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Permanent means self sustaining. I.e biodome completely isolated from outside with its own atmosphere. None of those are self sustaining.
by ActorNightly 5mo ago
Permanent means self sustaining. I.e biodome completely isolated from outside with its own atmosphere.
None of those are self sustaining.
- femto 5mo agoThere's an argument that Earth, as a biodome completely isolated from outside with its own atmosphere, also isn't self sustaining. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth_Overshoot_Day https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth_Overshoot_Day I'd keep the Moonraker film in mind as a metric for self sustaining colonies created by billionaires. They can't be trusted unless they are also working to fix what we already have.
- kelnos 5mo ago> Permanent means self sustaining. No it doesn't. "Permanent settlement" just means it's not temporary, only intended for a short-term mission.
- hvb2 5mo agoWhy on earth (pun intended), would you want that? You don't want to be there? Almost every other place on earth is better. So you send a skeleton crew along with what they need. If it is to test an actual community living isolated, sure. But I think it'll always be different because you know that help is at most a few months away and probably a lot less. I don't think you can fake that, unless you're never told you're not alone
- ActorNightly 5mo agoThe point is that we don't have technology (or at least not proven) to make a habitat on earth that can reliably provide isolation from harsh atmosphere. When you are sending people to space on an experimental rocket, with experimental supply for an experimental habitat, all of that shit better be engineered to a huge safety factor, because its not a matter of if things will go wrong, its how often will they go wrong and what the impact will be. To deal with that kind of unknown requires a level of technology that should make it possible to live in Antarctica for extended period of time without any external shipments coming in to resupply. That means heating, oxygen generation, food resources, air filtration, full medical bay capable of advanced surgery, and a bunch of other smaller things that all matter in the end.
- christophilus 5mo agoPlus insane storms and winds that I’m not sure Antarctica will properly simulate.
- mikeyouse 5mo agoAntarctica might be okay as a demo site on that front; https://www.youtube.com/shorts/QK5M_UfofRU https://www.youtube.com/shorts/QK5M_UfofRU
- hagbard_c 5mo agoThose "insane storms and winds" in an atmosphere with 2% of the density of earth's atmosphere won't be much of a problem.
- ActorNightly 5mo agoThat works both ways. Sure you won't have much density for air to move things, but things moving through air also don't have the drag to slow them down.
- tlb 5mo agoYes, for example taking off or landing a rocket on the surface blasts particles of sand out sideways at 1000s of m/s. The particles can fly in the thin atmosphere for kilometers and sandblast everything. Our intuitions about how far and fast tiny things can fly are only true in an atmosphere of similar density.
- Recurecur 5mo agoYour intuition about how far sand particles can fly at high velocity in the Martian atmosphere is way off base…
- ActorNightly 5mo ago
- flohofwoe 5mo agoAre you talking a Mars or Antarctica settlement? ;) (eg any place on Earth is infinitely better than any place on Mars, maybe a couple of scientists are ready to endure Mars for a couple of months at a time, but beyond that? It will be like living in a labour camp in (frozen) hell.
- elevaet 5mo agoNo air, scarce water, radiation challenges. Comms to earth has a 3min lag on a good day, 6mins roundtrip. On a bad day it's 45mins. We are better off at this stage of human civilization to look at building resiliency and redundancy at home. Settling margins of Earth in places like Antarctica, underground, under water is many orders of magnitude simpler than Mars, provides useful models for distant future space colonization, and also provides us with some of the civilizational redundancy and resiliency many space-colony-enthusiasts are looking for.
- MagicMoonlight 5mo agoAmerica still isn’t self sustaining and it’s been hundreds of years.
- notachatbot123 5mo agoAnd the planet is dying
- hagbard_c 5mo agoThe planet cannot die since it doesn't live. Planet life isn't dying either.
- ponector 5mo agoYes, but it has some extra 5 billion years to live.
- Recurecur 5mo agoThat’s a misconception. The Sun is slowly growing more luminous, and inescapable global warming is expected to make the Earth uninhabitable in about a billion years. Life on Earth is about 3/4 of the way through its existence…
- echoangle 5mo ago> Permanent means self sustaining. I.e biodome completely isolated from outside with its own atmosphere. According to whom exactly? For me, permanent means "permanently without breaks".
- mapt 5mo agoIf you want another word for that, go with "Continuous". The ISS has been continuously occupied since November 2, 2000. But it was not, in fact, expected by anyone to be a permanent station; It is made of non-replaceable parts that age and fail (decade scale), it only has very limited life support supplies on board (month scale).
- echoangle 5mo agoI would call the ISS a permanent station. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Space_Station#:~:text=module%29-,The,98%2E https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Space_Station#:~... > It is made of non-replaceable parts Every part of the ISS is replaceable if you want to. > it only has very limited life support supplies on board (month scale) I still don't see why self-sustainability is a part of being "permanent".
- SideburnsOfDoom 5mo ago> I would call the ISS a permanent station. Since the ISS end of life is scheduled for 2030 - just four years from now - I really would not call it "permanent". Even if gets a few years reprieve, that's quite temporary. > Every part of the ISS is replaceable if you want to. There comes a point with buildings and with space stations where tearing down and completely replacing them is a better and cheaper option than repairing or extending them. The ISS is nearing that point.
- echoangle 5mo agoSomething that was permanent and is now scheduled for destruction is still permanent, no? Or can we at least agree that it was permanent at some point of its life? > There comes a point with buildings and with space stations where tearing down and completely replacing them is a better and cheaper option than repairing or extending them. The ISS is nearing that point. Sure, but that's the case for everything, including permanent things. My house won't be around forever, I would still call it a permanent housing.
- api 5mo agoNobody’s tried because they are a short flight away from South America. No point. It’s cheaper and easier to fly it in. There are skeptical arguments against Mars settlement but the Antarctica thing is kind of a weak one. To point out one more problem with it: there’s legal and treaty restrictions in play for that continent. You can’t just go. That’s another limiting factor.
- general1465 5mo agoYou can try the same thing in Greenland or far north of Canada. But nobody does that either, because there is no reason to do so. However put a reason to go to Mars, i.e. alien shipwreck and there is going to be multiple cities within end of the decade.
- elevaet 5mo agoCan you explain why and how we would build cities on Mars if we found an alien shipwreck there? That doesn't make any sense to me. It would likely cost bare minimum 10-100 billion dollars to put a few boots on the ground on Mars, how could we possibly build cities there within the end of the decade?
- ponector 5mo agoAccording to this, New York is not permanent settlement because it's not self sustaining.
- deleted 5mo ago[deleted]