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> Human bodies will never go very far from Earth. It is possible with space elevators and a series of Biosphere 2 style experiments. A series of five and ten y

> Human bodies will never go very far from Earth. It is possible with space elevators and a series of Biosphere 2 style experiments. A series of five and ten year experiments can prove the feasibility of building hermetically sealed nuclear powered habitats. With space elevators they can be replicated outside the gravity well in space, spinning at 1G and properly shielded from radiation. Nano tech developments make space elevators seem less and less crazy. It is not crazy to expect to happen in the next 40 years. The thing to do is hermetically seal off some deep down mines with nuclear reactors and 30 people for 10 years and prove it can be done.

IndianAstronaut 12y ago
They have already tried to seal off humans to see if they could survive in a closed habitat for years. They failed. Until we figure out a way to generate food without the use of plants and animals, we cannot explore space. The overhead of having to maintain plants and animals for food is just too great to make sustainable living elsewhere in the solar system feasible.
- a8da6b0c91d 12y ago
  There was one fairly low budget attempt. Nobody ever said it was going to work the first time. I can imagine it taking 25 years to iron out all the kinks. It's not like people figured out reliable trans-oceanic voyaging and navigation in a couple years. It was a long processes.
- xenophonf 12y ago
  If everybody stopped trying to do something the first time they failed, no one would do anything or learn anything. Heck, science is all about systematically and methodically failing - that's what the null hypothesis is all about! I almost wrote that we probably won't have permanent outposts in space within any of our lifetimes, but that isn't strictly true, is it, what with Skylab, Mir, and ISS? So let me posit that we will probably never see self-sustaining space habitats (whether in orbit around Earth or on some other body in the Solar System) within our lifetimes, nor within our children's lifetimes. That doesn't mean it isn't a worthy (or feasible) goal. Mankind has wondered about traveling to the moon for hundreds of years (if not thousands), and only recently has it become possible. Living somewhere other than Earth isn't really all that different, insofar that it is an engineering problem and not a scientific one, and unless some apocalyptic disaster strikes us, we have nothing but time in which to figure it out.
  - IndianAstronaut 12y ago
    I definitely do not think we shouod stop trying. We need to look into non plant and animal based food, at least for calories and amino acids. Probably will need to research into catalysts which can take raw H2 and CO2 to convert into starches and such.
- pja 12y ago
  They failed mostly because they hadn't accounted for the way the concrete that the building was made from would continue to suck CO2 from the atmosphere as it cured, resulting in very low yields from the crops they intended to grow for food.
- logfromblammo 12y ago
  If you collected several varieties of extremophilic microorganisms from here on Earth, spent about 40 years resequencing their genes, and then shot those tailored organisms in cubesat-like dispersal capsules down into each gravity well, that overhead would take care if itself within a few millennia. First design the space-plankton, and then the space-whales can follow. Waste recycling is difficult when you don't have an entire planetary biological system to work with. So why not start by trying to cover every rock in this system with a biofilm just one cell thick?

IndianAstronaut 12y ago

They have already tried to seal off humans to see if they could survive in a closed habitat for years. They failed. Until we figure out a way to generate food without the use of plants and animals, we cannot explore space. The overhead of having to maintain plants and animals for food is just too great to make sustainable living elsewhere in the solar system feasible.

a8da6b0c91d 12y ago
There was one fairly low budget attempt. Nobody ever said it was going to work the first time. I can imagine it taking 25 years to iron out all the kinks. It's not like people figured out reliable trans-oceanic voyaging and navigation in a couple years. It was a long processes.
xenophonf 12y ago
If everybody stopped trying to do something the first time they failed, no one would do anything or learn anything. Heck, science is all about systematically and methodically failing - that's what the null hypothesis is all about! I almost wrote that we probably won't have permanent outposts in space within any of our lifetimes, but that isn't strictly true, is it, what with Skylab, Mir, and ISS? So let me posit that we will probably never see self-sustaining space habitats (whether in orbit around Earth or on some other body in the Solar System) within our lifetimes, nor within our children's lifetimes. That doesn't mean it isn't a worthy (or feasible) goal. Mankind has wondered about traveling to the moon for hundreds of years (if not thousands), and only recently has it become possible. Living somewhere other than Earth isn't really all that different, insofar that it is an engineering problem and not a scientific one, and unless some apocalyptic disaster strikes us, we have nothing but time in which to figure it out.
- IndianAstronaut 12y ago
  I definitely do not think we shouod stop trying. We need to look into non plant and animal based food, at least for calories and amino acids. Probably will need to research into catalysts which can take raw H2 and CO2 to convert into starches and such.
pja 12y ago
They failed mostly because they hadn't accounted for the way the concrete that the building was made from would continue to suck CO2 from the atmosphere as it cured, resulting in very low yields from the crops they intended to grow for food.
logfromblammo 12y ago
If you collected several varieties of extremophilic microorganisms from here on Earth, spent about 40 years resequencing their genes, and then shot those tailored organisms in cubesat-like dispersal capsules down into each gravity well, that overhead would take care if itself within a few millennia. First design the space-plankton, and then the space-whales can follow. Waste recycling is difficult when you don't have an entire planetary biological system to work with. So why not start by trying to cover every rock in this system with a biofilm just one cell thick?