Why I thought we'd all be living in space by now

http://www.nas.nasa.gov/About/Education/SpaceSettlement/70sArt/art.html

by pg • 18 years ago

48 82 18 years ago

nas.nasa.gov

TomOfTTB3• 18 years ago

It’s sad because the Biosphere 2 is pretty close to this by all accounts. But the disastrous second mission (which had nothing to do with technical problems, see here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biosphere_2#Second_mission) really hurt the development of biosphere’s on earth which in turn hurt the cause as a whole.

But the reality is this...

1. Biosphere 2’s first mission was an overall success, albeit with a few glitches

2. The International Space Station exists and is working relatively well proving we can put a self contained environment in Space virtually without problem

Combine those and you see that the technology is really in our grasp.It’s simply been held back by a few unlucky events that have kept us from ironing out all the bugs.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think we’ll have a 10,000 person colony in space any time soon. But I think an artificial environment off the International Space Station is possible and I wish more research was being done.

rms• 18 years ago

Cut the US defense budget in half and we'd have 10,000 people on Mars in 20 years. It's an issue of priorities.

eru3• 18 years ago

Either by using that money to lowering taxes or finance NASA.

ivankirigin2• 18 years ago

Giving billions from one government agency to another doesn't sound like it would create real innovation to me.

gaius6• 18 years ago

Nuclear submarines proved we can do life-support in a hostile environment for extended periods of time, not just 3 people like a space station but dozens if not hundreds. The actual problem is a power/fuel source to move mass-produced and well-understood things into space in the first place. What kills the budget right now is that everything has to be custom made for space.

gravitycop19• 18 years ago

The actual problem is a power/fuel source to move mass-produced and well-understood things into space in the first place.

What about this?: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=429099

ryanwaggoner2• 18 years ago

The reason that we're not isn't technical capability: it's a lack of demand. Why spend hundreds of billions or trillions of dollars to put 10,000 people in space? Because we can? Not good enough...space exploration and colonization will only really pick up when we must do it to survive and/or there's a serious financial incentive.

eru3• 18 years ago

Or when Nanotech will have made it cheap enough. (At least unmanned missions. Humen in space are mostly a PR gimmick anyway.)

jraines4• 18 years ago

Not in the really long term -- what about when the sun dies? Think humanity will make it that long?

gravitycop19• 18 years ago

People do not move to, and telecommute from, Hawaii because they must do it to survive. It also is not cheap for them to do so. 1.3 million people currently live in Hawaii, though it would be cheaper for them to live on the mainland.

If Hawaii can attract telecommuters, perhaps Earth orbit can attract telecommuters.

jmtulloss4• 18 years ago

We can take the space elevator to work!

Xichekolas3• 18 years ago

We could probably telecommute from LEO, but anything further out starts to become annoying if you need anything in real time.

On the other hand, with the lack of distractions, I imagine the Moon would be an incredibly productive locale.

rsheridan64• 18 years ago

Hawaii has nice weather and beaches. What does Earth orbit have?

tokenadult2• 18 years ago

People do not move to, and telecommute from, Hawaii because they must do it to survive.

How many people move to, and telecommute from, Hawaii? Who counts them? By contrast, how many people move from Hawaii to the mainland to pursue the same occupation they pursued in Hawaii?

TomOfTTB3• 18 years ago

The problem I have with this is that it's short sighted. It's the same sentiment that kept Europeans trapped on their little continent for centuries before the Americas were discovered. Humanity needs to realize exploration will always be an imperative.

As for the financial aspect I’d point out that every time humanity has ventured out and explored the world around it the profits have been huge. Whether it's the technology from the space program or spices from the Americas exploration has always turned a profit.

In this case being able to create a self sustaining enviornment in orbit is the first step to creating a self sustaining enviornment that can move beyond our orbit. That in turn is the first step in humanity's continued exploration of the universe we live in and the value of that is immeasurable.

ryanwaggoner2• 18 years ago

Don't misunderstand me...I'm not saying that this is the way it should be, just that this is the way it is.

There are two paths to space: governments and private sector. The government path doesn't seem to have made a huge dent in the colonization goal over the last fifty years. It's almost as if we've lost ground since the Apollo program ended. And the reality of the "golden age" of space exploration is that the funding of the program was driven more by the need to beat the USSR than it was by the vision of space exploration as a worthy goal for humanity.

As for the private sector, the issue there is that huge profits could be made, but the risks are way too high and the timeline is way too long. The handful of companies that could afford it are already making huge profits here on earth in things they understand and their shareholders are apt to take a dim view of those companies risking billions of dollars with little hope of return within the next couple decades.

Sadly, the best hope for space colonization is either a) breakthrough developments in a tangential technical field that enable cheap access to space (read: nanotech enables construction of space elevator) and/or b) we trash our planet to the point that our survival requires governments to commit everything they have to space colonization.

vaksel2• 18 years ago

the problem is that there is nothing to do in space. If there was some mining of asteroids or lets say trade with aliens...then sure space colonies would make sense.

All we need is some gold rush for unobtanium, and there'll be 100,000 in space in 5 years

gravitycop19• 18 years ago

Is there anything to do in Hawaii?

vaksel2• 18 years ago

You can vacation there for cheap...which is a resource + there were indigenous people there from the start.

Space tourism could be an answer...but it needs to be a good bang for your buck. Right now you spend millions just to go up for a little time.

gaius6• 18 years ago

You mean like the tritium that's just lying there on the surface of the moon? As soon as we have working fusion reactors on Earth that'll make the Saudi oilfields look like pocket change.

gravitycop19• 18 years ago

It is Helium-3 that is on the moon. Tritium is Hydrogen-3 (and has a half-life of only 12.3 years, so it is unlikely that there is any on the moon).

zandorg2• 18 years ago

It's a shame SpaceX has so many employees. They're offering a 4x saving on a rocket trip, but I think it could be 10x by cutting out dead wood from mission control (eg, more automation) while it's still possible.

randallsquared2• 18 years ago

If they continue to be a private company, they can add automation as they scale up without adding so many employees, and achieve the same. Reducing (the percentage of) employees in favor of automation seems like something to do after launches are so routine that all the decisions have been made multiple times.

zandorg2• 18 years ago

I agree, especially about the 'private' part. Going public (I think) tends to have value by having a lot of employees. Staying private won't affect the market cap if they lay people off.

I'm not saying slash and burn, just that the lowest launch cost is made possible.

debt• 18 years ago

Space is incredibly dangerous. We need to put computers in space not people.

ericb2• 18 years ago

Meh.

Air travel should be dangerous by all rights, but there is something north of 50,000 people in flight over the US at any given time.

evgen• 18 years ago

Air travel gets you to a place that you want to go to. Going into space just gets you a pretty view and not much else. To quote Gurtrude Stein: 'there's no there there"

tokenadult2• 18 years ago

How much is it costing to put people into space currently? Once people get there, what can they do that is worth the expense of sending them there?

Why I thought we'd all be living in space by now

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