Space
This is a bit over due don't ya think.
posted by Churt(Elfkind) at 15:11
Thursday, October 04, 2007
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8 Comments:
The idea that humans will be able to extract ourselves from our earthly enviromenetal probelems by using space is nonsense for any reasonable forseeable timeframe. The main problem with exploitineg space is so often underestimated, that is: humans need air to breath. Anyone who has watched the movie Appllo 13 should be well aware of the problems that occur if there is a breach in a space vehicle's containment systems. Mars has an atmosphere but it is only about 9 millibars, (top of Mount Everest is about 300 millibar, which is 1/3 of sea level), and it is made up of CO2.
Also, even if there was a vein of pure gold on the moon, it costs more to bring the gold back to earth than it is worth. It would be much more cost effective to recycle and clean up the waste produced on earth than to try and ship it into space.
So we just squat here and reproduce ourselves into dystopia? Or do you propose some draconian population control methods? Maybe kill every other baby?
The generation of new wealth is the only thing that improves living conditions and enables high-minded ideas like the recreational environmentalism movement. The creation of wealth hinges upon the exploitation of resources and the geographic expansion of human cultures and societies.
As for air, that's nothing but an oxygen-nitrogen mix with a few trace elements. It can be synthesized. A simple algae-seeding program can terraform planets like Mars into habitability, remaking their atmospheres in a matter of decades with proper planning and process maintenance.
Your objections sound very much like those voiced against explorers such as Columbus: "We have everything we need right here in Europe." "The overland route to India is quite good enough, thank you." "What if the ships run out of food and there's nothing out there Europeans can eat?" and the best one of all... "Your ships will sail off the edge of the world."
The only thing timidity ever accomplished was the short-term preservation of the meek. True, exploration is a dangerous business, not to be undertaken without preparation. But it is as integral and necessary to the human animal as breathing and reproduction. In fact, the latter depends upon it.
Reply to Jarhead
Hey, I like Star Wars, Star Trek, Stargate SG1, and other science fiction shows, but they are exactly that, mostly just fiction. Your analogy of Columbus is not the same thing, because Columbus did not arrive at a place with no air. This is a very significant difference. If you want to simulate living in a place with no air, buy a 20 ft trailer and live in it, and never come out, ever, because you can’t. Except maybe for a few minutes in a space suit. That is what it would be like to live in a place with no air. Most people would not choose to live this way; it must be like being in the supermax prison in Colorado, which has got to suck. Also if you eat all your food supplies, or drink up all your beer, there is no Seven11 so your are kind of screwed.
“So we just squat here and reproduce ourselves into dystopia?”
If that is where you think we a headed, what makes you think we have the capability of building the complex systems which would allow us to leave earth and live in a place with no air?
“Or do you propose some draconian population control methods?”
My wife and I had two and only two children. I think we can train the rest of the world to follow along. (free Trojans for Africans, is an idea). If not, eventually world population will limit out due to a lack of food.
Note: I like BattleStar Galactica, also, but how can this ragtag colony really repair their ships after a Cylon attack? It would be like the navy fleet being attacked in the Pacific Ocean and some how repairing itself to full strength without ever turning to a shipyard, and no other sips come to help either.
Less television, more Arthur C. Clarke, Carl Sagan, and Charles Sheffield. =0)
Seriously, the science is there; the incentive is there. And it doesn't have to involve living in cans on a vacuum-soaked rock. The biggest impediment to space exploration and exploitation is government management.
Governments, by their nature, don't create wealth; they spend it, often frivolously. Deregulate space and private interests will find a way to make it work. Micro-gravity manufacturing alone promises huge leaps in materials science and medicine that are simply impossible while squatting at the bottom of a gravity well. If there's a profit to be made, people will always find a way to make it. But asking taxpayers to foot the trillion dollar bill for a mission to Mars that involves picking up rocks and taking pretty pictures is not a realistic approach to space exploration, nor will it ever be so. A space-faring version of the East India Company would be far more successful at exploration, colonization and exploitation of resources than any government could ever hope to be.
