Why Colonize Space?

"Rod Speed" wrote:

Pity I rubbed your nose in the FACT that even in the early middle
ages, those unspeakable vikings were rampaging over their entire
known world and quite a bit of their unknown world too, so Jim's
original is just plain wrong about even just the early middle ages.

What the hell are you talking about?

That there was plenty of trade outside 'local geographical areas'
in even the early middle ages, most obviously with the vikings
and normans.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silk_Road#Medieval_age

I don't think that wildly successful pirates is a great example of
"trade". There is a difference between trade and hauling booty home.

--
Tomorrow is today already.
Greg Goss, 1989-01-27

Greg Goss wrote
Rod Speed wrote

Pity I rubbed your nose in the FACT that even in the early middle
ages, those unspeakable vikings were rampaging over their entire
known world and quite a bit of their unknown world too, so Jim's
original is just plain wrong about even just the early middle ages.

What the hell are you talking about?

That there was plenty of trade outside 'local geographical areas' in even
the early middle ages, most obviously with the vikings and normans.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silk_Road#Medieval_age

I don't think that wildly successful pirates is a great example of "trade".

But the Silk Road clearly is just that. That continued right thru the early middle ages.

There is a difference between trade and hauling booty home.

You quite sure you aint one of those rocket scientist fellas ?

jmfbahciv wrote
Rod Speed wrote
jmfbahciv wrote
Walter Bushell wrote
Rod Speed wrote

The traditional western european dark ages werent really all that dark, just didnt produce much in the way of
dramatic changes that later times like the renaissance etc did.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_Ages

From what I've read the later "Dark Ages" produced a lot of
technological innovation, but it didn't get written down. Or, if it
did, the parchment was scrapped and something else written on it.

The Dark Ages were dark because trade was constrained to local geographical areas.

No it wasnt. Most obviously with the crusades.

The crusades were tours arranged by travel agencies.

Pity about the Vikings, Normans and the Silk Road.

A lot of knowledge of how to do work was also lost.

Hardly any was actually lost in fact. They still managed those magificent crusader castles etc.

You don't know how much was lost.

Wrong, as always.

Quadibloc wrote:
On Aug 13, 2:12*pm, Eric Chomko wrote:
Explain Saturn's moon Titan then. It has an atmosphere that is 1.5
times as much pressure than does the Earth. Yet Titan is smaller than
Mars! *Also, Venus's atmospheric pressure is 90 times that of the
Earth and Venus is smaller than Earth. *So you might want to rethink
solar-system-object size and atmospheric pressure as being necessarily
related.

The difference is presumably due to what the atmosphere is made of.

Only somewhat. The much bigger difference from Mars is in that if Titan's
atmosphere escapes the local area of Titan ... it's still trapped deep in
_Saturn's_ gravity well. In the approximate orbit of Titan. So most of what
manages to escape ends up back in Titan's atmosphere a while later.

Dave "also see: Io and, I think, flux tubes?" DeLaney
--
\/David DeLaney posting from "It's not the pot that grows the flower
It's not the clock that slows the hour The definition's plain for anyone to see
Love is all it takes to make a family" - R&P. VISUALIZE HAPPYNET VRbeableBLINK
http://www.vic.com/~dbd/ - net.legends FAQ & Magic / I WUV you in all CAPS! --K.

On Aug 12, 11:09*am, 23vl wrote:
On Aug 12, 4:56*pm, David Johnston wrote:





On Wed, 12 Aug 2009 20:36:15 +1000, "Rod Speed"

wrote:
23vl wrote:
On Aug 12, 12:09 pm, "Rod Speed" wrote:
23vl wrote:
On Aug 12, 4:36 am, z wrote:
On Jul 23, 3:11 pm, ericthetolle wrote:

On Jul 23, 6:20 am, "Giga" "Giga" just(removetheseandaddmatthe
end)

wrote:
"William December Starr" wrote in
...

In article ,
"Giga" "Giga" just(removetheseandaddmatthe
said:

That to me would just the adequate life. Space could
potentially give us the resources for everyone to have their
own planet!

I'm not sure that I have ever in my life seen more of a load
placed
on a single word than what you just hung on that "potentially."

-- wds

) (true) but that is what its all about for me. Its all there
just waiting
for us, shame to just settle for just one planet.

You haven't even bothered to colonize all of this one planet!

