/sci/ - Science & Math

>>4911524

Have you actually worked in materials science? I have people working down the hall from my office who do cutting edge work on material engineering, and you make it sound a lot easier than they do. It's nice to talk about all the cool construction techniques we'll be able to use in space, but that stuff is going to be hard to develop. And while it's true that there are a lot of resources in asteroids, they tend not to be concentrated in useful ores the way they are on Earth (the main exception being nickel and iron). Terrestrial planets with hydrothermal activity (like Earth and Mars) do us a favor processing things geochemically so we don't have to try to extract an element at a few 10s ppm.

And I certainly do "believe in space stations"; I agreed with you earlier that pulling things in and out of gravity wells a lot is a bad idea! And many (not all) of the basic technologies necessary for am orbital habitat would also be required for travel to and from Mars. So I can't completely bash space stations and still support an argument for terraforming Mars, now can I?

>Imagine, your grand-grand-grand-grand children might travel in space

And it'll probably be as boring as taking the bus if it gets common enough.