Quote from: Spinachcat;446816We need a moon colony...with a reality TV show.  I'm totally serious.

Imaginations would explode and a whole new generation would be clamoring to charge into space.

Today, space travel is something you see in science-fiction, perhaps even less realistic to today's generation than the last two generations.   It needs to become real again.   Lame-ass space shuttles don't cut it.  Sub-orbital was cool in the 50s.

From my experience with promoting and developing for Orbiter Space Sim (http://www.orbitersim.com) what would happen is a that sizable minority would be inspired by this. It wouldn't be the fad like it was in the 60's.

Note that I wrote a switch accurate simulation of Project Mercury.  It is accurate enough you can use the original flight plans for the mercury missions.

Along with a physic realistic simulation of Gemini for Orbiter Space Simulator. Haven't gotten as far as emulating the control panel.  For best result use the 2006 version of Orbiter as I haven't had the time to updated for the 2010 version. (http://www.ibiblio.org/mscorbit)

QuoteWe need a moon colony...with a reality TV show. I'm totally serious.

Entertainment could be good financing. I vaguely recall an old SF story about a guy who funded his space voyage by selling a sci-fi movie project to Hollywood producers.

Look at the money that goes into movies, TV shows, video games. As that goes up along with the value of the audience, and cost to orbit goes down for new technologies, maybe a much larger, more commercial project than the one fiction film that (IIRC) has been shot aboard the ISS could become feasible.

Quote from: estar;446909A lot of people didn't like the idea of leaving Europe on a ricky wooden sailing ship at the mercy of the sea either.

It becomes an issue is when a person's tax dollars are being to used to fund this.  But current New Space industry are largely self funded and self directed not like the space divisions of Lockheed and Boeing.

You have to get out of the mindset of comparing collonisation of the solar system to colonisatin of the New World.

There is no parallel. It's not a case of you survive the dangerous 5 month crossing and then you can wander about catch turkeys and pick blueberrys.

You fly to Mars there is nothing there. The view is wow but pretty soon you have seen one red sunset you have seen them all. You would probably spend most of your time sittign in the command capsule trying to make up role playing games to pass the boredom

The most useful thing they could spend money on, not just tax money but any money they want to spend on space is to spend it on robotic exploration. Cheaper, safer, and you get more actual data. by all means send another version of the martian rover to Europa or even Venus if you can design one. A mother ship in orbit relaying data back to earth and commands back to the lander.

Investigating if they can build a habitat on Earth is a good plan. Build one in Alaska like you suggest but it has to be a closed environment that lasts for 18months.

But seriously read the stuff on that link I posted as all of this stuff is detailed there one way or another.

Quote from: jibbajibba;446935You have to get out of the mindset of comparing collonisation of the solar system to colonisatin of the New World.

And you need to get out of the mindset of thinking there must be a logical reason to do this. I have wanted this since I can remember, and there's nothing logical about it.

You also need to get out of the mindset of telling others what they would do in a situation. I would likely be so fascinated by mars I wouldn't even notice my air leaking away until it was too late. I am an extreme neophile, and currently exert a lot of effort on finding new things to learn. Mars is a whole planet full of new things.



-clash

I see both sides of this argument, really, but I'd like to point out something that will be available in space that is in increasingly short supply on Earth.
Freedom.

Quote from: jibbajibba;446935There is no parallel. It's not a case of you survive the dangerous 5 month crossing and then you can wander about catch turkeys and pick blueberrys.

That what the Plymouth and Jamestown settlers thought too until half of them died through the first years. It wasn't until they learned from the indians the ins and outs of the new world until they finally stabilized. Even then the death rate and risk was appalling.

In short going over to the New World and setting up a Merrie Olde England farm did NOT work.  There were enough difference to cause severe hardship for the settlers.  The same happened in Canada, South Africa, Australia, and New Zealand.

The deal is that the New World Colonies were eventually hazardous and Space is immediately hazardous. But also we had over two centuries of experience with science, and technology. What remains unknown whether that is enough to offset the dangers of the environment.

Quote from: jibbajibba;446935You fly to Mars there is nothing there. The view is wow but pretty soon you have seen one red sunset you have seen them all. You would probably spend most of your time sittign in the command capsule trying to make up role playing games to pass the boredom

Been to arizona? Look like a giant construction site to this easterner. Yet people find beauty amid the rocks and sands.  I vastly prefer my Pennsylvania woods but I can appreciate their point as well.  

Mars and other world have varied terrain. Look at the difference between what the Spirit Rover shows and Opportunity shows. A good piece of fiction that show how varied Mars is Red Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson.

There was debate over choosing Hadley Rille over the Marius Hills. Dave Scott came down on the side of Hadley Rille.

