Amarna Forum

I haven't found a good thread on the subject, let me know if I missed it. What led me to make this one was a reply in the Übermensch-thread, see below.
If we don't have it already (otherwise I might ask Chud to move this), I think it would be nice to have place to discuss space exploration and colonisation, anyway.

(10-31-2023, 03:22 AM)Mason Hall-McCullough Wrote: [ -> ]

Quote:Why is [space colonisation] unrealistic? We're doing it already.

Space colonization is economically unfeasible, not just because it's expensive (supply issue) but more importantly because there is insufficient demand. Space development so far has been motivated by scientific research, satellite communication, and trying to win the space race for political favor.

We have plenty of real estate left on Earth. Reclaiming land from the ocean/desert/mountains will always be cheaper than traveling through space to set up a colony in a place with no air, so there is no argument to be made that space colonization will provide a solution to the Earth running out of room. Other moons and planets are lifeless and uninhabitable, so a lot of resources will need to be brought from Earth. This makes no economic sense when you could set up the same controlled atmosphere in a harsh corner of Earth instead at a fraction of the cost. The only resource space has to offer is metal, and small mining operations sending metals back to Earth seems like it could happen.

Demand in an economic sense is not just "wanting things", it also requires the ability to pay. Many people will want to live on the Moon, but they will not have the economic bargaining power necessary to warrant a proper Moon colony that begins to expand on its own. It could make more economic sense for a Moon mine to be entirely automated.

Sending families on a ship to the Americas was economically viable because at that time we needed lots of humans to farm and build and industrialize. Humans are not adapted to perform tasks in space and will soon lose the last advantage they have (intelligence) to AI, so there's no motivation to send them into space other than as a publicity gimmick, or possibly an experience sold to billionaires.

>economically  unfeasible
Yes, and no. Earth colonisation only got started because states (ie. monarchs) put a lot of venture capital in. If you'd have left it to the free market, there would have been barely any expeditions. The economic potential of "space", which is a broad way of describing the economic potential of other celestial bodies, is extremely high. The question is not "can we make it work now" (we can't), but the question is, can we divert enough ressources to make it work in a near enough future. Near enough would mean so close in time that people who are alive can imagine their descendants profitting. I'd say, somewhere between 100-200 years is the timeframe for the whole project - which is roughly the timeframe for the rise and fall of a legacy, so that should work in my opinion.

>Other moons and planets are lifeless and uninhabitable
>Humans are not adapted to perform tasks in space
I agree and don't think space colonisation will be done primarily by biological humans. I think creating habitable spaces will be the smallest part of it, save for terraforming planets like Mars, but then the timeframe is thousands of years, and all speculation becomes fiction. If we as a species ever go beyond the solar system, the people we send will be digitalised as Hansionan Ems.

>The only ressource space has to offer is metal, ... mining operations sending metals back to Earth seems like it could happen
The most likely outcome is that a growing proportion of the economy in space stays in space. At first, we would bring a lot of the mined metals planetside, but as the operation grows, most would stay in space to expand capacities there.
Further, the "only ressource" makes it sound like metals are some minor contribution to an economy, and not its backbone. With mostly robots in space, metals are the most important thing to gain by far. The other ressource to be gained is so much of the lower atomic mass elements that they become as cheap as can get. I suspect it's likely that the largest cost associated with space ship fuel will be the cost of transporting it to "gas stations".

As for why people on Earth should care to build an economy in space, the first thing is of course that something like iron (still the most important structural material by far) would be come ridiculously cheap if we tap into a reservoir that's orders of magnitude larger than what we have here. Similarly for other metals, carbon, hydrogens, etc. Further, space tourism, space station living, all become possible factors when a space ressource extraction is valid and ongoing. For war, I would refer to this excellent essay:
https://waspergers.substack.com/p/the-mo...stress?s=r

So in conclusion, I think you imagine space colonisation wrongly if you think it's about moving people away from planet Earth. It's about extending our economic reach by using the appropriate tools (robots, some human supervision - think oil rig in space). If it doesn't happen, it would mean the communists won and we revert to being a lower form of life. So I have to believe it will happen, and I want to contribute.

