Space Colonization General

[Anonymous No.4593130]

I know you all have a boner for space colonization.

What role will the Oort cloud play in humanity's colonization of the cosmos?

[sage No.4593142]

>>4593130
>>>/x/

[Anonymous No.4593149]

There will never be such a thing as space colonization. Not only is it generally nonsense from an econimical perspective, but also we won't be able to achieve anything anymore after peak oil.

[pascal !n5Z3VuZapw No.4593150]

oort cloud isn't spherical

we can go around.

[Anonymous No.4593151]

(continued)
The Oort cloud is a cloud of comets with an estimated net mass approximately equal to that of Earth and spans between 0.5 and 1.0 light years from Earth.

Comets have everything human colonies would need: organic material, minerals, and fuel for fusion. Proxima Centauri is the closest star to Earth and it is only 3 light years away from the supposed edge of the Oort cloud. Proxima's own Oort cloud would be just over 2 light years away from the edge of Sol's Oort cloud. Humanity could spread throughout the Oort cloud, mining comets and using their hollowed out husks as habitats, and eventually make the jump to nearby star systems in the same way they jump from comet to comet for resources.

[Anonymous No.4593169]

>>4593130
No use. Shit's cold and far away.

[Anonymous No.4593173]

>>4593150
y u make jokes

[Anonymous No.4593176]

> only 3 light years away
> only

[Anonymous No.4593178]

>>4593149
>There will never be such a thing as space colonization.
You're claim is possible but unacceptable. To stay on Earth is to accept extinction. We cannot accept extinction no matter how likely it is.

[Anonymous No.4593182]

>>4593176
Three light years is less than four light years.

[Anonymous No.4593189]

>>4593178
In case you didn't notice, we are mortal. We are gonna die anyway.

[Anonymous No.4593193]

>>4593178
The last mass extinction event was 65 million years ago and little mammalian rats/moles still managed to survive. The risk of another extinction event is negligible and our highly developed technological society will no doubt be able to survive on some level.

Besides, the real solution is to deal with the threats head on such as diverting the trajectories of asteroids. Not to plan for leaving our home planet for dead.

[Anonymous No.4593196]

>>4593142
The future fruits of science are /sci/ relevant.

[Anonymous No.4593197]

The problem with these threads is people don't quite understand the distances they're talking about.

If I took your sorry ass and placed it outside earth, you'd take a while to find the moon, and subsequently, you'd ask "where the hell are the planets?"

These distances are so abysmally large that there is really no point into discussing this, we'd be much better off of trying to figure out cryogenics / stasis.

That, or some way to burn these distances somehow with blazing speeds.
And light speed isnt even that fast.
Shit its actually slow, even moving at a kpc/s would take you a while to move around.

a pc is about 31 trillion kilometers, notice that I said "kpc", so a thousand times more, or 3.1*10^16.
31 trillion million meters per second is SLOW. Lights is about 300,000 meters per second.
We sure as fuck can't even travel at light speed.

>exploring space
>"colonizing" space
stop making me sad

[Anonymous No.4593198]

>It's hypothetical.

[Anonymous No.4593225]

>>4593189
>deaths of individuals = extinction of species

[Anonymous No.4593232]

i give humanity with a LOOOONG SHOT that they will have bases in mars in about a 100 years,MAX.
i hope my grandchildren get to see that

[Anonymous No.4593267]

>>4593197
3 ly ain't impossible, mah niggah. Sure, it's far beyong anything we've ever done in that field, but it is doable.

[Anonymous No.4593294]

>>4593193
99.9% of every species that ever existed went extinct. Humans are not immune to extinction.

Humans are highly adaptable, but dramatic changes in Earth's environment are the reason most species go extinct and humans have a habit of creating dramatic environmental changes. The power humans wield over their environment may be impressive in the short term but it makes equilibrium with the environment over hundreds of thousand and millions of years very unlikely.

Every dramatic change is like a roll of the dice. Humanity's dice may be loaded, but we force ourselves to throw those dice more frequently. Sooner or later we will lose, and it only takes one loss. One loss equates to the failure of humanity, our extinction. And when humanity fails, it fails forever.

[Anonymous No.4593314]

>>4593294
>implying an environmental change on a single planet can kill galaxy wide civilization

[Anonymous No.4593315]

>>4593130
We should use a Project orion style vessel to get to proxima centauri, then after that aim for Gilese 581

The oort cloud is pretty much useless. Honestly, Jupiter's atmosphere probably has more metal per unit volume

[Anonymous No.4593355]

>>4593197
The problem is not with these threads. The problem is with your assumption that the colonization of the cosmos needs to take the form of daring pioneers warping off to another star system, traveling on a giant ship selflessly built using the entire GDP of a nation, and getting there in 10 years or less for the sake of movie style plot development of the original crew.

Humanity might instead slowly spread across the solar system, to the outer limits of the Oort cloud by jumping from minuscule celestial body to minuscule celestial body. Each jump could take generations. The jump to objects orbiting other stars would just be a matter of stocking up more before the journey.

