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> our oceans are dying due to overfishing and pollution, rainforests are cut to make room for more agricultural land, existing agricultural land is acidified du

> our oceans are dying due to overfishing and pollution, rainforests are cut to make room for more agricultural land, existing agricultural land is acidified due to overuse of chemical fertilizers and pesticides, potable water sources are vanishing So you think rain-forests and clean water exists on space ?? We can solve those problems withing sending more rockets to space - which ends up burning more fossil fuel. Remember, every day that you are alive ( assuming you are living a developed country ) you are emitting huge amount of carbon. Just keeping you alive is making the earth more inhospitable - dont talk about sending rockets to space ( with other people's money ) as a method to combat climate change and solving the resource constraint on planet earth.

ethbro 10y ago
> So you think rain-forests and clean water exists on space ?? The point was that they (in the "all around us" / Earth sense) do not, so it is therefore more difficult to pollute them via space industry. There's something to be said for an environment where you can run an unshielded nuclear reactor without causing any particular damage around your craft...
konart 10y ago
>water in space Very much yes.
- tremon 10y ago
  In fact, the water in space is so clean, it will kill you.
bad_user 10y ago
I can't parse this opinion. You're disagreeing, but I don't understand how. You also went on a tangent, avoiding my main point. Are you aware that advancements made for space exploration have helped the medical field? Things like NASA's digital image processing of the moon helping with MRIs and CAT scans. Or LVAD leading to artificial heart pumps. NASA is basically able to claim at least partial credit for things like ear thermometers, automatic insulin pumps, implantable heart defibrillators, improvements in digital mammography technology, programmable pacemakers, LEDs, etc. The discussion is about mining and I see no reason for why space mining colonies couldn't be self-sustainable. If they cannot be, then space mining isn't feasible or too costly. And if they are self sustainable, then the fossil fuel mined and burned on earth would be worth it. If this was meant for me to feel shame of being alive and consuming carbon, take note that this is reductionist thinking, the same reason for why we find ourselves in the current predicament. Carbon emissions are only important as long as we have an impending global warming phenomenon potentially pushing us over a dangerous threshold. And while that's certainly a potential catastrophe, it's reductionist thinking in the sense that carbon emission isn't the real problem, just a reaction in a long chain of reactions and focusing just on carbon emissions will spell our doom. But going back to your first question, we'd have plenty of water if we wouldn't pollute it, I don't see the need for mining decreasing, quite the contrary, so instead of dynamiting mountains and filling the area with cyanide for extracting gold or whatever, I'd rather have all of this happen in space, instead of our backyard. Mining on earth is only cheap because the costs are subsidized, being implicit in the damage to the environment, a cost that we'll pay sooner or later. If we'd factor in the real cost, if space mining is possible, I don't think it will look that expensive.
- EGreg 10y ago
  Let me reduce the issue to the bare essentials: We can find lots of resources and turn them into useful energy and things. But that only exacerbates the pollution issue, regardless of where we obtain the resources. Especially noxious is the non biodegradable pollution and the millions of years worth of carbon released from the ground.
  - bad_user 10y ago
    I understand, but I disagree, because you can have carbon emissions, or you can have carbon emissions along with whole areas left uninhabitable due to mining and the need for mining resources will still be there, whether we want it or not. I stand by my opinion. I'd rather have mining happen in space. And I understand the concern, but if reducing CO2 emissions is the goal, the first targets should be the production of electricity, heat, transport and agriculture. Food gets transported nowadays by airplane and maybe we shouldn't shut down nuclear power plants to replace them with coal plants. Plenty of low hanging fruits if you ask me.
    - Zardoz84 10y ago
      for first time, I see some one that think like me about nuclear plants. Nuclear should be only closed to be replaced by modermand and more secure nuclear, or by solar/wind/sea powered centrals.
      - adrianN 10y ago
        You must be pretty new here, a large part of HN is pro-nuclear.
  - pavel_lishin 10y ago
    > But that only exacerbates the pollution issue, regardless of where we obtain the resources. Factually untrue! Obtaining resources on Earth generates pollution that stays on Earth. If we move mining off-world, the byproducts of mining don't go into streams, soil, etc. Furthermore, generating energy in space and beaming it down to the planet means not having to burn coal, reducing the risk of nuclear accidents, and eliminating the need for dams that disrupt ecological systems. Yes, we'll need to burn more fuel to get there, but that's the nature of progress. The other alternative is to fall back to a pre-industrial lifestyle limited to only those parts of the globe where the temperature is mild year-round - unless you want to keep burning wood for heat in the winter.
lmm 10y ago
> So you think rain-forests and clean water exists on space ?? Space is between us and all the ones not on Earth. If we're going to spread to other solar systems we're going to have to get used to living in space.
blisterpeanuts 10y ago
> We can solve those problems withing sending more rockets to space - which ends up burning more fossil fuel. Remember, every day that you are alive ( assuming you are living a developed country ) you are emitting huge amount of carbon. Even if you launched 10 rockets a day, it's a tiny percentage of combustion compared to hundreds of millions of cars, trucks, buses, planes, coal and oil and gas boilers, etc. I don't understand your second point. But regarding "clean water on[sic] space", there are in fact ice comets containing tons of water that could be harvested by a future space colony. It makes sense that we'd want to exploit that source rather than try to move H2O into orbit from the Earth's surface. The Jupiter moon Europa is thought to possibly have a vast water ocean beneath its icy shell. The Moon may also harbor vast amounts of water locked in minerals or in subsurface ice. With water, we can have colonies. Colonies can grow trees, entire forests in fact. The sky's the limit, so to speak. Really, there's a lot of exciting possibilities for spreading civilization into orbit and onto other planets and moons. The spin-offs and economic expansion that space colonization will undoubtedly bring more than justify the costs of exploration. A few space colonies and mining operations will solve poverty on Earth. It's worth it.

