Futuof Humanity

How much actual work have either of these two done on space settlements? My guess: none.

The first one doesnt even seem to realize the free-space settlements are possible.

The second one doesnt seem to realize that Biosphere II stayed pretty close to closed for 13 months on the first try. Scientific and marketing flop, definitely, but pretty much an engineering success (how many of your projects worked for 13 months before failure on the first try?). Even the fact that they had to replenish the O2 proves that the system was in fact close to airtight.

The first settlements probably wont be far flung outposts. They will probably be quite close to Earth, probably LEO over the equator where radiation levels are low below 500-600 km, and will have frequent resupply from Earth. Economics will drive them towards greater independence and more closed eco-systems but the first settlements dont need that for survival. Like a human child, they will need help for quite some time, but eventually they will grow strong, head out further from Earth, and settle at least the solar system and arguably the galaxy.

See http://space.alglobus.net/papers/Easy.pdf for details

> On Aug 28, 2017, at 11:21 PM, sraj sraj99@... [spacesettlers] wrote:
>
> 1. Does humanity have a future beyond Earth?
> I think its a dangerous delusion to envisage mass emigration from Earth. Theres nowhere else in the solar system thats as comfortable as even the top of Everest or the South Pole. We must address the worlds problems here. Nevertheless, Id guess that by the next century, there will be groups of privately funded adventurers living on Mars and thereafter perhaps elsewhere in the solar system. We should surely wish these pioneer settlers good luck in using all the cyborg techniques and biotech to adapt to alien environments. Within a few centuries they will have become a new species: the posthuman era will have begun. Travel beyond the solar system is an enterprise for posthumansorganic or inorganic.
> Martin Rees, British cosmologist and astrophysicist
>
> 12. Will we ever colonize outer space?
> That depends on the definition of colonize. If landing robots qualifies, then weve already done it. If it means sending microbes from Earth and having them persist and maybe grow, then, unfortunately, its not unlikely that weve done that as wellpossibly on Mars with the Phoenix spacecraft and almost certainly inside the Curiosity rover, which carries a heat source and was not fully baked the way Viking had been.
> If it means having humans live elsewhere for a longer period of time, but not reproduce, then thats something that might happen within the next 50 years or so. (Even some limited degree of reproduction might be feasible, recognizing that primates will be primates.) But if the idea is to construct a self-sustaining environment where humans can persist indefinitely with only modest help from Earththe working definition of a colony, according to the various European colonies outside of Europethen Id say this is very far in the future, if its possible at all. We currently have a very inadequate understanding of how to build closed ecosystems that are robust to perturbation by introduced organisms or nonbiological events (Biosphere 2, for example), and I suspect that the contained ecosystem problem will turn out to be much more challenging than the vast majority of space colonization advocates realize. There are a wide range of technical problems to solve, another being air handling. We havent bothered to colonize areas underwater on Earth yet. Its far more challenging to colonize a place where theres hardly any atmosphere at all.
> Catharine A. Conley, NASA planetary protection officer
> https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/20-big-questions-about-the-future-of-humanity/
>

The first one doesnt even seem to realize the free-space settlements are possible.
The second one doesnt seem to realize that Biosphere II stayed pretty close to closed for 13 months on the first try. Scientific and marketing flop, definitely, but pretty much an engineering success (how many of your projects worked for 13 months before failure on the first try?). Even the fact that they had to replenish the O2 proves that the system was in fact close to airtight.
The first settlements probably wont be far flung outposts. They will probably be quite close to Earth, probably LEO over the equator where radiation levels are low below 500-600 km, and will have frequent resupply from Earth. Economics will drive them towards greater independence and more closed eco-systems but the first settlements dont need that for survival. Like a human child, they will need help for quite some time, but eventually they will grow strong, head out further from Earth, and settle at least the solar system and arguably the galaxy.
See
http://space.alglobus.net/papers/Easy.pdf
for details
On Aug 28, 2017, at 11:21 PM, sraj
sraj99@...
[spacesettlers] <
spacesettlers@yahoogroups.com
> wrote:
1. Does humanity have a future beyond Earth?
I think its a dangerous delusion to envisage mass emigration from Earth. Theres nowhere else in the solar system thats as comfortable as even the top of Everest or the South Pole. We must address the worlds problems here. Nevertheless, Id guess that by the next century, there will be groups of privately funded adventurers living on Mars and thereafter perhaps elsewhere in the solar system. We should surely wish these pioneer settlers good luck in using all the cyborg techniques and biotech to adapt to alien environments. Within a few centuries they will have become a new species: the posthuman era will have begun. Travel beyond the solar system is an enterprise for posthumansorganic or inorganic.
Martin Rees, British cosmologist and astrophysicist
12. Will we ever colonize outer space?
That depends on the definition of colonize. If landing robots qualifies, then weve already done it. If it means sending microbes from Earth and having them persist and maybe grow, then, unfortunately, its not unlikely that weve done that as wellpossibly on Mars with the Phoenix spacecraft and almost certainly inside the Curiosity rover, which carries a heat source and was not fully baked the way Viking had been.
If it means having humans live elsewhere for a longer period of time, but not reproduce, then thats something that might happen within the next 50 years or so. (Even some limited degree of reproduction might be feasible, recognizing that primates will be primates.) But if the idea is to construct a self-sustaining environment where humans can persist indefinitely with only modest help from Earththe working definition of a colony, according to the various European colonies outside of Europethen Id say this is very far in the future, if its possible at all. We currently have a very inadequate understanding of how to build closed ecosystems that are robust to perturbation by introduced organisms or nonbiological events (
Biosphere 2
, for example), and I suspect that the contained ecosystem problem will turn out to be much more challenging than the vast majority of space colonization advocates realize. There are a wide range of technical problems to solve, another being air handling. We havent bothered to colonize areas underwater on Earth yet. Its far more challenging to colonize a place where theres hardly any atmosphere at all.
Catharine A. Conley, NASA planetary protection officer
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/20-big-questions-about-the-future-of-humanity/