[Anonymous No.4593373]

>>4593355
A better way would be to build robots, send them to planets, and have each robot built more robots and send them to other planets.

[Anonymous No.4593386]

i'm not saying transhumanism is possible, but if it is possible, it would solve a lot of problems with space travel

1. Become immortal machine beings
2. Travel (extremely slowly) to other stars using whatever propulsion tech we have running on solar/nuclear/whatever power
3. Occupy selves during trip with VR environments (possibly with sped up processing speeds to make subjective experience of travel faster)
4. Profit?

obviously this assumes a shitload of scientific and technological development that might remain a pipe dream

[Anonymous No.4593390]

>>4593267
This. If we can get cryogenics working and can reach speeds of 1% of the speed of light it'd be doable. At 10% or more of the speed of light it becomes possible even without cryogenics (although I imagine a 30 year space journey would get very boring very quickly).

[Anonymous No.4593391]

>>4593373
That isn't human colonization and requires overcoming greater technological hurdles than the slow and steady approach I am suggesting. The slow and steady approach is relatively simple and most important of all, it is done naturally (for the gain of individual groups of people) as opposed to relying on unprecedentedly selfless actions to protect our species from what-if scenarios.

[Anonymous No.4593398]

>>4593267
>3ly is possible
>roughly 30 trillion kilometers, or one pc.

Earth>moon is roughly 4 hundred thousand km.

>3*10^13 km
vs how far a human flew so far
>4*10^5 km

>possible
Not in a timeframe I can comprehend. "possible" is a very loose term, how about we start to use "realistic"?

>>4593355
>let me assume a lot of shit and then attack you as if you said it
I stopped reading then.

[Anonymous No.4593399]

>>4593386
>immortal machine beings
>occupy selves
If we were fully machine we could just switch off and back on when we were near wherever we were going.

[Anonymous No.4593401]

>>4593314
Your post has nothing to do with the post you linked to.

[Anonymous No.4593406]

>>4593391
The idea of the robot thing is to find worlds that are useful and then send humans afterwards. It avoids the problem of sending humans to a planet only to find out it's uninhabitable and then they have to come back.

[Anonymous No.4593420]

>>4593398
I'll make the argument succinct. (4593197) made assumptions as to how space colonization must be carried out and criticized the very concept of space colonization because said assumptions made it impractical. (>>4593355) argues that those assumptions are unfounded and that there are more practical alternative space colonization methods.

[Anonymous No.4593431]

Even if we find a way to go at nearly the speed of light, communication between Earth and any spacecraft going that fast will be almost impossible because of the time it would take the radio waves to go between the Earth and the spacecraft.

[Anonymous No.4593443]

>>4593406
I disagree with your assumption that humans will require Earth like planets in order to colonize the cosmos. Earth like planets will be nothing more than a luxury once humans learn to carve out a living in within our solar system without terrestrial resources.

[Anonymous No.4593449]

>>4593431
A) Why is that relevant? This thread is about colonization, not unmanned probes.
B) Sufficiently advanced AI would be required for an unmanned mission far from humans.

[Anonymous No.4593463]

>>4593449
Where did I say unmanned? You are aware that modern rockets communicate with Earth, right?

>>4593431
That's true, but the point isn't necessarily to find Earth-like planets, just ones that are useful for any purpose. It's easier to use robots to figure out where the useful materials and things like that are than firing people off into space in hopes of finding useful planets there and having to come back empty handed. I see your point though.

[Anonymous No.4593468]

>>4593463
Quit samefagging.

Contribute to the discussion instead of arguing with yourself.

[Anonymous No.4593470]

Moving around the solar system will be easy using chemical propulsion. If we were accelerating at 1g from Earth we would:
Reach Mercury in 37 hours
Venus in 25 hours
Mars in 35 hours
Jupiter in 4 days
Saturn in 6 days
Uranus in 9 days
Neptune in 11 days

Easy cheesy. BUT its gonna take 3 years to reach alpha centauri using the same acceleration. Travelling between stars won't be travelling in a straight line from A to B, but probably through wormholes which we're not gonna be the masters of for a LONG time. The distances are too great. In this century we will travel round the solar system, but no further for quite some time

[Anonymous No.4593472]

>>4593468
>implying calling me out on samefagging is contributing to the discussion
Hypocrite. I'm not arguing with myself, and I am contributing to the discussion (more than you are, at least).

>>4593470
3 years isn't so bad if we have something like cryogenics or a way to make people "hybernate".

[Anonymous No.4593478]

>>4593420

>>4593197
>>4593398
This gives some perspective on what are the distances we're talking about, and how it could be carried out (omits assumptions), implies purpose

>>4593355
makes ad hominem attacks, based on words he put in someone elses mouth, and then latches some awe inspiring "long term capillar colonization".


There is good reason to believe that "exploring/colonizing" space will be closely tied to money. Or otherwise, some very large "gain" for our civilization, this is because leaving our planet for an exceedingly long journey, or even leaving our planet to live (and colonize!) another planet will always cost ridiculous amounts of money.
These are healthy assumptions that leave out the "omg w migh go xtinc!" scenario.

