The Dark (seriously, very dark) future of human space flight

[AcidSludge]

Ah. Turn off the Internet and cut 98% of all TV channels, and we're on Mars in five years.

[Rakaydos]

Ah. Turn off the Internet and cut 98% of all TV channels, and we're on Mars in five years.

Or buried in riots.

[Kryten]

Ah. Turn off the Internet and cut 98% of all TV channels, and we're on Mars in five years.

That explains how we got to Mars in the seventies

[AcidSludge]

Or buried in riots.

On second thought, that's more likely.

[stellarator]

I think that the only way possible to go Mars with actual Space Agencies Budget and experience is that:

This is an imaginary scenario that i created, post your comments please.

-ESA has not experience with manned vehicles, but they've landed on titan and they created a fantastic space carrier (ATV). They will send cargo to LMO, Phobos Deimos and Mars Surface. Why Phobos and Deimos? Because they could have water. And water means oxygen, fuel and water. Also, a space station inside the moons will be shielded against radiation. If we could be able to put a driller on them... They will deliver Supplies to surface, by this way, the mass of the ship will be less.

-Rocosmos has expierence on space. They've had many space stations. They are the logical option to build the cruise ship, that will travel between LEO and MEO.

-NASA is the only space agency that returned astronauts from outside Earth, that menas that have more experience on designing descent ships etc. Also, they had sent many missions to the red Planet.

The cost of that missionwill be very high, but i think that, with the time, the benfist will be higher (minerals from Mars), technology... etc.

What do you think?

[baggers]

Maybe we could say that to the actual state of technology and knowledge about space, our solar system, and the neightbour solar systems, unmanned space flight is the best choice at the moment?

I mean: we are humans, and Darwin say that we are adapted to our planet. We couldn't "live" outside our "biological system" in another planet in our solar system: In fact, they are many place on our own planet were we couldn't live! But we can explore or exploit even in places we couldn't sustain our specie.

Unless we find a way to "adapt" ourself or the others planets (terraformation) to our "biological system", we probably can't sustain a permanent "trading post" anywhere outside our planet.

So, we can explore unmanned and hope for a "sister-earth".

Or we can try to improve terraformation technologys ^^

Or adapt ourself: permanent spacesuits, live forever for travelling hundert of years, eating vacuum, that sort of things.

But I'm affraid that "manned exploration" go to an end here. Unless a special case happen.

Note that remaining one and only specie and one and only biological system is probably a costly way to colonize space: An "humanity" divided in differents species and adapted to differents biologicals systems/planets is probably a better way to expand itself in space: diversity...

[Rakaydos]

Maybe we could say that to the actual state of technology and knowledge about space, our solar system, and the neightbour solar systems, unmanned space flight is the best choice at the moment?

I mean: we are humans, and Darwin say that we are adapted to our planet. We couldn't "live" outside our "biological system" in another planet in our solar system: In fact, they are many place on our own planet were we couldn't live! But we can explore or exploit even in places we couldn't sustain our specie.

Unless we find a way to "adapt" ourself or the others planets (terraformation) to our "biological system", we probably can't sustain a permanent "trading post" anywhere outside our planet.

So, we can explore unmanned and hope for a "sister-earth".

Or we can try to improve terraformation technologys ^^

Or adapt ourself: permanent spacesuits, live forever for travelling hundert of years, eating vacuum, that sort of things.

But I'm affraid that "manned exploration" go to an end here. Unless a special case happen.

Note that remaining one and only specie and one and only biological system is probably a costly way to colonize space: An "humanity" divided in differents species and adapted to differents biologicals systems/planets is probably a better way to expand itself in space: diversity...

...And this is the answer to the Fermi Paradox.

[GoSlash27]

It's sacrilegious to say this around here, so I'll be the bad guy:

In the general scheme of things, manned spaceflight really isn't all that important. At least... not right now.

There's all sorts of things that need attention and funding right here on Earth, and not enough of either to go around.

