/sci/ - Science & Math

[Anonymous No.9845636]

Does anyone understand this Jeff guy's space vision?

He vaguely explains his motivation:
>we will have to leave this planet
>we don’t have a lot of time

Hmm, ok, could be true. If he means overpopulation for example (although many people believe that earth can harbor billions of additional people with efficient technology, e.g. efficient agriculture). Even though his motivation is only vaguely formulated and not true on a timeframe of some generations at least, let's agree that no one wants humans to be stuck on earth forever.

The solutions he proposes is where it get's really weird. He want's millions of people to live and work in space. How would that solve any problem? Any space station, let it be 1000 times as big as the ISS, won't be autark, they will all depend on supply from earth with earthly products.
And he says it's very important to have a long term moon basis. Again, nothing on the moon will ever be autark (opposed to mars where there is such a variety of elements and molecules and a chance to get a nice atmosphere). I would agree that the moon can be a good place to test technology that is meant for mars, given that the moon is always in reach and mars can only be reached every 2 years, combined with a months long travel. But why would it be necessary that there is something
like the ISS that just lands on moon's surface. It needs to be constantly supplied from earth like the ISS, it won't help to get "millions of people living and working in space".

In conclusion, space stations and moon bases will ever depend on earth so they are not a backup for earthly live. And they will be fucking expensive. A mars colony has a chance to be self-sustaining one day and won't cost earth anything, it might even improve some earthly GDPs because of it's imports. Is Jeff Who a joke? What am I not understanding?

[Anonymous No.9845955]

>>9845636
It's because he feels that climate change is going to fuck everything up so he wants to move as much industry off the planet as possible. He feels that if we do that, then we can reduce pollution and thus get better control over climate change.

[Anonymous No.9846080]

>>9845636
Read the high frontier. That's his vision. Self-sustaining rotating colonies filled with millions in relatively low-density and high-quality living spaces

[Anonymous No.9846095]

>>9845636

>Any space station, let it be 1000 times as big as the ISS, won't be autark, they will all depend on supply from earth with earthly products.

you can recycle vast majority of chemical elements, greatly reducing the need for any resupply

Mars is good for an initial base but space stations offer unlimited real estate and natural gravity, they are the only way to have trillions of people living in space

[Anonymous No.9846102]

The interesting thing with Jeff's vision isn't the goal, it's the path to get there. Following Blorange is like watching paint dry, and that's on purpose. Personally, I'm not convinced about it. Everyone already has them slated as the major competitor left standing when Space-X prices out the market, but it's always based on capital, not performance.

[Anonymous No.9846113]

>>9845955
>moving heavy industry to space to reduce global warming

How would that work practically? We need chemical rockets to launch off earth (and to land retropulsively). So are we going to launch megatons of bauxite into space, have it being processed to aluminium there powered by solar power and then land the aluminium back to earth? That needs so much rocket fuel and is so expensive. We could much easier install the solar arrays here. Yes, they are less efficient here compared to space. But you know what's a quadrillion times more inefficient and worse for the climate? To get all that mass to space and back.

[Anonymous No.9846123]

>>9846113
All you need to get into orbit is something that's happy to explode. Right now emissions from rocket launches are a rounding error of overall emissions, but even if that changed dramatically, rocket fuel need not be significantly polluting or carbon positive.

[Anonymous No.9846152]

>>9846123
The only options on the table are hydrocarbons like RP-1 or methane or just hydrogen. You can produce hydrogen or methane from water (and CO2) using just electricity, but you need a lot of electricity for that. Way way more than what the electricity production difference between space located solar panels and earth located solar panels will ever be.

[Anonymous No.9846159]

>>9845636
Watch Elysium and then understand that Matt Damon is the villain.

That's Bezos' vision.

[Anonymous No.9846164]

>>9846152
>Way way more than what the electricity production difference between space located solar panels and earth located solar panels will ever be.
As long as your reason for creating/maintaining infrastructure in space is more than simply the increased efficiency of solar energy there, that's not a major concern.