If money or otherwise purpose is the driving force, its no wonder people will desire to be able to reap what they sow, you just won't see our civilization colonize (and populate) some random planet or belt in the butt of the galaxy because "its pretty cool", you'll go there with a goal in mind, and if you do that, you are bound to have time contraints, and if you want to get shit done with a live crew (colonize, remember?), you have a whole lot more constraints.

If you want to assume that a large amount of derpoids will stack up unthinkable amounts of money and resources to leave for journey in which they are guaranteed to die long, long before reaching the destination, and whose drive and purpose is "mite b cool", you are not being realistic.

>inb4spaceX

[Anonymous No.4593517]

>>4593472
A) Let me reword my command. Contribute more to the discussion instead of supporting your own posts with samefaggotry.
B) I HAVE been contributing to this thread and am criticizing the quality of your contributions.

If your posts were decent then you wouldn't need to rely on creating fallacious replies of agreement. You insult yourself and harm the discussion by not being forthright with your arguments.

[Anonymous No.4593548]

>>4593478
>If money or otherwise purpose is the driving force, its no wonder people will desire to be able to reap what they sow, you just won't see our civilization colonize (and populate) some random planet or belt in the butt of the galaxy because "its pretty cool", you'll go there with a goal in mind, and if you do that, you are bound to have time contraints, and if you want to get shit done with a live crew (colonize, remember?), you have a whole lot more constraints.
What are you arguing?

[Anonymous No.4593576]

>>4593517
I'm not entirely sure what you're talking about. You seem to think that I'm pretending to be other people and agreeing with myself to give the impression that other people agree with me, but I'm not. All I've done is say things and then answered when someone has responded to them.

[Anonymous No.4593632]

>>4593472
I calculate it would take approximately 4 years relative to the crew to travel 4 light years accelerating at 1 g. Did you take into account the fact that they would need to decelerate for the second half of the journey?

[Anonymous No.4593636]

>>4593149
>That guy who has to bring up "Peak Oil" in every discussion.

[Anonymous No.4593642]

>>4593576
>You seem to think that I'm pretending to be other people and agreeing with myself to give the impression that other people agree with me, but I'm not.
That is exactly what I'm accusing (>>4593463) of and it's hard not to see that is exactly what (>>4593463) was doing given (>>4593463)'s use of the first person to defend (>>4593431) against (>>4593449) and then referring to (>>4593431) again but this time in the second person in the very same post.

[Anonymous No.4593648]

>>4593548
see last lines of 1st quote
>>4593398

[Anonymous No.4593649]

The Oort cloud is worthless. By the time we can get there easily and spend enough fuel and effort to actually find one of those comets*, it's far more useful to go to other solar systems and find suitable planets.

Like>>4593151 said, the Oort cloud contains as much mass as the earth spread out over a cubic light year. That's more empty than any artificial vacuum on earth. It's not worth wasting your kinetic energy on.

[Anonymous No.4593654]

>>4593636
I'm not him and I bring up peak oil a lot too. If modern technological progress and the capacity to sustain that technology is due to cheap oil then it is reasonable to be worried about the effects of the loss of cheap oil. Such worries are relevant to many futurist topics because such topics often rely on the rate of technological progress and capacity to maintain a given level of technology present during the age of cheap oil and yet extrapolate past the point cheap oil will be available.

[Anonymous No.4593657]

>>4593648
>last line of the first quote
>roughly 30 trillion kilometers, or one pc.
That is not a claim to be argued. That is not even a complete sentence. Did you link to the wrong post?

[Anonymous No.4593659]

>>4593642
I didn't even notice that. I didn't do it on purpose. I meant to reply to >>4593443 instead of >>4593431 (my post). My bad.

[Anonymous No.4593662]

>>4593659
And if you don't believe me - apply logic. What I wrote wouldn't make sense if it was a response to >>4593431, while it would make sense as a reply to >>4593443. I guess I clicked the wrong number.

[Anonymous No.4593675]

>>4593657
I meant to say of the first post I quoted:

>>possible
>Not in a timeframe I can comprehend. "possible" is a very loose term, how about we start to use "realistic"?

[eye No.4593678]

>>4593632
Did you really just say that it takes 4 years to go 4 light years moving at the speed of light? You know that's like saying that it takes 1 hour to go 60 kilometers moving at 60 kilomters per hour, right?

[Anonymous No.4593679]

>>4593649
Good point, but I find humanity using the Oort cloud as a means of leapfrogging to the nearby star systems more "down to Earth" then alternative means of colonizing other star systems. Given the necessity of colonizing other star systems, colonizing the Oort cloud is almost a necessity.

[Anonymous No.4593685]

>>4593678
I know, special relativity is pretty crazy.

[Anonymous No.4593691]

>>4593662
A likely excuse... but I accept your almost implied apology.

Good day.

[Anonymous No.4593700]

>>4593678
I said it would take four years to travel four light years accelerating at 1 g relative to the crew.

[Anonymous No.4593714]

>>4593679
>Given the necessity of colonizing other star systems
Our system has give or take 4 more billion years of life, since its tied to the life of the sun.

