspermia might even have picked up enough life from Earth to give it a breathable atmosphere. The Apollo Project would have immediately been followed by a project to kill and eat the local wildlife to see what it tastes like. Or suppose we'd evolved on a moon of a Jupiter-like planet in the habitable zone -- there'd be a whole bunch of other equally habitable moons just a short flight away. Instead we're stuck on a big rock, looking at a bunch of other rocks which are fairly useless to us. Sigh.
    - coderdude 17y ago
      I'm fuzzy on this so I may be wrong, but wouldn't the moon require a metal core to create a magnetic field to hold the atmosphere (or protect it from being bombarded by radiation)?
      - hugh_ 17y ago
        Quite likely, yes.
  - stcredzero 17y ago
    If Fermi's Paradox comes from a limiting factor "removing" civilizations (a physics experiment, etc), it should need to destroy a whole solar system and not only a planet. Maybe the economic hurdles are the limiting factors? Economics seems to be closely related to game theory. I bet a lot of the principles apply to all civilizations.
    - berntb 17y ago
      Space access can be much cheaper, even without nuclear launch. They talked of building the Orion the same way as submarines, iirc. I've read Henry Spencer argue that modern rockets and payloads are so expensive to make because they have to save on every gram.
- btilly 17y ago
  What was the estimate, an average of one person killed per launch because of the radioactive fallout? Not near my planet, please.
- selven 17y ago
  Launching orion from the ground would be extremely unfeasible. The best space-colonizing strategies all involve setting up a base in Earth orbit, with some space elevators attached, and building ships for colonization from there. It has to be done this way because a Mars mission would spend only half of its fuel getting to Mars - the other half is spent getting out of the gravity well. If we could mine and build in space, we can skip that step (and safely detonate some nukes to launch our spaceships)
  - stcredzero 17y ago
    For purely physical reasons, the Project Orion study disagrees with you. According to their models, a robust surface to orbit launch schedule would result in a couple of extra deaths a year worldwide from cancer. Compared to the extra cancer deaths from burning coal, this is nothing! Compared to worldwide deaths from automobile traffic? Compared against the potential economic benefit? Unfortunately, it would be politically infeasible.
- joe_the_user 17y ago
  It might have been possible to send humans beings to Mars in the 1970's - if you weren't concerned whether they arrived alive at the end. The problem is that wouldn't have proved the prowess of US or Soviet technology.
Icterus 17y ago
Not nearly as close as we are to colonizing the oceans: http://seasteading.org/ http://seasteading.org/
- tyohn 17y ago
  On the ocean? I was really hoping for under the ocean :(
  - Raphael 17y ago
    There'll be no accusations, just friendly crustaceans under the sea.
- joe_the_user 17y ago
  In other words, We are way bleeping far away from colonizing space... The problem that low gravity significantly accelerates aging isn't often mentioned but it serves as a pretty decisive hindrance. I mean, even a permanent settlement is a long way from colonization. We have permanent bases on Antarctica. We aren't planning to colonize any time soon. That part of the Jetsons will have to wait...
  - eru 17y ago
    > The problem that low gravity significantly accelerates aging isn't often mentioned but it serves as a pretty decisive hindrance. Interesting. Sources?
    - joe_the_user 17y ago
      I couldn't find a really good source. It is referred to fairly often however: http://weboflife.nasa.gov/currentResearch/currentResearchGeneralArchives/agingSpaceflight.htm http://weboflife.nasa.gov/currentResearch/currentResearchGen... "The lack of gravity during space flight affects living things in a variety of ways. A number of these mimic common effects of aging." Puts it very nicely. Perhaps the space scientists don't want scare people about going into space. Also, more googling for you: www.joanvernikos.com/uploads/space_and_aging.pdf As the duration of space flight missions has increased, many other symptoms related in particular to being away from gravity have been observed. They include a kind of anemia due to reduced red cell mass, muscle atrophy and reduced strength of those muscles that keep the body upright, loss of calcium from bones, reduced bone density and strength, reduced calcium absorption from the gut, disturbed sleep and a depressed immune system. These are all normal body function adaptations that occur when away from gravity. Degradation of body functions no longer needed in space is the normal adaptation to living away from gravity. -- Simulates the effects of aging...
elblanco 17y ago
20 years. We're always 20 years away.
dennisgorelik 17y ago
Could anybody explain to me why would we need to colonize Mars (or even Moon) if we still have virtually empty Antarctica and near-empty Siberia?
- wooster 17y ago
  It reduces the risk of total species annihilation.
  - lliiffee 17y ago
    I wonder how much it does. Seems to me the greatest risk is global thermonuclear war. If we are determined enough to nuke ourselves our of existence here, couldn't we pretty easily send a bunch of bombs mars' way, too?
    - wooster 17y ago
      There are more risks than nuclear war. For example, asteroid impacts, pandemics, ecological disasters, etc. Even in the case of nuclear war, it's much easier to detect and destroy an incoming nuke from another planet than it is to hit one that makes its transit in 5 minutes. Especially if information about the nuke is transmitted at the same time as the nuke. Also, once we make that first "leap across the black" to colonizing another planet, theoretically the next, further leap, will be easier/less daunting.