"Both sites offer equal opportunity to test any of the theories of lunar genesis, but Hadley has something more. Grandeur, and there is something to be said about exploring beautiful places. It is good for the soul."

Quote from: jibbajibba;446935The most useful thing they could spend money on, not just tax money but any money they want to spend on space is to spend it on robotic exploration. Cheaper, safer, and you get more actual data.

People want to go and see for themselves. Not everybody want to go "out there", either have no desire or circumstances doesn't allow them to take the risk.  Robotics may do the job or even necessary but they will never be as satisfying as bending down on your own knees and picking up the rock for yourself.

Quote from: jibbajibba;446935Investigating if they can build a habitat on Earth is a good plan. Build one in Alaska like you suggest but it has to be a closed environment that lasts for 18months.

Yes they should, there is a lot we don't know about setting up self contained environments. We can do a lot for the short term but have limited experience for long term survival.

Quote from: jibbajibba;446935But seriously read the stuff on that link I posted as all of this stuff is detailed there one way or another.

I have and I don't agree with it. I go point by point if you like.

Quote from: jibbajibba;446935The most useful thing they could spend money on, not just tax money but any money they want to spend on space is to spend it on robotic exploration. Cheaper, safer, and you get more actual data. by all means send another version of the martian rover to Europa or even Venus if you can design one. A mother ship in orbit relaying data back to earth and commands back to the lander.

I would imagine colonization by people would only be achievable, after robot exploration has reached a saturation point.

I mean, how much more analysis of Moon and Mars rocks do we need? Exploration of the ice caps of Mars is already slated. There's not a terrible lot left for Mars rovers to tell us about Mars. We're reaching a point where a robot cannot provide us more meaningful data, only a living person.

Quote from: jibbajibba;446935Investigating if they can build a habitat on Earth is a good plan. Build one in Alaska like you suggest but it has to be a closed environment that lasts for 18months.

Read Mars on Earth by Robert Zubrin, because it has been done.

Quote from: Aos;446943I see both sides of this argument, really, but I'd like to point out something that will be available in space that is in increasingly short supply on Earth.
Freedom.

Just to add to this very important point by Aos.

Ultimately the Earth will be destroyed. The sun will expand into a red gient and engulf our world, long before then the Earth will have been rendered uninhabitable. We can either choose to leave the planet and ensure our survival or not. We can either choose to utilise the resources in space or make due with the dwindling natural resources of our own finite world.

Quote from: flyingmice;446629The killer issue is entirely one of transportation, jibbajabba. I.e. technology. Reducing the massive cost to get to orbit enables everything, because all other issues are solvable and trivial in comparison. Once you are in orbit, you are half way to anywhere, as (IIRC) Jerry Pournelle once said.

There are ways to defeat this ogre, we are just not sure how as yet, and a huge part of solving that question is removing NASA from the loop. NASA is inherently conservative, and has just plain dropped the ball on everything. They refuse to take chances, and have continuously subordinated practical research and development on this question to maintaining their status quo. The shuttle program was a dinosaur that gobbled up resources on routine space launches that could far better be spent on vehicle research.

The single biggest problem right now is the NASA-mentality (and to a certain extent the general modern American mentality) of "not ONE person can die to get us there".  That's where they fail.  For space colonization to work, you have to assume and be ok with the fact that shitloads of people will probably have to die so we can learn and conquer the stars.

RPGPundit

Quote from: P&P;446755That was Robert A. Heinlein, but he was talking to Jerry Pournelle at the time.

I think that the progression of solar system colonisation would depend on a thing called Δv budgets (it's pronounced "delta vee").  Basically, Δv is a measure of how much energy it costs to get from one place to another.  Your Δv budget is the amount of energy (fuel) you have for your mission.

I'll assume the mission is aiming for the lowest Δv budget possible.  This implies that the spaceship is using a thing called a Hohmann Transfer Orbit, which is basically an elliptical trajectory.  It takes a lot longer than a direct journey but it's much cheaper in Δv.  

The plane of the ecliptic also matters.  There's an energy cost for leaving it, so planets relatively distant from us in the plane (particularly Mercury but also Venus and Saturn) are more expensive to reach.

If you'll accept my premises, the lowest-cost round-trip mission in terms of Δv budgets is not to the moon, or to Mars or to Venus.  It's to an asteroid.  This is because if you're going from Earth to the moon and back, you have to climb out of two gravity wells, but the asteroid's gravity well is negligible.  Also, valuable resources are easier to extract from asteroids, and once extracted it's relatively cheap to send them to Earth or other colonies because of gravity wells.

So I think the first economically-motivated colonisation effort will be aimed at asteroids, and from there to other small bodies with rich resources to extract, such as outlying moons of gas giants or even plutonids, although those have their own problems (not so much distance as the energy cost of going so far away from the plane of the ecliptic).  