Point taken about the significance of metals, nuclear power without requiring materials sent from Earth is also possible if uranium can be located. NASA is planning on sending a small fission reactor to the Moon: https://www.nasa.gov/tdm/fission-surface-power/

That substack article is really interesting. At first reading about the fuel concerns it was hard to imagine transporting ores from Moon->Earth could ever outweigh the cost of sending a rocket, but it starts to seem feasible if we construct simple rockets on the Moon that can more easily make it back to Earth due to the Moon's low atmosphere. Even if it's not very efficient, so long as sending resources back only consumes Moon resources that were not otherwise going to be used, it's potentially viable.

I'm more skeptical of the prediction that a lot of production will end up occurring on the Moon because I think having ~free nitrogen/oxygen/water is critical for a lot of our industry, but maybe there are alternative processes that make this possible.

When you said space colonization it immediately made me think of science fiction with human colonies spanning galaxies, I think partially or fully automated oil rigs in space are much more realistic.

There's no reason to believe space colonization is "impossible" or "uneconomical".  Manned space exploration wasn't abandoned because it was either of these but because it was diverting money away from the spic-nig cycle.  The rump space-themed bureaucracies left behind are simply too gay and dysfunctional to even think about manned, I'm sorry, human exploration.  

The Apollo 11 lander would have crashed without a human pilot at its controls, and the Apollo missions accomplished feats that are impossible or uneconomical to do with robotic probes (an easy to quantify one is sample return).  "muh robots" is a complete false economy, especially for longer-duration or novel missions.  An astronaut looking out the window to confirm their instrument readings or shoving a handful of dirt into their cargo pocket can accomplish more and more reliably than than the nigger-rigged prototypes flung into space by Current Year government bureaus (using Apollo-era rockets until Elon actually bothered spending some money on engineers and suddenly produced a series of breakthroughs).  The first geological survey team to get to the Moon or Mars will obsolete the billions of dollars pissed away by NASA over the decades since Apollo.  I won't even bother complaining about the ISS.

I admit to being a bit skeptical of deep space colonies where breeding populations of humans live in giant metal enclosures, but that still doesn't explain the total lack of human presence on bodies like the Moon given the current state of the art.  Anti-space faggots like to compare it to Antarctica or deep sea exploration, but Antarctica has a year-round population of around 1500.  Worldwide numbers for saturation divers are probably similar.  A world where 100 or even just 10 people were living on the Moon at any given time is perfectly reasonable even if the place has no economic value whatsoever (and as implied above, someone actually needs to go up there and look to see if there's anything useful).

I'm sure you've all heard about Project Orion, the abandoned NASA program that researched the concept of using series of small-yield nuclear explosions as a means of kinetic impulse for interplanetary travel. Nuclear fission enables access to much higher energy densities than chemical fuel, so this could have been (or could again be in some optimistic future) a possible next step toward becoming a full-bore spacefaring civilization. Sadly Orion was canceled for being too keyed by lawyers, manifesting the Cthonic Feminine hatred for masculine power via international nuclear test ban treaties.

Here's a video of a miniature demonstration of the concept using conventional explosives. I had always mistakenly assumed that it was just an idea on the drawing-board, but seeing the prototype in flight is quite inspiring.

(11-05-2023, 05:09 PM)Handi Wrote: [ -> ]I'm sure you've all heard about Project Orion, the abandoned NASA program that researched the concept of using series of small-yield nuclear explosions as a means of kinetic impulse for interplanetary travel. Nuclear fission enables access to much higher energy densities than chemical fuel, so this could have been (or could again be in some optimistic future) a possible next step toward becoming a full-bore spacefaring civilization. Sadly Orion was canceled for being too keyed by lawyers, manifesting the Cthonic Feminine hatred for masculine power via international nuclear test ban treaties.

Here's a video of a miniature demonstration of the concept using conventional explosives. I had always mistakenly assumed that it was just an idea on the drawing-board, but seeing the prototype in flight is quite inspiring.

Very interesting! A higher density energy source than chemical fuel is the key to interstellar travel, but it would likely advance intra-stellar (is that an expression?) movements as well. How would a nuclear explosion in space produce a kinetic impulse without oxygen?

