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> Quite simply, the continued human expertise and organization necessary to manage and sustain such a system is far, far beyond anything we have today. I get y

by cletus 7y ago

> Quite simply, the continued human expertise and organization necessary to manage and sustain such a system is far, far beyond anything we have today. I get your concern but the differences are significant. 1. Habitats are mobile. If you don't like the neighbours you can up and move, something not possible with geography on Earth; 2. Land area is essentially infinite, not so on Earth. > We can't even manage to globally reduce CO2 On the contrary, excessive CO2 is, at least in some context, a remarkably simple problem. We can extract CO2 from the atmosphere and make fuel. It just doesn't make any sense to do it because we need to burn fossil fuels to power the process. So all we really need is a power source that's cheaper than fossil fuels. There are two obvious contenders for this: 1. Solar power. Estimates I've seen are that an orbital collector can be about 7 times as efficient as current Earth-based solar collectors. 2. Fusion power. Personally I'm not yet convinced if hydrogen fusion is viable. There are of course other proposals. We shall see. You'll note that I don't include fission. It's an unpopular opinion on HN but until we have a good story for fuel and waste processing then this is a nonstarter.

ben_w 7y ago
>> We can't even manage to globally reduce CO2 > On the contrary, excessive CO2 is, at least in some context, a remarkably simple problem. I would argue that even though we have the technical skill, the fact we do not have the political capacity is a significant problem. Given where humans came from, I’m sometimes surprised that our political thought processes functions at all on groups as large as cities, never mind nations or the plant as a whole. While I would like to hope that scaling it to the size of a Dyson swarm or larger would be fine, even at the level of one planet we do keep repeating cycles of genocides followed by people saying “never again” followed by more genocides elsewhere.
gambiting 7y ago
>>1. Habitats are mobile. If you don't like the neighbours you can up and move, something not possible with geography on Earth; That relies on the assumption that people within a single habitat wouldn't want to separate for whatever reason. Nation within a nation. It already happens on Earth(see: Catalonia, Taiwan, Hong-Kong, Silesia).
- Cthulhu_ 7y ago
  Getting my sci-fi hat on here but, it would in theory be easier for them to pool their money together and buy / build their own spaceship. Of course, this assumes that each ship is its own political entity; in practice, we'll probably see the equivalent of countries and states but in space, spanning territories and jurisdictions that span multiple habitats.
  - nojvek 7y ago
    Why would separate spheres be any better than counties. One of the things that shot us up is the industrial revolution and that was mostly powered by cheap trade routes by land and ship. As in trade is very essential for growth. Both of goods and ideas.
dorgo 7y ago
> but until we have a good story for fuel and waste processing then this is a nonstarter. Waste processing in space? Just give it a slight push in the direction of the sun (or whatever the right direction is taking in consideration gravity) and forget about it.
- flopunctro 7y ago
  > a slight push in the direction of the sun That's not how orbital dynamics work; a slight push in any direction won't change the orbit enough for that thing to not be a problem anymore. To make something fall into the sun, one needs quite a bit of delta-vee, which means energy. However, if the thing isn't in any hurry (and I imagine waste isn't), one can simply attach a solar sail with a tiny computer for steering it, and let it brake for the next few thousand years. (Kerbal Space Program should be part of school curricula)
- rtkwe 7y ago
  Pushing something into the sun requires removing most of it's orbital velocity not just a simple push. A small push in an orbit will create something on a very similar orbit to you that absent a nearby body to induce a lot of drag will intersect with your orbit in 2 places (not at the same time you're there fortunately in pretty much every case).
- cletus 7y ago
  It's actually cheaper (in delta-V terms) to leave the Solar System than it is to hit the Sun [1]. [1]: https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/5lt50r/why_does_it_take_more_delta_v_to_hit_the_sun_than/ https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/5lt50r/why_does...
salawat 7y ago
>1. Habitats are mobile. If you don't like the neighbours you can up and move, something not possible with geography on Earth; Mobile? Are we talking O'Neal Cylinders here? While yes, technically they will be mobile, I highly doubt the reaction mass requirements to actually move a constructed space habitat on the scale of maintaining as near to self-sufficiency as possible a city size population would be terribly practical, especially if everyone was doing it wantonly. Keep in mind the effect as of late with Moore's Law in processors, and realize that the same phenomena is likely to happen with spaveflight in that yes, the technology will scale in capacity, but a great deal of that capacity may be expended in rendering the technology "more accessible" to the less specialized consumer as opposed to remaining in a state where you're actually optimizing for maximum throughput theoretically possible. Cars/motorcycles would be another example of the same phenomena I'm trying to get across in that we're trading technically superior performance of the motorcycle (maximally efficient, yet relatively hard to control and severe to lose control of) vs. The relative safety and friendliness offered by a car to an less skilled user, even if lugging around all the extra metal eats into the overall efficiency of attaining movement of small packets of material from point A to point B via motion attained through internal combustion processes. Never mind the political issues. I fail to entertain enough optimism to realistically expect even getting beyond the ISS-like stage of space habitation within my lifetime at the rate we're going, and fully expect climate/ecological breakdowns to start creating too much conflict to really keep us moving forward in a cooperation friendly regime. I'd love to be proven wrong though.

