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Imagine an easy mode planet in a system with multiple habitable planets. Now that I've typed that I'm also considering how Mars would look from 12 light years a

by MRD85 7y ago

Imagine an easy mode planet in a system with multiple habitable planets. Now that I've typed that I'm also considering how Mars would look from 12 light years away. Is establishing a colony 12 light years away easier than transforming mars into a habitable planet?

jl6 7y ago
Harder, I think. We have the technology to live on Mars (not to terraform it, just to survive on it). We have some ideas from physics about how to get to a planet 12 ly away, but not the technology. Nor, I would argue, do we have the social and political setup required for such a project, which would most likely take hundreds of years to get to a basic colony.
- blotter_paper 7y ago
  > We have the technology to live on Mars (not to terraform it, just to survive on it). I'm not convinced this is true intergenerationally without a maternity ward in a centrifuge; the low gravity mouse embryo experiments don't look promising. Maybe 1/3rd earth gravity is enough, but I'm doubtful. If we're granting centrifugal habitats as something doable with current technology, an Orion/Daedalus style nuke-propelled spacecraft seems in the same ballpark. It's been sketched out and tested with models, it's clearly possible, but nobody has really made one yet and it's a hell of an engineering problem still.
  - kevin_thibedeau 7y ago
    We should be colonizing the moon first, then Phobos or Deimos. Then, once established, we can conquer the martian gravity well with local resources.
    - blotter_paper 7y ago
      I like Musk's plan of using Mars as a fuel-planet, I just don't expect a self-sufficient colony for some time. Mars is like an oil rig or a mineshaft; no place for children.
      - jacobush 7y ago
        In fact it's cold as hell. And there's no one there to raise them if you did.
    - JauntTrooper 7y ago
      Phobos and Deimos are very, very tiny. The diameter of the Moon is 2,160 miles. The diameter of Phobos is 14 miles. Deimos is 8 miles. (For scale, Mars' diameter is 4,200 miles).
      - kevin_thibedeau 7y ago
        That is the point. It's easy to land and get off a tiny moon and there is material to make a habitat out of rather than sending it all from Earth.
  - abledon 7y ago
    mouse embyro zero-G experiments being referred to: https://www.wired.com/2009/08/spacebabies/ https://www.wired.com/2009/08/spacebabies/
- monomyth 7y ago
  > Harder, I think. We have the technology to live on Mars (not to terraform it, just to survive on it). There is a chance that nuking the polar caps would terraform Mars, I think we already have the technology for basic terraforming. edit: wrong quote :/
jodrellblank 7y ago
On interstellar travel realities: http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2007/06/the-high-frontier-redux.html http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2007/06/the-high... - aka it’s not happening soon. And for terraforming Mars, Isaac Arthur’s YouTube channel has many related videos, and he posits that by the time your civilisation could do it, it would be a wasteful use of Mars when it could be better disassembled and turned into O’Neill cylinders or something. But coming over a crater or valley on Mars and transforming it into something habitable would be enormously easier than travelling 12 ly.

by MRD85 7y ago

jl6 7y ago

Harder, I think. We have the technology to live on Mars (not to terraform it, just to survive on it). We have some ideas from physics about how to get to a planet 12 ly away, but not the technology. Nor, I would argue, do we have the social and political setup required for such a project, which would most likely take hundreds of years to get to a basic colony.

blotter_paper 7y ago
> We have the technology to live on Mars (not to terraform it, just to survive on it). I'm not convinced this is true intergenerationally without a maternity ward in a centrifuge; the low gravity mouse embryo experiments don't look promising. Maybe 1/3rd earth gravity is enough, but I'm doubtful. If we're granting centrifugal habitats as something doable with current technology, an Orion/Daedalus style nuke-propelled spacecraft seems in the same ballpark. It's been sketched out and tested with models, it's clearly possible, but nobody has really made one yet and it's a hell of an engineering problem still.
- kevin_thibedeau 7y ago
  We should be colonizing the moon first, then Phobos or Deimos. Then, once established, we can conquer the martian gravity well with local resources.
  - blotter_paper 7y ago
    I like Musk's plan of using Mars as a fuel-planet, I just don't expect a self-sufficient colony for some time. Mars is like an oil rig or a mineshaft; no place for children.
    - jacobush 7y ago
      In fact it's cold as hell. And there's no one there to raise them if you did.
  - JauntTrooper 7y ago
    Phobos and Deimos are very, very tiny. The diameter of the Moon is 2,160 miles. The diameter of Phobos is 14 miles. Deimos is 8 miles. (For scale, Mars' diameter is 4,200 miles).
    - kevin_thibedeau 7y ago
      That is the point. It's easy to land and get off a tiny moon and there is material to make a habitat out of rather than sending it all from Earth.
- abledon 7y ago
  mouse embyro zero-G experiments being referred to: https://www.wired.com/2009/08/spacebabies/ https://www.wired.com/2009/08/spacebabies/
monomyth 7y ago
> Harder, I think. We have the technology to live on Mars (not to terraform it, just to survive on it). There is a chance that nuking the polar caps would terraform Mars, I think we already have the technology for basic terraforming. edit: wrong quote :/

jodrellblank 7y ago

On interstellar travel realities: http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2007/06/the-high-frontier-redux.html http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2007/06/the-high... - aka it’s not happening soon. And for terraforming Mars, Isaac Arthur’s YouTube channel has many related videos, and he posits that by the time your civilisation could do it, it would be a wasteful use of Mars when it could be better disassembled and turned into O’Neill cylinders or something. But coming over a crater or valley on Mars and transforming it into something habitable would be enormously easier than travelling 12 ly.