I also remembered a wiki-article that might be of interest to anybody who wants to imagine what a colonised solar system might look like in practice: ITN 
In short, there are ways to move around the solar system with almost no energy investment, but it would take a very long time ("generations" as the article says). While this is impractical for moving materials or people, it would be very practical to move large structures - for example, I like to imagine that large space stations, like a hydrogen syphoning platform destined for Jupiter, could be begun to built at a point where infrastructure for such a project is available, but then over the course of the construction be moved to its destination. 
All this just to make another example of how temporal and spatial scales of space colonisation are not tailored to us, and that we might have to adapt to that in ways that we never have adapted to anything. 

True space colonisation is to 21st century man what the Great Pyramids of Gizeh are to a Hadza hunter-gatherer. We can grasp the rough concept, we can point to analogues in our own experiences, but we are far removed from achieving it.

this is a interesting piece of a plausible scenario in the future where humanity colonize the space without intelligent aliens,faster than light travel or AI smarter than the theoretical human maximum. https://www.deviantart.com/ottovonsuds/a...-670989495

"The vast majority of humanity has lived off of earth for more than two thousand years, with the old homeworld being a curiosity or source of legends for most. Old divisions persist, except in cases where historical circumstances have rendered them irrelevant and the human race has wasted no time in inventing new divisions."

"INTERSTELLAR HISTORY SUCH AS IT IS
History is these days something of a deeply complicated subject due to the logistical considerations involving the wide distances of space, combined with the gulfs of time[1]. Even so, knowledge of man's past has accumulated over time, often being found by archeologists in ruins or stumbled on by colonists. As a result, there have been various patterns discovered. Basic stuff, really such as 1) Civilizations rise and fall[2] 2) Interstellar war is basically a waste of resources to name some of the most obvious insights learned over the millenia. Even so, civilizations over time keep making the usual mistakes and suffering the usual consequences. Sometimes the pattern is broken by them finding some new way to screw up, with the most common result of this being the extinction of humanity on that particular world and it needing to be resettled from outside."

"Humans remain much the same as ever, to the disappointment of transhumanists. The most visible structural differences from 2017 humanity lie in the form of higher radiation/toxin tolerance, 50% longer lifespans even sans midtek/hitek medical support and being somewhat more attractive[1] in general than 2017 humans. Besides these changes there are many new phenotypes for human appearence that didn't exist back on old earth -- selection pressures on various worlds, mixing of colony populations and genetic engineering for looks or far less common for utility reasons."

(11-06-2023, 04:08 AM)Hamamelis Wrote: [ -> ]How would a nuclear explosion in space produce a kinetic impulse without oxygen?

The wikipedo article is very interesting. The nuclear reaction is self-contained, and the mass of the charge vaporizes into plasma so no external medium is needed to transmit the force. The reaction mass can be shaped to focus the plasma along the axis of acceleration, to mitigate efficiency lost by detonating the charge externally. And there were even design proposals for internal detonation (!)

(11-06-2023, 04:08 AM)Hamamelis Wrote: [ -> ]I also remembered a wiki-article that might be of interest to anybody who wants to imagine what a colonised solar system might look like in practice: ITN

Imagine your colony ship getting deflected slightly outside of the stable geodesic by an asteroid, missing the next Lagrange point, and then whanging into the interstellar void forever...

(11-06-2023, 04:08 AM)Hamamelis Wrote: [ -> ]In short, there are ways to move around the solar system with almost no energy investment, but it would take a very long time ("generations" as the article says). While this is impractical for moving materials or people, it would be very practical to move large structures - for example, I like to imagine that large space stations, like a hydrogen syphoning platform destined for Jupiter, could be begun to built at a point where infrastructure for such a project is available, but then over the course of the construction be moved to its destination. 
All this just to make another example of how temporal and spatial scales of space colonisation are not tailored to us, and that we might have to adapt to that in ways that we never have adapted to anything.

True space colonisation is to 21st century man what the Great Pyramids of Gizeh are to a Hadza hunter-gatherer. We can grasp the rough concept, we can point to analogues in our own experiences, but we are far removed from achieving it.