[Anonymous No.9846168]

>>9845636
economic realists see the crash coming. with the world economy completely linked to oil, and the rate of resource depletion of all kinds... the train is headed for a cliff, and no one is at the controls.

[Anonymous No.9846196]

>>9845636
He basically wants to enslave the entire human race, and force everybody to work in his Amazon sweatshops located on the moon. I'm going to travel to Musk's libertarian colony on Mars in the future to escape Bezos' hyper-capitalist space dystopia, and I suggest you all do the same.

[Anonymous No.9846325]

>>9846164
So for what reasons should we bring any kind of industry that we have here on earth to void space (not mars)? And why should millions of people live there? How could that make anything better here on earth or depict an improvement for earthian life?
Can you give an answer that doesn’t contain asteroid mining? Getting the commodities from all the asteroids and moons to earth is nice, but you don’t need „millions of people working and living in space“ for that and earth could perfectly harbor billions and billions of additional people without it.

[Anonymous No.9846353]

>>9846325
When you need to start your argument immediately by heading off things like mining and colonies, maybe you should just admit that you don't have an argument and move on.

[Anonymous No.9846385]

>>9846095
>you can recycle vast majority of chemical elements, greatly reducing the need for any resupply
That without mentioning asteroid mining, where you won't even need to recycle. Take rock, process it, get good stuff, dump trash into space, repeat. Honestly, I feel by the time we get the technology to make a self-sustainable colony on mars, we'll have no reason to do it because we could just as well put it into space to the same effect. What does mars have that space doesn't? Air? No. Water? Not much. Pressure? No. Resources? A protective magnetic field? Everything mars could offer we could get more conveniently in space. We could protect ourselves from radiation by putting the base on an L2 point of a body with a strong magnetic field, or we cold even produce our own magnetic field using superconductors depending on the technology at the time. Putting it on L2 would add the benefit of protecting it against heat, meaning more efficient radiators. And it would not take all that delta-v to take off the ground when you do need to trade with earth.

[Anonymous No.9846389]

>>9845636
>In conclusion, space stations and moon bases will ever depend on earth

Why is that? Do you realize asteroids hold more ressources than all of the planets of the solar system combined?

[Anonymous No.9846453]

>>9846353
>>9846385
>>9846389
I agree that this might be a possible future in the very long term. I highly doubt that a fully self sustaining space colonie will be there before Jeff or one of his children or grandchildren dies. A fully self sustaining mars colony is more achievable and could be there in 50 years or so. Building some kind of artificial planet with the surface area and water, O2, C, ... amounts of mars is far harder than terraforming mars, which is already there. It’s shooting decades old ICBM at mars‘ poles vs building a death star.

[Anonymous No.9846469]

>>9846453
There is no need for a colony to be fully self sustaining. Living without infrastructure, trade, etc, isn't common on earth as it is, why would it be in space?

[Anonymous No.9846488]

>>9846469
I think it makes sense to get a backup for humans and earthly life as soon as possible. Not because of a particular, imminent threat I have in mind, but in general. This backup idea is the main reason why I‘m such a fanboy of space technology and related topics. I think colonizing mars is the best chance we have to create such a backup asap, I would say it’s the only realistic chance we have with current technology.

If you have a thousand ISSs glued together, but still everyone dies when something relly bad happens to earth, 4 billion years of evolution on earth were for nothing.

[Anonymous No.9846500]

>>9846488
When I say that I'm not necessarily thinking just Earth, though. Earth would be the sugar daddy of the solar system at first, sure, but if you have asteroid mining and colonies on the moon and Mars then there's never going to be a single failure point for all trade.

