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That premise only holds if we can live without Earth’s support, and frankly outside of science fiction and people without enough scientific education to know be
by gotocake 8y ago
That premise only holds if we can live without Earth’s support, and frankly outside of science fiction and people without enough scientific education to know better, that’s not happening in the lifetimes of anyone having this conversation, or their children, and probably grand and great-grandchildren. We’re still a ways from being able to live off Earth with suppport from Earth, never mind sustaining the race indefinitely without Earth.
If we want to get the chance to add some real redundancy to the species, we’re going to have to need a functional Earth for the foreseeable future.
- mLuby 8y agoWe've had astronauts in the international space station for 18 years (with regular supply shipments from Earth) so we're definitely capable of living off Earth with Earth support. Since we're making unsubstantiated claims, here's mine: humanity will have a self-sufficient (given raw material inputs such as exist on Mars or the Moon) colony within 100 years.
- jonathankoren 8y agoOnly if there’s a way to make it pay, and pay a lot. Seriously. Colonization has never been about “redundancy” or “curiosity”, it’s always been driven by economics.
- gotocake 8y agoThose astronauts spend less than 216 days on that station, and require extensive physical therapy to recover (which they never fully do) when they get home. They’re also not a sustainable population, even with supplies and reinforcements from Earth. The longer they spend up there the more their long-term health suffers, and there’s no reason to believe that they could survive for years, never mind breed and sustain a population even with supplies. Pointing to the ISS as an example of how close we are to self-sufficient colonies betrays a total lack of comprehension about the challenges such an endeavor faces.