This has a direct parallel in those cathedrals that took 800 years to build. Arguably the coolest part of any stellar-scale scifi concept or setting is the religious structures that would be necessary to coordinate such projects across vast eons of spacetime, and the resulting fallout of schisms and heresies.

See: Dune (Bene Gesserit), Foundation (Foundation), Warhammer 40k (Imperium), Halo (Covenant), BattleTech (Word of Blake), SMAC (all factions, most explicitly the Lord's Believers, Progenitors, and Cult of Planet), Alien/Prometheus (I've always assumed this franchise is trash outside of Alien but I'm sure it's in there).

Seculars need not apply, only a faith that commands fanatical devotion can build space pyramids. On the topic of Halo per Anthony's excellent videos, this is where I gripe with a detail of Bungie's implementation of Halo's thesis: specifically, that the UN of all organizations lacks coordination around anything except for international looting, and will be totally defunct by the year 21XX, let alone be able to facilitate the prosecution of heroic Aryan crusade against the ravaging hordes of Xeno Islam. Logic rests on axioms, rationality requires principles, and so in reality the hyperrational vision of perpetual total war symbolized in Master Chief depends on an even higher octane distillation of fanaticism. Master Chief's spiritual sword must be sharper than that of the Covenent religion, maybe UNSC actually stands for Ultra Nazi Space Command...

P.S. Above is why the most futuristic musical instrument of all time is the Sequential Circuits Prophet-5

Hamamelis Wrote:>economically  unfeasible
Yes, and no. Earth colonisation only got started because states (ie. monarchs) put a lot of venture capital in. If you'd have left it to the free market, there would have been barely any expeditions. The economic potential of "space", which is a broad way of describing the economic potential of other celestial bodies, is extremely high. The question is not "can we make it work now" (we can't), but the question is, can we divert enough ressources to make it work in a near enough future. Near enough would mean so close in time that people who are alive can imagine their descendants profitting. I'd say, somewhere between 100-200 years is the timeframe for the whole project - which is roughly the timeframe for the rise and fall of a legacy, so that should work in my opinion.

The colonization of the United States was almost entirely the result of private enterprises looking for a profit. As were the European colonial ventures in Asia.

Quote:Further, the "only ressource" makes it sound like metals are some minor contribution to an economy, and not its backbone. With mostly robots in space, metals are the most important thing to gain by far. The other ressource to be gained is so much of the lower atomic mass elements that they become as cheap as can get. I suspect it's likely that the largest cost associated with space ship fuel will be the cost of transporting it to "gas stations".

The larger the craft you send the more expensive it is to launch. Unless you're suggesting that someone is going to somehow force an asteroid into colliding with the Earth (this is not a very good idea) it's never going to be profitable.


All of this is irrelevant, however. The true problem with space exploration isn't its (non-existent) practicality but the underlying assumptions that encourage the fantasy. We're never running out of space for people to live: the Earth is enormous and largely sparsely inhabited, and we'll be lucky if we can sustain what population we have after the WEF get around to enacting their African quarantine. Neither are we going to run out of food. Rare elements are largely recyclable and can be sustained indefinitely by reducing consumption with simple price incentives (you're not going to be buying a new iPhone every two years if they cost $10,000) - many of them aren't even necessary for sustained economic productivity and go to luxury goods.

Most importantly: it's gay. We don't need more people spread out over more space; we need better people. And we're not going to get that by enslaving them under some Martian dome where Elon Musk gets to control how much light you get to have or your living pod's daily oxygen ration.

calico Wrote:Most importantly: it's gay. We don't need more people spread out over more space; we need better people. And we're not going to get that by enslaving them under some Martian dome where Elon Musk gets to control how much light you get to have or your living pod's daily oxygen ration.

