Nibb31

It's up to you to explain how they would help with our survival and i what circumstances. What sort of event would it save us from? There are nearly 8 billion of us on Earth. Even if an event kills off 99.9% of the population, it would still leave 8 million survivors, which is more than you could possibly sustain on any sort of reality-based self-sufficient space colony.

Why would a government fund space colonization exactly? We will run out sooner or later, which is why we need to a sustainable economy *before* we reach out. Spending our scarce resources on a massive colonization effort is a sure way to end up with a depleted Earth and a failed colony. Education and free birth control should be enough. If we don't regulate population ourselves, then physics and economics will take care of the problem and it won't be pretty. Yes, I do. It's much easier to educate girls and to distribute free birth control pills than to build O'Neill colonies. Birth control is already free in many countries. Define species and survival. Is it our genetic pool ? Our culture? Our economy? How is any of that of any benefit to the universe beyond our own existence and interests? I don't think that extinction is any more nihilistic than death (which we accept as part of the cycle of life). On the contrary; if we go extinct, something else will emerge thrive in the niche that we leave empty. Maybe that species will be better, smarter, more benevolent, and generally more worthy of survival than we are. Good for them. Maybe a new era of biodiversity will emerge, much richer than it could be when we were around. Who knows? The point is that if we go extinct, there won't be anybody around to feel sad about. Life will continue, like it always has. Yes, it has developed mechanisms to protect itself. Like many other species. As for our civilization being peaceful, all it takes is to switch on the news to see that that's just a load of balooney. More people have been exterminated in last century than in the thousands of years before, and I won't be surprised if more of our fellow humans die a violent death in the 21st century than in the 20th. So which civilization exactly are you talking about? Take a few steps back and look at the big picture. There are (and have been) hundreds of different cultures and civilizations around. Some of them might seem welcoming to you, others might think that your culture is perverted and evil, others think that theirs is the only true civilization, and so on... We are not a special snowflake species. From nature's point of view, we are living organisms no more worthy than the millions of species that we exterminate every day. In the grand scheme of the universe, we are insignificant, and that's ok. It's not a bad thing to have some humility. And many others go completely forgotten. It's no big deal. I don't think that a majority of taxpayers agree with you. There are a lot of good causes that we should be spending money on: research, exploration, education, environmental sustainability, etc... I don't think that space colonization is one of them at this point.

My point is that there is no evidence that colonization would have any effect on our survival as a species. The keys to our survival for the foreseeable future are on Earth. First of all, you need to define the species, what makes us what we are, and what you want to actually preserve. When it comes to taxonomy, lines can be very blurred. Our species will evolve and turn into something different or go extinct, no matter how much effort to spend on building artificial environments. It's no big deal. Species evolve and go extinct every day, it's just how nature works. If it's our civilization or culture that you want to save, then that is even more short-lived. There has never been a single human culture or civilzation, and there is no reason to believe that our current culture deserves to be preserved any more than the Roman Empire or Precolumbian civilizations. In the future, it might become apparent that we need to spread to the stars, but that is far from an actual *need* at this stage. For the next couple of decades, we are stuck here, so our survival is going to depend on how we deal with adapting to our changing environment, not the pipe dream of moving someplace else.

Easy solution: stop increasing population. Getting population and climate change under control are going to be prerequisites for any significant colonization effort. We are not going to have space colonies in the next couple of centuries if we can't survive those threats over the next couple of decades. As for nuclear war or NEOs, they would not kill 100% percent of the population instantaneously. There is no reason to believe that the subsequent population bottleneck would be significantly different with or without a space colony. Why would it be otherwise? Nothing lives forever. There is no right or wrong in evolution. Nobody is going to feel bad when we go extinct. Even then, there aren't any threats where a space colony would guarantee our survival. If you can support thousands of people in a closed-loop space colony, then you can support millions in a closed-loop earth colony on a scorched earth for a fraction of the effort.

We don't *need* either. A tiny minority of people think they would be cool, but that is not a *need*.