Lets assume we get our shit together and don't destroy earth, I can see us reaching out to grab resources, that is likely to be done in unmanned ways.

As far as straight out colonizing worlds, or even reaching them, landing and building a modular base, we are talking so much far into the future that I quite frankly don't even see the purpose of specifically talking about the Oort cloud might be. It could be a place to scavenge resources, as good as any, since if we can reach the oort cloud and mine it, you could assume we can reach beyond the Oort cloud.

Or, you could assume we deplete everything around us before the Oort cloud and we have to face the Oort cloud if we want resources, that also is a very long time into the future, and again, technology might be so advanced that, well.

You see where I'm going. You're talking about distances, and scales, and timeframes, well beyond your (or my) comprehension.
At that point, its more fanfiction than it is goodfaith speculation. Pick a reasonable timeframe and distance, some we can reason and at least grasp, and then we can have some decent discussion.

[Anonymous No.4593723]

>>4593463
>That's true, but the point isn't necessarily to find Earth-like planets, just ones that are useful for any purpose. It's easier to use robots to figure out where the useful materials and things like that are than firing people off into space in hopes of finding useful planets there and having to come back empty handed. I see your point though.
I agree that going into other solar systems blind is pointless and that it could be possible to use unmanned probes to scout out other solar systems. However, I don't believe such scouting needs to be done with probes first. It might not be worth it if AI doesn't develop far enough and if we don't want to wait for a probe to get there before sending humans. I also don't believe we need to send a probe. It would be a lot less time consuming just to use telescopes to scout on nearby star systems. Having multiple telescopes across the solar system would greatly increase our ability to resolve nearby planetary systems.

[Anonymous No.4593722]

>>4593700
That's even worse. Given the speed of light as an absolute limit, you'll need more than 4 years to travel 4 light year. It will take you about a year (354 days) accelerating at 1 g to reach the speed of light. Then another year to decelerate.

During periods of acceleration and deceleration you'd travel half a light year. So the correct answer is about 5 years.

[Anonymous No.4593727]

>>4593722
I said it twice and I'll say it a third time. It would take four years RELATIVE TO THE CREW. That's how time dilation works.

[Anonymous No.4593745]

>>4593714
>Lets assume we get our shit together and don't destroy earth.
Over what time scale? We can't keep all our eggs in one basket forever.

[Anonymous No.4593749]

>The Oort cloud is a cloud of comets with an estimated net mass approximately equal to that of Earth and spans between 0.5 and 1.0 light years from Earth.

Here is the problem; you aren't taking the immense spread of these rocks into account.

These are not close together; they are an incredibly sparse arrangement of very little matter over a huge space.
We would need the mass that is already in space for any work in space, but finding, getting to, and surviving on one tiny morsel out in a 'cloud' that large is a vaster accomplishment than just going straight where you want to go.

[Anonymous No.4593755]

>>4593749
>extreme distance
Don't you mean extreme delta v?

[Anonymous No.4593764]

So has /sci/ given up on FTL travel?

[Anonymous No.4593768]

>>4593749
>We would need the mass that is already in space for any work in space, but finding, getting to, and surviving on one tiny morsel out in a 'cloud' that large is a vaster accomplishment than just going straight where you want to go.
The "morsels" would be the goal. They have everything a human colony requires and a lot more fuel for fusion than most other solar bodies. Colonizing other star systems wouldn't be the goal, it would be an added bonus.

[Anonymous No.4593773]

>>4593764
No self respecting /sci/entist worth eir salt ever believe FTL was possible in the first place.

[Anonymous No.4593777]

>>4593773

But we can still dream.

[Anonymous No.4593786]

>>4593745
>Over what time scale?
huh
>Our system has give or take 4 more billion years of life
now < timescale < 4bil years

But ultimately it doesnt matter. We're leaving earth once earth becomes unsuitable for life, rather than when "theres too many of us".

[Anonymous No.4593787]

>>4593777
>But we can still dream.
No, /sci/ is not allowed to dream about absurd impossibilities. /sci/ can only dream about glorious dawns of 400 billion suns.

[Anonymous No.4593796]

Envision a relatively slow hopping from one body to another across interstellar distances to establish the first unmanned outposts with host infrastructure for uploads. The uploads themselves will then travel as a beam of light between systems.

[Anonymous No.4593826]

So what about FTL communication? Has it been established that quantum entanglement wouldn't work?

[Anonymous No.4593875]

>>4593786
>We're leaving earth once earth becomes unsuitable for life, rather than when "theres too many of us".
You are piling on the misconceptions in your post.
A) Humans will never leave Earth en masse due to overpopulation. It wouldn't even be a drop in the bucket. We'd be lucky if we could get a millionth of the Earth's population off its surface. No one itt implied that would be the reason we colonize space because it is absurd.
B) We are less and less likely to colonize space the worse it gets on Earth. Humanity would sooner fight over what few resources are left on Earth than spend billions on rockets when every world economy is collapsing due to resource depletion, environmental damage, and war.

