"What do we need from outer space?" Topic
22 Posts
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Stalkey and Co | 24 Apr 2020 6:49 p.m. PST |
OK, so I've read some posts here that say "we don't need anything from outer space". That may be true. Still, I am wondering if there is anything, metal, gas, anything at all, that is worth being in outer space for, except, well, more space. As in "space for people to roam out to". I can see people wanting to get away from it all, but why not colonize the ocean instead? For one thing, it has water, fish, and oxygen handy, so with proper technology you can eat, drink and breathe. Anyway, for those who want to theorize… What would make outer space economically viable to explore and colonize? I'm uncertain even a rare metal would be worth it. Rhodium? Californium 252? |
Toaster | 24 Apr 2020 7:05 p.m. PST |
Your average asteroid has as much metal as has been used in the entirety of human history and processing it in zero-G allows higher purity, also you can apparently easily create some really funky alloys in zero-G. People will be in space just as soon as someone figures out how to profit from the above. Robert |
Rudysnelson | 24 Apr 2020 7:50 p.m. PST |
All bodies in space contain raw materials that can be refined on earth. |
DyeHard | 24 Apr 2020 8:53 p.m. PST |
Here is one thing in space that is devilishly difficult to get on the surface: Helium-3 link |
Stryderg | 24 Apr 2020 9:24 p.m. PST |
If you're just looking for reasons to setup a few battles: Micro-G manufacturing opportunities on a space station Tourism on a space station. The kind of 'everything is legal here' tourism that you can't do planet-side. Di-lithium crystals Cheap and easy gas collection from giant planets. Control of the gravity well (the higher you are, the easier it is to drop stuff on the enemy) |
ROUWetPatchBehindTheSofa | 25 Apr 2020 3:37 a.m. PST |
Rare earth metals may be the big driver – obviously rare in the Earth's crust, increasingly in demand for modern consumer electronics, often come from less than stable parts of the world and an absence of recycling. |
Major Mike | 25 Apr 2020 6:55 a.m. PST |
You will need the rare element Illudium Phosdex, the shaving cream atom, which can only be found on Planet X. |
Moonbeast | 25 Apr 2020 9:36 a.m. PST |
Didn't Marvin the Martian have the rare Ilonium Pu 36 required for his space modulator? He obtained that in space. We don't have that here, we'll need some. |
Ghostrunner | 25 Apr 2020 9:47 a.m. PST |
Someone pointed out that colonizing Antarctica would cost probably 1% of what it would cost to colonize Mars, and no one really thinks there's a good reason to colonize Antarctica. Not quite the same thing, but it does show there are a some hellacious costs involved. |
Parzival | 25 Apr 2020 11:59 a.m. PST |
We need women! Oh, wait, it's the other way around…
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Daricles | 25 Apr 2020 12:00 p.m. PST |
If we don't colonize places other than Earth we WILL eventually die off as a species. As long as we are confined to a single planetary body we are fragile and vulnerable to extinction. That may be the single best reason to move beyond this rock as soon as we can. |
Andrew Walters | 25 Apr 2020 12:36 p.m. PST |
We should learn to live in space for that reason. Not because we need room. Not because there's anything valuable up there. He3, yes, but we don't need that, yet. I suspect we will, but there's no use for it now. There are many wonderful things up there, but setting aside money the energy cost of getting any given material from space is much higher than producing it here. There is another way, one that worked for many European colonies over the last five hundred years. You have the government subsidize space operations run by for-profit concerns. European governments paid for military protection and some of the transport for colonies around the world that made money for private corporations. If the private companies had to bear all the costs the operations would not have been profitable. So the whole colony was not a money *maker*, it just shifted tax dollars into private pockets, via the East or West Indies. In the same way you could have Earth-bound governments pay for developing the technologies and perhaps for some Earth-orbit infrastructure, all paid for with your tax dollars. That could reduce the expense of space mining such that companies could make money. Be sure and buy shares if you want your tax money back. The other, other way is a rough parallel with the settling of Iceland. Norway had been a bunch of politically independent populations, so when someone finally got around to rolling all that up under one king a handful of people left for Iceland to preserve their independence. They created one of the first parliaments in Europe, but eventually came under European politics after all. In the same way, serious populations in space may be formed when people want to escape Earth's politics. That's tougher than colonizing Iceland, certainly, and those people better have a lot of money. And competence. But it's another thing space offers besides iron and nickel. |
Mark Plant | 25 Apr 2020 7:43 p.m. PST |
Rare earth metals may be the big driver – obviously rare in the Earth's crust, Rare earths aren't even remotely rare. Cerium is more abundant than copper! They are annoyingly dispersed, so we generally get them while mining for something else. But there's loads of the stable ones. Rare earths will also be dispersed in space for the same reasons that they are on earth -- and why would they be more common? The one advantage I can see is that you could extract and purify using techniques impossible on earth because of the pollution issues. |
Stalkey and Co | 25 Apr 2020 7:49 p.m. PST |
