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.
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.
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.
> It's almost as if we've lost ground since the Apollo program ended.
We have lost ground since the Apollo program ended. At that time, we had some functional boosters left - they've been rusting in Florida since then. We also had the tooling to make more of the whole stack, but that tooling was intentionally destroyed as part of the Shuttle program. We have lost other material things.
The biggest loss is probably that we've lost the belief that we should go to space.
Geeks seem to have this funny blindspot when it comes to premature optimization if the premature optimization is something that would make for a good sci-fi novel.
I'm not proposing we optimize right now for this eventuality. I'm pointing out that the "PR gimmick" is something that actually has to happen at some point. That's just one obvious point at which it has to happen.
Your somewhat glib response reminds me this:
But I should remember, Krauss said, that the long run is a very long time. He told me about a meeting he attended at the Vatican a few years back on the future of the universe: "There were about 15 people, theologians, a few cosmologists, some biologists. The idea was to find common ground, but after three days it was clear that we had nothing to say to one another. When theologians talk about the 'long term,' raising questions about resurrection and such, they're really thinking about the short term. We weren't even on the same plane. When you talk about 10^50 years, the theologians' eyes glaze over.
If you would want to experience another world, you wouldn't want to have your sensors/effectors too far away from your brain. And it doesn't matter if you would be flesh or silicon.
Even planets in our solar system are already too far for remote interaction.
If, as I originally posited, humans were to evolve into in silico entities, then human beings (= naked apes) would not exist, would they (other than, perhaps, as specimens on display in zoos)?
What I meant by in silico was existence in computer hardware. Sending 100 lbs of computer+powersupply there means being there, without being spread telepresently over large distances.
Yes, but I only hear of this particular amusing scenario in the context of "Why you should be forced to give your money to support a government agency which I approve of".
We're quantifiably more bacteria than mammal. Evolution isn't linear, and considering humans are the only species (that humans are aware of) which can manipulate fire, build non-trivial structures with straight lines, communicate with symbols, work levers independently, carve stone, create metal tools, vary sonic pitch extra-physically, design automated processes, and travel beyond the stratosphere, there is the possibility that we're already nearly evolutionarily optimal for this universe. (Please correct me if I overestimated our uniqueness on any of the above.)
Just because web source code looked a lot different fifteen years ago doesn't mean it'll change considerably fifteen years from now. Mutation can be beneficial, but it can also carry the unfortunate cost of breaking compatibility.
No. [edit: Upon further reflection, I may have misunderstood you. If you simply mean that humans and bacteria have a lot of DNA in common, then I of course agree.]
> there is the possibility that we're already nearly evolutionarily optimal for this universe.
So you think humans are the general solution for the global^Wuniversal optimization problem? Unlikely. Even if we assume that humanity is somehow optimal right now, will this be true in even 100,000 years? A global temperature change of a few degrees or a change in the concentration of oxygen in the atmosphere could render us utterly non-optimal.
By way of example, consider that 500 million years ago there was considerably more oxygen in the atmosphere than now. This meant that insects could grow much larger than they are today withought needing to invest resources in lungs to support their body mass (insects lack specialized circulatory organs, generally). But fast forward today and giant insects are a manifestly suboptimal solution. I'm personnally grateful.
> So you think humans are the general solution for the global^Wuniversal optimization problem?
It's not that we're physically optimal, but that we're good enough to be able to manipulate heat to an extent that makes metallurgy possible, which allows us to non-trivially optimize our environment to ourselves.
Based on the fact that we haven't seen any aliens, and assuming that we're not the first intelligent species in the universe for roughly the same reason I assume I'm not the first person to have some bright idea for a web app, I'm going to guess no, or at least that it's not cost effective. Otherwise we'd probably have seen von Neumann probes or something like that by now (or more likely, we wouldn't be here).
We're not really quite up to the task of "allowing" this or that to evolve just yet. (See drug-resistant strains of bacteria, the annual flu-shot crapshoot, etc)
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.
Indeed. Moving away from the axis-of-rotation increases acceleration. When you are ready, you can go back to zero-g, or .5 g, or 1 g, or 1.5 g, etc. Instead of having to pay thousands of dollars each for airplane parabola rides, it is all right there.
For the same reasons that ski bums live near ski slopes, zero-g bums might live near zero-g. When you live in a spinning orbital habitat, you can have rapid inexpensive access - a veritable season pass - to a variety of acceleration levels.
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?
We could probably telecommute from LEO, but anything further out starts to become annoying if you need anything in real time.
