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Let's Colonize Titan

blogs.scientificamerican.com

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Re: Let's Colonize Titan

#251

Post by acchow »

paulryanrogers wrote: post #163
pavelrub wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes let's stop all scientific and technological progress which isn't directly related to achieving utopia on earth, until a hypothetical point in the future that will never come. Is everything you do and find important in life directly related to improving our ecosystem and eliminating nuclear stockpiles? Do you think it's ok to be interested, for example, in web development, but not in space colonization? Maybe inst…

If humans cannot live sustainably on Earth then what hope is there of existing in any form elsewhere?

Well, if the Earth really gets that bad (e.g. the entire surface is all water, no land; or extremely destructive weather events; or too dark because sunlight can't reach our surface), it might actually be easier to set up self-contained (bubble) cities on another planet than on earth itself.

But if you're talking about terraforming, then if we could terraform another planet we could probably re-terraform earth itself.

Re: Let's Colonize Titan

#252

Post by blueprint »

maxerickson wrote: post #247
blueprint wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Before we can have a conversation about this we have to establish how gravity is generated. If we don't, it'll be a bit of a waste of time. For the moment I can tell you that the circulation of gravity requires the ability the maintain a certain balance, and that balance has been broken.

Oh, I don't care about having the conversation or understanding why it is happening, I'm just curious what activity is the problem.

Then I think you've answered your own question.

Re: Let's Colonize Titan

#253

Post by maxerickson »

blueprint wrote: post #252
maxerickson wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh, I don't care about having the conversation or understanding why it is happening, I'm just curious what activity is the problem.

Then I think you've answered your own question.

So thinking is blocking the gravity from working right?

Re: Let's Colonize Titan

#254

Post by Noos »

incongruity wrote: post #216
banach wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that the pursuit of knowledge is a really good way to spend your time, but I do not like when simple solutions to real problems are sidelined in favor of the latest buzzword-oriented technology fetish. In times when the president-elect has announced that he is shutting down NASA's climate change research, ostensibly to fund space exploration, I think we need to remind ourselves that any work we chose to pursu…

Those "solutions" are only simple in theory, not in practice. Enacting that change would actually be exponentially harder than getting humans to Titan, IMHO. One requires massive social and economic change. The other requires sending a limited number of people to another part of the solar system. We roughly know how to do the latter but the former is on decidedly a longer timescale if it achievable at all.

I don't think we know how to do the latter, in terms of colonization. Our experience locally is that living in hazardous environments is not something human beings can endure long term. We'd be asking people to live in a place that combines the worst elements of submarine and Antarctic living, with no real way of responding to any difficulty at all, even through communication.

Lot of people assume magical science fairies will solve this via "terraforming" or some other science fiction only idea, but more likely space exploration will remain unmanned probes if just because we aren't going to send a generation of explorers to their deaths or eventual madness.

Re: Let's Colonize Titan

#255

Post by eli_gottlieb »

pavelrub wrote: post #159
banach wrote: post #106

I think that, before colonizing other planets, we should start by realizing that Earth can easily sustain human kind for the foreseeable future, given some pretty modest tweaks to our way of life (compared to "going multi-planetary" that is). If we start valuing quality over novelty, stop eating animal-based foods and re-organize to live closer to where we work, we can stop the consumption and that is taxing our ecos…

Yes let's stop all scientific and technological progress which isn't directly related to achieving utopia on earth, until a hypothetical point in the future that will never come. Is everything you do and find important in life directly related to improving our ecosystem and eliminating nuclear stockpiles? Do you think it's ok to be interested, for example, in web development, but not in space colonization? Maybe inst…

I'd like to live in a world where my grandchildren can live at all, so sustainability seems pretty damn important to me.

Re: Let's Colonize Titan

#256

Post by banach »

ferbivore wrote: post #197
banach wrote: post #106

I think that, before colonizing other planets, we should start by realizing that Earth can easily sustain human kind for the foreseeable future, given some pretty modest tweaks to our way of life (compared to "going multi-planetary" that is). If we start valuing quality over novelty, stop eating animal-based foods and re-organize to live closer to where we work, we can stop the consumption and that is taxing our ecos…

Do you seriously think that any of the following global political challenges: - convince everyone on Earth to implement changes that are bad for them, like not eating animal-based foods, with only the promise of "maybe in 200 years your descendants, should your line not be extinct by then, will benefit" as compensation - reorganise every single human settlement and/or social structure on Earth to put people closer to…

>Do you seriously think that any of the following global political challenges: > > - convince everyone on Earth to implement changes that are bad for them, like not eating animal-based foods, with only the promise of "maybe in 200 years your descendants, should your line not be extinct by then, will benefit" as compensation

Even if we assume that people are as self-centered as you portray them, eating meat is not necessarily good for you:

http://www.cancer.org/cancer/news/world-health-organization-...