by cletus 7y ago

ben_w 7y ago

>> We can't even manage to globally reduce CO2 > On the contrary, excessive CO2 is, at least in some context, a remarkably simple problem. I would argue that even though we have the technical skill, the fact we do not have the political capacity is a significant problem. Given where humans came from, I’m sometimes surprised that our political thought processes functions at all on groups as large as cities, never mind nations or the plant as a whole. While I would like to hope that scaling it to the size of a Dyson swarm or larger would be fine, even at the level of one planet we do keep repeating cycles of genocides followed by people saying “never again” followed by more genocides elsewhere.

gambiting 7y ago

>>1. Habitats are mobile. If you don't like the neighbours you can up and move, something not possible with geography on Earth; That relies on the assumption that people within a single habitat wouldn't want to separate for whatever reason. Nation within a nation. It already happens on Earth(see: Catalonia, Taiwan, Hong-Kong, Silesia).

Cthulhu_ 7y ago
Getting my sci-fi hat on here but, it would in theory be easier for them to pool their money together and buy / build their own spaceship. Of course, this assumes that each ship is its own political entity; in practice, we'll probably see the equivalent of countries and states but in space, spanning territories and jurisdictions that span multiple habitats.
- nojvek 7y ago
  Why would separate spheres be any better than counties. One of the things that shot us up is the industrial revolution and that was mostly powered by cheap trade routes by land and ship. As in trade is very essential for growth. Both of goods and ideas.

dorgo 7y ago

> but until we have a good story for fuel and waste processing then this is a nonstarter. Waste processing in space? Just give it a slight push in the direction of the sun (or whatever the right direction is taking in consideration gravity) and forget about it.

flopunctro 7y ago
> a slight push in the direction of the sun That's not how orbital dynamics work; a slight push in any direction won't change the orbit enough for that thing to not be a problem anymore. To make something fall into the sun, one needs quite a bit of delta-vee, which means energy. However, if the thing isn't in any hurry (and I imagine waste isn't), one can simply attach a solar sail with a tiny computer for steering it, and let it brake for the next few thousand years. (Kerbal Space Program should be part of school curricula)
rtkwe 7y ago
Pushing something into the sun requires removing most of it's orbital velocity not just a simple push. A small push in an orbit will create something on a very similar orbit to you that absent a nearby body to induce a lot of drag will intersect with your orbit in 2 places (not at the same time you're there fortunately in pretty much every case).
cletus 7y ago
It's actually cheaper (in delta-V terms) to leave the Solar System than it is to hit the Sun [1]. [1]: https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/5lt50r/why_does_it_take_more_delta_v_to_hit_the_sun_than/ https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/5lt50r/why_does...

salawat 7y ago

>1. Habitats are mobile. If you don't like the neighbours you can up and move, something not possible with geography on Earth; Mobile? Are we talking O'Neal Cylinders here? While yes, technically they will be mobile, I highly doubt the reaction mass requirements to actually move a constructed space habitat on the scale of maintaining as near to self-sufficiency as possible a city size population would be terribly practical, especially if everyone was doing it wantonly. Keep in mind the effect as of late with Moore's Law in processors, and realize that the same phenomena is likely to happen with spaveflight in that yes, the technology will scale in capacity, but a great deal of that capacity may be expended in rendering the technology "more accessible" to the less specialized consumer as opposed to remaining in a state where you're actually optimizing for maximum throughput theoretically possible. Cars/motorcycles would be another example of the same phenomena I'm trying to get across in that we're trading technically superior performance of the motorcycle (maximally efficient, yet relatively hard to control and severe to lose control of) vs. The relative safety and friendliness offered by a car to an less skilled user, even if lugging around all the extra metal eats into the overall efficiency of attaining movement of small packets of material from point A to point B via motion attained through internal combustion processes. Never mind the political issues. I fail to entertain enough optimism to realistically expect even getting beyond the ISS-like stage of space habitation within my lifetime at the rate we're going, and fully expect climate/ecological breakdowns to start creating too much conflict to really keep us moving forward in a cooperation friendly regime. I'd love to be proven wrong though.