Should humans colonize other planets?

[jay gw]

There are countless reasons why this would be a good idea, not least the survival of our species.

What about the survival of the poor? Does anyone care about that?

I guess I don't see how colonizing another planet with some tiny colony will improve the lives of 6 billion people. Sorry but you haven't made any kind of successful argument for colonizing.

 

[Floyt]

Not putting all eggs in one basket is a very good argument in favour of colonizing, IMO. Probably even the decisive one. But it would seem to depend very much on the urgency of acting in this direction as to how ruthlessly it should be pursued at this time.

NEOs where mentioned. What's the statistical chance of big wipe-out boulder coming along while we are still in this "not really doable" state of technology? (I think I saw the figures somewhere, but can't recall the source)

 

[kuroyume0161]

Of course we should colonize other planets! And the faster we do so the better.

There are countless reasons why this would be a good idea, not least the survival of our species.

After reading the comments so far it seems that most agree, although there is some disagreement regarding whether this endevour could/should be launched now or at an unspecified time in the future when we are more technologically mature.

I obviously think this endevour should begin now. We have the technology to land capsules on Mars now. We have the experience of keeping humans in space for over a year now. We have people who are very willing to go now. We have almost everything now except the political will.

Blah, blah, blah. Forget a few hundred (or thousand) details did you?

1. We keep humans in close NEO orbit only 400 Km away. They are completely dependent upon ground resources - for energy, transport, air, food, water, replacement parts (iow - everything). How successful have these orbitting space stations been? Marginal at best.

2. For my second time (and along with drkitten), I will mention the utter failure of Biosphere 2 which showed conclusively that we cannot even maintain a biosphere ON EARTH! let alone on a cold, dead, desolate planet far away.

3. We DO NOT have the necessary resources for colonization of Mars. We have them for a limited exploratory trip tp and return from Mars (at a huge financial and resource cost). We have no tenable solutions for air, water, food, and sufficient energy. For colonization, you can't bring it with you. You must be able to create, recycle, renew.

So, no, we don't have 'everything now'. There are quite a few missing things from your simplistic formulization. As drkitten said, this is like the AI folks who at one time kept chanting, "Almost there. Almost there." Such an endeavor will be tenable when it is tenable. We do not have the technological resources to make the endeavor tenable - not now and probably not for a hundred years.

Naive optimism is just as bad as woo-wooism. Again, I'm a realist. When we can 'really' do such a thing, then we can discuss doing it.

 

[Johnny Pixels]

The technology to colonise Mars may not be related to the technology used to send emn to the Moon, but this is like saying the technology used in Formula One is nothing like the technology used to make the model T Ford. You can't stop a space program and then restart in 100 years time and expect to get results. There are stages that need to be explored in between. It's a constant deveolpment program.
As for whether money should be spent on space rather than the poor, throwing $25 billion dollars at Africa or whatever won't solve their problems. Suffering is not caused by a lack of money. Nomadic tribes don't buy things with money. The problem is with education. AIDS spreads because of a lack of understanding. Giving someone $10 won't stop them from getting AIDS, you need to explain to them how to stop getting it. However, communicating over such vast distances is difficult. Using satellites for communications makes it possible to transmit information to people, to educate them. Satellites, developed through the space program, launched by rockets and shuttles developed through the space program. They allow aid agencies to coordinate efforts, find villages with GPS. Satellites are being developed that may provide warnings of earthquakes and tsunamis.
The space program does not directly affect peoples lives, (other than being an inspiration), but the offshoots of it do.

 

[drkitten]

I obviously think this endevour should begin now. We have the technology to land capsules on Mars now. We have the experience of keeping humans in space for over a year now. We have people who are very willing to go now. We have almost everything now except the political will.

And the capacity!

Yes, we can find idiots who will volunteer for almost anything.

Including reality shows.

What we do not have is the basic capacity, or even any promising leads about how to get there.

Right now (2005), we don't even have the capacity to go to the moon. The old Saturn V's are junk, rusting away in museums, and no one knows or remembers how to build them any more. If we wanted to re-start the Apollo project, we would need to essentially re-engineer everyting from scrach -- and I hope that with modern technology and materials we would do a much better job of it the second time around. But it would still be a major research undertaking just to do what we've already done.

In broad terms, we have the capacity to put multi-tonne objects into low Earth orbit, and we have the capacity to put small objects (Pathfinder was about 250kg) essentially anywhere in the universe we like if we're willing to take long enough.

