Futurism-Space Habitats, Transhumanism, et cetera...

[Anonymous No.11562560]

What it says on the tin...

So this is a thread for thoughts about the aforementioned subjects as well as related subjects (that is not a license to derail but it _IS_ meant to give a lot of leeway).


So......

[Space Habitats No.11562565]

A]] Space habitats ; so we have all seen those paintings of oneil cylinders, the hourglasses from Gundam, the Babylon 5 station, et cetera but each of those designs is flawed. Let us discuss those flaws and how a real space colony actually _could_ work.

1=Those windows. Seriously the oneil design calls for glass windows that are miles long to let light into the colony. Not only is the 'glass' (and yes I realize that it would likely be a transparent composite not real glass) a serious vulnerability and risk for the thousands of inhabitants in terms of breakability but it is also a risk and vulnerability in terms of radiation. If visible light can get through, then other unwanted radiation wave-lengths can get through. Your colony is dead of cancer.

Then there is the matter of timing those huge mirrors to reflect light into the colony through those windows in a colony WHILE IT IS ROTATING. The strobing effect would be hellish on the poor people inside.
Another thought is that direct sunlight would not have the hundreds of kilometers of atmosphere to diffuse and soften the light so lighting would be uncomfortablely harsh.

[Space Habitats No.11562571]

>>11562565

2= A cylinder free floating in space with the endcapps stationary for docking? This means that any debris can get into the rotation mechanisms. Anything from a small screw that got away from a workman who was fixing solar panels to meteoric micro-fragments can get into the gears , the colony tears itself apart and , again , your colony is dead. (Remember that the 'meteors are rare' argument does not actually hold due to the fact that the planet or moon that you are orbiting is actively ATTRACTING thousands of tons of material every single day and even the Lagrange points are vulnerable).

The clear and fairly obvious answer to these problems seems to be to enclose the cylinder in a sheath. A vacuum would be maintained in the sheath to avoid friction related issues and the space that would have been wasted on the windows now becomes available for other uses. External solar accumulators power solar lamps in the center of the cylinder indirectly , thus reducing radiation concerns. (Although not eliminating them, this IS space after all and radiation is seldom your friend.)

[Space Habitats No.11562575]

>>11562571

3= Material strength ; Okay so having millions of tons of space colony spinning to simulate gravity means developing materials with crazy levels of suspension and compression strength. One suggestion that I have heard involved fullerene materials utilizing braided electron clouds. Can anyone give a Bill Nye PBS special explanation of this?

[Space Habitats No.11562578]

>>11562575

4= Gravity ; Okay so most space colony designs utilize centrifugal force to simulate gravity but arguments on vertigo and motion sickness complicate this idea. At what point do these factors balance out?
How big can a colony be?
To the other end of things what is really the smallest that such a design could be?

[Transhumanism No.11562584]

Transhumanism can take many forms. The SixMillionDollar Man and Bionic Woman showed some ideas on cybernetic replacement for amputated limbs for example . Genetic engineering is another venue.


How would you like to augment yourself if you had the opportunity? While things like 'stronger' , and 'run faster' are obvious, what are some less well known ideas? RADAR transponders under the scalp so that you could 'see' at night? A GPS chip implanted directly into your brain so that you would not get lost? Vibration generators implanted into your pelvis to improve your love life and that of your partner? (Yes ADULT suggestions are accepted here but please be mature about it)
A genetic modification to tweak dormant genes so that we could have prehensile tails? (Both arms full? No problem, open the door with your tail.)
Splice Snow Cricket or similar traits into people so that they could simply sleep in ice solid slumber if bad things happened?

[General space-future living - (...) No.11562595]

General space/ future living ideas]] What are some little thought out ideas regarding living , working, and traveling in space.

Example; CryoStasis; we really need to develop cryostasis medical technology before we try to take a three and a half year journey to and then back from Mars. Having one or two crew members awake to run the ship while the rest of the crew slumber peacefully would save on needed resources. Certainly it would have made things a lot easier on Mark Watney if he could have just gone to sleep and woken up when the next Ares mission came to rescue him.

Likewise when they(NASA/ESA) pre-shipped the Hab to the Mars-site they could have (should-have) sent a second Hab both as a back-up and as a green-house. If the author ever writes a sequel I suspect that that would be the case for later missions.


Life hacks ; One SFwriter had the idea that life on the moon would include a new form of transportation; his idea was with such low gravity you could weld four pogo stick together on a platform and a person could pogo around instead of driving a car.
Another idea was 'Mercury-ball' a sport like soccer/football but the ball had another smaller ball of mercury inside so that as the ball-with-in-a-ball would go rolling in crazy directions, the outer ball would suddenly reverse , change direction, et cetera to make for a faster higher energy game.
What are ideas you have?

[Terraforming Mars No.11562605]

So the following are my thoughts on terraforming Mars

Mars -
1- move nearby asteroids/planetoids into orbit to act as bases and material resources for following stages
2- Slam comets into the planet at the right angles to slightly speed up the rotation of Mars to jump-start its magnetic field via dynamo action.
2.5- As this alone may not be enough to generate the magnetic field to sufficient levels it may be necessary to build massive thermo-nuclear reactors/furnaces that use the hydrogen from the comet strikes to power an artificial boost to the geo-magnetic field.

The now greater geo-magnetic field gives better protection (although not yet to Earth levels) from solar radiation and holds in atmosphere to increasing pressure levels.

3- Continue to bring down more comets (seriously there are tens of thousands of them in the oort cloud) to generate atmosphere, and water, as well as increase mass/gravity levels ( It seems doubtful that they will reach half that of Earth/Terran standard but getting it even a little above the current one-third Earth/Terran standard would help).

4- By the time that the entire planet (or at least nearly so) is underwater, introduce algae and sea-plants that have been genetically engineered for the job . They convert the atmosphere from the CO2 ,(from the original atmosphere ) and the amonia, methane , et ctera, ( from the comets) to a better composition. They would have to include multiple self-destruct sequences to make certain that they did not become the kudzu of the next age. They would also provide bio-mass for the later stages.

[Terraforming Venus No.11562611]

Many stages would be the same as terraforming Mars but there would be some differences.

1- Again place planetoids into orbit to serve as materials and as bases.

2- Again slam comets into the planet to speed up the rotation. First is to make days closer to a rate that would be easier to tolerate for life-forms that evolved to deal with a more or less 24 hour standard. Second is that while Venus does not need extra strengthening of its magnetic field to hold onto an atmosphere (it is doing a good job of that at the moment already), due to the proximity to the sun it might still need to boost its screening powers to block solar radiation.
3- Seed the atmosphere with genetically tailored micro-organisms designed to reconfigure the content of the atmosphere and, again like on Mars, they would have multiple limiters built directly into their genetic code to kill them off in favour of later biome components.

4- What to do with leftover toxins. Fixate sulfer and other compounds into a solid state and place them in a induction zone so that the volcanic activity would take them deep into the molten interior maybe?


Now what did I miss /overlook / forget about that needs to be addressed?