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| I don't know You certainly don't. You have a serious misunderstanding of the sheer scale involved in space travel. Its great to think that an individual will

| I don't know You certainly don't. You have a serious misunderstanding of the sheer scale involved in space travel. Its great to think that an individual will be able to pack up their space car in 200 years and move on out west to mars or something, but there literally wont be anything to do but crash land once you get there, or maybe if you're lucky, walk around for a few hours before suffocating. Im not saying it's not possible to colonize another planet, but I am saying that disintermediated space travel in the sense of a Heinlein novel is overwhelmingly a pipe dream.

deleted 6y ago
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cthalupa 6y ago
Terraforming planets in a meaningful way anytime soon is a pipe dream, but someone in 200 years very much could get in their space car and go to a different space habitat. O'Neill cylinders have already been mentioned here. There's no scientific reason we are aware of that would make living in artificial habitats worse than living on a planet, and a lot of reasons that it would be better. It's just that those of us talking now live on a planet, and find the idea of continuing to live on a planet comforting. Someone born on an O'Neill cylinder or similar will likely have no such compunctions.
- m4rtink 6y ago
  >Someone born on an O'Neill cylinder or similar will likely have no such compunctions. "You can't really control the weather, it varies by the year and there is earthquakes and flash floods at random ? Not to mention no Free-Fall-Racing ? How the hell have you survived till now down there ??"
- defterGoose 6y ago
  > There's no scientific reason we are aware of that would make living in artificial habitats worse than living on a planet, and a lot of reasons that it would be better. It's just that those of us talking now live on a planet, and find the idea of continuing to live on a planet comforting. But this is just so obviously backwards. Your assumption is that an artificial environment would be monotonically better to live in than the one in which we evolved? There's simply no evidence for it, and if you take a look at how the people on the ISS live, a strong argument against it. As for scientific caveats...well bone density and muscle mass loss in low-g (pretty much every target location for colonization) are fairly well substantiated, as well as the cosmic ray issue, which is even harder to deal with.
  - cthalupa 6y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O'Neill_cylinder https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O'Neill_cylinder These are possible (if not remotely practical) with our current level of materials science and solve for both the gravity and cosmic ray/radiation issues. There's lots of other designs that should go larger, but require further advancements in things like carbon nanotubes, etc. to be possible. As for why it would be better - control. No worries about pollution. No worries about earthquakes, volcanoes, or other natural disasters. No droughts, no hurricanes, no tornadoes. No one is talking about living on space stations like the ISS - we're talking about building purpose built large scale structures that are designed from the ground. And these aren't things that are the realm of science fiction authors and futurists with no grounding in reality or physics - they're things that have been and continue to be seriously researched by NASA and other space agencies.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

cthalupa 6y ago

Terraforming planets in a meaningful way anytime soon is a pipe dream, but someone in 200 years very much could get in their space car and go to a different space habitat. O'Neill cylinders have already been mentioned here. There's no scientific reason we are aware of that would make living in artificial habitats worse than living on a planet, and a lot of reasons that it would be better. It's just that those of us talking now live on a planet, and find the idea of continuing to live on a planet comforting. Someone born on an O'Neill cylinder or similar will likely have no such compunctions.

m4rtink 6y ago
>Someone born on an O'Neill cylinder or similar will likely have no such compunctions. "You can't really control the weather, it varies by the year and there is earthquakes and flash floods at random ? Not to mention no Free-Fall-Racing ? How the hell have you survived till now down there ??"
defterGoose 6y ago
> There's no scientific reason we are aware of that would make living in artificial habitats worse than living on a planet, and a lot of reasons that it would be better. It's just that those of us talking now live on a planet, and find the idea of continuing to live on a planet comforting. But this is just so obviously backwards. Your assumption is that an artificial environment would be monotonically better to live in than the one in which we evolved? There's simply no evidence for it, and if you take a look at how the people on the ISS live, a strong argument against it. As for scientific caveats...well bone density and muscle mass loss in low-g (pretty much every target location for colonization) are fairly well substantiated, as well as the cosmic ray issue, which is even harder to deal with.
- cthalupa 6y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O'Neill_cylinder https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O'Neill_cylinder These are possible (if not remotely practical) with our current level of materials science and solve for both the gravity and cosmic ray/radiation issues. There's lots of other designs that should go larger, but require further advancements in things like carbon nanotubes, etc. to be possible. As for why it would be better - control. No worries about pollution. No worries about earthquakes, volcanoes, or other natural disasters. No droughts, no hurricanes, no tornadoes. No one is talking about living on space stations like the ISS - we're talking about building purpose built large scale structures that are designed from the ground. And these aren't things that are the realm of science fiction authors and futurists with no grounding in reality or physics - they're things that have been and continue to be seriously researched by NASA and other space agencies.