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I think the best target for off-world colonization is variously designed giant space stations in orbit around Earth and, later, sharing Earth's orbit (maybe lag
by SiVal 5y ago
I think the best target for off-world colonization is variously designed giant space stations in orbit around Earth and, later, sharing Earth's orbit (maybe lagrange points) around the Sun.
To create the best possible life for humans offworld, we'll need VERY close contact with Earth for a long time. I mean Amazon Prime delivery close. Coming down for family Thanksgiving close. Lots of sharing and experimenting as easily and cheaply as possible. We don't want to have to adapt to the random features of some other natural body that's far away and not very good. We should learn how to build an artificial body that has exactly the features we love and then, when we've learned how to make a great place for humans to live in space, replicate them, which will be easier if the whole thing was man-made to begin with.
- snarf21 5y agoI think a SS will be essential as a waypoint but the difference is we can't mine anything at scale in space but we can on the moon. A full scale Mars civilization is never happening without a major advance in propulsion and cost-effective materials. The moon is close enough that we can iterate and learn fairly quickly. There are so so many things we only think we know how to do but haven't really tried. Hopefully all these fake space flights can at least fun a moon colony. In the end though, humans are selfish and we won't take care of the next planet any better than we do this one.
- mooreds 5y ago> we can't mine anything at scale in space but we can on the moon Huh. I thought we could mine asteroids in space pretty effectively? https://www.milkenreview.org/articles/mining-in-space-is-coming https://www.milkenreview.org/articles/mining-in-space-is-com... has some details.
- snarf21 5y agoSorry, I wasn't clear in that statement. I meant that if we are on a space station in orbit somewhere we can't mine anything right there. We could go to an asteroid or whatever or we could go to the moon which is always right there.