5 ms·

Why? Without speed of light or faster than speed of light travel we are stuck with uninhabitable planets (and we can't even fix our own)

• Paradigma11 2y ago
  Who cares about planets. Space stations like big ONeil cylinders is where it is at. Why succumb to another gravity well after we successfully fled the first one.
  • me_me_me 2y ago
    lol, sure. Those work in sci-fi movies, unless you want vertigo every time you stand up. Or require to have ungodly amount of resources, as those things need massive radius to actually work like earth's gravity
    • ETH_start 2y ago
      There are massive amounts of resources in our solar system to put towards this type of construction, so why worth about that? And an O'Neill cylinder large enough won't cause vertigo.
      • me_me_me 2y ago
        Yes to both. But we are nowhere near to even realistically plan on achieving something like that
        • Paradigma11 2y ago
          It is achievable with existing technology and materials. We would need something like an industrial lunar base to get material cheap into orbit, though.
          • me_me_me 2y ago
            If you mean to unite all nations and replace calipalism with a technocratic system aimed at exploration and scientific progress. So then humanity could pool together all resources to operate moon habitat and space industry to create space megastructures... then yes its 'achievable'
        • ETH_start 2y ago
          A reusable Starship being churned out one a day at the Starfactory can achieve that: A Kalpana One space habitat is estimated to require a mass of 10 billion kilograms, or 10 million tons. One Starship launch can place 100 tons in orbit. 10,000 Starships, launching once a day, can place 10 million tons into orbit in 10 days. From there, tapping extraterrestrial resources becomes far more feasible, and using them to construct an O'Neill Cylinder comes within sight. Sources: Peter Hague's Planetocracy blog provide the Kalpana One mass estimates: https://planetocracy.org/ https://planetocracy.org/ Starfactory planning to manufacture one Starship per day: https://www.space.com/spacex-starship-one-a-day-starfactory https://www.space.com/spacex-starship-one-a-day-starfactory
• 93po 2y ago
  Being able to explore and learn more about other planets, which are our best sources of information of whether we're alone in the universe, will help answer one of the most fundamental and long-lasting questions in all of human history. That's pretty exciting to me.
• ETH_start 2y ago
  I can't imagine any where with tolerable gravity and solid ground is uninhabitable. It will just require advances in habitat construction, which will massively expand the space for human settlements. Space exploration has already spurred significant technological advancements and I anticipate that space colonization will catalyze orders of magnitude more innovation.