There is excessive latency with satellite internet, which uses GEO satellites. However, satellite internet requires 4 hops. Telecommuting from GEO only requires 2 hops = half the latency. ~23,000 miles x 2 = 46,000 miles. 46,000 miles / 186,000 miles/second = 247 milliseconds of latency (about a quarter of a second).
For faster travel, rockets tend to be chosen. What, then, would be the point of a space elevator?
By the way, the top recorded speed of a Bugatti Veyron, the fastest production car in the world, is 253 mph - on the flat. Travelling vertically at that speed, a space elevator car (we might assume it is powered by a 1%-efficient laser-beam stationed on the ground and aimed at photovoltaic panels on the bottom of the elevator car) would take 88 hours (or 3.7 days) to get to GEO.
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.
Your both probably right but priorities come from Public Sentiment more than anything else. So it's as much the fault of people not talking about it (which I'm guilty of) as it is the fault of anything else.
I don't believe governments have what it takes to make any good, big idea in space viable. We're biased towards believing that because of the space race, but I don't think it will ever happen again.
So even if something isn't new tech, the innovation will be the group doing it. I'm really excited about the private efforts today.
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.
If such a hypothetical power source existed, we could literally replace the propulsion systems of nuclear submarines and have an instant space fleet... Complete with torpedoes ;-)
If you are talking about single-stage-to-orbit (SSTO) submarines, I should tell you that the Sea Dragon is kind of like that. It is 75 feet in diameter, and produced in an ordinary maritime shipyard out of steel. This is larger in diameter than any submarine ever made. The Russian Typhoon submarine class is 75 feet wide, but it is not round (it is shorter high than it is wide; flat top). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Typhoon_class_submarine
A major difference between the Sea Dragon and an SSTO submarine would be the fact that a Sea Dragon is a staged vehicle. Only part of it would make it to orbit. It does launch from the sea, by the way. It could potentially be scaled up to whatever your preferable size is. Is there a particular reason why you would want a big metal submarine in orbit?
I guess I'm not following you. What problem is this hypothetical power source attempting to solve? Before, it sounded like you were talking about a need to launch cargo into orbit. Why are you using the term power source?
By the way, high-thrust, and high Isp (rocket fuel efficiency = propellant speed), goals generally conflict with each other. To launch from Earth requires high thrust. To travel through space requires high Isp.
Because to do anything useful in space we've got to get stuff there, i.e. heavy industrial machinery for mining, and people to operate it, and a way to sustain them, and a way to get what they produce back to Earth. Getting in an out of a gravity well has to be routine. It's only expensive and difficult now because we don't have anything with enough energy density to do it. If you can make a powered re-entry you don't even need to bother with the Shuttle's elaborate heat shielding, you just take your time, match orbit with the Earth and come "straight down" in an hour or two.
Power source, energy source, fuel, these terms are interchangeable.
to do anything useful in space we've got to get stuff there, i.e. heavy industrial machinery for mining
That is what the Sea Dragon is for. The payload capacity is 1.2 million pounds, and can be expanded with minor modifications.
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It's only expensive and difficult now because we don't have anything with enough energy density to do it.
We have kerosene and liquid oxygen. Chilled propane works, too. Are you thinking that these fuels and oxidizers are somehow not adequate? If so, in what way?
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If you can make a powered re-entry you don't even need to bother with the Shuttle's elaborate heat shielding
The Shuttle requires elaborate heat shielding for reasons that have nothing to do with the fact that it does not make powered re-entries. The Russian Soyuz capsule re-enters with a basic heatshield and lands on the Kazakh steppes. It's cheap. It's reliable.
Powered re-entries to Earth are not feasible and not desirable. They would be outrageously expensive and probably unreliable (read: dangerous).
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
Hm. I actually was referring to not becoming bound too tightly to the government (that is, "public sector"), when I said "private". I do agree that not becoming a publicly-traded company may help them stay small and lean, but I'm not sure that's a major risk anytime soon anyway.
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"
I think you underestimate weightlessness and the possibilities moving and floating in 3 dimensions brings. Space sports could be very different from sports today.
What is the grand canyon other than a pretty view?
With no gravity, aging in space is a different proposition.
Insurance against nuclear and meteor catastrophe on earth is worthwhile, if only as a backup copy of civilization.
Once people start living in space, cultures will fragment and evolve in ways they never have before. Colonies will have their own recipes, foods, traditions, etc. We bring the "there" with us, or create it "there."