[Anonymous No.4593891]

>>4593875
(continued)
You're perspective on human colonization is too lade back. Earth like planets are probably pretty common and Earth like planets have probably been around long before Earth. That would mean intelligent life is common and has existed within the Milky Way long before humanity evolved. Humanity's ultimate goal is to colonize other star systems and eventually the galaxy (it is a necessity in the eyes of anyone who values the survival of the species above all else) and yet we see no signs of galactic civilizations. There are no signs of any intelligent life out there, not a peep. You could argue something outlandish and optimistic like those much older alien civilizations advancing beyond anything would could find by listening for them and that they bend their entire civilization in order to hide themselves from lesser races, but pessimism is practical. Hope for the best and plan on the worst.

A more reasonable/practical assumption is that those alien civilizations never colonized beyond their solar system. They reached some developmental bottleneck and then suffered some natural or self-induced catastrophe that led to their technological regression before eventually being wiped out due to disease, mass extinction event, or pure dumb chance.

Having to live with the possibility of natural events destroying civilization as we know it is bad enough, now we have nuclear weapons! Staying on Earth is a death sentence. It is unlikely that we will colonize space before war or economic collapse destroys our ability to colonize space. If we do colonize space, it will be very very hard. It is unlikely that we will colonize other star systems. If we do colonize other star systems, it will be very very hard.

Sitting on our asses hoping for the universe to be full of puppies and flowers will lead to our extinction. We need to assume the worst and work hard for the best.

[Anonymous No.4593895]

>>4593826
FTL anything is impossible. You can not possibly pass beyond your own light cone of influence.

[Anonymous No.4593911]

>>4593294
>99.9% of every species that ever existed went extinct.
And how many of those were intelligent?

If Neanderthals are considered separate from humans and considered intelligent, then there's one. But they only went extinct human of a more intelligent race; homo sapiens.

Then you could say "well aliens could come and..." which is true, but unlikely. For instance, if we found some random island which for *some* reason we had never found before, and it was full of neanderthals, we wouldn't wipe them out. We would trade with them, communicate with them, etc. And reasonable alien race would do the same.

[Anonymous No.4593930]

>>4593796
That does not serve humanity. That is a luxury dreamed up by trekkies who are grasping at anything to make their dreams of individuals galavanting across the universe a reality.

Such people need to come to grips with the reality that no individual will adventure across multiple star systems. The adventure will be experienced across generations of humans.

[Anonymous No.4593940]

>>4593911
You try to argue that humans are special, but you ignored the part of my post which argues why we have disadvantages that perhaps exceed our advantages when it comes to survival across large time spans.

[Anonymous No.4593942]

>>4593875
>when every world economy is collapsing due to resource depletion, environmental damage, and war.
Except that won't be happening.

Earth will be prosperous enough and technologically advanced enough to support a large scale space mission. Using one or more space elevators, we would have no problem transporting massive amounts of people into orbit. Even if we can't move faster than light, we could somehow extend the life of the people on the ship long enough to reach a habitable world.

Another possibility is creating a ship so large that it could function as a self-sustaining city with a functioning population.

>>4593930
Assuming a limited life span.

[Anonymous No.4593947]

>2012
>still traveling while moving

[Anonymous No.4593978]

>>4593940
I stopped reading after the first sentence because it made me rage. BUT since you asked I'll respond to the latter portion.

>Dramatic changes in Earth's environment are the reason most species go extinct
I won't argue with that.

>Humans have a habit of creating dramatic environmental changes
Disagree. The dramatic changes that lead to extinction include bigass volcanoes, meteor/comet impacts, or ice ages. Humans do not have the means or desire to create any change such as this - in fact we are working very hard to prevent this. Like I said, intelligence is the key. We can land on asteroids, moving one out of a collision course would be challenging but possible.


>...impressive in the short term but it makes equilibrium with the environment over hundreds of thousand and millions of years very unlikely
We don't need equilibrium. The "environment" is simply the physical objects (tree/air/water/etc) that existed on this planet before humans arrived. It can be manipulated to serve us; the only quantities that must be in equilibrium are "energy in" and "energy out". Of course manipulating it can be dangerous, but that's where intelligence comes in. Supercomputer simulations provide the means to predict how the environment will react to various actions and allow us to choose the best one.

>Every dramatic change is like a roll of the dice
No. There are no dice, everything is deterministic. You're going to need to elaborate on the "dramatic changes" you are referring to, because there has been nothing humanity has done that could irreversibly fuck up our environment.

[Anonymous No.4594122]

>>4593470
>Easy cheesy. BUT its gonna take 3 years to reach alpha centauri using the same acceleration.

You are supposing 'easy' without calculating the reaction mass for this.
To have constant 1G acceleration does indeed make all trips shorter, to any destination. But how can anyone forgive ignoring the fuel?

[Anonymous No.4594139]

>>4593679
>Good point, but I find humanity using the Oort cloud as a means of leapfrogging to the nearby star systems more "down to Earth" then alternative means of colonizing other star systems. Given the necessity of colonizing other star systems, colonizing the Oort cloud is almost a necessity.