To be faire, that paper goes back to 1997, way before Constellation and the Orion CEV.

The landing contact light came on when the landing probe sensor touched the ground. This was a 5-foot (1.5 meter) wire that dangled below the landing pads. The idea was to cut the engine 5 feet above the ground, so that the plume would not blow up dust and damage the LM. In the original design, there were 4 landing probes. However, there was concern that the probe would be bent upwards after landing, and could damage or puncture the astronaut's suits, so the probe was omitted on the leg that had the egress ladder and only 3 were installed.

That would be anecdotal, not really an enabler technology for space.

It was a lot of hot air without much substance.

Yep, it could replace EVA and even landing on other planets really.

Russia has plans to disconnect their newer module (that hasn't launched yet). No it isn't. It took over a decade to build and many systems are intertwined. It would be very difficult to disassemble any of the major parts, especially the oldest ones (Zarya, Zveda, Unity, and truss modules and solar array), which are at the core of the station. Without the space shuttle, there is no way to send up any major components for the USOS without the Shuttle. There is already a whole thread on the subject. You should read it and expand the discussion there if you have any further questions or remarks:

Yes, but that's only two rockets. There simply aren't enough assembly buildings to be processing 3 Delta IVs at VAFB simultaneously, as well as 2 Delta Heavies and 3 Atlas Vs at the Cape. Also, I really don't understand the mission profile. It doesn't seem to include any actual spacecraft or lander. Three "Food" launches sounds a bit wasteful. How do you get that food onto the Martian surface? And why send 2 different spacecraft? How do you get stuff like a Garage, a greenhouse or a wind farm to Mars and to the surface in a single Delta IV launch? What do you do with a "Middle liquid fuel tank" once it's floating around in orbit? Why does a CST-100 launch unmanned? What does the Orion Spacecraft Docking Module dock to? What's with all the gliders? And where is SLS when you need it? It really doesn't make much sense at all.

Looks like an awful lot of launches. I'm not sure how you plan to launch 7 rockets in a week from the same launch pad. That's a lot of rockets to process at the same time. It also looks like there is an awful lot of orbital assembly work going on. Again, I don't see how you can do all that in the course of a few days, or what sort of vehicle delivers stuff like solar panels on a Soyuz U.

I usually use a glue gun for that sort of stuff.

So the guy is offering €1 million to run the rocket equation ?

But nobody is proposing a Mach 3 air launch because: Hypersonic separation is a difficult nut to crack. Mach 3 and 24 000 meters still makes a rather crappy first stage (typically they get you to Mach 6 or 7 at 100 km). You are still going to need a pretty large multi-stage rocket with a first stage that will only be marginally smaller. Nobody wants the cost of developing a one-off XB-70 just to have it fly once a month or less.

Boca Chica

Every plane flight is suborbital. A first stage suborbital rocket is absolutely possible. Just stick wings on it and glide back. It should absolutely be possible. Not practical, but possible.

A first stage that only provides 250m/s, negligeable altitude, and wastes immobilization money as a hangar queen.

Yeah, that's like 5 years old at least. The "Falcon XX" concept was abandoned years ago, SpaceX has been using the name Raptor for its engine since 2009, and the "Hydra" pic is fanart.

Surely you're talking about Raptor, not Merlin 2. A Raptor-powered Falcon would not be able to throttle down to the level of a single Merlin, which would make landing more difficult. Raptor is supposed to be for the BFR.

Do you really think that a bunch of kids playing a video game are smarter than the thousands of scientists and engineers that work at NASA and its contracting companies?

There haven't been any manned missions to Mars, so there is no predetermined textbook way to do it. When they do get around to sending humans to Mars, they will probably proceed by doing multiple iterations of porkchop graphs and selecting the best window each way. The time between the two windows then determines the duration of the stay on Mars. It's expected that a typical Mars round trip would be approximately 18 months long.

So why are you posting this in the science forums when this is clearly about science fiction ? This has been discussed plenty of times before. Why don't you go and read all those old threads?

Oh no, not again. Use the search, Luke.