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I believe we already have the resources to colonise the Moon and maybe Mars right now. There would have to be considerable R&D, and willpower, and it would be v

I believe we already have the resources to colonise the Moon and maybe Mars right now. There would have to be considerable R&D, and willpower, and it would be very expensive but I think it is within our powers. Humans would have to live underground and deal with dust, maybe microbes in the case of Mars, but we could do it. The spaceships to go to Mars would have to be big but they could more easily be built on the Moon due to the lower gravity.

mmooss 9mo ago
> I believe we already have the resources to colonise the Moon and maybe Mars right now. That is or was essentially the mission of the US government's Artemis program, as I understand it. Some elements of the plan are (or were): 'Civilize' (my word) the Moon - build PNT, situational awareness, communication infrastructure, bases, permanent human presence etc. Bring it within a normalized region of operations, like Earth orbit (though obviously much more expensive and less utilized). A benefit is developing plans for infrastructure and operations on Mars, in a much more friendly and less expensive environment. What does it take to support humans efficiently and reliably on another body? Also conduct experiments and develop technology for Mars in cislunar regions - again, much friendlier and less costly.
PaulHoule 9mo ago
It's easy if you can build some kind of machine like what Eric Drexler talked about that could manufacture absolutely everything. Otherwise it's impossible. The best hope for that is to send the one thing to Mars that people absolutely refuse to send to Mars which is bacteria and yeast and microbes. That could be a synthetic biology platform that could make pretty much all the molecules you need and then you assemble them with 3D printing or something like that.
- Dylan16807 9mo ago
  We could send ten thousand workshop machines, a thousand huge forges and presses and reactors, and enough people to run them and all the farms and chemical vats they use those machines to build. Is that not enough manufacturing capability?
  - PaulHoule 9mo ago
    And that takes, what, a million of those "Starships?" To be plausible you have to be able to get it a lot smaller than that. If you can fit it into someone's hand the rocketry gets to be trivial.
    - Dylan16807 9mo ago
      I was thinking less than 2000. One each for the huge machines, a few hundred for the smaller machines, a hundred to few hundred full of people. And you could cut those numbers 10x and still have a huge variety of manufacturing capabilities. I don't see why we would need a near-magic factory box just to build a colony.
      - PaulHoule 9mo ago
        Manufacturing is hard, even for something “simple” like a pencil: https://www.amazon.com/Pencil-History-Design-Circumstance/dp/0679734155 https://www.amazon.com/Pencil-History-Design-Circumstance/dp... Those big machines have lots of little parts and if you have to wait three years to get a spare part that’s a big problem. (Never mind anything that Earth sends to a Mars colony is a gift because it is inconceivable that it would be profitable to bring anything back) Anyone who starts sketching out what a space manufacturing complex looks like (e.g. Drexler, myself [1]) comes to the same conclusion Drexler did —- there is this diverse residue of difficult to manufacture small but complex things. The good news is that we have molecular assemblers, they built you, and now that people are decoding the “junk DNA” we are getting a handle on genetic regulation networks and will be able to make them much more productive and reliable. [1] unpublished study on manufacturing sunshades on an asteroid which is rich in something which is more-or-less “coal”, out of a lack of imagination I assumed it was going to use a pyrolysis system like https://www.netl.doe.gov/research/Coal/energy-systems/gasification/gasifipedia/great-plains https://www.netl.doe.gov/research/Coal/energy-systems/gasifi... and I can tell you that sort of thing on Earth has almost as many things that can go wrong with it as a fast reactor
        cindyllm 9mo ago

mmooss 9mo ago

> I believe we already have the resources to colonise the Moon and maybe Mars right now. That is or was essentially the mission of the US government's Artemis program, as I understand it. Some elements of the plan are (or were): 'Civilize' (my word) the Moon - build PNT, situational awareness, communication infrastructure, bases, permanent human presence etc. Bring it within a normalized region of operations, like Earth orbit (though obviously much more expensive and less utilized). A benefit is developing plans for infrastructure and operations on Mars, in a much more friendly and less expensive environment. What does it take to support humans efficiently and reliably on another body? Also conduct experiments and develop technology for Mars in cislunar regions - again, much friendlier and less costly.

PaulHoule 9mo ago

It's easy if you can build some kind of machine like what Eric Drexler talked about that could manufacture absolutely everything. Otherwise it's impossible. The best hope for that is to send the one thing to Mars that people absolutely refuse to send to Mars which is bacteria and yeast and microbes. That could be a synthetic biology platform that could make pretty much all the molecules you need and then you assemble them with 3D printing or something like that.

Dylan16807 9mo ago
We could send ten thousand workshop machines, a thousand huge forges and presses and reactors, and enough people to run them and all the farms and chemical vats they use those machines to build. Is that not enough manufacturing capability?
- PaulHoule 9mo ago
  And that takes, what, a million of those "Starships?" To be plausible you have to be able to get it a lot smaller than that. If you can fit it into someone's hand the rocketry gets to be trivial.
  - Dylan16807 9mo ago
    I was thinking less than 2000. One each for the huge machines, a few hundred for the smaller machines, a hundred to few hundred full of people. And you could cut those numbers 10x and still have a huge variety of manufacturing capabilities. I don't see why we would need a near-magic factory box just to build a colony.
    - PaulHoule 9mo ago
      Manufacturing is hard, even for something “simple” like a pencil: https://www.amazon.com/Pencil-History-Design-Circumstance/dp/0679734155 https://www.amazon.com/Pencil-History-Design-Circumstance/dp... Those big machines have lots of little parts and if you have to wait three years to get a spare part that’s a big problem. (Never mind anything that Earth sends to a Mars colony is a gift because it is inconceivable that it would be profitable to bring anything back) Anyone who starts sketching out what a space manufacturing complex looks like (e.g. Drexler, myself [1]) comes to the same conclusion Drexler did —- there is this diverse residue of difficult to manufacture small but complex things. The good news is that we have molecular assemblers, they built you, and now that people are decoding the “junk DNA” we are getting a handle on genetic regulation networks and will be able to make them much more productive and reliable. [1] unpublished study on manufacturing sunshades on an asteroid which is rich in something which is more-or-less “coal”, out of a lack of imagination I assumed it was going to use a pyrolysis system like https://www.netl.doe.gov/research/Coal/energy-systems/gasification/gasifipedia/great-plains https://www.netl.doe.gov/research/Coal/energy-systems/gasifi... and I can tell you that sort of thing on Earth has almost as many things that can go wrong with it as a fast reactor
      - cindyllm 9mo ago