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You added a bunch of constraints there which equate it to colonizing an uninhabitable planet like Mars.

bee_rider 4y ago
If you are picking from inside our solar system, you are pretty much limited to Venus or somewhere that gets less solar radiation than Earth. Apparently the clouds of Venus are relatively habitable (in the sense that they aren't the hellscape of the surface of that planet, or the nearly oxygen free wasteland that is Mars). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colonization_of_Venus#Aerostat_habitats_and_floating_cities https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colonization_of_Venus#Aerostat... Colonizing planets outside the solar system seems to require some sort of sci-fi technology just to get there, so it is hard to speculate. If we're going to assume we can somehow get to Alpha Centauri, we might as well also assume that when we get there we can use nanobot magic or whatever to transform the colonists into an alternative form that is compatible with whatever environment we find there.
- koheripbal 4y ago
  > If you are picking from inside our solar system That, again, is a pretty big new constraint you are placing to make an argument. Since we're talking about exo-planets, that's not a reasonable constraint in this conversation. > Colonizing planets outside the solar system seems to require some sort of sci-fi technology Yes - yet that's the context of this thread.
  - bee_rider 4y ago
    The article was about the search for life, so clearly we're off on a tangent here if we are talking about space colonization. I guess I assumed it was about semi-realistic space colonization, because the comment that kicked it off talked about the solving problems -- if we have magical sci-fi technology there's no reason to talk about this, because we have no way to speculate which problems will have an automatic sci-fi answer. Anyway, if you pick apart the problems described in the first post you responded to, you'll find, I think, that the only restriction imposed by limiting the discussion to planets inside the solar system is the "less solar energy."

If you are picking from inside our solar system, you are pretty much limited to Venus or somewhere that gets less solar radiation than Earth. Apparently the clouds of Venus are relatively habitable (in the sense that they aren't the hellscape of the surface of that planet, or the nearly oxygen free wasteland that is Mars). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colonization_of_Venus#Aerostat_habitats_and_floating_cities https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colonization_of_Venus#Aerostat... Colonizing planets outside the solar system seems to require some sort of sci-fi technology just to get there, so it is hard to speculate. If we're going to assume we can somehow get to Alpha Centauri, we might as well also assume that when we get there we can use nanobot magic or whatever to transform the colonists into an alternative form that is compatible with whatever environment we find there.

koheripbal 4y ago
> If you are picking from inside our solar system That, again, is a pretty big new constraint you are placing to make an argument. Since we're talking about exo-planets, that's not a reasonable constraint in this conversation. > Colonizing planets outside the solar system seems to require some sort of sci-fi technology Yes - yet that's the context of this thread.
- bee_rider 4y ago
  The article was about the search for life, so clearly we're off on a tangent here if we are talking about space colonization. I guess I assumed it was about semi-realistic space colonization, because the comment that kicked it off talked about the solving problems -- if we have magical sci-fi technology there's no reason to talk about this, because we have no way to speculate which problems will have an automatic sci-fi answer. Anyway, if you pick apart the problems described in the first post you responded to, you'll find, I think, that the only restriction imposed by limiting the discussion to planets inside the solar system is the "less solar energy."