COME! COLONIZE THE ANTARCTIC OCEAN! COLONIZE THE OCEAN BOTTOM! THE
RICHES OF THE ATLANTIC TRENCH ARE WAITING FOR YOU! POTENTIALLY WE
CAN MAKE EVERY COLONIST RICH ENOUGH TO HAVE HIS OWN ISLAND!

Show me you have enough gumption to do THAT, and then I'll believe
your babble about being a big, daring colonist with foresight. But
if you aren't even willing to colonize a floating platform south
of the Cape of Good Hope, then all your rhetoric is just so much
bull****.

Eric Tolle- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

exactly. we can't exploit the ocean bottoms, the polar regions,
lots of places on earth. mars can't possibly be more economically
feasible
As Heinlein said-it is not a good idea to keep all our eggs in one
basket.

Pity about the immense cost of anything else.

There is also the fact that the Earth can't sustain human growth
indefinitely,

Its obviously a hell of a lot cheaper to do something about that
growth than to colonise space.

and we can find more resources

We've got plenty of those here on earth, much more cheaply too.

and room for growth

We've got plenty of those here on earth, much more cheaply too.

in space,and the possibilities for scientific exploration.

Makes a hell of a lot more sense to use robots to do that.

Sooner or later this planet will die-

So will mars etc.

Mars is already dead. *

Who cares about mars-in the end it is just another lame muddball and
its gravity isn't strong enough to sustain a thick atmosphere such as
Earth's.

Explain Saturn's moon Titan then. It has an atmosphere that is 1.5
times as much pressure than does the Earth. Yet Titan is smaller than
Mars! Also, Venus's atmospheric pressure is 90 times that of the
Earth and Venus is smaller than Earth. So you might want to rethink
solar-system-object size and atmospheric pressure as being necessarily
related.

Eric

On Aug 13, 2:12*pm, Eric Chomko wrote:

Explain Saturn's moon Titan then. It has an atmosphere that is 1.5
times as much pressure than does the Earth. Yet Titan is smaller than
Mars! *Also, Venus's atmospheric pressure is 90 times that of the
Earth and Venus is smaller than Earth. *So you might want to rethink
solar-system-object size and atmospheric pressure as being necessarily
related.

The difference is presumably due to what the atmosphere is made of.

After all, the pressure at the bottom of the Marianas Trench is also
higher than 14.7 pounds per square inch, yet the oceans have not
boiled off into space because Earth obviously has more water on it
than its gravity allows.

The other variable would be temperature, since cold gases or liquids
are less likely to evaporate into space.

John Savard

::: Who cares about mars-in the end it is just another lame muddball and
::: its gravity isn't strong enough to sustain a thick atmosphere such
::: as Earth's.

:: Explain Saturn's moon Titan then.

: Quadibloc
: The difference is presumably due to what the atmosphere is made of.

Perhaps not so much as you'd think. Mars' atmosphere is mostly C02, iirc,
which has a larger molecular mass and thus a smaller average velocity
due to kinetic energy at a given temperatures than for earth-like air.
Titan is mostly CH4 iirc, and that's a *smaller* molecular mass, plus an
escape velocity half that of mars. Mars' escape velocity is half earth's,
while venus' is 90 percent of earth's. Of course, as mentioned, on earth,
lots of the atmosphere has condensed out; the total mass of atmosphere
(ie, volatile compounds faunching about on the surface) on earth isn't
so far out of line with that of venus... and venus' atmosphere's mean
molecular mass is larger than earth's.

However, Titan is much, much colder.

So. On Titan, it's not quite so much "what it's made of" as "how cold it
is", plus some other factors having to do with the sun being far, far away.
Venus, a bit to do with what it's made of, but mostly, just the fact that
all of venus' volatile chemicals are gasses, and none liquids.


On the other hand, Mars could hold on to an earth-like atmosphere for
some millions of years, I'd expect. Mean kinetic velocity for earth-like
air at room temperature is a half-kilometer per second, and that's still
only ten percent of mars' escape velocity. Eventually, mars would lose it
again, far faster than earth or venus. But I'm not sure planning in
detail for events a million years off is all that interesting, and even
if it were, presumably you could count on the same technology that
generated an atmosphere on mars to do it again if you ran low. You don't
need your car tires to be absolutely, positively, impermeable to air;
you just need to fill them up faster than they deflate, and if they
deflate less often than than yearly, then you're probably OK,
and should be checking it that often anyways.


Wayne Throop http://sheol.org/throopw

On Aug 13, 4:01*pm, (Wayne Throop) wrote:

Perhaps not so much as you'd think.