What we really have here is a basic difference in our philosophies: you're the conservative, "work with what you've got" person; I'm the wild-eyed adventurer dreaming of gold veins. Neither personality is "wrong" or "right." It takes both to make society function; one must look no further back than the Old West to see that in action. Frankly, I think it's time for a New West. You can stay in New York if you like, but I want to see what's on the other side of the Rockies. =o)
Just to chime in on this. Did you read the article? The idea of the article is not to go to another planet. It was to move environmentally damaging processes to outer space where they can do no more harm and to make use of resources we can extract from the moon.
As far as air is concerned, we can create biosphere type facilities in space relatively easy. The technology exists. And I'm not talking about the pathetic little cans we've been sending up. I'm talking about large facilities that produce their own food and necessities. The other thing is that we don't even need air. We've been doing robotic manufacturing for years. Send up a robotic factory and all you have to do transport raw material up and manufactured goods down. All the pollution generated can be shot in a stream toward the sun or recycled or whatever. Another benefit is that if you get industry into space it will find better ways of doing things in space. The thing lacking is support. And the support is not there because the government won't deregulate space.
And who cares about gold. Material science is quickly making it relatively worthless.
The idea is that a big enough industrial expansion into space has the potential to create enough excess energy that no one on the planet will be lacking for it. Many think this a silly fantasy but it's not at all far fetched. We mainly just need enough people to get behind the idea of it.
To be continued. It's time to go home and have a beer.
Later!!
In this post you have vastly scaled back your expectations for the rewards of space exploration. I would rate the likelihood of new medicines developed in space as high. As for new materials, it is possible that some may be invented in space, but large scale useful manufacturing seems unlikely, given the cost. The materials that we build most things from, such as steel, concrete, aluminum, wood, etc. are much more cheaply obtained here than any material manufactured in space, even if it were to have superior properties. As for a private space exploration company, it seems that the most likely application will be for earth orbit tourism, which is already in development by Burt Rutan, and others. These space applications are much more limited than any moon or planetary exploitation and colonization schemes proposed by Mr. Karlsson.
“What we really have here is a basic difference in our philosophies”
Actually, its more than that. I am beginning to wonder if we are not tethered inextrically to this planet earth. Whether one believes we are here as a result of a fully formed creation by a higher power or the result of Darwinian evolution, we are fairly well suited to living on this planet. But when people who have spent time in a weightless space environment return to earth, we find them to be suffering deteriorated muscles and significant bone loss. As far as I know there have been no humans born as a result of reproduction in space. We need to perform this test to find out if humans can reproduce and survive after being born in space. Humans have millions of bateria in their bodies. If we lived on Mars without earthly refreshing of these colonies, would our bodies continue to function? If humans left earth for the stars in some form of a space ark vessel, could they take a large enough number of other species along for the ride to ensure the survival of the whole?
These are interesting questions to be studied, but I think it will take many, many years to determine the answers, and in the meantime we must seek solutions to our earthly problems, environmental and otherwise, here on earth. Looking to the stars is simply being starstruck.
Reply to Churt:
“Did you read the article?”
There were only 3 specific ideas put forth by Karlsson in the article:
(1) Solar radiation energy from space. Currently on earth electricity can be produced from solar panels at a cost $0.16-0.22 per KWHr and this price is declining. It seems unlikely that panels locate in space will be able to achieve parity anytime soon. Huge photovoltaic panel manufacturing plants could build in California and the product shipped to the nearby desert to produce vast amounts of energy at a cost cheaper that some space system.
(2) Dispose of waste streams in space. The only item this could practically refer to is the waste generated from nuclear reactors. It seems that radioactive waste disposal at a site on earth is more of a political problem than a technical problem. (We could put it in Sweden, LoL)
(3) Obtain resource materials from space such as the moon. As previously discussed, the cost would be extremely high compared to recycling materials on earth. Gold from the moon was just an example, and the point was that any material found on some other celestial body will be exorbitantly expensive to return to earth in a useful quantity than that of a comparative material on earth.
……..
BTW, I enjoy your site, Jarhead.
As I said, some people are on the opposite side of the fence. You just don't "get" the overwhelming need behind why we should be pushing hard for space exploration and exploitation.
I don't "get" why you don't.
/shrug. In the end, it won't matter, because we'll both be long dead before anything of consequence happens -- or too old to care, which is mostly the same thing.
Thanks for the compliment. Always nice to have readers; I sometimes feel like this is nothing more than literary masturbation. =O)
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