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Let's Colonize Titan

blogs.scientificamerican.com

291–300 of 508 posts

Re: Let's Colonize Titan

#291
post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The trouble there is that, in order to attenuate high-energy radiation like the cosmic rays under discussion, you need something that's either extremely dense or extremely thick, and ideally both - dense so a speeding particle is more likely to hit it instead of zipping past between the atoms, thick so that Bremsstrahlung X-rays get absorbed before they reach human tissue susceptible to ionization injury. Both of the…

I'm completely out of my depth here, but couldn't we develop some kind of force field to do this? I'm thinking something along the lines of a Faraday cage, but for the GCRs. Is anyone researching this line of thought?

A magnetic field (Van Allen belt, or analog on other bodies) deflects lighter charged particles better than heavier ones (with a greater mass-to-charge ration). E.g. - helium ions (alpha particles) vs iron nuclei as mentioned in the article.

Otherwise, pure mass over your head is the best defense.

Re: Let's Colonize Titan

#292
post #57

Alright, so currently we can't even predict how bad osteoporosis becomes after a flight to Mars (will astronauts break their hips on the first step out of landing module?), what would radiation exposure outside Earth's magnetosphere do to our bodies, yet we should hurry up to Titan. Currently even human space flight to Mars is a pipe dream, our practical knowledge constructing vehicles capable of reaching Moon and su…

To add to your list: the moonshot cost 4% of the US GDP, and it only got a couple of men to the moon in a tiny box - far from a self-sufficient colony seed.

Re: Let's Colonize Titan

#293
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.

> One requires massive social and economic change. The other requires sending a limited number of people to another part of the solar system.

Do social and economic factors magically not apply to people who colonize the solar system? Seems to me you now have 2 problems.

Re: Let's Colonize Titan

#294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm wondering how contaminated are raw materials on planets without a solid magnetosphere. Could it be that most of the water out there is too radio-active for consumption?

Things get contaminated by radioactive material, not by radiation exposure [0]. And of course obligatory xkcd [1]. [0] https://www.mirion.com/introduction-to-radiation-safety/radi... [1] https://what-if.xkcd.com/29/

So, your biggest problem in a reactor cooling pool is "lead poisoning", eh? :-)

Anyway, worth pointing out that cosmic rays are little groups of neutrons (and adjoining protons). I don't know about the half life of the resulting products, though, or how often a heavy nucleus collides with another nucleus, vs simply bashing through electron bonds.

Re: Let's Colonize Titan

#295
post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are right, but in this case my friends are a pretty good sample of the over-all population. I live in Sweden, where 10% of the population is vegetarian: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vegetarianism_by_country . This seems to be a growing trend as well, also elsewhere: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/food-and-drink/news/number-of-veg... .

Sweden is not the whole world.

Your point being?

Re: Let's Colonize Titan

#296
I appreciate that the article points out at the end: "There is no quick way to move off the Earth. We will have to solve our problems here."

Solving the climate change and other ecological issues we face here is surely easier than colonizing other planetary bodies.

Re: Let's Colonize Titan

#297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course. When I find people who are truthful enough to be able to pursue the line of questions that could lead them to having to abandon their existing knowledge, I can guide them to see the world by making their questions concrete enough, and then helping them to confirm them. But those people are the exception. When you observe me doing this on the internet, most people can't understand what I say, much less have…

Paranoid delusions?

Rationalizations of psychological buffering?

Re: Let's Colonize Titan

#298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I hope I did not imply that they were. I only meant to say that the social movements that youth were involved in during the 60's and 70's were far more widespread (and much more radical) than those of today. Because of that, I really don't hold much hope in today's youth having much more of a transformative aspect on society than the youth of the 60's and 70's did, and even that was quite limited. My greatest hope fo…

> the social movements that youth were involved in during the 60's and 70's were far more widespread (and much more radical) than those of today

I am not sure that is the case. Contrast popular opposition to the Vietnam war, which didn't become widespread until many years into the conflict, with the opposition to the war in Iraq, where protests drew hundreds of thousands of people even before the actual invasion.

Re: Let's Colonize Titan

#299
post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The surface of the moon is dramatically more hostile than the surface of Mars by every metric, and it's almost as hard to get to the moon as it is to get to Mars. Building a long term permanent colony on the moon would be far more difficult than doing so on Mars. As long as you can manage the travel, Mars is by far the more desirable target for colonization, both short term and long term. Elon Musk believes that his…

Can you give some examples for how the moon is more hostile? I've always thought that for both you need a pressure suit but that the temps and radiation numbers were similar? Sure it's 21 days of hot then 21 days of cold instead of 24.5 hours but that seems much easier to deal with than the communications delay and travel times?

The long days + nights pose problems beyond just temperatures. It means having to store a lot of energy to deal with the long nights, meaning either big batteries (heavy and hard to get out of Earth's gravity well) or nuclear reactors (riddled with political issues). The 24.5 hour days on Mars can easily be handled with small batteries, or if need be power generated by fuel extracted on Mars.

Gravity on the moon is also a big issue for long term habitation. It's only 16.7% of Earth's gravity, which is a far cry from Mars' 40% and is much more likely to cause physiological issues with the human body. 40% gravity may be enough for negative effects to be mostly offset by exercise, but 16.7% is much more doubtful. Crews would likely need to be regularly cycled, making it impossible for anybody to live on the moon permanently.

The surface of the moon is exposed to much higher levels of radiation by two counts: first, it's closer to the sun, and two, it has no atmosphere. Mars' surface radiation is a good deal lower thanks to extra distance and its atmosphere, as thin as it is, cuts down on that number significantly. Furthermore, with 24.5 hour days there are frequent breaks from exposure to solar radiation whereas moon colonists would be faced with 21 days of high exposure followed by 21 days of low exposure.

There's also the matter of resources. Raw material is both far more plentiful and more accessible on Mars; there's an atmosphere to pull gases from for oxygen and fuel and entire lakes of frozen water on Mars, whereas moon settlers would need to use expensive, complicated, and failure-prone machinery to process regolith. There are craters with some frozen water on the moon, but relying on those greatly limits the number of prospective colonization sites and will eventually be exhausted if population counts rise from outpost numbers to something more closely resembling a permanent colony.

There are other factors as well, but these four are some of the largest.

Re: Let's Colonize Titan

#300
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…

> If we re-distribute our wealth, population growth will subside. I don't get this argument. People want to fuck and reproduce, and the next generation will contain the genes of precisely the people who most want to, and so on. Something needs to check this other than wishful thinking.

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