/sci/ - Science & Math

>>5771511

Because we couldn't.

its hot volatile gas and an atmosphere of acid rain. gg no re

You say that like building a "floating city" is no big deal. Let alone one on another planet. With clouds of sulphuric acid and constant storms stronger than any on Earth.

We talk about Mars because Mars is a lot easier.

Because even a desert is better than hell.

>>5771511
>conceivably build a floating city on Venus with current technology
no.

>Not going to Io

The obsession with Mars OR Venus is purely a problem related to planet-centrism. Planetary surfaces are the wrong place for a technological civilization to continue expanding. Any fool with half a brain and basic science education can tell that. O'Neill and his graduate students firmly established that. But Humanity is full of Violent Simians for whom logic is a secondary method; our primary method of reasoning involves emotion. Emotionally, Humans are in love with the concept of planets. Worlds. They just can't grasp how much of a loser it is to continue fucking around with gravity wells.

>>5771511
Or lets use those resources to build an Earth's orbit space port used for research, development, construction, and tourism of intergalactic life.

If in fact something like a space elevator can be created.

>tfw not economically possible

>why is everyone so obsessed with going to tards when we could conceivably build a floating city on my penus with current technology?
well, if you look at it that way----we could build a ice city on pluto,,,, if we could only fucking GET THERE

>>5773304
I've never read anything on the subject. How those this O'Neill see things? Rotating space station?

>Why is everyone so obsessed with going to Mars
You have my attention...
>when we could conceivably build a floating city on Venus with current technology?
AHHH, you almost got me!

Rot in your basement, scifiggot

>Why is everyone so obsessed with going to Mars
You have my attention..
>when we could conceivably build a floating city on Venus with current technology?
AHHH, you almost got me!

Rot in your basement, scifiggot

Thinking purely in terms of cost (since we more or less have the technology; it's just expensive as fuck), what would be more sensible: Building the sci-fi-centric 'city on another celestial body?' Or making a city in space itself, more or less 'from scratch?'

>>5773310
>intergalactic life

>>5773366
>figgot

>>5773353
I read this in Teal'c's voice from Stargate.

>>5773353

You can easily wiki up Gerard K. O'Neill. His time was the last 60s and early 70s, when space efforts reached a practical maximum. That's also the era of Freeman Dyson and latter-day Buckminster Fuller. Then Western Civilization convulsed with the first Oil Peak, and it was all downhill from there.

Really, O'Neill's efforts were very well documented. He testified in the front of Congress and everything. But he was talking about a big industrial effort that didn't have anything to do with earthbound cold war, and certainly didn't match the new plan of de-industrializing the West to make way for the supremacy of FIRE economy (finance, insurance, real estate... basically, the delusions and insanity that govern a society before it collapses into imperial anarchy and war).

>>5771511
Because Mars is fucktons easier than that?

>>5771511
We could also conceivably build a landed city on Mars with the same definition of "current technology."

The city on Mars would be easier and involve less sulfuric acid and ridiculous winds.

>>5773304
>yfw

>>5771511
Why don't we just build a station on the moon? At least then you have a chance of getting back to Earth if things go wrong.

>>5774253
Because it's not a question of either/or.
We'll probably build both. As well as asteroid bases like the NOPLANETSfags want.
And the venerean cloud cities.

Most people in these threads seem to assume that if we do one thing, we will do ONLY that one one thing and nothing else. But all larger bodies in the system have some characteristics that will attract different kinds of people and industries.

Things that are more conveniently done at the bottom of a gravity well, within atmosphere, will be done on planets. Things that are more conveniently done in microgravity and/or vacuum, will be done on the Moon or at the Belt or other asteroids.

I doubt we'll make large fully artificial habitats akin to Island 1&2 due to limits in material strength and vulnerability. Unless some very significant strides are made in materials science and radiation protection, I'd expect outposts no larger than a couple hundred meters to be the maximum.

>>5774253

Dude, you'd have to build a "station" on the moon, and that means a manufacturing center. The lunar surface with its comparatively low gravity and lack of atmosphere (it's said that the free ions floating close to the moon, when compressed to STP, would fill a Zeppelin) and extensive regolith, would be perfect for Humanity's factory floor. This factory floor would make all the spacecraft needed to form the transportation networks into the solar system.

You can't keep building stuff on Earth. That's a gravity well. It's totally uneconomic. But hey, merely getting OUT of that gravity well is totally uneconomic. Which fully explains why we're not colonizing space, and while our prevailing economic models are here, we'll never do it anyway.

>>5774874
> Things that are more conveniently done at the bottom of a gravity well, within atmosphere, will be done on planets.

