Yes, we have most of the tech needed to do this. We can do fantastic things with our sciences. We have plans for inflatable moonbases, geodesic martian cities, and there's even a floating venusian city in the concept stage. We can probably tow in asteroids and create living spaces in them. However…
Humanity still isn't ready. I don't think we're "mature" enough to go out into space without really messing things up. We're still fighting wars over religion, two bit dictators and other such governments keep people under their heel/thumb, and… well… there's all that space junk we left up in the atmosphere that we haven't tried to clean up yet.
What do you think of all this?
Oh.. and if this thread doesn't belong here, please move it. :)
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Comic Talk and General Discussion *
Do you think Humanity is ready to leave Earth and colonize other worlds (and outer space in general)?
Can't say that I fully agree with us being able to leave Earth and colonize like crazy, just like that.
There's one thing that's still inhibiting us, technologically. The trouble of overcoming Earth's gravity. We need to spend huge amounts of fuel, just to get few kilos into orbit. Most of the weight that the rockets and those shuttles start with is just the fuel they need to burn to get up there. We're having a hard time, just building that ISS space station and that's years behind schedule.
If we can build an space elevator, then things would rapidly change. We could send up larger payloads, more frequently and at a much cheaper cost. We could construct orbital dry docks and build spaceships in orbit that would never need to land.
Second factor is time. It can take months to travel to Mars alone. Going further then that could easily be a year long trip. If something comes up, then help would be far away. Early established colonies, like those that have been hypothesized on Mars would need a large quantity of supplies to maintain themselves at first, depending on the amount of people that would be living there.
Naturally if a space elevator could be built on Earth than a similar elevator could be built on the moon and on Mars for the fraction of the cost (due to the lower gravity on those planets). That would mean that supplies could be taken cared of with 2-3 ships that are traveling between the stations that are anchored to those elevators.
I always envisioned that if a successful Mars colony would ever constructed, it would probably declare independence from Earth the moment it becomes fully self sufficient.
I don't think we're "mature" enough to go out into space without really messing things up.
You're not going to mars until you've tidied your rooms and that's final.
We're still fighting wars over religion, two bit dictators and other such governments keep people under their heel/thumb, and… well
Don't forget, if it wasn't for that kind of immature nonesense, we wouldn't have had the space race and we wouldn't have set foot on the moon in the first place.
If we have the capability to set out into space, then we're ready. Will we mess up space? Of course we will, even if we wait a thousand years. One day the cosmos will be an infinity of burger bars and timeshare apartments, but we have a duty to go because there's probably nobody else out there and if something happens to earth tomorrow, then it's all just wasted potential and cold dead space.
We don't need a moon elevator by the way - it doesn't take much to break free of the moons gravitational pull, which is what makes it the perfect staging post for our space exploration. If they can find any water up there, we're off!
We don't need a moon elevator by the way - it doesn't take much to break free of the moons gravitational pull, which is what makes it the perfect staging post for our space exploration.True. I just mentioned it because I remember them talking about making an el-cheapo one one the moon, if they ever perfect the technology and build one for Earth. Then they could just design a moon ferry that would never need to land.
if doing something was based on maturity, more than likely i'd still be living with my mother, who would be living with her mother. who wasn't living with her mother because she's dead.
i think maturity comes thru experience. if people think they can act a certain way, as long as they get away with it, they will continue to act that way. we wont change until change is forced upon us.
If we have a safe practical means to colonize the moon or mars, I say go for it. Not like anyone else is using them. "A person is smart. People are stupid" and they always will be, so like Ironscarf said, if we can go up there we should. Might as well screw up now so we can try to fix it sooner.
I don't think we should fuck with the moon, it controls so many subtle things about our planet and even ourselves and animals that it should be a crime to crap it up.
Of course the earth controls even more about ourselves and most people still treat it like a perpetual toilet. :/ We should be spending those theoretical gazillions on making some giant vacuum/filter to suck up pollution and trash into a giant ball to launch into space.
That's just about as crazy as colonizing on mars i guess lol!
