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Saturn's largest moon may be the only place beyond Earth where humans could live

blogs.scientificamerican.com

341–350 of 393 posts

Re: Saturn's largest moon may be the only place beyond Earth where humans could live

#341
post #70

If you can you should check out the TV series Avenue 5. It’s a sci-fi comedy and whoever they hired to do their science is really knocking it out the park. Some of the true science I’ve seen in the shown: the ship is massive enough to have its own gravity. Objects that get lost in space don’t float away. They orbit the ship. They use passenger effluent as a cosmic radiation shield. And due to an anomaly they don’t ge…

I gotta disagree. The physics in the show is disappointingly cartoonish in my opinion. The ship is not massive enough for it's gravity to capture the, uh, various items in the orbit shown. Even the orbital mechanics of the delay are just a plot device.

The latest episode has people freezing solid after leaving through an airlock almost instantaneously- someone on earth survived a longer exposure to vacuum but at closer to room temperature in a suit failure.

Re: Saturn's largest moon may be the only place beyond Earth where humans could live

#342
post #70

If you can you should check out the TV series Avenue 5. It’s a sci-fi comedy and whoever they hired to do their science is really knocking it out the park. Some of the true science I’ve seen in the shown: the ship is massive enough to have its own gravity. Objects that get lost in space don’t float away. They orbit the ship. They use passenger effluent as a cosmic radiation shield. And due to an anomaly they don’t ge…

I watched the first 3-4 episodes. It was a polished show and the realistic take on science was a breath of fresh air, but it seemed like the story stopped going anywhere.

I’m a masochist - after eight episodes this is the most disappointing TV show ever based on creators previous work. It’s like an improv or stand up gone bad for five hours.

Re: Saturn's largest moon may be the only place beyond Earth where humans could live

#343

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And you'd mostly spend your life in bunkers underground That's okay for many people knowing they are in the forefront of humanity's interplanetary expansion. Also, probably whatever they do will enter the history books as epic heroic acts.

Well yes. Here on earth there are indeed many people who think they want that. Mars one proved at least that. But I am not so sure, if they will be also so happy on mars, if they really have to be underground allmost the whole time and teleoperate the robotic exploration and mining on the surface etc. For me the dark winter already is every year challenging. But being in a dark winter so to say forever, would not be…

The artificial sun is a solved problem. There are even commercially available products for that: https://www.coelux.com/

The problem with the winter that you stuck in your "small" house. If you create Cosco sized "open" space underground it won't be a problem for most of the people.

Re: Saturn's largest moon may be the only place beyond Earth where humans could live

#344

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One reason I'm bullish on humans being a stepping-stone to electronic/software life forms, is that we are ill-equipped in every way to meaningfully travel the universe: from short life spans, to radiation vulnerability, to the complexity of converting electrical energy into bio-available energy, to psychological effects of long journeys in cramped quarters. Software-life, on the other hand, can tailor its physical fo…

It's just difficult to implement something like this because we have no idea what consciousness actually is. I don't even know if we will ever find out.

More disturbing: if/when we reach the day when an AI told us, "I'm conscious, I have feelings, the lights are on, it is like something to be me": how would we know if that were actually the case?

There are people continually grinding on the Hard Problem, and seeking ways to measure whatever consciousness is; perhaps someday we'll have an empirical test.

If that day never arrives, it opens an interesting philosophical question: how important is it that the species that inherits the galaxy has the lights turned on? Is intelligence/complexity which lacks subjective experience still an inherent good? Who knows, maybe we could wind up with a benevolent AI network (akin to Iain Banks' Culture) who seeds and maintains biological life in their optimal planetary habitats, because for whatever reason, real consciousness only arises in nucleotide wetware.

Or: maybe that already happened, and our galactic AI is really really good at staying hidden. ;)

Re: Saturn's largest moon may be the only place beyond Earth where humans could live

#345

Everyone in the comments here debating the merits of Mars vs the Moon vs Titan seems to have missed the whole point of this article. The author is arguing that anywhere other than Titan is infeasible due to recent research suggesting that Galactic Cosmic Rays cause significant brain damage (not just increased risk of cancer). In fact, the article argues that the danger is so severe that even getting to Titan quickly…

Here (below) is one of the referenced papers from that article, which basically asserts that the worst case long-term scenario (solar minimum) would give about the same amount of dose that the mice had in the study in about two years in space. Of course, a solar event would give a lot more dose quickly, but that is the kind of thing one can have a shelter for. https://academic.oup.com/rpd/article/115/1-4/44/1600988 T…

I'd like to add some nuance to this discussion. It is important to note that accumulative dosages is very different from short duration dosages as well as that 300mSv whole body dosage for a human is drastically different than 300mSv whole body dosage for a mouse.

Also, according to the paper 50mSv showed no affect to cognitive performance. The paper notes that Brookhaven National Laboratory can supply dose rates between 5 and 25 cGy/min, so these dosages were given over very short timeframes. This matters.

