Can We Ever Colonize Space?

[bennyboy]

As for the food problem, there have recently been groundbreaking advances in 3D printing technology that allows people to print meat using stem cells. This technology is in its infancy, so I have no doubt that synthetic food will become a viable food source in the future.

That would be like a desk jet printer creating ink.  3D printing doesn't create meat, it prints meat cells into the form we want them.  We have to have the meat to begin with.

We could just grow gigantic vats of algae - not everyone would like the resulting product, but when you have a choice of starving or eating something less palatable than prime rib, most people opt to not starve.

Algae + Soylent Green = Humanity wins!

[antediluvian]

Even if we can, let's not.

How about I make you a tin foil hat music box? :P

Oh, APA, you sweet-talker you.

[VaasMontenegro]

I think we could, but I don't think we will.  For a start, who's paying?  It will need a massive paradigm shift before someone will be willing to stump up sufficient cash for something with no comeback in their lifetime.   And it won't be cheap.  Who knows, it may take a disaster to force the issue....  :shock:

Private companies are already showing that they are more than willing to pay for trips into space. Space X are ferrying supplies to the ISS for NASA and the Russian Space Agency, another company has already set a date for the first commercial flights to the Moon in 2020, another company is planning the first manned fly-by of Mars and The Mars-One project, which will send the first - permanently settling- manned mission to mars in 2023, is run by a private company.

The future of space travel will have nothing to do with the governments, and NASA will be the minority party when it comes to space travel.

[VaasMontenegro]

You'd be mistaken to think that we wont colonize space. The human race has adapted to every situation that has arisen and it will continue to do so.

It is also imperative that we colonize space if we are to thrive as a species in the long term.

Technically it isn't though. We have two avenues: Expand into space or learn how to manage our existence on this planet. Frankly the latter is the harder one but if we can manage it we have quite a while until the sun burns out and perhaps by then we will have somehow found a solution to that problem as well.

To me expanding into space isn't about that we HAVE to its that theres no reason not to.

There are plenty of reasons, firstly the imperatives - to secure our future as a species and to ensure that there will be no single event that could wipe out the human race. It has been 65 Million years since the last major impact on Earth - we're due another pretty soon.

Secondly, Exploration. Humans have an unquenchable thirst for knowledge and we will forever attempting to further our knowledge of the universe - this is something that cant be done from Earth by using telescopes or just sending out satellites to do the exploring for us.

I get the impression that the reason most people reject the idea of the Human race exploring outer space and colonizing other planets, is that they think all of these ideas come from Science fiction movies and that they are not realistic, (either that or they are hardcore religious nuts who think space is just an illusion created by the devil), but the fact is - these goals are well within our reach and anyone would be a fool to simply dismiss them.

[mnmelt]

Even if we can, let's not.

Really... Just another planet we'll fuck up... =;  =;

[VaasMontenegro]

> If we ever meet any, its likely to be in the very distant future.

That's the point.  This is the very distant future for many civilizations.  The universe was already 9 billion years old when the earth formed, so there must be other civilizations that have a several-billion year head start on us.  If civilizations can colonize the galaxy, then someone should have gotten here by now.

Simply moving to another location as the sun ages is a different matter.  Colonizing one planet is different from colonizing the galaxy.

Frank

The thing is I'm not sure they would see this corner of the galaxy as very attractive. There is only 1 planet in our solar system that is capable of sustaining complex life, whereas there are likely entire solar systems out there that have luscious, large planets that can easily support life that would be far more attractive to an advanced civilization. There are far many more factors as to why we haven't formally met another civilization, and who's to say that contact hasn't already been made.....

Not to stir up a conspiracy, but if contact was/has been made made, the public would/will be the last to know about it, considering the mass hysteria would cause.

[GurrenLagann]

Whoever said private companies are the future of space travel is much mistaken in my view. It will never be possible for a privately operated company to do what a government is able to do fiscally and technologically, given the higher money and pool of talent they can enlist. Not that I don't support those endeavors, but let's be (a bit) realistic about that.

[SilentFutility]

As for the food problem, there have recently been groundbreaking advances in 3D printing technology that allows people to print meat using stem cells. This technology is in its infancy, so I have no doubt that synthetic food will become a viable food source in the future.

That would be like a desk jet printer creating ink.  3D printing doesn't create meat, it prints meat cells into the form we want them.  We have to have the meat to begin with.

We could just grow gigantic vats of algae - not everyone would like the resulting product, but when you have a choice of starving or eating something less palatable than prime rib, most people opt to not starve.

I know, but as I said, the technology is still in its infancy. If the ability to synthesise stem cells were to be developed, for example, then they could be printed or assembled into meat and plant-matter.

I'm not saying it is possible now, I'm saying that obtaining matter to assemble into synthetic food may be possible in the future. We do create the ink for a deskjet printer, like in your example, but over the course of history ink has been made with many different materials. It may be possible to synthesise organic matter that could be consumed for nutrition using elements and compounds found on a colonised planet. This would be self-sustaining.