> - reorganise every single human settlement and/or social structure on Earth to put people closer to their workplaces

Most of the world actually already lives like this. Yes, the urban sprawl of many American cities will have to go, but it can (and will) be done.

> - implement a global wealth redistribution scheme that doesn't start with North Korea conquering the planet through nuclear war

Such a system was implemented after WW2 (cf. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshall_Plan). Worked out pretty well.

> - successfully convince every NWS to destroy their nukes and institute a worldwide ban on nuclear weaponry

If we elect politicians who are more interested in cooperation than in sabre-rattling, and more interested in the problems of the people they represent than in the needs of the military-industrial complex, they will have few incentives for maintaining anything even remotely the size of the current stockpile. Great though it may be, we do not need an all-out ban on nuclear weapons to ensure our continued survival, only a (large) reduction in the size of the stockpiles. That not only makes sense from a survival perspective, but also economically.

> Are easier than the engineering challenge of building a colony on Titan? If yes, please let me into whatever politics-free, single world government utopia you're living in.

My lack of cynicism may be due to the fact that I live in Europe, where I can see more progress than stagnation in all of the areas you mention above. Given how close it was that a politician who advocated all of the above policies was elected as president of the USA, I think there is reason to be optimistic there as well.

Re: Let's Colonize Titan

#257

Post by sandworm101 »

banach wrote: post #106

I think that, before colonizing other planets, we should start by realizing that Earth can easily sustain human kind for the foreseeable future, given some pretty modest tweaks to our way of life (compared to "going multi-planetary" that is). If we start valuing quality over novelty, stop eating animal-based foods and re-organize to live closer to where we work, we can stop the consumption and that is taxing our ecos…

The very concept of colonization flies in the face of Utopian dreams. This isn't about sending our poor and huddled masses to colonize a new land. This is about investing gargantuan resources into a tiny band of elites. We are talking literally billions of dollars per person to get there, followed by maintenance costs on the order of millions of dollars per person-day.

A Titan colony wouldn't be self-sustaining for years, probably decades. That means we many investing massively in the maintenance of the elites on Titan. That isn't Utopia. That's elitism. (See every non-trek sci-fi ever written.)

Re: Let's Colonize Titan

#258

Post by eli_gottlieb »

pmoriarty wrote: post #179
banach wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think the issues that are putting Earth in danger are the result of some immutable, unfortunate human nature. I think they are the result of a system that could be changed as easily as it was put in place. Many of the pathologies of the modern society were consciously manufactured (c.f. "Propaganda" by Edward Bernays), and all we need to do is to realize this, and start changing things. Luckily, the young gen…

"Luckily, the young generation is far less bought into the current system, and I believe we will see a move to a saner way of life over the coming decades." I hope you're right, and don't want to say that we're doomed. But look at the 1960's and '70s: the young people of that time were far more committed to a radically different life than the young people of today -- and were so on a much larger scale, with the sense…

Actually, the overwhelming majority of Baby Boomers were never hippies in the first place.

Re: Let's Colonize Titan

#259

Post by Zigurd »

With the possible exception of underground colonies on Mars, it seems likelier, sooner, that humans will re-engineer themselves for long-duration space travel and life on other planets than we will engineer those planets to be livable for Earth-dwelling humans.

Re: Let's Colonize Titan

#260

Post by StreamBright »

There are lots of technical problems to be solved associated with space travel and colonising a new planet. SpaceX is trying to solve some of these but there are a lot of other problems not well know. Once we solved these we can move on to the more popular subjects like near light speed space travel.

The problems to be solved:

- how to reduce exposure to radiation (cosmic rays, GCRs) while traveling with a space ship

- how to reduce exposure to radiation coming from space while living on a planet like Mars not having a magnetosphere

"The health threat from cosmic rays is the danger posed by galactic cosmic rays and solar energetic particles to astronauts on interplanetary missions or any missions that venture through the Van-Allen Belts or outside the Earth's magnetosphere.[1][2] Galactic cosmic rays (GCRs) consist of high energy protons (85%), helium (14%) and other high energy nuclei (HZE ions).[1] Solar energetic particles consist primarily of protons accelerated by the Sun to high energies via proximity to solar flares and coronal mass ejections. They are one of the most important barriers standing in the way of plans for interplanetary travel by crewed spacecraft."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_threat_from_cosmic_rays

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