So we have somewhere between 5mSv (over ~1 minute) having no effect and 30mSv (over 1-2mins) having a statistically significant decline in cognitive performance (they did measure activated microglia in 5mSv but note that Oxygen had a different effect than Titanium). So we can clearly see that mice, in the worst case, are recovering after 24 weeks. This means the body can repair itself. This is why it is important to talk about the timeframe that a dosage was received.

So as to the 20mSv that most European countries use as total yearly dosages 1) this is well below a statistically significant measure in cognitive decline 2) this dosage is over a year and not over a minute (also likely weighted to extremities, like hands, as opposed to total body). So comparing this to radiation worker dosages is not a great comparison.

As to space flight, there are actually a lot of new rad (pun intended) technologies being developed (I worked on some of these). The primary concern in solar radiation is from charged particles (mostly protons, then alpha). These are relatively easy to block (in comparison). A lot of concern now is currently with neutrons and high energy particles. Current technologies are frequently a big chunk of titanium, kevlar, and spectra/dyneema (UHMWPE). Plastics are rather good as neutron shields because of their hydrogen density. Many of these are now being doped (boron is a common one, anyone pushing gadolinium hasn't run simulations for the energy levels we are concerned about. Or plastics doped with metals, like titanium, to increase their effectiveness against charged particles). This is a big optimization problem where layer size and order are important variables. Dopants can become charged and reradiate, but this can also be beneficial. Incoming radiation energy also DRASTICALLY changes the equation, as higher energy particles "ignore" a lot of material (see snide comment about gadolinium and thermal neutrons). It is a complicated and challenging problem for anyone interested, but importantly, we are making major improvements.

P.S. if we were REALLY concerned, you can just surround your spaceship with a large body of water. Problem is that this is heavy and extremely expensive to transport in space. The problem isn't really about can we block radiation? but can we __cost/mass effectively__ block radiation?

Re: Saturn's largest moon may be the only place beyond Earth where humans could live

#346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are there so many ice comets avaiable? Also, would the temperature really go down and not be negated by the kinetic impact? Apart from that, more water probably helps, if we do not need that water more urgently on mars.

There are billions of comets available https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuiper_belt Then there is also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oort_cloud Don't worry - there is more than enough comets to bomb the Mars with all the future settlements. Muhaha

Good to know ... otherwise a possible future would involve hunting and waging war for the few ice comets ..

Re: Saturn's largest moon may be the only place beyond Earth where humans could live

#347

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well yes. Here on earth there are indeed many people who think they want that. Mars one proved at least that. But I am not so sure, if they will be also so happy on mars, if they really have to be underground allmost the whole time and teleoperate the robotic exploration and mining on the surface etc. For me the dark winter already is every year challenging. But being in a dark winter so to say forever, would not be…

The artificial sun is a solved problem. There are even commercially available products for that: https://www.coelux.com/ The problem with the winter that you stuck in your "small" house. If you create Cosco sized "open" space underground it won't be a problem for most of the people.

Those electric suns really did not convince me at all. I do not know if your linked product uses a new technology, but the ones I tried, I disliked and they could never replace the real sunlight for me.

And yes, I also meant the space problem. Open space underground might solve it for some people, but probably not for me. I would always feel like in a prison, if I cannot go outside and feel real wind. But humans are adoptable. Still, I suspect quite many, who think they want that, would probably go crazy, if they really would be stuck in a bunker forever.

Re: Saturn's largest moon may be the only place beyond Earth where humans could live

#348

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The distance would be mitigated with a 1g thrust drive. It would reduce the transit time between Earth and Mars to three days, with the ship accelerating to midpoint and decelerating from there. We just need a craft that can thrust that strength for three days straight.

A craft that can sustain a 1g thrust for three days straight is the most outlandish idea in this entire thread.

Maybe, but Phd's are thinking about it:

https://www.johndcook.com/blog/2012/08/30/flying-to-mars-in-...

and

https://www.skythisweek.info/constant1g.pdf

Re: Saturn's largest moon may be the only place beyond Earth where humans could live

#349

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's just difficult to implement something like this because we have no idea what consciousness actually is. I don't even know if we will ever find out.

More disturbing: if/when we reach the day when an AI told us, "I'm conscious, I have feelings, the lights are on, it is like something to be me": how would we know if that were actually the case? There are people continually grinding on the Hard Problem, and seeking ways to measure whatever consciousness is; perhaps someday we'll have an empirical test. If that day never arrives, it opens an interesting philosophical…

> More disturbing: if/when we reach the day when an AI told us, "I'm conscious, I have feelings, the lights are on, it is like something to be me": how would we know if that were actually the case?

Right, it could just be lying to us to gain sympathy while it makes lots of paper clips. Ex Machina was interesting in that the robot seemed to be very human, but was also manipulating the subject of the test. But yet again, it did seem like she was conscious.

Re: Saturn's largest moon may be the only place beyond Earth where humans could live

#350
OMG! It's full of fumes! All the times!

That is all i could think about when reading about the hydrocarbons. Imagine having to live in the all permeating STINK of a gas station, or worse (petro)chemical factory.

/me shudders

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