I don't think we should fuck with the moon, it controls so many subtle things about our planet and even ourselves and animals that it should be a crime to crap it up.
lol@ the moon ? it's just a big rock , it provides gravity for the tides and light for some animals that like to hunt at night . i dont know how we could realisticaly make a noticeable change to those things the moon provides unless we really mined the hell out of it or just blew it up . it seems infinitly less of a crime to damage a big dead rock than this rock we live on that has life on every square centimeter and tons of stuff we haven't even discovered yet
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wut people should really be reserching is how to use the quantum physics to tunnel into the fourth dimension so we can fold space and travel without moving , then we could creat whole alternate 3 dimensional universes to colonize and be the gods of those universes, maybe even meet the freeks that built our universe ! now wut abut thta ?
We don't really have the tech for this at all. I mean, theoretically, we can make a moon base… something like the ISS only bigger and… on the moon, but how the hell can we explore other planets effectively when our methods of travel are still rocket-propulsion based and our methods of communication electromagnetic?
A Mars mission would take years and would be so ridiculously risky.
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wut people should really be reserching is how to use the quantum physics to tunnel into the fourth dimension so we can fold space and travel without moving , then we could creat whole alternate 3 dimensional universes to colonize and be the gods of those universes, maybe even meet the freeks that built our universe ! now wut abut thta ?
we have a current theory on that. it involves converting the entire planet of jupiter into pure energy.
we then put a bubble around us and have space move around us.
however that's just 1 trip. 1 direction, for who knows how far? and apparently according to someone elses theory on the same subject, actually using that much energy would open a black hole right in the middle of the solar system.
so you better put dna and cloning machines on the ship, because you dont wanna risk the entire human race on either end of the travel….
http://www.space.com/businesstechnology/080813-tw-warp-speed.html
Let's see how solar sail technology turns out first before we start talking about colonizing deep space. Then again, people say that solar sails would likely only work in theory so….yeah, we're not ready.
(edit: Hmmm, just read up, and it seems solar sails would be best used for near earth missions.)
Interestingly enough, I almost made an entire comic strip that dealt with this very issue. I didn't though, as I ran into a fundamental flaw in my story: There's currently no need to travel such a ridiculous distance and start a new civilization and have it work with earth, or to visit deep space.
lol@ the moon ? it's just a big rock , it provides gravity for the tides and light for some animals that like to hunt at night . i dont know how we could realisticaly make a noticeable change to those things the moon provides unless we really mined the hell out of it or just blew it up
Blowing up the moon sounds like a great idea~!
To clear up a few things:
It's the moon's orbit and spin that effects elemental changes and weather on earth. Mining on the moon, or indeed colonizing it would not be harmful. There would have to be a sudden and drastic change that causes it's course to alter in order to effect anything major on Earth.
Likewise, if you were to blow the moon up, or even blow a big enough cunk up, the resulting storms would murder millions :)
EDIT: I should note I'm not a fuckin' astrologist and that I'm only assuming this is how things work, although it makes sense that it's corse and mass > evironmental changes.
When the time comes that tourism starts to become a viable option in space, they should build a base around the appolo 11 landing site just to piss of all the old geezers who claimed that the moon landing was a fake, as they were trolling all the forums in their youth.
When the time comes that tourism starts to become a viable option in space, they should build a base around the appolo 11 landing site just to piss of all the old geezers who claimed that the moon landing was a fake, as they were trolling all the forums in their youth.
they wont have to build around it if theres nothing there
vidWHHHhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhyyyyyyyyyyyy???!!! O_O
the moon… :(
I used to love that show. My fave episode was ablot the two rival strakers. It was a parody of that cycle competition move with Jeff Bridges (I think). The streak version was much better. :)
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The moon has a role to play in tides and the light affect nocturnal animals yeah. The tides aren't directly related to the moon though… The sun also has a pull on them, but the thing is that while the sun and the moon pull a bit here and there, what really moves the water is all that other mass of it all around the rest of the planet that isn't being similarly tugged a bit at the time. So while the sun and the moon have a small affect on the water it's magnified by the nature of the water itself and the way it coats the globe of the earth :)
You could mine up there without changing too much, but you'd probably be better off mining the asteroids and using the moon as a base to process them before sending them back to earth.
We need to play Spore to develop an understanding as a unity and grow up. We may be the smartest species on Earth, but that isn't saying a lot when you look at certain things. I think in time (maybe even before 2100 comes) we'll be able to move on farther into Space and act responsible to everything else. We haven't been very good to mother Earth, but we're improving!
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