Quote from: estar;446563I think terraforming Mars would be easier provided it had enough volatiles on the planet or that sending down comets and/or ice asteriod can be made to work without leaving the planet choked in dust for a 1,000 years.

Mars has a near earth day length (25 hours) and any thick atmosphere created will last far long then the length of any known human civilization.

Whereas venus has virtually identical mass and surface gravity to the Earth. Terraforming Venus is a matter of seeding tailored microorganisms into the atmosphere to lock up carbon, sulphur, and nitrogen, and free the oxygen to bind with hydrogen and itself, reducing the mass and thus the pressure of the atmosphere and eventually eliminating the greenhouse effect. Without the greenhouse effect, the temperatures on Venus should be tolerable, even on the surface. It would take a very long time, but so would terraforming Mars.

-clash

Quote from: boulet;446568I thought I read that Mars' mass was a little too low to retain durably an atmosphere. You're saying that it would be a slow phenomenon that doesn't make terraformation useless?

Yes. It would eventually be lost, but only after thousands of years, and it could always be built up/maintained by bringing in more water mass.

-clash

wiki good on terraforming.

Talks about Venus , Mars and Europa. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terraforming

Of course you would to convince all those Climate change deniers that global warming was real before they would give you the requisite 1,000,0000 Trillion dollars to try it out I mean all you have to do is restart the iron core of mars spinning to regenerate a magnetosphere and for that we would just need Bruce Willis in some sort of giant digging machine

I've got the feeling that communities on orbit would have less technological challenges to face than down on gravity wells.

Quote from: jibbajibba;446572wiki good on terraforming.

Talks about Venus , Mars and Europa. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terraforming

Of course you would to convince all those Climate change deniers that global warming was real before they would give you the requisite 1,000,0000 Trillion dollars to try it out I mean all you have to do is restart the iron core of mars spinning to regenerate a magnetosphere and for that we would just need Bruce Willis in some sort of giant digging machine

I don't think there are any reputable scientists saying climate change is not real, jibbajabba, the data is real and solid. There are a lot who say it is a natural phenomenon we have undergone in the past, though, and not exclusively man-made.

-clash

Quote from: boulet;446574I've got the feeling that communities on orbit would have less technological challenges to face than down on gravity wells.

Oh! I agree! The only reason to be down in gravity wells is - well - gravity! We're adapted for it. Spin gravity helps a lot, though. The problem with spin gravity is making a space structure strong enough to withstand the forces involved when boosting material to orbit is so expensive.

-clash

Quote from: boulet;446574I've got the feeling that communities on orbit would have less technological challenges to face than down on gravity wells.

But the real question is an economic one not a technological one.

Why would anyone pay for it? What is the cost to benefit for sticking 500 or 5000 people on an orbiting space station round the earth, or Venus or where-ever?

You are talking about deploying people to a totally inhospitable place. It's not like colonising Australia.

So the first question needs to be what economic benefits would there be or what would have to happen on earth for it to take place. Terraforming (which we always seem to suggest would be "easy" but which is in reality about as theoretical as you can possibly get would be an even more dicey proposition.
Ice cores show that Earth CO2 levels have increased 30 % from 0.27% to 0.35% of the atmosphere in 250 years of us pumping out as much CO2, CFCs and other shit as we can. What resources are you talking about to create a workable atmosphere round Mars, how many years? How much resource? Really easier than desalinating water from the oceans to ferilise the Sahara?

I have no answers by the way but those are the questions you would need to answer.

Quote from: jibbajibba;446577But the real question is an economic one not a technological one.

You're forgetting a small but important thing, jibbajabba. I - and many, many others like me - would give anything to go if we could, whether or not it's economically viable. And once people are there, economies will grow around them.

-clash

Quote from: flyingmice;446569Whereas venus has virtually identical mass and surface gravity to the Earth. Terraforming Venus is a matter of seeding tailored microorganisms into the atmosphere to lock up carbon, sulphur, and nitrogen, and free the oxygen to bind with hydrogen and itself, reducing the mass and thus the pressure of the atmosphere and eventually eliminating the greenhouse effect. Without the greenhouse effect, the temperatures on Venus should be tolerable, even on the surface. It would take a very long time, but so would terraforming Mars.

The day length would stop me from considering Venus as the first choice. While your method would work the esstentially one day per year that Venus is a major showstopper compared to Mars. Plus I consider Mars' 1/3 gravity a benefit to colonization as the energy cost to the surface and back is considerably less and doesn't have all the negative impact of microgravity on human health.

Quote from: flyingmice;446578You're forgetting a small but important thing, jibbajabba. I - and many, many others like me - would give anything to go if we could, whether or not it's economically viable. And once people are there, economies will grow around them.

Agreed 100% with Flyingmice here. New World colonization didn't make much economic sense for much of history. Most of the commercial ventures specifically setup to exploit the New World failed.  It wasn't until crazy-ass people made their way to America to actually live there that things started to take off. Many New World colonies were started because people just wanted to get here to do their own thing. Plymouth, Pennsylvania, Georgia, etc. Then there were people that couldn't hack it in the home country and were desperate enough to try a new beginning in the New World.

