Make no mistake: exploration is great, and I’m all for it. But the concept of colonising a dead planet is stupid. Like @wyld.at.hrt , I’d have preferred to see money invested into more spatial exploration.
As for your examples: you can still go out of your arctic station, watch the birds, walk in the ice and admire the sky. You are still on Earth. The astronaut on a spatial station knows that his time is limited and that one day, he’ll be back on Earth.
But those guys who want to go on Mars? They’ll know that they’ll stay there forever… that is a decisive psychologic difference.
I think you’re glossing over the technicalities a little but I dont doubt we will have the ability to do it one day. But as I said i dont think it becomes truly viable until transit times become more feasible than they currently are. There will also be a cost issue.
I’m still not 100% on Musk’s apparent trial and error philosophy but he gets 10/10 for effort
We don’t have access to any other living planets so we go for the nearest that is potentially habitable. People will be able to come back, it’s not a one way ticket. I’d see it as pretty much a seriously expensive holiday destination. People working there as they do on an oil rig or being a chalet maid for a ski season. Doesn’t make sense to me to want to live there and bring up a family but people will. Will also all probably be paid for by the world’s biggest reality TV show too.
Probably do it on the moon first. In 20 years I can for-see space hotels and moon bases for your delight for the correct amount of £££££.
Hey, I couldn’t type out the technicalities in a month. But then have you ever considered the infrastructure that’s behind you putting fuel in your car? It will happen and sooner than some imagine. Easier to just say, yeah, just send some ships full of remote gear that builds shit then send some dudes, job done.
If you’re following Space X’s exploits in Texas (and know who Mary is) you’ll know that the Raptor is a methox full flow staged combustion engine. The reason? You can produce methane on Mars but you can’t on the moon. It has one purpose and I bloody love it!
And NASA, poor NASA, is stuck in the 1970s. Space X and ULA and Blue Origin (when they get their arses in gear) are utterly revolutionising getting to space, it’s our destiny.
So you think we’ll go and come back and not stay? Given the colossal amount of hardware that that would take? You have to stay for 6 months due to orbital dynamics. That’s going to need a LOT of infrastructure. Stands to reason then that people will stay and eventually have families. It’s inevitable. Guessing you don’t fancy a charity bet then. I can see a child being born there inside 10 years.
Mate, nobody has been to the moon for over 40 years. To go from that to space hotels in 20 years is a little optimistic. I am as keen on space exploration as anyone, probably more so, but one really has to be realistic about the when, the where and of course the why. If we are investing in space holidays as a gimmick rather than as a tool to ensure that we find a potential habitable space outside of Earth, be that man made habitats or natural, then we are wasting valuable resources that would be better used here.
Actually, this one I can see happening. Maybe not in 20 years but there or thereabouts. Still doesn’t change my opinion on the likelihood of colonising Mars though. I’d bet on nuclear (or some other similarly apocalyptic) war happening first.
Probably will, I agree, but over a longer timespan imo. Definitely not in agreement with it though. I suppose you can compare it to a luxury hotel in the Maldives and ask what’s the difference but for me, personally, space exploration to the advantage and advancement of our species should be prioritised rather than a vanity like a space hotel that only a miniscule minority would be able to frequent.
That’s the beauty of capitalism. Anybody’s welcome to design and build their own rockets and space ships and do as they wish with them (well, almost if you know about the trouble with the FAA).
Build it and they will come.
What’s wrong with a luxury hotel in the Maldives if the locals benefit through tourism and taxation? Pretty much like any holiday resort.
No, I’m serious, have I stumbled upon a hidden bastion of the Anti Hotel lobby that I never knew existed? Or are you just talking about the environmental damage of a nice place? Or travel in general. You wouldn’t be the first member to disagree with flying for example.
Capitalism is only a system of distributing and controling the IOU tokens and the available resources. It cant create resources that don’t exist nor can it change the laws of physics (as they say captain).
Sustaining human life on any significant scale on Mars is beyond the available resources that humans have at their disposal without changing the laws of physics. A few countries and entrepeneurs have enough IOU tokens to play with rockets and have some left over to remain rich. That’s all this is.
Yeah that’s something I can envisage. The return trip is short, and if space travel becomes reasonably secure, it could happen. It would be beyond useless, but it could happen, for the fancy aspect of it.
Going to Mars though, and coming back from there is a different thing: between half and a full year for one trip, according to the planets’ relative positions. That’s a lot, and the price for this would be absolutely exorbitant.
Yeah, billionaires could pay for it, but why on earth would they want to go confine themselves first in a spacecraft, then in a hermetically closed structure on Mars, and then back in a spacecraft again when they can live a free and almost limitless life on Earth with all their money? They’d have to be beyond stupid.