23 points by icey 17y ago

We could've done it with 1970's technology. The primary hurdle is economic. (Fast Mars missions would've been feasible with Project Orion's nuclear propulsion. Background radiation would be a lot worse now, however.)

berntb 17y ago
Since it seems we could have had viable colonies outside the atmosphere by now, this should have implications for Fermi's Paradox. If Fermi's Paradox comes from a limiting factor "removing" civilizations (a physics experiment, etc), it should need to destroy a whole solar system and not only a planet. Otherwise it would only remove the fraction of civilizations that didn't develop an Orion before that experiment. IIRC, NASA killed Orion politically? They might have exterminated humanity -- for job security...
- tphyahoo 17y ago
  wasn't it the 1963 nuclear test ban treaty? basicaly, after that, you could only detonate nukes during peacetime underground, right? and orion would have been detonating them not-too-distant from earth when ramping up for interstellar voyages.
  - randallsquared 17y ago
    No. Kennedy was shown a design for an Orion well before that, and was freaked out by the possibility of one hovering over an enemy city, per Ted Taylor, the project leader. The test ban treaty signing might have actually been partially a result of Orion, rather than an unrelated activity that shut it down.
- rbanffy 17y ago
  Actually, it's good they killed the Orion. Can you imagine a streak of detonating nukes all the way to LEO?
  - berntb 17y ago
    >>Actually, it's good they killed the Orion. Extreme, world changing (in more than one way) and mind blowing (also in more than one way!) technological marvels might not be your cup of tea? Edit: I might add -- if you can't handle tea, stay with the boiled water... >>Can you imagine a streak of detonating nukes all the way to LEO? I can imagine it -- all the way to Saturn's moons, by way of the asteroid belt. What a beautiful dream. But certainly, a careful analysis of the failure modes might be considered prudent. An infrastructure outside the atmosphere would easily arguably be worth at least a small increase in cancer risk. (Today is a different matter of course, since it would be detrimental to lots of very expensive satellites' health.)
    - rbanffy 17y ago
      Don't get me wrong. I would love the aircraft-carrier sized spacecraft and the sheer demonstration of power of it reaching orbit and leaving to deep space. What I don't like is the huge EMP destroying electronics across half a planet and the fallout making three-eyed fish. Orion is great, but we would have to find cleaner propellants if we really want to build a lot of them ;-) It's also unclear how many we could propel with the amount of fissiles we have on Earth.
      - berntb 17y ago
        >>It's also unclear how many we could propel with the amount of fissiles we have on Earth. Was that a joke? Can you give a reference which discusses how many thousands ton of nukes that are limiting...? (Hint, not that much uranium is needed for those bombs. Also, from what I've read -- if the Uranium prices go up a bit, there will be much more mined.)
        rbanffy 17y ago
- hugh_ 17y ago
  I'm guessing that civilizations on some other planets probably have a much easier time of colonizing space than we do. We have the misfortune of finding ourselves in the only vaguely-habitable rock in our own solar system, but some other systems must have multiple habitable planets, even multiple life-supporting ones. Imagine if the moon had been several times bigger -- it would have an atmosphere, and thanks to panspermia might even have picked up enough life from Earth to give it a breathable atmosphere. The Apollo Project would have immediately been followed by a project to kill and eat the local wildlife to see what it tastes like. Or suppose we'd evolved on a moon of a Jupiter-like planet in the habitable zone -- there'd be a whole bunch of other equally habitable moons just a short flight away. Instead we're stuck on a big rock, looking at a bunch of other rocks which are fairly useless to us. Sigh.
  - coderdude 17y ago
    I'm fuzzy on this so I may be wrong, but wouldn't the moon require a metal core to create a magnetic field to hold the atmosphere (or protect it from being bombarded by radiation)?
    - hugh_ 17y ago
      Quite likely, yes.
- stcredzero 17y ago
  If Fermi's Paradox comes from a limiting factor "removing" civilizations (a physics experiment, etc), it should need to destroy a whole solar system and not only a planet. Maybe the economic hurdles are the limiting factors? Economics seems to be closely related to game theory. I bet a lot of the principles apply to all civilizations.
  - berntb 17y ago
    Space access can be much cheaper, even without nuclear launch. They talked of building the Orion the same way as submarines, iirc. I've read Henry Spencer argue that modern rockets and payloads are so expensive to make because they have to save on every gram.
btilly 17y ago
What was the estimate, an average of one person killed per launch because of the radioactive fallout? Not near my planet, please.
selven 17y ago
Launching orion from the ground would be extremely unfeasible. The best space-colonizing strategies all involve setting up a base in Earth orbit, with some space elevators attached, and building ships for colonization from there. It has to be done this way because a Mars mission would spend only half of its fuel getting to Mars - the other half is spent getting out of the gravity well. If we could mine and build in space, we can skip that step (and safely detonate some nukes to launch our spaceships)
- stcredzero 17y ago
  For purely physical reasons, the Project Orion study disagrees with you. According to their models, a robust surface to orbit launch schedule would result in a couple of extra deaths a year worldwide from cancer. Compared to the extra cancer deaths from burning coal, this is nothing! Compared to worldwide deaths from automobile traffic? Compared against the potential economic benefit? Unfortunately, it would be politically infeasible.
joe_the_user 17y ago
It might have been possible to send humans beings to Mars in the 1970's - if you weren't concerned whether they arrived alive at the end. The problem is that wouldn't have proved the prowess of US or Soviet technology.