I realise that making a system self-sustaining would be extremely difficult, but not impossible, and that is the largest obstacle to living away from the earth's self-sustaining ecological systems.

[moog]

Not to stir up a conspiracy, but if contact was/has been made made, the public would/will be the last to know about it, considering the mass hysteria would cause.

Why would there be mass panic because a radio signal was picked up from a few hundred light years away?

[zacherystaylor]

>    Why haven't they colonized the earth yet?


Frank

According to the Twilight Zone they have; that is where we came from.

[zacherystaylor]

As for colonizing relatively near space, mostly orbiting the Earth or perhaps Mars, I suspect it might eventually be possible but it would almost certainly require support from Earth. this would mean that Carl Sagan's suggestion, which I assume was sarcastic, that we have to learn how to colonize space because we're in the process of destroying this planet won't hold up.

If we can't stop destroying this planet we can't colonize space at all much longer.

My best guess is that if it is possible to colonize extensively beyond our solar system it will involve mechanical colonization and artificial intelligence. we almost certainly can't bring a sustainable environment in the long run.

[Thumpalumpacus]

... we'll have to send out literally millions of them to survey for habitable worlds. It might be tough maintaining interest in such a program after the first thousand years and several million probes turn up nada.

Von Neuman speculated decades ago about self-replicating machines.  I would imagine that search probes would be managed through such a hierarchy of nested chains of command.  Amway isn't entirely useless, eh?

[robandrob1]

to find those needles in the haystack. But since we have a few billion years before our Sun burns out, I suppose that's plenty of time to get lucky.

If this is ever to be done I think it will have to start with a massive unmanned probe campaign... we'll have to send out literally millions of them to survey for habitable worlds. .

In a relatively short amount of time we'll be able to provide an estimate of how habitable an extra solar planet is by using spectroscopy to analyse the contents of it's atmosphere.  No probes required to determine whether a planet is worth closer inspection.  With the telescopes in development we'll be able to get useful images of extra solar planets in the first half of this century.  Granted the resulting image will just look like a fuzzy dot, but the color of that fuzzy dot can tell you a lot about the planet.  You'd then only have to send out probes to investigate the earth sized planets in their stars habitable zones that when imaged were blue fuzzy dots with oxygen in their atmosphere.  At that point I think your odds on to find a planet that at the very least could be easily terraformed, the worst result would be that the probe arrives to find the planet is completely covered by an ocean of liquid water or that it's a snowball.

I am however pesismistic about the possibility of colonizing other star systems for reasons other than ones you originally stated.  Namely, I don't think our species in it's current form is going to be around in 500 years, or if we are we won't be the ones doing the colonizing and the exploring.  If we continue on our present course artificial intelligence will completely surpass us  within a couple of hundred years, Humans will probably try to keep up using genetic engineering to improve cognition, lifespan and reflexes but it won't be enough.  I think the major decisions will largely be made by artificial super-intelligence's, then there will be a few different tiers of Human's depending on their level of genetic/cybernetic enhancement,  then right at the bottom of the pile will be baseline Human's.  That's not to say we'll necessarily be oppressed or exterminated, but why would they send the least intelligent sentient beings with the shortest lifespans to do the exploring and colonizing?

[Youssuf Ramadan]

I think we could, but I don't think we will.  For a start, who's paying?  It will need a massive paradigm shift before someone will be willing to stump up sufficient cash for something with no comeback in their lifetime.   And it won't be cheap.  Who knows, it may take a disaster to force the issue....  :shock:

Private companies are already showing that they are more than willing to pay for trips into space. Space X are ferrying supplies to the ISS for NASA and the Russian Space Agency, another company has already set a date for the first commercial flights to the Moon in 2020, another company is planning the first manned fly-by of Mars and The Mars-One project, which will send the first - permanently settling- manned mission to mars in 2023, is run by a private company.

Yes, a bit different to a mass-move to another habitable planet though.  And the companies will all get some sort of profit from that in one form or another.  I'm not expecting any companies to provide humanity with a free lunch any time soon.  It will be interesting to see developments, but looking through the thread there's a hell of a lot of ifs and maybes.  One thing is for sure, it won't affect peasants like us....  :-|

The future of space travel will have nothing to do with the governments, and NASA will be the minority party when it comes to space travel.

I don't know if NASA will even exist that far in the future.  Also I would suggest that the dividing line between government and private company will probably bocome even more blurred by then.

Interesting topic for sure!

[commonsense822]

We could most certainly colonize space, but personally I think it would be a better long term solution to terraform planets.  And believe it or not, we can theoretically terraform Mars if we chose to.

We're pretty good at figuring out how to survive in places we are not supposed to survive.  We are a virtually hairless species that was meant to survive in sub-Saharan temperatures.  We developed housing and clothing that allows us to live in multiple climates outside of what we are naturally supposed to.  We will do the same with space.

We are persistent fucks.