Guest post: Small problem
Originally a comment by Your Name’s not Bruce? on Strange man.
“I believe, in the next couple of decades, there will be millions of people living in space. That’s how fast this is going to accelerate,” he said.
There’s a small problem with this. We don’t know how to live in space. I believe it was from someone posting here on B&W that I learned of the book A City on Mars by Kelly Weinersmith and Zach Weinersmith. Their conclusion? Not soon, not likely. The problem? It’s not only the Rocket Science, it’s the Us Science.
A short list of things we don’t know about (not all from the book, and in no particular order):
Part 1) Rocket science
How to build Really Big Things in space.
How to build Really Big Things that Spin in space.
How to build Really Big Things on moons and planets.
How to build large scale, long term closed loop systems.
How to mine and process materials in space
Part 2) Us science
Sex in space.
Conception, gestation and birth in space.
Growth and maturation in space.
How to grow lots of food in space (see “closed loop system” above).
How to build a community/society/polity in space.
What happens when the Company Town controls the air you breathe?
Etc.
According to Google, the most people launched into space on one flight was 8; and the largest number ofhumans in space at one time up to now has been 19. Millions in 20 years? No. Do we really want that many rockets built* and launched in that period of time? Fuck no.
And what exactly are a million people going to do in space? Is there a need for that many people to go into space? Fragile space stations, and Lunar or Martian colonies are never going to be insurance policies against human extinction (let alone biospheric extinction). As far as we’re concerned, Earth is it. The chances of self-sustaining, off-Earth human settlements are remote. They will always be more vulnerable than Earth. If planetary disaster did strike, rendering Earth uninhabitable, such colonies would be, at best, lifeboats with no one to rescue them.
Questions of time frame and material feasability aside, do we really want corporations or individuals claiming for themselves a Manifest Destiny in space, claiming territories to which they have no right, squandering resources they can buy, but which the planet cannot afford? Are the communitis/societies/polities they dream of spawning going to be bastions of freedom and liberty, when there’s always going to be someone able to pull the plug, or vent the atmosphere? How do we live off the Earth when we haven’t learned (or have forgotten how) to live in it and on it?
*Sure, some will be reusable, or partly so, but you’re going to need a huge fleet, which will be a huge drain on resources, and a huge source of pollution from both construction and launch. Musk’s Starship, which will supposedly carry up to 100 people at once, would require 10,000 launches to loft 1,000,000 people into space. Since 1957, in the total history of space flight, the total number of orbital launches of all kinds, by all nations and companies has been about 7,300. The number of space launches with humans aboard (which also includes suborbital flights)? About 400.
One thing that’s certain is that we really don’t know how to provide long-term protection against cosmic rays, and I think that’s the idea that led to the science fiction replicants having 4 year lifespans. They were needed for asteroid belt mining, because humans would not suvive upon return. Too much cancer and other disruptions of our DNA.
The YouTube channel Common Sense Skeptic is very good on all of this. Much of the channel focuses on Musk and Starship, but there are others. Like this two-parter about Gateway Foundation’s rotating SpacePort. Turns out it is not clear that a rotating space station mimics gravity well enough to live in it:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yVd-PCo6NbU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WfFbyoh1osI
One thing these colonize outer space nuts don’t ever want to talk about: Biology. I knew a man who was writing a book about colonizing the moon. I asked him if he was going to consult with any scientists. He said, oh yes, he was going to talk to some NASA astronauts and some NASA psychologists. No biologists? No because they will give you a quick lesson on what life requires. (He didn’t say that; I am now editorializing.)
No matter how many other problems they can solve (and I doubt they can solve all the non-biology problems), biology remains as much a problem for them as it does for the trans ideology.
And, once again, if we humans couldn’t even bring ourselves to not fuck up the most habitable place in the universe (to our kind of life anyway), what are the chances that we’re not going to fuck up Mars?
Space exploration is nothing like the Age of Discovery in the 15th C. Although open ocean water is not drinkable, the atmosphere is breathable, the journey between landing spots is normally less than the 6-9 months that a space journey to mars would take, and landing places generally offer the opportunity to replenish food and water needed to continue the journey. In terms of, say, Antarctic exploration in the early 20th C., again, the expedition can be prepared for by placing caches at route checkpoints. The atmosphere has about the same breathability at all stages of the expeditionary journey. Lewis and Clark’s Voyage of Discovery could count on at least some resources for food and water, and didn’t have to worry about not having an air supply. Space exploration has none of these advantages. There are no way stations to replenish food, water, or fuel. There’s no breathable air in space. Earth based explorations ended at places where people could live. There’s no space destination that has any features to support human life. If we are going to face facts, we have to realize that we are bound to the Earth.
Just as we have only one life to live, we have only one accessible place in the universe to live.
I did a panel on this awhile back.
https://farcornercafe.blogspot.com/2022/10/while-on-subject-of-billionaires.html
As several have mentioned, an ecosystem is a most complex complex system. Some of these guys think that throwing money at the challenge will make up for hundreds of millions of years of co-evolution
There’s something about the enthusiasm for space colonization that presumes an endless progression of human population growth. We will have so many people that we will live in space!
The problem with this idea is that the current projection is that Earth (which is to say the universe) will reach peak population in the 2080s, at around 10.4 billion people, and our current population is already 78% of that. That’s sixty years away, and I’ll be long dead, but my kids might be alive to see the decline of human population. A lot of things could come up between now and then, but none of them are likely to increase human population; most of them (war, famine, rapid industrialization, environmental apocalypse, AGI singularity) will reduce human population. Putting some of these people in space would not help with the projection for long-term peaking and decline of human population. Fertility rates drop once countries become industrialized, space colonization is inherently industrialized, and the idea that people in space would have higher fertility rates than us landlubbers is maximally absurd. Putting people in space would be a way to reduce, if not erase, their fertility.