I think you are ignoring the point entirely.
Using the Oort like you say is like suggesting someone swim across the Pacific and reminding them there are some islands to rest on.
it doesn't make any damn difference to the swimmer; they are too far, too invisible, and too spread out to be of any use at all.
He's better off making a boat or plane, and once he has that, he can just go straight to his destination.

[Anonymous No.4594156]

>>4593764
You don't have to give up any effort.
We still have good, practical uses for horses, trains, trucks, and boats, even though we have made planes.

[Anonymous No.4594159]

I think we will someday possibly mine the asteroids in it.

[Mad Scientist !!Q11PG81nz2n No.4594166]

>"I know you all have a boner for space colonization."

Wat

[Anonymous No.4594171]

>>4593796
That's ridiculous.
It supposes several things we cannot expect ever to do, ignores several massive problems, and assumes total reliability over massive distances.

[Anonymous No.4594185]

>>4594159
>I think we will someday possibly mine the asteroids in it.

Then you, too, haven't conceived of the sparseness of those rocks

We're talking tiny bits of matter strewn over an immense space.
Immense.
Read that as 'unforgiveably huge, I can't really believe this is so empty, omigod there is nothing out here, goddammit it is stupid looking for a little ice this way.'

[Anonymous No.4594208]

>>4594185
The distances just take time. Give your ship a good shove from your home accelerator and you just need to fine-tune the trajectory and decelerate at the destination.

No medium to slow you down.

[Anonymous No.4594255]

>>4593149
as if that will always be the main fuel source

[Anonymous No.4594259]

The fucking thing about the Oort is that it's extremely sparse. You might find an asteroidal-sized fragment in a volume as large as the entire planetary solar system. In order to make use of the volatiles out there, you'd have to come up with a massive telescope project that tries to find the very dim objects out there. Put a massive set of mirrored hexagons in Jupiter's L2 point and have them peer outward in the plane of the ecliptic for these dim objects. In fact, there's no reason why such a project shouldn't be built for general light-spectrum investigation. Just have 'em collect light and categorize it into massive data storage, and punch all that through massive processors, looking for any object whatsoever. Sort and process the data, and have the output piped to very specific scopes to determine distance. You should be able to find Oort objects in a hurry, and build up a catalog, hence forming a mission priority list when it comes time to go to them and mine them for volatiles.

... NOT that I believe Humanity will ever be that capable.

[Anonymous No.4594444]

>>4593942
>Earth will be prosperous enough and technologically advanced enough to support a large scale space mission.
Optimism isn't practical. You can hope for the best and try to find the good aspects of what comes to pass, but don't assume everything will fall into humanity's lap. It is practical to assume the worst so long as some hope remains.

[Anonymous No.4594512]

Isn't the Oort cloud still hypothetical? It might not even be there.

>didn't read a single post in the thread

[Anonymous No.4594521]

>>4594259
Yes, you can do that.
But then, you'd be doing it while sitting on top of Jupiter, a massive fuel source, with thirty moons nearby and a set of rings that is vastly --- vastly! -- more accessible than the tiny rocks you *might* be able to discern within a light year of range.

Seriously?

If there were only one tuna in all of the ocean, would you go fishing?

the Oort cloud is a technicality; a minor detail, without consequence and certainly not worth consideration.

It would be what was supposed early on in the thread if it were a heavy belt of material, where actually moving between significant pieces would be easy and rewarding, and where it actually did make the relative space between systems less empty.
But it isn't.
It simply is not rich enough to bother looking for and moving to each of the things that are there.
It isn't even rich enough to look at!

[Anonymous No.4594539]

>>4594139
I've said it in other posts but not that one and you and others have argued the same point. I apologize on not putting everything into that post. I'll elaborate.

Your ocean analogy is apt, and I love analogies, so I'm going to run with it. The goal of the people doing the colonizing isn't to cross the ocean. Their goal is to colonize and exploit the islands. The leapfrogging from island to island would eventually allow them to make one last relatively short jump to the other side of the ocean, but that was never their goal. It is just an added bonus for the colonizers as a whole (i.e. humanity).

The beauty of the gradual colonization of the Oort cloud as a means of colonizing other star systems is that there is no one single unprecedented event where a nation selflessly builds and launches the most expensive object ever built just to preserve humanity. The gradual method is made up of relatively small treks that are each done for personal gain.

I don't expect humanity to be selfless, saintly people who do everything for the greater good. They will be hominids with the same selfish urges that motivated their ancestors to seek the comforts of a warm fire, a fully belly, and sex.

The "Oort Method" as I guess I'll name it, is requires the least of humanity and humanity's technology in order to complete the necessary task of colonizing other star systems. That's why I favor it.

[Anonymous No.4594589]

>>4594539
Oh, I saw that from before, it's just that the Oort can't do it. There isn't enough there.

What you are talking about fits much better in the asteroid belt, and has been suggested many times (Ben Bova, David Brin, Heinlein).
It's got enough material to be interesting, close enough distances that they can be reached at slow speeds, and it's all gathered on the plane of the system.
(Remember the Oort cloud is not on the plane; it's roughly spherical distribution and random vector of objects is a heavy complication.)