Do you have any idea how long it would take to deliver Biosphere 2 to Mars in 250kg loads? And Biosphere 2 didn't work!

We can deliver 250kg to Mars. Okay, that's two (2) dead human bodies.

That's one live human body, and about 100 days worth of food and water. The launch windows are about 26 months apart. So you get to eat for the first three months of your stay, and then the next 23 months are an intensive weight loss program.

Ooops, and I forgot to account for breathable air, too..... Well, we'll send some of that in two years, too.

Actually, since it takes six months flight time --- we ran out of food halfway to Mars.

Here's a simple question for you. Using technology we have available today, explain to me how we could get a single living human to the surface of Mars.

 

[kuroyume0161]

Wow! Someone who actually agrees with me (because the facts back it up). Thank you drkitten. And well stated.

Even if we can design, build, test, and launch this new super launcher to get to Mars (since as I mentioned in another thread and drkitten reaffirms, we don't have one), here's something that I was formulating while falling asleep.

What do humans need to live? We need breathable atmosphere, water, food, and, on an inhospitable planet, hermetically-sealed shelter.

I'm going to jump right to the third issue and call it "Noah's problem" because there seem to be correlations here. Human beings require sustanance in several forms - vitamins, minerals, proteins, etc and so forth. Where do we get most of our proteins from? Meat (fish, poultry, mammals). Some of this can be done on a vegetarian diet with soy (ala tofu), but I doubt you could wrangle an entirely vegetarian colony. This leads to a problem. How do you transport all of this 'food' in a replenishable way? You could send the colonists along with a years' worth of meat in prepared forms (such as beef jerky). But to sustain a colony, they will need live animals to reproduce in numbers vast enough so that some can also be slaughtered as food. How do those animals survive the six month journey to Mars as well as the years to come on Mars? They need...air, food, water. So you have to send the animals and air, food, water for the animals to Mars. You'll also need a very large hermetically-sealed facility to house all of these animals. You'll need colonists with skills with livestock as well as slaughter and preparation of meat products.

Also, along with this, you will need a manufacturing facility (what, you're going to send spare parts to Mars on an as-needed basis? "Oops, our air recycler failed. We can hold our breath for six months or so."). They'll also need a mining facility since they will need to take raw materials from the planet and turn them into viable materials for manufacture (um, there is no wood from the 'vast' forrests of Mars and how do you smelt iron ore and such?).

You just keep living in that science fiction.

ETA: Here's a plan for Mars colonization:

1. Send a fleet of intelligent machines - at least intelligent enough to do autonomous preparatory work. I wouldn't send humans until an infrastructure is fully in place and verified as working. These machines would do the mining of raw materials and constructing of habitats and facilities needed for human colonization. This type of infrastructure is too large to send in rockets. We're talking habitats and facilities to permanently sustain a colony here. This would be a small city.

2. Send fleets of supplies unavailable on Mars with minimal human crews - mainly plants and animals for food supplies; plants may also serve as part of an ecosystem (if we can ever figure out how to do so reliably).

3. Then send the humans en masse shortly thereafter.

Time estimates for the start of such an endeavor, considering that the 'intelligent machines', rocket/spaceship fleet, and most of the needed technologies don't exist: maybe a hundred years if we invest large quantities of time, resources, and finances (we're talking tens of quadrillions here) towards this goal. After that, it may take a decade or more for the machines to finish mining and constructing (depending on their intelligence and numbers).

You have to bootstrap a colony before humans get involved. You cannot just send humans and everything that they will need to get these things going because that would require massive star fleets transporting megatons of materials. You can do that. Just wait a thousand years or so.

 

[drkitten]

The technology to colonise Mars may not be related to the technology used to send emn to the Moon, but this is like saying the technology used in Formula One is nothing like the technology used to make the model T Ford.

This might be a better metaphor than you realized, but not to your benefit.

Design -- please -- a modern Formula One car without using a transistor.

I humbly submit that you can't. There are simply too many electronic and computer-controlled parts, without which the car won't work.

And not only did Henry Ford not use any transistors in his Model T, he didn't even realize that transistors were possible. In fact, they weren't possible to him, and it took an entirely unrelated Nobel Prize, and nearly a century of research, to get to the point where these components -- components that today are mandatory -- would even be possible.

Of course, there's one main difference in the analogies. There's not really a physical barrier to keep someone from racing a Model T Ford -- although we would recognize it as silly, no one will die if you try it.

If you try to colonize Mars with insufficient technology, people will die.