Icterus 17y ago

Not nearly as close as we are to colonizing the oceans: http://seasteading.org/ http://seasteading.org/

tyohn 17y ago
On the ocean? I was really hoping for under the ocean :(
- Raphael 17y ago
  There'll be no accusations, just friendly crustaceans under the sea.
joe_the_user 17y ago
In other words, We are way bleeping far away from colonizing space... The problem that low gravity significantly accelerates aging isn't often mentioned but it serves as a pretty decisive hindrance. I mean, even a permanent settlement is a long way from colonization. We have permanent bases on Antarctica. We aren't planning to colonize any time soon. That part of the Jetsons will have to wait...
- eru 17y ago
  > The problem that low gravity significantly accelerates aging isn't often mentioned but it serves as a pretty decisive hindrance. Interesting. Sources?
  - joe_the_user 17y ago
    I couldn't find a really good source. It is referred to fairly often however: http://weboflife.nasa.gov/currentResearch/currentResearchGeneralArchives/agingSpaceflight.htm http://weboflife.nasa.gov/currentResearch/currentResearchGen... "The lack of gravity during space flight affects living things in a variety of ways. A number of these mimic common effects of aging." Puts it very nicely. Perhaps the space scientists don't want scare people about going into space. Also, more googling for you: www.joanvernikos.com/uploads/space_and_aging.pdf As the duration of space flight missions has increased, many other symptoms related in particular to being away from gravity have been observed. They include a kind of anemia due to reduced red cell mass, muscle atrophy and reduced strength of those muscles that keep the body upright, loss of calcium from bones, reduced bone density and strength, reduced calcium absorption from the gut, disturbed sleep and a depressed immune system. These are all normal body function adaptations that occur when away from gravity. Degradation of body functions no longer needed in space is the normal adaptation to living away from gravity. -- Simulates the effects of aging...

elblanco 17y ago

20 years. We're always 20 years away.

dennisgorelik 17y ago

Could anybody explain to me why would we need to colonize Mars (or even Moon) if we still have virtually empty Antarctica and near-empty Siberia?

wooster 17y ago
It reduces the risk of total species annihilation.
- lliiffee 17y ago
  I wonder how much it does. Seems to me the greatest risk is global thermonuclear war. If we are determined enough to nuke ourselves our of existence here, couldn't we pretty easily send a bunch of bombs mars' way, too?
  - wooster 17y ago
    There are more risks than nuclear war. For example, asteroid impacts, pandemics, ecological disasters, etc. Even in the case of nuclear war, it's much easier to detect and destroy an incoming nuke from another planet than it is to hit one that makes its transit in 5 minutes. Especially if information about the nuke is transmitted at the same time as the nuke. Also, once we make that first "leap across the black" to colonizing another planet, theoretically the next, further leap, will be easier/less daunting.