Exploring space should be a uniting purpose of humanity, but colonizing space, as humans live now, is just wildly, hilariously impractical. It would be orders of magnitude cheaper and easier to live at the bottom of the ocean, or under the antarctic ice sheet. And this is speaking as someone really into exotic rocketry and transcendental sci-fi.
As well as “farther future” but grounded Sci-Fi like Orion’s Arm, where humanity doesn’t really resemble its current form. And play KSP! The more you read and see, the more you realize “wow, sending humans through space is hard, and living there kinda doesn’t make sense right now.”
In making that attempt, we have to solve a lot of problems. How do we make a self-sustaining ecosystems where humans can live indefinitely? Can humans live that long in reduced gravity without issues? Can children be raised to healthy adulthood in reduced gravity? Is human pregnancy even possible there (probably is, but we don’t know that for sure)? Are there technologies or genetic engineering that we could use to solve the issues we encounter?
How do we mine asteroids? How do we manufacture things in zero gravity? How do we build the Internet to handle latency measured in minutes or hours or days?
These are all hard problems, but if they were easy, then they wouldn’t be interesting.
And I’d say the same for ocean colonies. That’s hard, too. Not quite as hard, but hard.
Colonization doesn’t make sense in light of what’s likely to come first. Artifical intelligence, mind uploading, extensive genetic engineering, programmable nanotech for fabrication, take your pick… All these are infinitely more reachable and cheaper than dedicating tons of resources to sustaining a squishy, fragile human bodies in space while the vast majority are still stuck on Earth due to economic constraints.
It’s just not economical until humans are so different that it doesn’t really resemble are Star Trek-ish visions of humans on space boats (eg they’re flying around in computers, AI are sent ahead to construct habitation, bodies are genetically engineered for survival in space, that sort of thing).
Again, I am not talking about research or the glory of stepping foot somewhere, but I just don’t see the point of trying to emulate a traditional human living in an environment where it’s so impractical.
I mean, I still think that having an operational moon-based spaceport is something we could see in our lifetime.
And as with all things concerning global affairs, it takes time and consistent pressure to overcome the lizard-brain us-vs-them mindsets that is inherent to our human political sphere. We’ve already grown to the point that we could take care of everyone on the planet, shuffling off the shackles of a scarcity-based economy which so severely hindered global human advancement in the past. I can only imagine what the combined efforts of the American, European, and Chinese economies/governments could accomplish if they put aside their differences, and embraced a true lasting partnership.
Also the website you gave is so incredibly interesting, I need to look at it more before I can appropriately sing its praises
I still think that having an operational moon-based spaceport
Depends what it’s used for, but yeah. But I think the human habitation would be extremely minimal, and it would be more of a utilitarian “midpoint” for deep-space missions and a research site rather than a place of extensive human habitation.
It’s a fictional universe in a wiki format (with some short stories), but based on hard science, and (IMO) a much more realistic idealized depiction of what future humanity could look like.
Two things:
That was kinda the dream after WWII, no?
Exploring space should be a uniting purpose of humanity, but colonizing space, as humans live now, is just wildly, hilariously impractical. It would be orders of magnitude cheaper and easier to live at the bottom of the ocean, or under the antarctic ice sheet. And this is speaking as someone really into exotic rocketry and transcendental sci-fi.
I’d recommend reading through Project Rho, if you’re interested: https://projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/
As well as “farther future” but grounded Sci-Fi like Orion’s Arm, where humanity doesn’t really resemble its current form. And play KSP! The more you read and see, the more you realize “wow, sending humans through space is hard, and living there kinda doesn’t make sense right now.”
Being hard is the point. (That’s what she said).
In making that attempt, we have to solve a lot of problems. How do we make a self-sustaining ecosystems where humans can live indefinitely? Can humans live that long in reduced gravity without issues? Can children be raised to healthy adulthood in reduced gravity? Is human pregnancy even possible there (probably is, but we don’t know that for sure)? Are there technologies or genetic engineering that we could use to solve the issues we encounter?
How do we mine asteroids? How do we manufacture things in zero gravity? How do we build the Internet to handle latency measured in minutes or hours or days?
These are all hard problems, but if they were easy, then they wouldn’t be interesting.
And I’d say the same for ocean colonies. That’s hard, too. Not quite as hard, but hard.
Colonization doesn’t make sense in light of what’s likely to come first. Artifical intelligence, mind uploading, extensive genetic engineering, programmable nanotech for fabrication, take your pick… All these are infinitely more reachable and cheaper than dedicating tons of resources to sustaining a squishy, fragile human bodies in space while the vast majority are still stuck on Earth due to economic constraints.
It’s just not economical until humans are so different that it doesn’t really resemble are Star Trek-ish visions of humans on space boats (eg they’re flying around in computers, AI are sent ahead to construct habitation, bodies are genetically engineered for survival in space, that sort of thing).
Again, I am not talking about research or the glory of stepping foot somewhere, but I just don’t see the point of trying to emulate a traditional human living in an environment where it’s so impractical.
I mean, I still think that having an operational moon-based spaceport is something we could see in our lifetime.
And as with all things concerning global affairs, it takes time and consistent pressure to overcome the lizard-brain us-vs-them mindsets that is inherent to our human political sphere. We’ve already grown to the point that we could take care of everyone on the planet, shuffling off the shackles of a scarcity-based economy which so severely hindered global human advancement in the past. I can only imagine what the combined efforts of the American, European, and Chinese economies/governments could accomplish if they put aside their differences, and embraced a true lasting partnership.
Also the website you gave is so incredibly interesting, I need to look at it more before I can appropriately sing its praises
Depends what it’s used for, but yeah. But I think the human habitation would be extremely minimal, and it would be more of a utilitarian “midpoint” for deep-space missions and a research site rather than a place of extensive human habitation.
Also read: https://www.orionsarm.com/xcms.php?r=oaeg-front
It’s a fictional universe in a wiki format (with some short stories), but based on hard science, and (IMO) a much more realistic idealized depiction of what future humanity could look like.