Never liked this take I think there's a much sounder argument that the history of space travel and aviation which it grew out of shows how we have lost a whole society made up and run by better people. You can trace this development of Western Civilization like a arc,







From gentlemen writing down theories in notebooks and testing them which goes on to inspire more gentlemen(And eventually the minds of millions) and inventions never before seen the rise of great institutions be they corporate or government to tame innovate and push the bounds of this new branch of art(In the Ancient Greek sense)  to redoing the Apollo program, because well as far as I can tell the reasoning is they did not bring a woman along last time.  A society that can only redo the ceiling build by past people. Deep down, even in the most still and mundane r/space user, is a fear of this and desire to get out from it. Robert Zubrin, in his book The Case For Mars which I recommend to anyone who want's well a case for Mars-What I wish to highlight is in the last chapter and the epilogue Zubrin lays out what are his and I believe for many others their actual reasoning for the need for space travel at our point in time.

Chapter 10 The View From Earth Wrote:When I was a boy, I used to read a lot of classical history. I still remember quite well one speech that Pericles, the Athenian leader, gave for the Athenian war dead at the end of the second year of Athens desperate struggle with Sparta. To the assembled relatives he intoned: These men, your sons and husbands,are dead—and I understand you are sad. But look at what they died for:They died for Athens. And what is that, but a city which uniquely calls upon its people to be citizens, not subjects; which celebrates philosophy, science, and reason; and which allows its people to live well while exercising both their duty and right to be fully human. And then Pericles opined: Future ages will wonder at us, even as the present age wonders at us now. Although Athens would soon be destroyed as a major power, Pericles was correct: It's been over two thousand years and despite all the technological and literary accomplishments since, people wonder at her still. Well, if we do our job and open up the first new world for humanity on Mars, then two thousand years from now, there will probably be people living not only on Earth and Mars, but on numerous other planets throughout this region of our galaxy. Those people will have technologies and abilities that would seem as magical to us as ours would to a resident of Periclean Athens. Yet, despite all their wondrous powers, if we are the people who make it possible, then those billions of advanced beings living on worlds orbiting multitudes of civilized stars will look back at our time, and they will wonder at us.

Epilogue Wrote:Currently we see around us an ever more apparent loss of vigor of our society: increasing fixity of the power structure and bureaucratization of all levels of life; impotence of political institutions to carry off great projects; the proliferation of regulations affecting all aspects of public, private, and commercial life; the spread of irrationalism; the banalization of popular culture; the loss of willingness by individuals to take
risks, to fend for themselves or think for themselves; economic stagnation and decline; the deceleration of the rate of technological innovation. . . .Everywhere you look, the writing is on the wall.
Without a frontier from which to breathe new life, the spirit that
gave rise to the progressive humanistic culture that America has represented for the past two centuries is fading. The issue is not just one of national loss—human progress needs a vanguard, and no replacement is in sight.
The creation of a new frontier thus presents itself as America's and
humanity's greatest social need. Nothing is more important: Apply
what palliatives you will, without a frontier to grow in, not only American society, but the entire global civilization based upon values of humanism, science, and progress will ultimately die.
I believe that humanity's new frontier can only be on Mars.
But why not on Earth, under the oceans or in a remote region such
as Antarctica? It is true that settlements on or under the sea or in
Antarctica are entirely possible, and their establishment and access
would be much easier than that of Martian colonies. Nevertheless, at this point in history such terrestrial developments cannot meet an essential requirement for a frontier—to wit, they are insufficiently remote to allow for the free development of a new society. In this day and age, with modern terrestrial communication and transportation systems, no matter how remote or hostile the spot on Earth, the cops are too close. If people are to have the dignity that comes with making their own world, they must be free of the old. Mars has what it takes. It's far enough away to free its colonists from intellectual or cultural domination by the old world, and unlike the Moon, rich enough in resources to give birth to a new branch of human civilization. As we've seen, though the Red Planet may appear at first glance to be frozen desert, it harbors resources in abundance
that can enable the creation of an advanced technological civilization. Mars is remote and can be settled. The fact that Mars can be settled and altered defines it as the New World that can create the basis for a positive future for terrestrial humanity for the next several centuries.