However, Titan is much, much colder.

I also noted temperature as a relevant variable. But one I neglected
was history - it might be that some planetary atmospheres are not in
equilibrium - or that some might lose 1% of their contents in 1,000
years, and others might lose 1% of their contents in a billion years.
(It might be that near-airlessness is the equlibrium condition for all
planets...)

John Savard

On Aug 12, 11:00*am, wrote:
In sci.physics 23vl wrote:





On Aug 12, 6:21*am, David Johnston wrote:
On Tue, 11 Aug 2009 20:16:37 -0700 (PDT), gabydewilde

wrote:
exactly. we can't exploit the ocean bottoms, the polar regions, lots
of places on earth. mars can't possibly be more economically feasible

There are many rocks up there made of 'exotic' materials.

We have no real reason to think that is true. *The table of elements
is the same no matter where you go. *

Yeah,but the quantities are different,and once we have some
infrastructure up there mining asteroids becomes a hell of a lot
easier and faster *than operating a regular mine.
There is also space manufacturing.

What makes you think the quantities are different?

How is it easier and faster to drive a space ship millions of miles in
and out of a gravity well than it is to drive a diesel truck a few miles
on a dirt road?

We don't mine the ocean floor because it it too expensive and we won't
mine space for the same reason.

--
Jim Pennino

Remove .spam.sux to reply.- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

ironically, i suspect that developing the technology to exploit other
parts off the solar system would be more of a benefit than actually
exploiting them. like the guy who says "i wish i had enough money to
buy an elephant" "why would you want an elephant?" "I don't, i just
want enough money to buy one"

On Aug 12, 6:02*am, 23vl wrote:
On Aug 12, 12:09*pm, "Rod Speed" wrote:





23vl wrote:
On Aug 12, 4:36 am, z wrote:
On Jul 23, 3:11 pm, ericthetolle wrote:

On Jul 23, 6:20 am, "Giga" "Giga" just(removetheseandaddmatthe
end)

wrote:
"William December Starr" wrote in
...

In article ,
"Giga" "Giga" just(removetheseandaddmatthe
said:

That to me would just the adequate life. Space could potentially
give us the resources for everyone to have their own planet!

I'm not sure that I have ever in my life seen more of a load
placed
on a single word than what you just hung on that "potentially."

-- wds

) (true) but that is what its all about for me. Its all there
just waiting
for us, shame to just settle for just one planet.

You haven't even bothered to colonize all of this one planet!

COME! COLONIZE THE ANTARCTIC OCEAN! COLONIZE THE OCEAN BOTTOM! THE
RICHES OF THE ATLANTIC TRENCH ARE WAITING FOR YOU! POTENTIALLY WE
CAN MAKE EVERY COLONIST RICH ENOUGH TO HAVE HIS OWN ISLAND!

Show me you have enough gumption to do THAT, and then I'll believe
your babble about being a big, daring colonist with foresight. But
if you aren't even willing to colonize a floating platform south of
the Cape of Good Hope, then all your rhetoric is just so much
bull****.

Eric Tolle- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

exactly. we can't exploit the ocean bottoms, the polar regions, lots
of places on earth. mars can't possibly be more economically feasible
As *Heinlein said-it is not a good idea to keep all our eggs in one basket.

Pity about the immense cost of anything else.

There is also the fact that the Earth can't sustain human growth indefinitely,

Its obviously a hell of a lot cheaper to do something about that growth than to colonise space.

and we *can find more resources

We've got plenty of those here on earth, much more cheaply too.

and room for growth

We've got plenty of those here on earth, much more cheaply too.

in space,and the possibilities for scientific exploration.

Makes a hell of a lot more sense to use robots to do that.

Sooner or later this planet will die-and then what of mankind,I
certainly don't want all that humanity has achieved to be wiped out by
some extinction event.And as for growth-the more people there are-the
more talent and therefore potential discoveries we have.Why should we
throw resources to limit our options for future development by chasing
after stupid ideas like sustainability-in space we will have access to
an abundance of energy thanks to solar power.And what about metals-
sooner or later the easily available deposits will run out.Your
options call for contraction and eventually death.Mine call for
expansion,the ability of mankind to finally free itself from its birth
environment and spread as far as possible.Just as nature intended.- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

we had a guy like that in our lab. rather than just clean up his damn
bench once in a while, he just kept moving his work area down leaving
the mess behind him.