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/sci/ - Science & Math

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8346243 No.8346243 [Reply] [Original]

"We must continue to go into space for humanity. We won’t survive another 1,000 years without escaping our fragile planet,"
- Stephen Hawking

So, /sci/, where the hell we going?

Honestly, I just wanted an excuse to talk about space colonization. Is it possible? How soon?

>> No.8346272

First, just getting to other planets: NASA expects Moon missions in the late 2020s and a Mars shot sometime in the 2030s. A Venus flyby (also proposed for Apollo) could be slotted in somewhere in there as well.

Secondly: figuring out which to colonize. This requires a much greater study of each planet's individual hydrology (if water is even present) and it's geography and weather. This means more communications satellites (such that a reliable Internet connection between other planets and earth become plausible) and more rovers that can dig deeper and determine accurate calculations of natural resources. From there, studies can be done to determine the land's carrying capaciy.

Thirdly: actually colonizing them. It'll have to be figured out what the effects of space travel and low gravity have on people, and the best practices for building stations on planets.

It is plausible but it will take a long time and require a huge amount of research and engineering.

>> No.8346296

Solve the energy problem
Create robots that do physical labor
Come up with a system to decide who gets to leave and who gets to stay
???
Survive

>> No.8346307

>>8346272
NASA is not funding or doing anything along those lines.

SpaceX is going to go to mars, maybe people will pay them to go elsewhere.
Venus seems tricky because with 90% of earths gravity you are going to need a 2 stage rocket to get back from a cloud city.

>> No.8346320

>>8346243

Everything can be done with proper funding. Would it be profitable to colonize mars? I guess terraforming Mars would come in handy, if not only to shut all them hippies up about "hurr durr we only have one planet" and shit like that.

Is Mars rich on natural resources? Seems to me to be just sand.

>> No.8346322

>>8346243
There is simply no way colonizing Mars would be a solution for survival.
Even if we completely fucked up Earth's environment, it would still be more hospitable than fucking Mars.

>> No.8346326
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8346326

>>8346320

>> No.8346344

>>8346307

NASA is working towards manned missions, see SLS and Orion. All that is needed is a lander, which will only take 5 years (at the absolute maximum) to develop. It's a slow, but occurring, process. Everything should come together around 2025.

SpaceX is not doing any sort of manned missions outside of LEO, mostly because it won't make them money. Probes are a different situation, though.