Now of course you can argue, this is wrongheaded in various ways, I would like you see your thoughts on this Calico beyond the Musk Marsville company towns snark and the economic argument(Which I feel most space advocates as it were do concede and then go, wouldn't it be cooler to put surplus tax money into it than the other stuff?). It's quite clearly one of the things pulling on the world's leading launch provider if his recent sharing of colorful opinions is anything to go by.

calico Wrote:The colonization of the United States was almost entirely the result of private enterprises looking for a profit. As were the European colonial ventures in Asia.

Exactly right - but before that, they were kickstarted by venture capital funded explorations, most of which came from monarchs.

Quote:The larger the craft you send the more expensive it is to launch. Unless you're suggesting that someone is going to somehow force an asteroid into colliding with the Earth (this is not a very good idea) it's never going to be profitable.

As I pointed out in an earlier post, the most probable scenario in which a lot of material is being moved around the solar system by us would be one in which expensive ground-to-orbit launches are rare. Moving an asteroid into another orbit would probably be too expensive, because most of the material on the asteroid is going to be useless.

Quote:All of this is irrelevant, however. The true problem ... the underlying assumptions that encourage the fantasy. ...
Most importantly: it's gay. We don't need more people spread out over more space; we need better people.

Most of this is adressed in posts above, as far as my ideas are concerned. Space colonisation will probably not primarily serve to expand living space for flesh-and-blood humans, at least not in the time frame in which I want to speculate.
It sounds like you're making the same argument as that sheboon on the famous picture: "We have problems here on Earth, why spend money on space". For one, space colonisation is an endeveaour of human excellence and should be pursued in any case. Further, the technological progress achieved in these matters requires a high-tech industry that can only be achieved in a state that has its affairs in order, especially as concerns human capital.

NuclearAbsolutist Wrote:Now of course you can argue, this is wrongheaded in various ways, I would like you see your thoughts on this Calico beyond the Musk Marsville company towns snark and the economic argument(Which I feel most space advocates as it were do concede and then go, wouldn't it be cooler to put surplus tax money into it than the other stuff?). It's quite clearly one of the things pulling on the world's leading launch provider if his recent sharing of colorful opinions is anything to go by.

You've really pinged me on this Nuke. I sincerely believe that the concept of space exploration is an abrogation of the true purpose of Man and have worked my way back from this. But I do, sincerely, believe the fantasy of space is an enormous copout by those who refuse to deal with the important and difficult issues. 

I don't want more people in the world, spread amongst the cosmos. I want better people. We've already made significant progress in this. Only 500 years ago the United States was inhabited by ever-warmongering tribes of cannibals. Only a fraction of the world could read as little as a century ago. Famine was an ever-present threat until only decades ago.

We live in very dark times at the moment. Possibly the darkest in human history. We've managed to overcome material scarcity; now we've come into an age of nihilism. No one even wants to have children anymore in the "West." We can't run to Mars from this. We have to fix it. We aren't the middlemen of history, we're the first Christians hiding in the catacombs. 

They're going to try to ruin it all and attempt to enslave us under their causes (sodomy, infinite population, etc.) but they're morons. We're going to win. They're going to fuck up. They already think things such as nuclear war are impossible. Even in the short time the United States thinks their fleets are invincible (they're not). That's an era defining event right there when one sinks.

Our intellectual descendants are going to emerge in the irradiated world and create a place worth living in. We just have to carry that torch for another 40-60 years each. That's not that long. A human life span isn't that long. You can do it. We're going to win. Everyone is going to win. We'll drag them kicking and screaming to a better world.

@Hamamelis

You are coping. It's one thing to want to expend resources in space like Nuke for the sake of it, but to say these things are practical is retarded.

NuclearAbsolutist Wrote:Now of course you can argue, this is wrongheaded in various ways, I would like you see your thoughts on this Calico beyond the Musk Marsville company towns snark and the economic argument(Which I feel most space advocates as it were do concede and then go, wouldn't it be cooler to put surplus tax money into it than the other stuff?). It's quite clearly one of the things pulling on the world's leading launch provider if his recent sharing of colorful opinions is anything to go by.

A colony on Mars is going to be dependent on importing technology from Earth just to survive. This wasn't true of the European settlements in the New World. How could a Martian colony be independent if it would be relying on economic subsidies from Earth?

