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Food for thought: Rather to colonize another planet, wouldn't it be easier to build the telescopes to spot a 5-20km sized asteroid and then deflect it? The def
by bayesianhorse 13y ago
Food for thought: Rather to colonize another planet, wouldn't it be easier to build the telescopes to spot a 5-20km sized asteroid and then deflect it?
The deflection would probably need less fuel than putting a colony on mercury (or mars or the moon) that could survive independently...
- antimagic 13y agoWell, the deflection system would still be a single point of failure for the human species. Colonising another planet of the solar system would reduce SPOFs to events affecting the entire solar system - the sun becoming a red giant, a neighbouring sun going supernova, a pulsar setting up shop too close. Settling on another planet removes species-ending events such as asteroid strikes, global nuclear war, a really bad virus getting out, nanotech grey goo getting loose. The deflection system would only remove one of these.