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thepeel
Joined: 08 Aug 2004
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 Posted: Mon Jun 18, 2007 10:52 am Post subject: Futility of space colonization |
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Here is one for Mith..
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Badass ninja science fiction writer Charlie Stross has just posted a killer essay on the futility of space explorationcolonization. Nutshell: it's far and hostile, and we can't even figure out how to live in the Gobi desert or the ocean's floor, infinitely closer and more hospitable.
Here's a handy metaphor: let's approximate one astronomical unit � the distance between the Earth and the sun, roughly 150 million kilometres, or 600 times the distance from the Earth to the Moon � to one centimetre. Got that? 1AU = 1cm. (You may want to get hold of a ruler to
follow through with this one.)
The solar system is conveniently small. Neptune, the outermost planet in our solar system, orbits the sun at a distance of almost exactly 30AU, or 30 centimetres � one foot (in imperial units). Giant Jupiter is 5.46 AU out from the sun, almost exactly two inches (in old money).
We've sent space probes to Jupiter; they take five and a half years to get there if we send them on a straight Hohmann transfer orbit, but we can get there quite a bit faster using some fancy orbital mechanics. Neptune is still a stretch � only one spacecraft, Voyager 2, has made it out there so far. Its journey time was 12 years, and it wasn't stopping. (It's now on its way out into interstellar space, having passed the heliopause some years ago.)
The Kuiper belt, domain of icy wandering dwarf planets like Pluto and Eris, extends perhaps another 30AU, before merging into the much more tenuous Hills cloud and Oort cloud, domain of loosely coupled long-period comets.
Now for the first scale shock: using our handy metaphor the Kuiper belt is perhaps a metre in diameter. The Oort cloud, in contrast, is as much as 50,000 AU in radius � its outer edge lies half a kilometre away. |
boingboing summary here:
http://www.boingboing.net/2007/06/16/futility_of_space_co.html
Full article here:
http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2007/06/the_high_frontier_redux.html |
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Treefarmer
Joined: 29 May 2007
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| Posted: Mon Jun 18, 2007 11:06 am Post subject: |
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| colonising space is pointless while we are limited by distance, we need lightspeed or something to make a go of it |
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AbbeFaria
Joined: 17 May 2005
Location: Gangnam
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| Posted: Mon Jun 18, 2007 11:44 am Post subject: |
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| Treefarmer wrote: |
| colonising space is pointless while we are limited by distance, we need lightspeed or something to make a go of it |
Yeah, but then you run in to all that nasty physics business that said, if I remember correctly, that even getting up to light speed is impossible since the objects mass increases with it's speed. More mass means more energy needed to make it go and therefor it won't go. Or something.
Physics never really was my thing. I read A Brief History of Time awhile back and only understood about 60% of it. Either way, even light speed is not fast enough to make interstellar travel feasible. It would work for a quick jaunt about the solar system, but once you get in to the big inky blackness, you'll be wanting to move a bit quicker.
-S- |
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mithridates
Joined: 03 Mar 2003
Location: President's office, Korean Space Agency
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| Posted: Mon Jun 18, 2007 2:52 pm Post subject: |
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Kind of a weird article. The border of space is generally thought of as being 100 km above the Earth, so I'm not sure what's with all the talk about Alpha Centauri and Gliese 581 c and so on. Nobody's under the impression that we can get there any time soon.
There are also two destinations that are easier than Mars: Venus and (possibly) Ceres. Venus because the cloudtops are (relatively) perfect places for human colonization and the planet is so much closer than Mars, and Ceres because it seems that it has a huge mantle of frozen water which always helps.
I think the most important task we have right now is to make sure that countries on their way to becoming strong economies are able to do so with stability, and are able to contribute as well. Countries like Azerbaijan and Vietnam for example. And on top of that we should be working on complete literacy, removal of poverty and everything else needed to have people be able to think about space as opposed to where the next meal is coming from. Regardless of how difficult a task colonizing space is, it's way easier when we have 6 billion people able to help out as opposed to the approximately one billion we have at present (I'm defining this by numbers of people using the Internet). |
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mindmetoo
Joined: 02 Feb 2004
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| Posted: Mon Jun 18, 2007 3:28 pm Post subject: |
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| I subscribe to the Hawking "let's not put all our eggs in this one planetary basket" theory. We're not going to colonize space anytime soon but I see nothing wrong with taking the baby steps today. |
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Guri Guy
Joined: 07 Sep 2003
Location: Bamboo Island
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| Posted: Mon Jun 18, 2007 3:40 pm Post subject: |
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It may seem futile now but I always think there must have been "doubting Thomases" when Columbus and other explorers wanted to find new worlds.
Give it time I say. Technology is advancing at a rapid pace. Who knows what we'll be capable of in 50 years.  |
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ED209
Joined: 17 Oct 2006
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| Posted: Mon Jun 18, 2007 3:57 pm Post subject: |
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| To over come the time and distance problems we are the ones who may have to adapt. Abandon our bodies and become huge black monoliths which can survive billions of years doing not much. You'll understand this once the robots take over the earth and become the dominant species. |
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pkang0202
Joined: 09 Mar 2007
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| Posted: Mon Jun 18, 2007 7:03 pm Post subject: |
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| Unless they got fried chicken on Alpha Centauri, I'm not interested. |
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Yo!Chingo
Joined: 06 Dec 2005
Location: Seoul Korea
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| Posted: Mon Jun 18, 2007 10:29 pm Post subject: |
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Warp speed baby! What we need are some Star Trek engineers to show us the way. I've always wondered when they start getting into the engineering mumbo jumbo if they have any frickin' idea what they're talkin' about or do they just pull these terms outta their behinds. 
Sad really |
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cbclark4
Joined: 20 Aug 2006
Location: Masan
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| Posted: Mon Jun 18, 2007 10:55 pm Post subject: |
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Seriously will the ecologists allow us to teraform the Gobi?
Ifnot; must seek out other worlds. |
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