@ Daricles, Andrew Walters, and Ghostrunner Yeah but you can get that settling in the ocean. And it would be cheaper, and with captain nemo's plan there's water, oxygen and fish/kelp right at hand. Forget Antarctica – that's going to be disputed territory. Go to the bottom of the seas in international waters, and you have a new iceland. Of course, the obvious parallel to iceland is to actually colonize Greenland and Antarctica, but if those territories don't suit you due to ownership, you can go to the bottom of shallow portions of the pacific. So lots and lots of rare metals for electronics and other tech seems like it might be a reason – but I bet the cost benefits analysis shows a net huge loss. Personally, i don't subscribe to the scientific doom and gloom about species extinction – scientists will go extinct first due to lack of funding and interest in anything but viral research at this point. However, a terrorist nuclear attack that renders part of the earth untenable might impel people to take a greater interest in colonizing space as a "backup plan" while we wait 4,000 years for the radiation to cool down and the baby diapers to decompose. As unlikely as it is, it is more likely than most of what I'm hearing. Which is to say that unless you get an engine that you toss a banana peel into and it will generate enough energy to dematerialize time and space to allow people to transport to Pluto instantaneously, it ain't happening. But the old "Alas, Babylon" scenario can always be pulled out as a possibility. Science inevitably produces destructive capability, and in the wrong hands… |
Editor in Chief Bill | 25 Apr 2020 9:03 p.m. PST |
Would a nice, cold, slushy comet halt global warming? Probably not… |
Parzival | 26 Apr 2020 11:29 a.m. PST |
Park it at L1* and spin it into a debris cloud as a space parasol, and yes, it could halt global warming. Of course, in 28 days it will leave L1 and you'd need to do it again, unless you develop a more stable parasol system. All of Earth's warmth come from the Sun. Reduce the light from the Sun that strikes Earth, and Earth will get cooler. By the way, that's the ONLY way to safely cool the planet. All other proposed plans involve drastic and dangerous alterations of Earth's ecosystem, with a risk of unintended permanency and unintended damage. A solar parasol wouldn't involve Earth's ecosystem, and could be easily destroyed or removed (as I said, without stabilization, it will eventually leave L1 anyway). By the way, the parasol neither needs to be large or perfect. A dimming factor of 2% is sufficient to counteract all claimed or projected levels of global warming completely. *L1= Earth/Sun Lagrange Point, a point in space where due to the interaction of gravity between the Earth and the Sun an object may be placed and thus be in a relatively stable orbit directly between Earth's center of mass and the Sun's center of mass. However, the point actually isn't stable, so without some station-keeping ability (that is, a rocket engine), such an object will eventually leave the point. IIRC, that time frame is approximately 28 days. |
Daricles | 26 Apr 2020 5:23 p.m. PST |
So, when I said we'd eventually go extinct if we don't inhabit places other than Earth, I wasn't talking about global warming, nuclear war or man made catastrophes. Colonizing the ocean isn't a bad idea and is certainly easier than colonizing places other than earth. However, there are impending catastrophes that being under the ocean won't save us from if/when they occur. For one, a large enough meteor impact would acidify the oceans and could make survival on earth only marginally easier than somewhere else, say Luna or Mars. Even if not, we are on the clock as long as we are confined to Earth. Our sun has an expiration date. Sure, it is faaaaaaaaar in the future, but as others pointed out the challenges of interplanetary travel are enormous and the challenges of interstellar travel dwarf them in comparison. Even if we start putting serious effort into interplanetary travel now with the ultimate goal of achieving interstellar travel, the clock might run out on us before we succeed. If we wait and do what humans tend to do, which is wait until the problem is upon us before we deal with it, we will fail and go extinct. |
Stalkey and Co | 26 Apr 2020 7:10 p.m. PST |
I'm voting for massive loans to pay for COVID-WUHAN problems. I figure I'll be dead by the time the bill comes due. What were you saying, Daricles? I was emailing my elected representatives. :) |
Daricles | 26 Apr 2020 8:10 p.m. PST |
I was saying that we better not procrastinate on dealing with foreseeable problems no matter how far off they may seem. For example, medical professionals have been warning us for several decades that a global pandemic is inevitable and we better start preparing for super viruses. Our healthcare system is fragile and operating near capacity on a daily basis. We need to build excess capacity, stockpile medicines and PPE and beef up our laboratory testing capabilities before it's too late… Oh, wait… Ok. That's enough real world crisis discussion for me. We are all living it and most of us probably come here to escape it for a few minutes. |
Stalkey and Co | 27 Apr 2020 4:54 p.m. PST |
OK, I like the meteor problem – that was made into a really silly movie years ago, so I didn't watch it. The best bets then all revolve around other places to live, along the lines of Waterworld, Alas Babylon, etc: - Nuclear War makes planet partially uninhabitable, and there's only so much of the artic and underwater zones that can be made habitable. Or the land is uninhabitable, and people figure they may as well live in space as under the ocean. - Incoming meteor pushes space exploration as #1 priority to either destroy it far away or get enough people away for humanity to survive and re-colonize earth after the meteor strike - pandemic that makes ebola look like a sniffle, with slow to no progress on a cure. Ergo, the plan is to send completely decontaminated people into space, hoping they won't catch it. A little disappointed that the Honorable Outer Space Company has no foreseeable future, not that it stops authors or script writers. If you've a bright idea to add, I'm willing to listen. |
Daricles | 27 Apr 2020 5:44 p.m. PST |
I think the better plan is to get off the planet and colonize other planets *before* we need to. It's as simple as not having all your eggs in one basket. And when I say get off the planet I don't mean leave altogether, I mean expanding to other places in addition to Earth. The more dispersed our presence the better. Eventually, we would ideally inhabit other worlds that are not dependent upon earth for anything important and are self-sufficient. It's only marginally better to colonize Luna or Mars if those colonies need food, water, fuel or anything else from Earth to survive. |
Zephyr1 | 28 Apr 2020 2:38 p.m. PST |
"What do we need from outer space?" The first "industry" will probably be zero-gravity porn… :-o |
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