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When humans start journeying outside low earth orbit again, it can be like this. Long and dangerous trips.
by Gravityloss 8y ago
When humans start journeying outside low earth orbit again, it can be like this. Long and dangerous trips.
- mistermann 8y agoIs there much out there to find, that requires physical human presence?
- bitanarch 8y agoNo. In theory you can mine everything with robots. However, every year you stay on Earth, you're kinda like throwing a 1d100 whether you get a WWIII and it turns into a nuclear wasteland or not. You can keep throwing it and hope it doesn't happen in your generation, or, you can get out of it and have a backup plan.
- CamTin 8y agoThis is an interesting framing, because presumably the first space-living people will actually have a much greater than a 1d100 chance of dying in some horrible space-related way. We then basically have a collective action problem: in order for the species to have a better chance of survival, individuals have to do things that actually lower their chances of survival. I think the first first experiments won't have any problem finding volunteers because we've been so acculturated to think of space travel as being "cool," but presumably after the first few extraterrestrial colonies dramatically cease to exist after explosive decompression accidents or are simultaneously poisoned by bizarrely-mutated e.coli variants in their water supplies, people will be much less eager to move off the nice, familiar, safe-seeming Earth.
- Ftuuky 8y agoHopefully with less scurvy and pirates.
- CapitalistCartr 8y agoScurvy/starvation, and pirates will always be with us. With the added bonus of losing air supply.
- adrianN 8y agoSince we figured out what causes scurvy and the amount of vitamins needed to prevent it weighs almost nothing, I'd bet that scurvy won't be one of the problems we encounter in space.
- Ftuuky 8y agoI agree, lack of nutrients and vitamins won't be a concern in most space trips. I also don't know about pirates. Where are they going to hide? I think the biggest risks are loss of breathable air and claustrophobia/prolonged isolation (if people freak out in ships, imagine in deep space).
- jacobush 8y agoPirates... maybe. They could go places hard to reach, so even if you knew roughly were they were, they could be hard to apprehend. But anyway, if we have pirates, there is a space ecosystem large enough to leech off, so a win!
- Ftuuky 8y agoBut you could detect them approaching your vessel, all you got to do is change course and/or speed up.
- adrianN 8y agoBattles in space are about who has more fuel and who can dissipate waste heat faster. You want to fire small, hard to detect ammunition from hours or days far away and try your best to anticipate the evasive maneuvers or shape your bullets' trajectories such that evading costs most fuel.