Gas giants are even better; fuels easier to siphon or scoop in an elongated orbit, it might even be efficient.

Maybe the sherpa method appeals to you; where robotic ferries maneuver material into useful locations that make a leisurely trip more practical.

Captcha cluons 1805 (a year significant to ballooning)

[Anonymous No.4594637]

>>4594589
>There isn't enough there
The Oort cloud supposedly has the mass of Earth. Given the inaccessibility of most of Earth's mass, that makes the Oort cloud a gold mine. Comets are perfect for future human colonies because they are chalk full of minerals, organics, water, and fuel for fusion. They won't be part of the interplanetary economy as much as the vast Jovian refining facilities or anything like that given how separated most of those comets are with the rest of the solar system, but that makes them no less livable for people who decide to rough it on the frontier of humanity's interplanetary civilization. For those want to be alone and prosper, Oort will become synonymous with utopia.

The Oort Method is neither the best economic choice nor the best path towards colonizing other star systems, but it is the only option that finds a middle road between the two. Do you get me?

[Anonymous No.4594700]

>>4593373
What if one of those robots malfunctions and starts reproducing defective robots that just continue making more and more robots.

They could consume entire solar systems before we even get there.

[Anonymous No.4594708]

>>4594700
That's why we would put in plenty of redundant programming and multiple kill switches.

[Anonymous No.4594711]

>>4593149
Nuclear.
Power.

Also, look at me, I'm mr edgy depression, would you like your future shit or shitter?

[Anonymous No.4594712]

How close is the closest asteroid that could possibly be mined?

[Anonymous No.4594715]

We'll have FTL travel or some equivalent in the future. I just know it.

[Anonymous No.4594718]

>>4594708
Adding more layers of complexity increases chances of failure.

[Anonymous No.4594722]

>>4594712
Yo Momma.

Hohoho.

But seriously, we'd have to get one that's in a safe orbit, I think, so I'm going to say the asteroid belt.

But I have no idea what I'm talking about.

[Anonymous No.4594728]

>>4594715
3/10
Would not rage again.

[Anonymous No.4594729]

>>4594712
mining asteroids is not economically viable.

bringing the material back to earth would fuck up the global economy, and various nations would block your attempts at trying to sell your products to make a profit.

[Anonymous No.4594738]

>>4594728
keep raging, you perfumed, close-minded whore

[Anonymous No.4594739]

>>4594728
I was serious.

[Anonymous No.4594742]

>>4594718
Redundancies don't make it more prone to failure. They simply make it more expensive.

Either get some coffee or call it a night.

[Anonymous No.4594746]

>>4594729
...so? You didn't answer the question at all. I don't give a fuck about your speculation.

[Anonymous No.4594794]

>>4594712
The space between Mars and Jupiter, you might recall, is an asteroid belt with the mass of a medium planet.
Not just that much mass, but it's all in the system equatorial plane, moving in largely regular orbit.
No gravity wells to deal with; if we can get something there to take advantage of the wealth, staying there is not so difficult.
It has long been perceived to be a likely source of good fuel and minerals, but it seems icy bodies would be much less common than the ratio in the Oort.

[Anonymous No.4594803]

>>4594718
It's also one reason such robots could never acquire the ability to create more robots.

We were just supposing robotic workers, not thoroughly AI sentient creatures with motivation.

They would need to be able to make a container and put material into it, then move that container to a good location and move on.

Someone has seen FAR too much sci-fi

[Anonymous No.4594813]

>>4594729
If it costs a lot to start, the material returned doesn't mess up any economics for a long time.

The problem is time; companies do not plan long-term enough to start any such project any more.

There isn't a fall-off point (yet) where you can recoup some of your investment halfway through.

That was why going to the moon was a good plan; it's a better understood goal that can get us a good start to the asteroids and give us a place to receive and/or manufacture the material.

[Anonymous No.4594846]

>>4593197
>quit exaggerating
If the nearest Goldilocks is 45LY away and we are using some fuel that could sustain 45 years of travel we could colonize another planet with a second generation.

Even if we can't reach light speed and max out a few m/s slower than light 46 years is not that big of a difference.

if beyond the oort is 3LY and we could travel lightspeed then it takes three years of continuous travel. We'd have to have sufficient energy but if we can reach light speed I'm guessing we can pack enough energy reserves. Even if we can't travel as fast as light and can only travel 150,000 m/s it would take us 6 years.

From that perspective reaching light speed should be the goal but we could be satisfied with reaching half light

Now in terms of cost, well we both know it would be improbable and not cost effective but it probably would be possible

[Anonymous No.4594945]

>Even if we can't reach light speed and max out a few m/s slower than light 46 years is not that big of a difference.

>…We'd have to have sufficient energy but if we can reach light speed I'm guessing we can pack enough energy reserves.

>From that perspective reaching light speed should be the goal but we could be satisfied with reaching half light

>Now in terms of cost, well we both know it would be improbable and not cost effective but it probably would be possible

No, not even close.
You've taken the principle of the limit of light speed and minimized it to nearly inconsequential factors 46 years instead of 45!
Light speed cannot be reached; that is because it would take infinite energy.
to reduce it so little is to say it would only take 44/45ths of infinite -- you're still talking far beyond the scope of matter in the universe.