I know somebody's gonna bring up the "eggs in one basket" argument, so let me preempt that: For now and the foreseeable future, all of humanity's eggs *are* in one basket regardless of how many people are temporarily off the planet. If we die they die because they cannot survive without us.

sorry,

-Slashy

[Jonboy]

It's sacrilegious to say this around here, so I'll be the bad guy:

In the general scheme of things, manned spaceflight really isn't all that important. At least... not right now.

There's all sorts of things that need attention and funding right here on Earth, and not enough of either to go around.

I know somebody's gonna bring up the "eggs in one basket" argument, so let me preempt that: For now and the foreseeable future, all of humanity's eggs *are* in one basket regardless of how many people are temporarily off the planet. If we die they die because they cannot survive without us.

sorry,

-Slashy

Yup. As cool as manned spaceflight is, it's foolish to think we will solve the looming problems at home (which are significant) by traipsing around the solar system planting flags. Especially right now, when such programs would be hugely expensive.

Space exploration is important, because it furthers our knowledge of the universe and gives us insight into Earth's past. That knowledge can help us learn to live intentionally and sustainably on our home planet. But space exploration should be done as efficiently and cheaply as possible. Right now, that means robotic probes. In the future, spaceflight might become cheap enough that manned missions are an efficient use of resources, but that day may be far off.

Edit: Don't get me wrong, I still think Space X is cool.

[SciMan]

Ok, regarding the "eggs in one basket" thing. How do you expect to go from "if Earth dies, we all die" to a situation where that's no longer true, if not by manned spaceflight?

Can't go from point A to point B without visiting every point between the two.

Of course, as said, anything that has a lead-time of more than 4 years might as well be impossible.

I would give up anything to see planning on 50+ year timescales be a feasible and not at all uncommon thing within my lifetime. Unfortunately it doesn't look like that's going to happen anytime soon.

[GoSlash27]

Ok, regarding the "eggs in one basket" thing. How do you expect to go from "if Earth dies, we all die" to a situation where that's no longer true, if not by manned spaceflight?

Can't go from point A to point B without visiting every point between the two.

Of course, as said, anything that has a lead-time of more than 4 years might as well be impossible.

I would give up anything to see planning on 50+ year timescales be a feasible and not at all uncommon thing within my lifetime. Unfortunately it doesn't look like that's going to happen anytime soon.

SciMan,

That's irrelevant. *how* we get to a point where human colonies can thrive off-planet is immaterial. So long as they are not currently survivable, having humans off- planet is not an effective insurance policy against extinction.

You do have a point that we have to maintain an effort to get to this point, but do we *have* to have manned spaceflight ongoing in order to achieve it? No. Not really...

Best,

-Slashy

[Beowolf]

Ok, regarding the "eggs in one basket" thing. How do you expect to go from "if Earth dies, we all die" to a situation where that's no longer true, if not by manned spaceflight?

Can't go from point A to point B without visiting every point between the two.

Of course, as said, anything that has a lead-time of more than 4 years might as well be impossible.

I would give up anything to see planning on 50+ year timescales be a feasible and not at all uncommon thing within my lifetime. Unfortunately it doesn't look like that's going to happen anytime soon.

Think about this for a minute. To escape the "if Earth dies, we all die" trap, space colonies would have to be so self-sufficient they can recreate ALL critical components of their colony from in-situ resources. It isn't just oxygen, water and power. Those will hold you for a few years, but not even the wildest ISRU plans have us building replacement CPU chips and new spacesuits for growing children! A colony that can't make more self-sufficient colonies will still die.

