Science Forums 2

[Thunderbird]

Originally Posted by Boerseun

It's perfectly possible, but everything done by humans on such a scale will have to be justified by more than "because we can". Such a project will consume enormous amounts of resources that could arguable be better spent on Earth. For instance, why not colonize the seafloor? It's as alien and dangerous as any colony on the moon would be, it would serve as a great learning tool to develop skills and techniques required for colonizing other planets. It's much closer and cheaper to get there, though - and as a project would occupy humanity for quite a few centuries.

If I had to pick one, I would go for Mars. Mars, at least, has an atmosphere, albeit a very thin and diffuse one, but one that would stop most micrometeorites, nonetheless.

But that's all besides the point.

Any resources that could be found on Mars or any other body in the Solar System is worthless in the absence of buyers. It's no good landing on an asteroid that is made of 99% solid pure gold, if you can't get it to Earth. And even if you could get such a massive amount of gold to Earth, all you would achieve by this is to depress the gold price to such an extent that it becomes essentially worthless. Which kinda makes the whole exercise pointless. The availability of resources in space must be seen in the context of what wants and needs any colonizers would have; resources should be mined and processed for them - attempting to trade with Earth will be virtually impossible due to fuel requirements and the distortion of the planetary market by the sudden availability of the rare commodity of your choice.

Colonizing the moon and the planets are all perfectly possible technically, but I think we need a much better reason than "because it's awesome and we can".

Even the old story of "keeping humanity's eggs in one basket" is not enough. With early detection and sufficient resolve, asteroids in dangerous close-earth orbits can be identified and either destroyed or nudged into safer orbits. If we can't do it yet, we should be able to in the not-too-distant future.

Don't get me wrong, I don't want to depress y'all. Colonizing the moon and planets will be awesomely cool. But I think increasingly intelligent robots will be the ticket for humanity's presence in space, and not only on the short term, but for hundreds of years to come, still.

And I agree, it sucks. But reality is a harsh mistress at times. I just can't see any justification for spending billions of dollars on space colonization when there are no locals to trade with, and its impossible to get anything of value back to Earth in large enough quantities to make it sustainable.

Pragmatism is a great and wonderful clarifier. The question of colonizing space to me is about the why , not the possibility of it. I do not see any advantage . There is no more hostile, energy consuming, atrophic, environment than space.