ethbro 10y ago

> So you think rain-forests and clean water exists on space ?? The point was that they (in the "all around us" / Earth sense) do not, so it is therefore more difficult to pollute them via space industry. There's something to be said for an environment where you can run an unshielded nuclear reactor without causing any particular damage around your craft...

konart 10y ago

>water in space Very much yes.

tremon 10y ago
In fact, the water in space is so clean, it will kill you.

bad_user 10y ago

I can't parse this opinion. You're disagreeing, but I don't understand how. You also went on a tangent, avoiding my main point. Are you aware that advancements made for space exploration have helped the medical field? Things like NASA's digital image processing of the moon helping with MRIs and CAT scans. Or LVAD leading to artificial heart pumps. NASA is basically able to claim at least partial credit for things like ear thermometers, automatic insulin pumps, implantable heart defibrillators, improvements in digital mammography technology, programmable pacemakers, LEDs, etc. The discussion is about mining and I see no reason for why space mining colonies couldn't be self-sustainable. If they cannot be, then space mining isn't feasible or too costly. And if they are self sustainable, then the fossil fuel mined and burned on earth would be worth it. If this was meant for me to feel shame of being alive and consuming carbon, take note that this is reductionist thinking, the same reason for why we find ourselves in the current predicament. Carbon emissions are only important as long as we have an impending global warming phenomenon potentially pushing us over a dangerous threshold. And while that's certainly a potential catastrophe, it's reductionist thinking in the sense that carbon emission isn't the real problem, just a reaction in a long chain of reactions and focusing just on carbon emissions will spell our doom. But going back to your first question, we'd have plenty of water if we wouldn't pollute it, I don't see the need for mining decreasing, quite the contrary, so instead of dynamiting mountains and filling the area with cyanide for extracting gold or whatever, I'd rather have all of this happen in space, instead of our backyard. Mining on earth is only cheap because the costs are subsidized, being implicit in the damage to the environment, a cost that we'll pay sooner or later. If we'd factor in the real cost, if space mining is possible, I don't think it will look that expensive.

EGreg 10y ago
Let me reduce the issue to the bare essentials: We can find lots of resources and turn them into useful energy and things. But that only exacerbates the pollution issue, regardless of where we obtain the resources. Especially noxious is the non biodegradable pollution and the millions of years worth of carbon released from the ground.
- bad_user 10y ago
  I understand, but I disagree, because you can have carbon emissions, or you can have carbon emissions along with whole areas left uninhabitable due to mining and the need for mining resources will still be there, whether we want it or not. I stand by my opinion. I'd rather have mining happen in space. And I understand the concern, but if reducing CO2 emissions is the goal, the first targets should be the production of electricity, heat, transport and agriculture. Food gets transported nowadays by airplane and maybe we shouldn't shut down nuclear power plants to replace them with coal plants. Plenty of low hanging fruits if you ask me.
  - Zardoz84 10y ago
    for first time, I see some one that think like me about nuclear plants. Nuclear should be only closed to be replaced by modermand and more secure nuclear, or by solar/wind/sea powered centrals.
    - adrianN 10y ago
      You must be pretty new here, a large part of HN is pro-nuclear.
- pavel_lishin 10y ago
  > But that only exacerbates the pollution issue, regardless of where we obtain the resources. Factually untrue! Obtaining resources on Earth generates pollution that stays on Earth. If we move mining off-world, the byproducts of mining don't go into streams, soil, etc. Furthermore, generating energy in space and beaming it down to the planet means not having to burn coal, reducing the risk of nuclear accidents, and eliminating the need for dams that disrupt ecological systems. Yes, we'll need to burn more fuel to get there, but that's the nature of progress. The other alternative is to fall back to a pre-industrial lifestyle limited to only those parts of the globe where the temperature is mild year-round - unless you want to keep burning wood for heat in the winter.

lmm 10y ago

> So you think rain-forests and clean water exists on space ?? Space is between us and all the ones not on Earth. If we're going to spread to other solar systems we're going to have to get used to living in space.

blisterpeanuts 10y ago

> We can solve those problems withing sending more rockets to space - which ends up burning more fossil fuel. Remember, every day that you are alive ( assuming you are living a developed country ) you are emitting huge amount of carbon. Even if you launched 10 rockets a day, it's a tiny percentage of combustion compared to hundreds of millions of cars, trucks, buses, planes, coal and oil and gas boilers, etc. I don't understand your second point. But regarding "clean water on[sic] space", there are in fact ice comets containing tons of water that could be harvested by a future space colony. It makes sense that we'd want to exploit that source rather than try to move H2O into orbit from the Earth's surface. The Jupiter moon Europa is thought to possibly have a vast water ocean beneath its icy shell. The Moon may also harbor vast amounts of water locked in minerals or in subsurface ice. With water, we can have colonies. Colonies can grow trees, entire forests in fact. The sky's the limit, so to speak. Really, there's a lot of exciting possibilities for spreading civilization into orbit and onto other planets and moons. The spin-offs and economic expansion that space colonization will undoubtedly bring more than justify the costs of exploration. A few space colonies and mining operations will solve poverty on Earth. It's worth it.