It's such a huge problem humanity can't even define all the variables yet. At our current tech level, manned interplanetary spaceflight on a massive scale is actually one of the easier pieces of this puzzle. We know how, it's just too expensive for us right now. Modern civilization is so interconnected that everything affects everything else. One tiny, simple example: Take a look at the list of ingredients on a multi-vitamin. We need all those chemicals and trace elements to survive. Many of the chemicals are automatically produced inside our food, of course. But all recycling has losses and the raw elements have to be replaced. So just for the materials required to make your daily vitamin pill, the colony needs extraction and refining capability for boron, cobalt, chromium, calcium, chlorine, copper, fluoride, iodine, iron, magnesium, manganese, molybdenum, nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium, selenium, sodium, sulphur, and zinc. And of course the easy ones, like oxygen, hydrogen, and carbon.

Right now, the only (theoretical!) way a single colony could extract the elements we need from Mars' surface is one of the ways they enriched uranium in WWII: A combination of a cyclotron and mass spectrometer called a calutron. A physicist once told me that a multistage calutron that was 10x-100x bigger than those could separate the individual elements from vaporized samples in small-but-useful quantities (grams/day). But the three "little" ones they built in WWII required 14,700 tons of silver and copper. So 100x bigger than that...built on Mars or shipped to Mars (ha!). Oh, and it would require gigawatts of power to run, so first we need a metropolis-sized power plant on Mars.

Maybe soon we'll be able to make engineered bacteria to concentrate the elements we need. A few of those are in lab-prototype stage, but definitely not all we need. Still, There are bacteria and fungi at Chernobyl that get their energy from the radiation, too. That'd be a really useful trait for a vat of tiny Martian manganese miners.

See what I mean? It all gets overwhelmingly complex very quickly. The more I learn about it, the less I think it's possible without advanced nanotech or gengineering.

I want it just as bad as you do, though.

PS If you think this was bad, look into how much water's needed to make computer chips. Even a small plant uses a million gallons a day! And they aren't particularly exceptional. A lot of our industrial processes are based on the assumption that megatonnes of pure water are instantly and cheaply available. Essentially, every process to create every manufactured material will have to be reengineered from scratch. That problem alone would cost decades and billions of dollars to solve with current tools. So we'll end up waiting for the nanotech, or some other miracle.

Edited May 21, 2015 by Beowolf

[magnemoe]

...And this is the answer to the Fermi Paradox.

How about an system with two habitable planets, put Venus outward or make Mars Earth sized, better do both.

Impacts ejects will probably make biochemistry pretty equal.

Yes its rarer, but not insanely so, an gas giant in the Goldilock zone with multiple earth sized moons would be even easier to travel between. Even easier to transfer life and you could see forests on the other moons with without telescopes.

Yes but as they have multiple planets they don't bother going interstellar.

- - - Updated - - -

I have seen this statistic many times before. When one country has a higher military budget than every other country on earth combined, you know we have a problem.

And the things they are doing with that money is... horrifying.

This... is terrifying. To be fair, the growing budgets of India and China are largely just because they have rapidly growing economies, so expect the same kind of growth with their space programs. Also, when china transitions towards a democracy they will inevitably ease off on their military force, persuading its rival India to do the same. India also won't have to worry about Pakistan any more, so its military will be weakened further.

Anyway, enough of my ranting for now, what's your opinions?

Add that China's growth will fall off as they have transformed their dirt farmers into workers, they are also doing most of the other stuff very correctly. Japan is the closest parallel even if they started far higher, again all the old ones on this forum remember the fear of Japan economy in 1980.

[baggers]

How about an system with two habitable planets, put Venus outward or make Mars Earth sized, better do both.

Impacts ejects will probably make biochemistry pretty equal.

Yes its rarer, but not insanely so, an gas giant in the Goldilock zone with multiple earth sized moons would be even easier to travel between. Even easier to transfer life and you could see forests on the other moons with without telescopes.

Yes but as they have multiple planets they don't bother going interstellar.