It’s a bizarre obsession for billionaires. Musk, Bezos, etc. can’t think of anything more useful to do with their imaginations than fixate on a soon to be obsolete growth rate and project humanity into the … well, not the stars, because the distance is an insurmountable problem, but Mars and the asteroid belt perhaps. Like on the TV. Pew pew.
These very same guys want to replace humans right here on earth with robots. They go right from talking about sending humans into space to talking about erasing humans from the work force without so much as a breath. Bezos wants robots to work in his Amazon warehouses. Musk wants robots to drive his Tesla taxis. But for the space stuff, with all the cosmic rays and lack of food and air, they want humans to do that. Not them personally, of course, but other humans (maybe the ones who can’t get warehouse or driving jobs anymore). What sense does this make? How would this increase or better humanity in any way?
The only way that space (near space, mind you) colonization makes any sense is robotically, and that only once the robots can gather and process the raw materials needed to repair and reproduce themselves. The line between that and the AGI singularity is fine enough that it hardly seems an appealing project. Yes, let’s make intelligent, self-replicating robots. They’ll be thrilled to be our slaves forever.
Pliny, not only that, but the only way to sustain a colony in space would be to get resources from the earth – which is a finite, limited system, for all its complexity. I suspect at least some of them know that, but believe they are more important than the mere earth-bound humanoids they will leave behind. I also suspect they believe they can set up isolated rich-people houses and areas on other planets (or moons) like they have on Earth, where the lower beings (us) will wait on them but not bother them.
I can’t even understand what is so appealing to them about the idea. I can’t understand how the people on the Space Station don’t go out of their minds. I need to spend a large chunk of time outside every single day or I start to go out of my mind – I want the fresh air. Living outside earth’s atmosphere sounds utterly repulsive to me.
For those of us who have consumed a great deal of “space opera” science fiction, the idea of living in space sounds immensely appealing. But it’s fictional. The reality of it is such that I am firmly and sadly convinced it will never happen. But oh how fascinating it would be to live on an Orbital in the world of the “Cuture” novels by Iain Banks.
That’s fiction for ya all right. It can make all kinds of setups seem attractive when in real life they’d be hell.
Amen to that. A trip to space is like a roller coaster: spectacular to ride, not to move into.
Jeff Bezos took William Shatner to space on one of his rockets, and Shatner found the experience profound — but not in a good way:
He compared the experience to a roller coaster: “I don’t need a ride to give me a thrill.” But the offer to go was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, so he thought, what the hell.
In his memoir, he wrote:
He was in space for a mere eleven minutes — and it filled him with an overwhelming sense of dread and grief.
And honestly, we’ve already built our robotic proxies to go up there and beam us back the postcard views. There’s no point strapping great numbers of meat puppets to rockets. If it ever becomes super-safe, sure — let it be a tourist thing. Maybe send one or two intrepid souls to Mars, just to say we did it.
Like Everest: fine for a few hardy explorers. But once it became a tourist destination, it got… gross.
Yes yes yes exactly. Why the HELL would we want to go there when down here under the blue sky is so………pardon me while I get emo. I went for a walk in the Arboretum yesterday and the layers of fall colors that changed constantly as I walked, revealing a new work of art every second – WHY THE FUCK DO PEOPLE WANT TO GET AWAY FROM THAT????
And some guys think that being able to squeeze or suck money out of an ecosystem is worth throwing away all those hundreds of millions of years of coevolution.
Yes, for the foreseeable future, almost all materials (maybe apart from soil and rock for radiation shielding) used for Lunar or Martian colonies will come from Earth. “Self-sustaining” and “closed loop” means everything. Biology is going to be very hard, and even the supposedly simple nuts and bolts material stuff is going to be extremely difficult for a long time, egos and expenditures notwithstanding.
Creating industrial plant from in-situ resources on the Moon or Mars, or from pillaging asteroids are decades away. Working in a vacuum, or very thin atmosphere, makes everything harder, even before you add radiation, extremes of temperature, low gravity or weightlessness, and the logistics of supply lines tens of millions of miles long. Tiny little experiments on the ISS aren’t going to be that informative at helping you build mining and smelting equipment in space. Ordinary events and processes one relies on on Earth might not happen at all, or happen weirdly.* How do you dig “down” when there is no down? Where does the stuff you dig go? Any process that needs air will need containers to keep that air. Any process that depends on gravity will have have gravity created, or the process will have to be reinvented. However much metal there may be in the asteroids, getting Earth materials up and out of our gravity well is going to be cheaper than trying to mine and refine materials in space for a long time. Self sustaing closed loop? Good luck with that.
Musk plans on building 1,000 Starships a year. Has anyone looked into what that will do, and what the environmental consequences of a comparable launch rate will be? Does anyone get to say “No” if the results and consequences are bad?
Those untouchable billionaires will be more vulnerable in their Space Lairs than they would ever be on Earth. Disgruntled underlings and peons only have to poke a big enough hole in the right spot at the right time in the right wall. A disgruntled underling or peon at the controls of a vehicle caple of a good rate of meters per second make poke a pretty big hole.
*Here’s what happens when you try to wring a washcloth out in space: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lMtXfwk7PXg
I came across this video on the topic, the attraction of the fictional representation of space travel and how depressing it can be to realize it’s impossible, that there are enormous obstacles, some of which, if solved, would give us every reason to stay on Earth anyway.
https://www.facebook.com/share/v/1EqZNhJugm/
That’s an excellent video, thank you.