If you want to send a fifty-person colony to Mars using current (or near-future) technology, the cheapest way to achieve your aim is to line those fifty people in front of a wall and machine-gun them. Same effect, and no multi-trillion dollar useless space capsule.

 

[egslim]

I'd like to point out that the first colonisation attempts were failures too. Columbus had the technology to cross the Atlantic, but it took several attempts to establish a self sufficient, somewhat prosperous colony. Many early colonists died, but that didn't stop them from trying and eventually they succeeded.

That said, I think the first priority should be to make spacetravel cheaper before we can consider doing something useful there like colonise.

What about the survival of the poor? Does anyone care about that?

A simple "No" would answer that sufficiently. However, there is a historic precedent. While European countries started to colonise large parts of the world they didn't think about the poor either. But fast forward 200 years and both the Americas, as well as Australia had basically become European. Many Europeans, including a large number of poor, flocked to those areas to improve their life.
It could be argued that Europes poor were eventually better off through colonisation, because it enabled them to emigrate and have a fresh start.
And Mars does not have complex, native inhabitants to compete with.

 

[drkitten]

I'd like to point out that the first colonisation attempts were failures too. Columbus had the technology to cross the Atlantic, but it took several attempts to establish a self sufficient, somewhat prosperous colony.

Which suggests that even if we had the technology to deliver humans alive and to keep them alive on Mars (which we don't), colonizing it would be a risky proposition.

Without such technology, it's sheer lunacy.

 

[Johnny Pixels]

Design -- please -- a modern Formula One car without using a transistor.

I humbly submit that you can't. There are simply too many electronic and computer-controlled parts, without which the car won't work.

And not only did Henry Ford not use any transistors in his Model T, he didn't even realize that transistors were possible. In fact, they weren't possible to him, and it took an entirely unrelated Nobel Prize, and nearly a century of research, to get to the point where these components -- components that today are mandatory -- would even be possible.

My point was that it's taken continuous development to create a modern F1 car. If grand prix racing had been stopped in the 1960s and then restarted today, then all the technology would be available to make a modern car, but none of the design process would have be completed. NASA was ready to send men to the moon in 1969 as they had been continuously working on designs for decades. It would not be possible to send men to Mars today, but we need to work on ways to achieve this in the future, and start designing today, otherwise how will we know when we have the right technology, becuase we won't know what technology we'll need.

 

[kuroyume0161]

Johnny Pixels:

This is very true. After some basic contemplation (and I'm way too busy to get detailed here), what we need is a shakedown period. This means research and development of technologies to establish a colony on another planet. The best place to begin is on the Moon - as it is one of the most inhospitable planets within easy reach. But we shouldn't plan for an immediate human colony. Instead, we need to do the same basic steps that I outlined above. And that means not aiming for the Moon and whatever is convenient for the short distance, but taking into consideration the longer term goal of colonizing Mars and other planets (more likely, moons of Saturn/Jupiter). This means that we need the boosters and machinery to do the job sans direct human intervention or minimal rotating human intervention (heck, we're not sending humans to Mars for five years without a pre-established base infrastructure - even Mr. Zubrin realizes this).

This would need to start on Earth with the development of the relevant technologies. That means boosters to transport heavy equipment to the moon and autonomous or semi-autonomous robotic equipment for mining and manufacturing. Start thinking 2050 (optimistic earliest) for the establishment of these. Then 2100 (still optimistic) for the commencement of actually building (R&Ding) a Moon colony base. Then 2130 (very optimistic) to establish the colonized base.

We will be all long dead by then.

 

[Rolfe]

Which suggests that even if we had the technology to deliver humans alive and to keep them alive on Mars (which we don't), colonizing it would be a risky proposition.

Without such technology, it's sheer lunacy.

Is anyone disagreeing with this? It's not the question on the card though.

Rolfe.

 

[jay gw]

ETA: Here's a plan for Mars colonization:

1. Send a fleet of intelligent machines

Exactly. Machines will have to be several generations beyond what they are now to even think about human colonization.

 

[Roboramma]

I doubt you could wrangle an entirely vegetarian colony.

I agree with much of what you're saying, but I disagree with this point. People can and do survive quite well on a vegetarian diet so long as they make sure to properly balance it. A large portion of the world's population (look to vegetarian hindus, for instance (not all hindus, but many), are vegetarian. What would stop them from doing so on mars? Of course growing the right diversity of plant species would be difficult, but certainly less difficult than raising animals for meat.