At the start New World colonization was brutal on the settlers and remained so for quite some time.  As for the OP, if there is true access to space people will go and if the technology and conditions permit it, they will live there as well.

Quote from: jibbajibba;446577Why would anyone pay for it? What is the cost to benefit for sticking 500 or 5000 people on an orbiting space station round the earth, or Venus or where-ever?

Currently it is $10,000 per pound to get into orbit, roughly. If it drops to $1,000 a pound then you will see considerably more human activity in space.  When it drops to $100 a point then the crazies, whack-jobs, fervent, idealists, and the dedicated will all be out in the black trying to make a go of it however they can. And it will make no economic sense to those at home until centuries later.

Quote from: jibbajibba;446577You are talking about deploying people to a totally inhospitable place. It's not like colonising Australia.

Read up on how many people died in initial colonization attempts. Sure we see in show like Man vs Wild people doing amazing things with next to nothing but colonization are not filled with people that skilled. Indeed most of them are incompetent. If you are skilled at colonizing life is hard, very hard at first and make no sense to undertake if you can buy a couple of acres in Devon by the Thames.

For a current example look at the State of Alaska land programs and consider who would be taking advantage of them.

http://www.commerce.state.ak.us/ded/dev/student_info/learn/homesteading.htm

Quote from: estar;446584Agreed 100% with Flyingmice here. New World colonization didn't make much economic sense for much of history. Most of the commercial ventures specifically setup to exploit the New World failed.  It wasn't until crazy-ass people made their way to America to actually live there that things started to take off. Many New World colonies were started because people just wanted to get here to do their own thing. Plymouth, Pennsylvania, Georgia, etc. Then there were people that couldn't hack it in the home country and were desperate enough to try a new beginning in the New World.

At the start New World colonization was brutal on the settlers and remained so for quite some time.  As for the OP, if there is true access to space people will go and if the technology and conditions permit it, they will live there as well.

The existence - the necessity - of the irrational with regard to human beings always seems to slip the minds of planners.

-clash

Quote from: estar;446586Currently it is $10,000 per pound to get into orbit, roughly. If it drops to $1,000 a pound then you will see considerably more human activity in space.  When it drops to $100 a point then the crazies, whack-jobs, fervent, idealists, and the dedicated will all be out in the black trying to make a go of it however they can. And it will make no economic sense to those at home until centuries later.

Read up on how many people died in initial colonization attempts. Sure we see in show like Man vs Wild people doing amazing things with next to nothing but colonization are not filled with people that skilled. Indeed most of them are incompetent. If you are skilled at colonizing life is hard, very hard at first and make no sense to undertake if you can buy a couple of acres in Devon by the Thames.

Exactly! I couldn't agree more!

-clash

Quote from: estar;446586Currently it is $10,000 per pound to get into orbit, roughly. If it drops to $1,000 a pound then you will see considerably more human activity in space.  When it drops to $100 a point then the crazies, whack-jobs, fervent, idealists, and the dedicated will all be out in the black trying to make a go of it however they can. And it will make no economic sense to those at home until centuries later.



Read up on how many people died in initial colonization attempts. Sure we see in show like Man vs Wild people doing amazing things with next to nothing but colonization are not filled with people that skilled. Indeed most of them are incompetent. If you are skilled at colonizing life is hard, very hard at first and make no sense to undertake if you can buy a couple of acres in Devon by the Thames.

For a current example look at the State of Alaska land programs and consider who would be taking advantage of them.

http://www.commerce.state.ak.us/ded/dev/student_info/learn/homesteading.htm

Now I think that is a bit of a myth. Space exploration isn't like exploring another country. It's not something you can do with minimal investment a stout heart and a sturdy ship. I know there are plenty of Clash's and Estars willing to head out into the wild black yonder but you have to have perspective. Rather than looking to the colonisation of America or Australia we need to compare to the colonisation of the ocean floor.
The Ocean floor is less hazardous and more accessible than space. There is lots of room down there, lots of mineral deposits lots of exploration to do but it hasn't been colonised. Why ? because it costs millions of dollars and takes really skilled people and if you don't do it right you die, not over a few years you find your crops fail die but shit there is an air-leak oops we are all dead die.

Quote from: estar;446581The day length would stop me from considering Venus as the first choice. While your method would work the esstentially one day per year that Venus is a major showstopper compared to Mars. Plus I consider Mars' 1/3 gravity a benefit to colonization as the energy cost to the surface and back is considerably less and doesn't have all the negative impact of microgravity on human health.

I did a lot of thinking and research on colonizing worlds with long day-night cycles when I wrote Commonwealth Space - the Commonwealth generally got the leavings of the American and Soviet programs, and their worlds were all rather marginal in some respect in consequence - and came to the conclusion that it's certainly possible to compensate with artificial light, and Venus has an abundance of solar power, waiting to be tapped to power it. It won't matter all that much for people, many are already currently on a non-diurnal cycle already, and indoors, day and night are pretty arbitrary anyway.

-clash