Dead wrong. Once a civilization gets out the gravity well, which is a TRAP, it finds that as long as its willing to build a habitat, that's where all civilizational functions can occur.

This is why IF Humanity leaves the Earth, it will NOT then descend into another gravity well. Economics says NO.

>>5773310

In 10 million years maybe.

>>5775038
this
Moons are fuckperfect for any form of heavy manufacturing and pollution.

>>5775043

If you can beat the radiation and side effects of low to no gravity, sure.

>>5775043
Se,, this kind of adamant extreme dogmatic cancer is what's killing /sci/.

You're voicing out your opinions without any regard to reality.

If you manage to step back from your soapbox and manage to drop off that massive chip on your shoulder, you should be able to realize that overspecialization itself is a trap.

Humans have had a good thing going on with being generalists and I doubt it will change.

Also, unless you're willing to dismantle planets, you're neglecting a lot of very useful resources, so you can cram that economics-argument back to the same place you pulled the rest of your TRUE KNOWLEDGE from.

Now shush, or I'll stop your riot by nerve-stapling you.

>>5775153
*See

>>5775121

You beat the radiation with regolith shields and all the metal shielding otherwise that you'd care to extract from the regolith. And 1/6 g is good enough. Sure, there will be bone loss, but once you get into space, you're not going back to Earth. Going back to Earth is just a stupid fantasy promoted by assholes writing scifi.

>>5775153

The reality is that we're not leaving our gravity well since the economic cost of doing so is too extreme.

Period. It's 2013. You're still lifting shit at 10 kilodollars per pound. That's why you're not lifting much of anything, and it's why there's no commerce offworld, and it's also why your industrialists are still conning you into destroying every kilogram you put into orbit. It's all a con, and you FELL FOR IT.

Reality slaps you. I don't even have to do it.

>>5771511
>floating city on venus
>current tech
>implying even if any of that was true there was something to glean off of venus besides acid rain, super wind storms and a slushy atmosphere
>mfw

I want a floating colony on Jupiter.

we could make the city not for humans but for tardigrades. That would be possible to do because they are smaller and a lot tougher. I think /sci/ needs to man up and design a tardigrade floating city on Venus.

>>5775207

Clearly you don't understand. The gravitational pull at Jupiter's cloud tops is about 3g. And the radiation environment isn't good for you either. Humans can't live 'on' Jupiter. Period.

Really, about Jupiter's only use to Humanity is in providing spacecraft slingshots.

>>5775207
yfw the culture gets cut off from earth and retrogrades into a primitive paganism. every jupiter-year, a person must be pushed off the city's edge in sacrifice to appease the gods they believe hold up the city.

>>5775254
Eh, 3g doesn't sound that bad. We'll populate it with /fit/ so they can lift without even going to gym. And I'm sure we can take care of radiation somehow in due time. After all, if we are ever going to have far-from-Earth space travel and living we'll need nuclear energy on board, so we need to develop some good shielding anyway.

And having a city floating on dense vapours of acid won't be much easier technically I'd say.

Mars is on all SciFi movies, so more people will be eager to go, thus funding will be more easily given.

>>5775280
>3g
have fun dying of heart failure at age 25

>>5775341
Give it couple of generations.

>>5775213
sounds like a plan
whats a tardigrade?

>>5775344
Oh god. Imagine a pregnancy in 3g. Horrifying.
>>5775346
A little buggish thing. Super durable and badass.

>>5775280
I don't think you understand what you are talking about. 3g is a crushing burden why would we choose this with literally hundreds of better options. And the radiation we are talking about is non trivial the best way to shield from radiation is build underground or have ridiculously thick walls both of these are impossible in a floating colony.

>>5773304
A++ orbitals for lyfe

>>5775375
Not only that, but how the hell would one protect this floating city from the sulfuric acid atmosphere? Gonna put it in a giant glass bottle?

>Venus
>400+c constantly

Yeah.. no.

>>5775456
no, it is room temperature at the cloudtops.

The sticking points are the sulfuric acid and hurricane-level winds. And no access to the surface, for materials.

If we could lick the sulfuric acid problem, then I would be all for a floating science probe! Imagine video of the venusian cloudscapes!

>>5775207
I'm assuming you meant Saturn:
* 1g at cloudtops
* beautiful rings in the sky
* no deadly radiation belts

>>5775456
>400+c
you cant go past c.

>>5775532
>What is D.

>>5775532
u r funy

This link is highly relevant:
http://www.space.com/21253-congress-nasa-asteroid-mars-missions.html