[Anonymous No.9846513]

>>9846453
And btw, you did not really reply to an argument I made. Why would you build some kind of artificial planet from scratch, that has the surface area of mars, the same amount of useful matter and the ability to keep preassure, while mars is already there? Mars also has enough gravity to support an atmosphere as dense as earth‘, while you need extra stable glass to keep the pressure on an artificial space colony. Space debris is also a huge threat to such a thing while it is no problem on mars. Why don’t you see that building something artificially that has as much living space as mars needs so much more advanced technology and is so much more expensive, than just using mars?

[Anonymous No.9846514]

>>9846453
>Building some kind of artificial planet with the surface area and water, O2, C, ... amounts of mars is far harder than terraforming mars
Why would you need it in these amounts? Lol, just make them able to house 3k people, and when it's full you build another one, and another, and another... Three thousand people is a lot of people historically speaking, and we can build today ships that can fit this many people on board (air-craft carriers). If we can ever get space manufacture going, I don't doubt we can get as many as a million people inside a singe rotating structure. I don't think we'll ever manage to raise this number to billions like we can on earth, but a million people is a lot! And if you need more, you just build another one.

In comparison to that, terraforming mars is waaay way harder.

[Anonymous No.9846523]

>>9846513
>Space debris is also a huge threat to such a thing while it is no problem on mars
How do you figure? Mars atmosphere is not dense enough to disintegrate space rocks like earth's is. Of course, if you are living in mars, it's reasonable to make it several feet underground to shield yourself from radiation, so it wouldn't be as troublesome. But as the military saying goes, fixed fortification is a monument to human stupidity, if you have a station in space, you'll see the rock coming long before it hits you, and if it's small enough that you don't, it's small enough that you won't care when inside centimeters thick steel.

[Anonymous No.9846529]

>>9846513
>Why would you build some kind of artificial planet from scratch, that has the surface area of mars, the same amount of useful matter and the ability to keep preassure, while mars is already there?
1. There is no reason to respect all the stipulations you're making about amount of matter, surface area, etc. These are arbitrary.
2. O'neill cylinders were conceived in an era where the best prospective material was just structural steel. So you can call that the baseline for what a very effective space station could look like, before even considering what you could do with better materials.
3. Mars has decent gravity, personally I believe it should be sufficient for health but that's just conjecture. However, whether it is or not, a spinning habitat/module has fully tunable gravity, which is nice.
4. You get to choose where to park your station. Pick an Earth-moon lagrange point and someone's probably already come up with a bunch of reasons to operate there.

I could keep going but I'll probably run into the post length limit lmao

[Anonymous No.9846565]

>>9846523
>>9846529
Googled O‘neill cylinders. They are nice and all and I hope that humanity has something like this one day. But they are so much further out, need so much more advanced technology than a mars colony. You can have a mars colony that’s underground and doesn’t need terraforming or artificial shielding from cosmic rays. For an o‘neill cylinder you need to be able to mine iron heavy asteroids and somehow produce high grade steel from it - in space. You also need to be able to construct big structures in space, etc.. All physically possible but many of these things have never been done. Bright future maybe, but far far out.

[Anonymous No.9846569]

>>9846565
... while we can start with the mars colony within this decade.

[Anonymous No.9846571]

>>9846569
within a* decade, sry

[Anonymous No.9846574]

>>9846488
>I think colonizing mars is the best chance we have to create such a backup asap, I would say it’s the only realistic chance we have with current technology.
Personally, I share your views. Life on Earth is doomed. Literally. In a billion years, it won't be here anymore, in 2 billion years for sure. Humans is the only thing that Earth has produced that has any chance of saving life, not Earth, and the chances of something coming up after we are gone are small to none. So either we accept our manifest destiny as life's saviors or its reapers.