And even if meat were an absolute requirement, raising chickens or fish would be crazy. People can do quite well with protein from insects and other small animals. Raise worms or termites or something else that has a very minimal requirement for ecological diversity for it's survival. And while you might need an expert to take care of your worm farms (or whatever was the appropriate small animal species), it's not that difficult to slaughter and prepare worms to be eaten.
Considering that such animals make up a large portion of the diets of many people, I think our Mars colonists could get over the "ew!" factor, especially if they were formed into a food not resembling their orignal form. Worm burgers anyone?

Of course some of the problems are insurmountable at our current level of technology and economic power (we just don't have the resources for the big and dirty approach). But I don't see that animal protien is a big concern.

 

[c4ts]

Is it really that difficult to take a small fish farm into space?

 

[DevilsAdvocate]

Should humans colonize other planets?

FnA, dude. Colonize away! I would love to have all farming and ranching move to the moon and good old earth restored to good old earth. The moon probably doesn't have enough gravity to sustain an atmosphere. But if you build a bunch of globes, hual up Antartica, you could get a good thing going. Then move all the factories there. And restore Earth to her natural paraside...

 

[kuroyume0161]

Is it really that difficult to take a small fish farm into space?

Obviously you have never had fish as pets (they tend to be replaced alot unless you are very devoted). They and their 'environ' require constant attention. They need proper nutrients, proper acidity/alkaline levels, proper environ cleaning (either natural or artificial) and who knows how they'd react in six months of microgravity (unless we overcome this with some artificial form).

Plus, another issue that so many seem to neglect, is our dependency on the sun. Certain levels of bands of radiation from the sun entering through our nice thick atmosphere. Not just humans, but almost all life on Earth (certain types exempt) is crucially tied to this because it all evolved specifically in this environment. Not sure what effect the dimished and less filtered solar radiation will have somewhere like Mars.

 

[kuroyume0161]

I agree with much of what you're saying, but I disagree with this point. People can and do survive quite well on a vegetarian diet so long as they make sure to properly balance it. A large portion of the world's population (look to vegetarian hindus, for instance (not all hindus, but many), are vegetarian. What would stop them from doing so on mars? Of course growing the right diversity of plant species would be difficult, but certainly less difficult than raising animals for meat.

And even if meat were an absolute requirement, raising chickens or fish would be crazy. People can do quite well with protein from insects and other small animals. Raise worms or termites or something else that has a very minimal requirement for ecological diversity for it's survival. And while you might need an expert to take care of your worm farms (or whatever was the appropriate small animal species), it's not that difficult to slaughter and prepare worms to be eaten.
Considering that such animals make up a large portion of the diets of many people, I think our Mars colonists could get over the "ew!" factor, especially if they were formed into a food not resembling their orignal form. Worm burgers anyone?

Of course some of the problems are insurmountable at our current level of technology and economic power (we just don't have the resources for the big and dirty approach). But I don't see that animal protien is a big concern.

I agree with your alternatives and that a mostly vegetarian diet could suffice. My concern is for a large population (say, over 500 or 1000). Now you thinning out your 'volunteers'. But even more, is that eventually (maybe not for some time after the colony has been established, reached stabilization, and possible growth), you are going to have animals showing up. Cats, dogs, mice (who knows what may actually stow away if interplanetary transport becomes that ubiquitous). Even today we cannot stop the introduction of new, foreign species into new environments by way of being transported on our ships and planes.

There are still issues. Where do you grow trees? Not trees for beauty, but for bananas, coconuts, apples, oranges, lemons, limes, peaches, pears, etc. and etc. Unlike certain crops, you cannot grow a tree in a hydroponics bay. You'd need tons of rich soil and some form of hydration system. one could limit fruit types, but nearly all fruits are born of trees and bushes. I don't think that I could eat strawberries 365 days a year... You know as well as I that humans cannot live without citric acid (i.e.: otherwise developing scurvy).

All of these minor infinitesimals that we take for granted on Earth must be accounted for in any attempt at a colony. For instance, what do you think could be the outcome, in a closed environment, if a certain pathogen (virus, bacteria) were to run out of its current host and under restrictive conditions transfered to human hosts for survival? This would be like BSE or the Avian flu on steroids. One has to be very careful that something like this doesn't mutate (in a nice mutation-friendly environment) and wipe out every living thing in the colony.

 

[uruk]

No. But we can't even see a way to "get there from here."


At our current level of technology, we have exactly the same chance of creating a self-sustaining colony on Mars via spaceship transport as we have through astral projection. (We can't even create a self-sustaining colony in low Earth orbit, in case you hadn't noticed.)