But in that case, as they have evidence of life on multiple habitables planets so close, they certainly can bet on habitable planets and life on many other star systems. It's a very-very good bait for interstellar travel. (like the one that push Colomb and other guys on the seas)

[ouion]

If in the future, we might stay on Earth for decades and technology might increase overtime. The reason is that going to space might not advance technology, as if we go to Mars today. We be using chemical rockets to get to Mars, the NERVA engines still need testing and budget cuts are to happen,because of world problems. The VASMIR engines needs 200 MW of energy to run and a space nuclear reactor need to be invented. Technology will still be increasing at a surprising rate, like computers and bio-engineering. Maybe as a species, we will be a advance civilization on Earth and space flight technology will wait for a longtime.

[Kibble]

If in the future, we might stay on Earth for decades and technology might increase overtime. The reason is that going to space might not advance technology, as if we go to Mars today. We be using chemical rockets to get to Mars, the NERVA engines still need testing and budget cuts are to happen,because of world problems. The VASMIR engines needs 200 MW of energy to run and a space nuclear reactor need to be invented. Technology will still be increasing at a surprising rate, like computers and bio-engineering. Maybe as a species, we will be a advance civilization on Earth and space flight technology will wait for a longtime.

Waiting for the "right technology" to come along has never been humanity's style. If we can go to Mars with what we have, there is a good chance we will, rather than sit around and wait until a heavenly-Isp politics-immune super rocket engine gets "invented".

[ouion]

The radiation and the solar propose a great threat for human safety and did we invent a shield that protects the crew from solar winds.

[DeepOdyssey]

Not only nasa budget was cut, but the ratio ofcspending has changed in favor of Global warming/ Earth studying satellites. I know that democrats can garner a lot of support by promotibg agw, but nasa really need more spending into actual rockets and Space stuff.

[DerekL1963]

It's sacrilegious to say this around here, so I'll be the bad guy:

In the general scheme of things, manned spaceflight really isn't all that important. At least... not right now.

There's all sorts of things that need attention and funding right here on Earth, and not enough of either to go around.

I know somebody's gonna bring up the "eggs in one basket" argument, so let me preempt that: For now and the foreseeable future, all of humanity's eggs *are* in one basket regardless of how many people are temporarily off the planet. If we die they die because they cannot survive without us.

GoSlash, you're going up against one the most sacred beliefs of Space Fandom - that manned spaceflight is the One True Path to the Salvation of Humanity. But, you and Beowolf are correct, manned spaceflight is all but irrelevant because the problem isn't one of getting there, it's one of surviving and being self sufficient (economically as well as technologically and in terms of material goods). For the foreseeable future, all manned spaceflight can produce are aquariums, and it's pretty easy to predict what happens to an aquarium when the owner stops paying the bills and feeding the inhabitants.

[JebKeb]

People say to me, "Why are you trying to recreate Earth in a base somewhere else when we can't even fix our own Earth?"

The answer...

"There's no Volkswagen in space."

P.S. "recreate Earth in a base somewhere else" wink wink 

Edited April 9, 2016 by JebKeb
I think I was a bit late for this joke...

[ModZero]

Ugh, all eggs in one basket argument, how I hate it. There are arguments for crewed exploration, but they are much more "squishy" (science, understanding how humans deal in different environments as a way to verify assumptions etc), so I guess people really want something hard. Too bad it's not a good argument.

One part of it commonly dealt with: if you really value species survival that high, it's still not a good way. There isn't going to be a self-sustaining off-world colony anytime soon. But that's beaten to death.

My take is, that species survival doesn't bother me as much as the quality of life and survival of the humans who actually are alive. And from that perspective, having two planets just means twice as many (well, not really, Mars is smaller) places that can get hit by an asteroid in a way that kills or hurts many people. It means spending resources in ways that are less efficient in terms of making people happier (sorry, but while we here on this forum may get happier from looking at rocket landings, we're not really a majority, and even I can also be made happier quite a lot cheaper by providing me with Stardew Valley and a free afternoon).

Now, I disagree somewhat with the OP premise: people will go to space. Eventually. If and when it's efficient and sustainable enough that they can't really be stopped from doing so. I think we're going to wait a long time, but hey, everyone's favourite megalomaniac made some promises for a crazy plan yesterday.