TimJames
3510
I have no dog in the fight, but I’m amused that they turned it into a hashtag and verb at the same time.
I guess one more problem to be added to the list of things that will make space colonisation difficult is the inevitability of micro-debris strikes on space workers. The equivalent of a construction worker is going to spend a lot of time exposed to micro-debris if they spend a few years working in orbit. We wont know for a while though, the entirety of spacewalk time humanity has completed can only measure in hundreds of hours, surely.
Cosmic radiation is going to be a lot worse too if you’re not “safely” located within a planet’s magnetosphere, the heliopause, or whatever.
I think a bigger problem with space colonization is that its the shittiest imaginable existence, and will therefore never happen beyond a few tourists that get bored after 90 minutes.
I guess the teenage kids might make it to four hours via a Netflix binge, but they’ll back out too when they see the toilet. “Uh, mom, I know dad was really excited about this, and the view is great! Can we go home now?”.
Guap
3515
Let’s say we find an asteroid made of pure gold or platinum. What exactly is the benefit of chopping away at it and hauling it back? What about if it’s U-235? What makes it worth it to go all the way there and bring it back? Does that do anything for humanity? Make us better somehow?
There’s wealth/resources in the solar system that will see people putting in 7 day 18 hour shifts and living 10 to a room because that’s what they are doing right now on ships/trawlers/farms/factories across the planet for shit wages.
The “being bored/its a hard life” argument doesnt really work if you’re not a lazy and comfortable Westerner
On Earth you can at least go for a walk. In space you can… treadmill.
There isnt infinite resources on Earth. Short of a mass culling the only future for humanity is in the stars.
Matt_W
3519
I’m skeptical of any space mining scheme that requires us to bring anything back down to the surface. I think that the only possible economic benefit to space mining is for construction in space. And probably in the near term (next couple of centuries), the most easily harvestable thing from space will be energy. Space has both solar energy and gravitational potential energy in abundance.
Short of some kind of breakthrough on propulsion I don’t see space mining being economically feasible for a very long time. It will cost more to get to the materials and get it back to Earth than the material is worth. Even just towing an asteroid to orbit to mine it, that’s tremendously complex and expensive.
Matt_W
3521
Or we learn how to manage our population and live sustainably. I’d counter and say there is no future for humanity in the stars. We’re not ever going to colonize the solar system, much less anywhere further afield. The obstacles are myriad and insurmountable, not least of which is that any non-Terran existence is going to be short and absolutely miserable.
Humanity’s future in space is another religion. Proven false, as we’ve had the ability to put people on the moon since 1969, and we haven’t done so because there’s no point.
People in the climate-change protests, with the sign that says “there is no planet B” have a better grasp on reality in my opinion.
Guap
3523
How the heck do you turn gravity into energy? Seems like there is plenty of gravity on earth.
Matt_W
3524
I’m having trouble finding a scholarly article on the subject, but the idea is to mine an asteroid for iron, cobalt, and/or nickel-rich nuggets and then use local materials to propel them down the gravity well sunward. They’ll accelerate as they near perihelion, and you station a kinetic energy collector there using a magnetic apparatus–kind of a linear electric generator. Then you beam the collected power back to earth.
There kind of are, just spread allover, including landfills and oceans, and mostly not worth the effort. Not enough to stop being conservationist (along with many other reasons), but we should be able to keep accessing (and recycling) more if we need to, as science and tech advances.
If we are responsible, which, well, might be a bigger pipe-dream than FTL.
Enidigm
3526
In an imaginary near future RTS game in my head, instead of Tiberium or gold, you mine landfills for resources.
schurem
3528
Haha that was excellent, thank you mang!
There you have it folks! Scott123 has foretold (with proof!) the entire future of the human race right here in this very thread.