At our current level of technology, we have exactly the same chance of creating a viable enclosed habit as we do of being able to survive without food, water, and air via chi projection. (Do you remember the Biosphere fiasco?)

And even at any level of technology we can realistically expect in the foreseeable future, those chances will remain identically zero.

We are at least one major breakthrough away from any chance of succeeding. Oddly enough, we're also "at least one major breakthrough" away from warp drive, from resurrection upon demand, from human-level artificial intelligence, from teleportation, and from cheap matter replication. In fact, any of those might provide us with the necessary technology to be able to successfully colonize Mars. But spending money and effort now on an extra-terrestrial colony instead of on building the necessary technological infrastructure to make it possible is simply pouring money and effort away.

Mars colonization is the modern equivalent of a cargo cult. We have a romanticized idea of what is supposed to happen, but no possibility at all of actually making it happen. No matter how hard the Polynesians worked on making perfect models of runways and radio shacks, what they build would never work as an airfield. And the more time and effort they spend on building bamboo radio antennae, the less they're spending on learning science, technology, engineering, and such that would let them even understand why bamboo doesn't work for an antenna.

The metaphor of 16th-century colonialism is often brought up. Unfortunately, it's a false metaphor. Columbus had the technology he needed to sail the ocean, more or less at will. He had the technology he needed to survive in terra incognita for a more or less unlimited amount of time. He had the technology he needed to work with the lands that he found, to build buildings, farm crops, and so forth.

What would you have told a 16th-century explorer who wanted to take his wooden sailing ship to the moon? "Just because it seems difficult or insurmountable to us now does not mean that it is impossible?" I'm sorry, but sailing a 16-th century ship to the moon is, in fact, impossible? "We can do it at sometime in the future?" Sure -- but what technologies would he be researching to make it possible? Better sails? A more reliable magnetic compass? A deeper keel to keep the ship from foundering? Our explorer couldn't even imagine the technologies that would be needed to "sail" to the moon.

We will eventually be able to colonize Mars. But the tools and technologies we use will no more be an extension of our current space technology than a Saturn V was an extension of the Santa Maria.

I agree that at our current level of technology colonization is far from feasible but I disagree that it is on the same level of difficulty as something like "warp drive" or "teleportation" Those require fundamental discoveries and implimentations of the laws of physics that are now only theoretical (not too unsimilar to how things were before the building of the atomic bomb) Colonization does not require quite that level of understanding of the laws of physics. BTW, nobody is arguing that colonization is possible now, just that research should be done towards that end, which is what the article is about in your OP.
I'm well aware of the Biosphere2 fiasco. Biosphere2 was nothing more than a publicity stunt that was poorly thought out from the getgo. But we did learn some things. Like how concrete actually absorbs oxygen for one.

unlike your sarcastic observation of 16th century sailing ships going to the moon, we presently do have the technology to go to the moon. The hard work has already been done. All you need to do is upgrade the hardware and build the ships.

 

[uruk]

And the capacity!

Right now (2005), we don't even have the capacity to go to the moon. The old Saturn V's are junk, rusting away in museums, and no one knows or remembers how to build them any more. If we wanted to re-start the Apollo project, we would need to essentially re-engineer everyting from scrach -- and I hope that with modern technology and materials we would do a much better job of it the second time around. But it would still be a major research undertaking just to do what we've already done.

Well this is just a load. We have the technological capability to go to the moon. We still know how to build the F1 engines, we still know how to build SaturnVs. We already have done all the hard work. All the plans and documentation still exists (it's all safely stored, I can show you links on where to find info), most of the engineers who designed and built the hardware are still alive. (most are retired of course) It's only been thirty-five years.

To go to the moon would only require that we upgrade the hardware and build the tools. It only took us about ten years to do that and that was back when we had to do all the reasearch and everything was an unknown. If we had to back to the moon, it would take us way less than ten years to do it.
But considering the present state of governmental beurocracy, it make take a while more. But not the engineering side.

One thing people keep forgetting is that all that money that was spent on the space program went to paying the wages of working people. The money went to the all the companies that were designing and building parts or supplying services.


You keep making your arguments from the prespective of our present technology. Technology advances all the time because we try to do things like going to the moon or asking questions like "can we colonize other planets". Have you ever heard the saying "necessity is the mother of invention"? Going to the moon gave us a great many things like micro electronincs, compact computers just to name only two things on the tech side. Studying the idea of colonization gave us hydroponics to name one.