Worse, you are trying to talk about immense masses being moved -- a whole colony. You ramped up the mass we have to move by many magnitudes to overcome the colonizing problem!

Let's say we can build a generation ship, it will traverse that 45 LY at 10%, and we have a firm and promising destination.
That is, we'd have to be able to build a reliable spaceship capable of lasting 450 years minimum with life-support for a generational crew and carrying (or gathering) fuel to push it at that speed for that long.

What is the most complex mechanism humanity has ever built that operated for 100 years?
(Nothing -- we don't even have the ability to make simple machines last that long. When we have made a complex device that can last 500 years on the surface, we might begin to consider the other bits.)

You'll notice we cannot consider cost at all; there isn't any possibility of covering the cost of something we cannot do.

[Anonymous No.4594959]

>>4594729
>bringing the material back to earth would fuck up the global economy
You don't know what you are talking about.

Are you Australian?

[Anonymous No.4594977]

>>4594945
>What is the most complex mechanism humanity has ever built that operated for 100 years?
That's a stupid argument. Technology 100 years ago was nothing compared to what it now, but there are still working clocks over 100 years old.

We don't build stuff to last 100 years anyways, because wtf is the point? If we needed such a system, we would make it.

[Anonymous No.4594999]

So... how do we deal with the space debris problem?

If you're traveling at relativistic speeds, hitting a goddamn pebble is going to rip a ship apart.

[Anonymous No.4595014]

>>4594999

deflector array? dude, who taught freshman engineering to you at starfleet academy??

[Anonymous No.4595017]

>>4595014

Sadly, ensign, this is only the 21st century. We haven't got that shit yet, yo.

[Anonymous No.4595021]

>ITT: Pessimists who will never accomplish anything because they think too small
>using words such as IMPOSSIBLE

Fuck you guys, you shouldn't even be in this board.

[Anonymous No.4595039]

>>4595021

...for all intents and purposes it is impossible right now. We might have the tech to make a manned mission not beyond Saturn's moons at this time.

Just because you have romantic ideas of spaceflight doesn't mean shit. How are you getting your propulsion, how are you shielding from radiation, how are you fighting isolation anxiety, how are you storing enough food for the journey, how are you planning to live once you arrive at your destination.

There are so many engineering feats that you don't even realize matter.

[Anonymous No.4595047]

>>4594977
I'll have to give you the clocks; at least those guys know about better precision and fine work.
I was thinking about engines, and mission-critical stuff like the artificial heart -- didn't the Jarvik IV last 3 years? that's pretty poor for a heart, and those guys were motivated and funded.

You assume we could build it sooner than I do.

We certainly wouldn't enter such a project based on the first device that we claimed could do that, anyway -- we'd want to see something last, say, 200 years first.
or, we'd have to build in the ability and skill to replace every component.

The space effort did one thing for us very well; pushed us to reach limits regular invention and development just wouldn't have done.
That kind of abstract goalmaking is why people don't always support such efforts; it's not as obvious what we are going to get from it.
But, (as soon as we can feed our planet and keep it from souring,) we need to get back to those extreme goals.

[That Q Guy From the Last Thread No.4595060]

Not trying to be pessimistic here, but, there seems to be a lot of "science woo" in this thread. Cryogenics, wormholes, FTL, etc.

I suppose they could be possible, but it just sounds silly for whatever reason.

[Anonymous No.4595073]

>>4595039
>implying that there's always the struggle of getting there
>men once said man would never fly
>men once thought the world was flat
>men once thought a million different things that couldn't happen
>those things happened

No shit there will problems getting there, but NEVER happening? Eat shit.

[Anonymous No.4595124]

>>4595047
But the Phoenix-7 has kept Mr. Yao alive since 1996. I agree that building something to last 500 years is a massive engineering challenge; but it isn't impossible. The ship would basically have to be self-repairing to ensure it would survive.

>But we need to get back to those extreme goals

Agreed. It's hard to sell them right now because they're so expensive and money is short. I'm hoping in 20-30 years after the current "facebook kids" have spawned their own families replete with significantly more technological knowledge than their own parents had, a sufficient portion of the population will be science-oriented enough to support such a mission. Then possibly another 20 years to reach the level of infrastructure needed (space elevators and such), and another 20 to build the thing.

This is all very optimistic though and purely speculative. Personally I don't like predicting the future in terms of actual dates because I can never do it reliably.
>>4595060
Lumping cyrogenics in with wormholes/FTL is miscategorization. It's vastly more probable than either of those to occur.

>>4595073
He said "right now", not "never".

[Anonymous No.4595140]

The hard thing about living in these times is being able to dream such beautiful dreams, but ending up dead before any of them become plausible.

Most of us won't live to see commercial fusion. People in the 50's thought that was right around the corner. I remember when NASA projected a manned mission to Mars by 2006. It's now just roughly projected as decades away.

You need to approach your world with sober senses.

[Anonymous No.4595628]

>>4593470
Good luck slowing down