But technologically speaking, terraforming mars is a much harder project than space habitats. And it would be much harder when people start actually living there. Nukes won't have fuck all of an effect on martian climate. Thinking nuking the ice caps will somehow create a positive feedback or some such is complete nonsense. Terraforming mars would involve a large industrial operation requiring gigawatts of power for a very long period of time, at least, dumping who knows what the fuck at the atmosphere, and probably dumping rocks from space into it at very high velocities. Compared to that, making a few rotating airtight ships capable of maintaining temperature and oxygen is very easy. So, as a backup for life, mars is the long-term project. And since the objective is to preserve life, we would probably do better finding a K-type star in reach of an arc-type ship and trying to colonize a planet around that, since they'll last many times longer than Earth will.

>>9846569
If you want them to live like they live in alaska, maybe. But it would be more of an outpost rather than a colony.

[Anonymous No.9846575]

>>9846565
The great thing about off-earth colonies - whether it's Mars, the moon, asteroids, etc - is they offer the materials to do these things as well as much easier access to space than Earth does.

[Anonymous No.9846594]

>>9846574
>If you want them to live like they live in alaska
The same in an O‘Neill cylinder. They probably won’t get a lot of direct sunlight. Only glass would allow to get a view outside, but it would have to be thick, would only let a fraction of sunlight through, and you can’t have much of it because of space debris risk.

[Anonymous No.9846605]

>>9845636
Following Musk's dreams is childhood
Realizing Bezos is right is being an adult.

Terraforming is a pipe dream.It would take thousands of years to complete, for little benefit.

Meanwhile you can have hundreds of habitats with perfect climate housing billion or more people within a century or two.

[Anonymous No.9846607]

>>9845636
> (opposed to mars where there is such a variety of elements and molecules and a chance to get a nice atmosphere).
Mars will always be a gravity death trap, and climate at best will resemble northern Canada.

[Anonymous No.9846614]

>>9846453
>A fully self sustaining mars colony is more achievable and could be there in 50 years or so
Mars will never be self-sustaining for human species.

>Building some kind of artificial planet with the surface area and water, O2, C, ... amounts of mars is far harder than terraforming mars, which is already there. It’s shooting decades old ICBM at mars‘ poles vs building a death star.
You don't build planets in space, you build cities.

[Anonymous No.9846615]

>>9846605
You would need a good solution to shield from all kinds of radiation in a space colony. There is none to date, the idea remains to be science fiction. For mars, the quick fix is to burry a bit.

[Anonymous No.9846616]

>>9846513
> Why would you build some kind of artificial planet from scratch, that has the surface area of mars, the same amount of useful matter and the ability to keep preassure, while mars is already there?
Nobody is planning to build planet from scratch but a comfortable city-sized station.

> Mars also has enough gravity to support an atmosphere as dense as earth
That's a downside,not a bonus.Figure out why.

[Anonymous No.9846617]

>>9846605
And realizing there is a place for both is nirvana, I guess.

>>9846594
You're probably going to rely on artificial lighting in either case for the most part. You don't want direct sunlight somewhere that lacks enough atmosphere to filter UV (mars, space)

[Anonymous No.9846619]

>>9846615
>You would need a good solution to shield from all kinds of radiation in a space colony.
Just add water and ice.Plenty of that in many asteroids and dwarf planets.

[Anonymous No.9846627]

>Living on dusty cold Mars
>not living on Bezos 091,sunny mediterreanan climate, Bishop Ring utopia full of traps and 0(zero) women

[Anonymous No.9846630]

>>9846594
Sunlight is overrated. I doubt there'd be any glass at all in the outer hull. But I think the ability to tune your gravity and the closeness to microgravity is going to be such a major advantage to industry it would be much easier to increase living area in space than in mars. I mean, to get to mars you already need a ship capable of everything a basic space habitat requires, you are, after all, living through the journey. From that to a basic mining outpost, you just need to expand the time your ship is capable of being self-sufficient and take the tools you need to start working on your asteroid with you. Tool that even if you were going to mars you'd need to take with you because you can't produce anything without it anyway. The only thing that'd change is the gravity, but even that you might able to tinker with using some cables and counterweights.

>>9846615
Mars has the same problems. And in space you probably can keep superconductors cooled more efficiently since there's no atmosphere, so you could put some pretty strong magnetic field outside to shield it artificially.