Going to Mars or Venus would be an expensive, economically non-viable, prestige project (though I've no doubt it will be done.  Mars before Venus because Mars is so much closer in terms of round-trip Δv budgets.)  But the people who aim to make a living in space won't be going to planets.

Now see, here is an interesting and OP-relevant post, with some good reasoning behind it.

RPGPundit

Quote from: jibbajibba;446767The trouble with asteroids is once you have dragged one lump of nickel the size of texas back to earth nickel suddenly isn't worth so much so getting a second one becomes moot.
Look at gold. The entire quantity of gold ever mined comes to a cube about the size of 2 tennis courts. You bring a chunk of gold space rock the size of wembley stadium back to earth and suddenly gold ...meh ...

It does if you're the only one who owns the nickel. The apt comparison here is not gold but diamonds, where careful monopolies protect the price of a common rock that by all rights should be worth about as much as quartz.

RPGpundit

Quote from: jeff37923;446963Just to add to this very important point by Aos.

Ultimately the Earth will be destroyed. The sun will expand into a red gient and engulf our world, long before then the Earth will have been rendered uninhabitable. We can either choose to leave the planet and ensure our survival or not. We can either choose to utilise the resources in space or make due with the dwindling natural resources of our own finite world.

Statistically, long before we have to worry about the sun going red, humanity will be wiped out by some meteor impact.  We have to get out there and kick the shit out of space rocks before they can kick the shit out of us.

RPGPundit

Quote from: jeff37923;446963Just to add to this very important point by Aos.

Ultimately the Earth will be destroyed. The sun will expand into a red gient and engulf our world, long before then the Earth will have been rendered uninhabitable. We can either choose to leave the planet and ensure our survival or not. We can either choose to utilise the resources in space or make due with the dwindling natural resources of our own finite world.

Both these points are spurious.
As Pundit points out getting hit by a super meteor is going to happen long before the sun goes super nova. Not to mention the fact that we have 4 -5 billion years to go and as a species that has only even been vaguely arround for 2 million years that is an awfully long time. Doing the maths to deflect asteroids, reducing the impact we currently have on the planet we are actually on, or working out how the species is likely to evolve over even the next million years that is useful.  

There is plenty of space on earth, loads and load and loads of it and it comes with the added benefit of a breathable atmosphere. Global population will peak at close to 10 billion round about 2080 then we start to see populations coming down.
The population density of Holland is c. 400/km and they have an excellent standard of living, the average population of the planet is 50/km and if you include the water it's about 10/km. Now if you really think its easier to build a livable habitat for a volume of people that will actually make a difference to world population (like actually move 100 million people off world and even that is only 1% of peak global population) and put them under a space dome on Mars, than it would be to build floating cities in the Indian Ocean, irrigate the sahara, etc etc then you are just dreaming (Okie Cities really are not a viable mass transit vehical for space travel)

You will NEVER reduce population density on earth by colonisation. That didn't even happen in the European colonisation of America or in the Mongolid colonisation of America 10,000 years earlier. Populations migrate and expand in their new locations.

I get that you are all Scifi fans and you want to see mankind expanding out into the black as some romantic notion but the facts are monstrously against it. Space is totally antithetical to human life. And Charles Stross is quite acurate when he points out that this is almost a religious need.

But I have pissed on your fireworks long enough.

Pundit, if you want some workable ideas for a game, a book or a short story then Clash's stuff is well thought out and internally consistent. You won't go wrong using it.

I will leave you all with your dreams of Terraforming Mars into a green oasis, flitting on a 2 week holiday to Europa in your personal shuttle craft and bathing in the sulphuric lakes of Venus in your 2 mil gel personal life support suits and go back to finishing the latest Iain M Banks...

Quote from: jibbajibba;447070Pundit, if you want some workable ideas for a game, a book or a short story then Clash's stuff is well thought out and internally consistent. You won't go wrong using it.

I will leave you all with your dreams of Terraforming Mars into a green oasis, flitting on a 2 week holiday to Europa in your personal shuttle craft and bathing in the sulphuric lakes of Venus in your 2 mil gel personal life support suits and go back to finishing the latest Iain M Banks...

And I'll leave you with your dreams of earth packed with people jammed shoulder to shoulder, living a low eco-impact (read poor) life in an increasingly regimented society. I will only note that the Netherlands may be densely populated and wealthy, but they are living on resources from all over the earth, not just their own land. Singapore too. Where you see dense populations living off their own resources, you see poverty, disease, and despair.

Colonizing space will not affect the population pressures on earth much, but if you are living and working in space, you don't much care because it isn't you jammed into your slot on earth, and by exploiting the resources of our entire solar system, we can improve the lives of people on earth, perhaps making it more like the Netherlands than the slums of Rio.



-clash