Zubrin's arguments for the economic viability of a Mars colony either hinge on raw resource extraction or assume the existence of a large independent society. The problem is how do you get from the former to the latter. Even if extraterrestrial mining required a human presence in space, it's difficult to make the case it would be a very large one.

Another issue Zubrin doesn't adequately address is if it is even possible to raise healthy human children in a reduced-gravity environment. It has never been done yet and if it isn't possible then a Mars colony would require expensive artificial gravity solutions just to be able to reproduce its own population.

Dr. Joseph Parker - Human Development in Low Gravity - 21st Annual Mars Society Convention

We would then find ourselves having to choose between surface (difficult artificial gravity, but easy access to matter for radiation shielding, farming) and orbital (easier artificial gravity but matter has to come from somewhere else) habitats .

Human colonization of space in the near future will likely depend on either technological breakthroughs that make living in space much easier or the discovery of an as-yet unknown economic incentive that requires the presence of large numbers of people.

It seems utterly chimerical to talk about space at this time. We've lost that lovin' feeling.

Man is adapted for everywhere and nowhere. Uniquely among creatures, everywhere he can survive, but nowhere is he perfectly at ease. But this only applies to this planet. I don't think man is able to leave it, however, without turning into a wretch propped up by nanobots and pharmaceuticals, and worst of all, therapy — lest he cease to be man as such. We could maybe wormhole to a similar planet and skip over the aeons of travel time, but I'm not sure for what useful purpose besides gathering resources. But for living and producing art? Everything about the species is enmeshed in this solar system and its rhythms. In a realistic sense, certainly the logical destiny of man in a vacuum, of Faustian man, must be 'out there,' but the biological results would be too hideous to be worthwhile in my opinion. We aren't supposed to colonize space. God made a vast universe so that it would appear as a complete system with fixed stars to guide man on the seas. I personally think the species will end by God's hand before it should advance towards meaningful spacefaring ability.

obscurefish Wrote:Another issue Zubrin doesn't adequately address is if it is even possible to raise healthy human children in a reduced-gravity environment. It has never been done yet and if it isn't possible then a Mars colony would require expensive artificial gravity solutions just to be able to reproduce its own population.

This was exactly the kind of argument I was thinking of as a counter point. Zubrin's tendency of space as Gat's Gulch seems a bit lost considering the simple fact the issue of gravity was/has(Although I hear some there was a promising experiment with mice done recently on the ISS) not even really broached in the decades space flight has been around  in favor of sticking with what was found out as the foundation for wheel spinning, bureaucratic domain building  and sometimes genuinely new science and exploration when the stars lined up right. Such a condition which is not localized but spread throughout society, clearly wilts any chance of serious efforts towards rocket science. I'll be forthright with my opinion  as I did not really expound on it earlier with the current status quo, Zurbin's and his kinds efforts while well meaning, is at best a illumination of rot with proposals to clear it a way grasping and muddled from only a limited leaving of the mental cages put on us by the status quo. In my view, its obvious that much will have to be straightened out before we can even begin to turn the old proposals and equations dreamed up over the years into reality along with so much else of the future that has been denied.

Mass extraterrestrial settlement may or may not be possible or a good idea.  But the amount of human in space is obviously way lower than it could be.  I think that Ayn Rand types are delusional and Galt's Lagrange Point is just another example.  But for purely scientific/curiosity reasons there should be at least a few dozen astronauts doing things like lunar sample returns.  It doesn't happen because space programs are underfunded, because governments are wasting money on the spic-nig cycle and boomer welfare.  There's a close analogy imo to the failure of the Ming Chinese to initiate the Age of Exploration.

The New World wasn't suddenly settled en masse.  There were generations of marginal economic activity (for example fishing off the New England coast, which is how Sasquatch could speak English) before such settlement occurred.  We should expect the same thing in space: some scientific and dick-waving missions, then economic exploitation, then maybe mass settlement or long-term terraforming.  Maybe these later steps are physically impossible, but no one has done the work even to determine this.  The Apollo program cost $178 billion in 2022 over ten years -- USG spend $482 on student loans just last year.  They're not even trying!