[Anonymous No.9846636]

>>9846630
> And in space you probably can keep superconductors cooled more efficiently since there's no atmosphere, so you could put some pretty strong magnetic field outside to shield it artificially.
No need to go that high tech.
You're already standing on the sky. Just put all of your matter in the sky and you have plenty of a barrier between you and any source of radiation.

[Anonymous No.9846679]

>>9846636
>No need to go that high tech.
Unfortunately, I think it's necessary.

http://www.islandone.org/Settlements/MagShield.html

[Anonymous No.9846687]

>>9845636
>overpopulation
Good News: We're past "peak child", the number of 0-14 year-olds has remained steady for over a decade. Current population growth is because there aren't enough old people dying to balance out young people having kids, but population growth is leveling out, and unless current trends change, we don't really have an overpopulation problem.

>>9846080
>Self-sustaining rotating colonies filled with millions
Bad News:current population growth is over 1.5 million a week.
That's not much for Earth itself, but unless you can build a million-man habitat once a week, we're not going to "fix" current growth issues by moving off-world.

[Anonymous No.9846690]

>>9846687
>>That's not much for Earth itself, but unless you can build a million-man habitat once a week, we're not going to "fix" current growth issues by moving off-world.
Good news: Nobody cares. Why should we worry about a problem that'll fix itself? We're are not discussing the motivations in this thread, only the feasibility.

[Anonymous No.9846739]

>>9846690
>We're are not discussing the motivations in this thread,
Sorry, I didn't know you were the self-appointed thread Nazi.
I'll try to keep it a little more to your liking next time, asshat.

Oh wait, the OP is talking about overpopulation and the absurd notion that space travel can fix it.
Next time I'll be sure to justify my post by quoting who I'm responding to.
Wait... I did that too.
How about you stick to complaining about spelling and grammar errors or something?
Or maybe you could go to redit where you can down-vote posts you don't like.

[Anonymous No.9846799]

>>9846687
>there aren't enough old people dying to balance out young people having kids

https://youtu.be/ezVk1ahRF78?t=10m40s

[Anonymous No.9846805]

>>9846799
rip Hans, he made me truly feel better about the future

[Anonymous No.9846806]

>>9846739
>the OP is talking about overpopulation and the absurd notion that space travel can fix it.
>>9845636
>(although many people believe that earth can harbor billions of additional people with efficient technology, e.g. efficient agriculture)
If you had taken the time to actually read the thread you are replying to instead of trying to jump into the bandwagon, you'd have noticed that was just a mild introduction to the topic of off-world colonization and why would anyone prefer orbital structures rather than planetary ones.

[Anonymous No.9846813]

>>9846805
same breh. just his ted talk probably saved me from becoming an edgelord

[Anonymous No.9846947]

>>9846806
>>there aren't enough old people dying to balance out young people having kids
Oh, so THAT'S why you feel comfortable being such a control freak.
I'mma try that too:
>>9846799
Hey Anon, Ted talks are not appropriate for this thread, don't do that again.
>>9846627
...and you. I don't like that jpeg, delete it.

See? That's what you sound like.
Now go fuck off.

[Anonymous No.9846952]

>>9846806
You must be a ton of fun at parties.
"Hey! No talking about sports!"
"You there! I don't want to hear you talking about the weather!"

[Anonymous No.9847686]

>>9846806
OP here. Please don’t interprete too much when the words are obvious. I’m especially interested in the meaning of all this and which motivations are followed better by space vs mars colony. I named overpopulation and life-backup. And then the discussion went to the motivations of getting cheap and feasible living space, again with the question if space vs mars colony is better. The whole thread is about WHY one would prefer to pursue a space colony or prefer to pursue a mars colony.

[Anonymous No.9847700]

>>9847686
Because it has to happen at some point. We might as well plan the bridge and gather the materials before we come to the river, don't you think?