No.716
ITT: Space General, things we will discuss: colonization, Space engineering, and exploration. Basically anything that has to do with space.
So What do you guys think of Asteroid Mining and colonization for mining purposes?
No.717
>>716(OP) My opinion on it is that once entry into space is cheaper then when people start doing it even fucking Africa will start to feel the economic effects, Phones with metals in them that make them cost 500 USD? nope they 150 USD now, not only that but as more people go to space and have experience of problems they have, if any of them are engineers it will be natural for them to fix it, it will be like a snowball going down a mountain, turns into an avalanche and suddenly Humanity are the Mexicans of the Galaxy breeding and living everywhere.
No.719
I think we ought to get on that ASAP, but one of the biggest reasons we haven't yet is because companies are worried that governments will take their ore and stuff due to current UN law.
http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-29334645Also, I made this thread, Orion launch party? >>>712
No.723
Also for another topic how to you faggots feel about colonizing mars?
Any cool Images of Mars colonies you have saved? Please share them.
No.738
>>716>asteroid miningWhat I don't get is, even if those asteroids are full of some valuable material, when you bring the whole thing back you will saturate the market. If you survive the markets going nuts, you'll have to face the fact that your second mining trip will be much less profitable.
This is different from mining stuff on Earth - mines generate a continuous stream of product and can be throttled, started and stopped with relative ease. But with asteroids, either you go all in with trillion dollar mining project, or you don't do it at all. Mining an asteroid a little bit is still about as expensive as mining it a lot.
>>723Shit tier colony, IMO. If short term, the atmosphere is ass so you'll be in a p-suit 24/7. Might as well colonize moon instead - less friction from dust and cheaper rocket launches. Plus internet lags way less.
Long term, terraforming would take centuries. But if you can wait that long, why not just make a generation ship and fly to a planet that isn't shit? At least go to Europa or something.
It's a dead planet with no EM field, no life, hardly any water, only climate is dust storms. There's nothing there. Nobody would give it the time of day if every other planet out here wasn't
>gas giant>toxic atmosphere>ocean of caustic liquid covering everything>2cold/2hot (but so is mars) No.740
>>738when you say 'bring the whole thing back' you don't mean the way they did it with water in
The Martian Way right?
No.741
>>738You just need to hold a stockpile of the mined resources and release them in fixed amount to maintain a constant supply in the market as to not over saturate it. Diamonds are really cheap considering how common they are, but most of the diamond mining companies have a trust to keep market saturation low, rather than running each other out of business, by trying to under cut each other by lowering their prices.
No.742
File: 1416420215328.jpg (215.41 KB, 1600x1066, 800:533, 2009-Harley-Davidson-Sport….jpg)
>>723Mars isn't perfect, but it's close enough so that we can realistically make it work as a second home for humanity. In our lifetime hopefully.
>>738 You shouldn't shit on our best hope so hard.
Yes at first we'd have to live underground,so what.The moon doesn't have enough gravity to live there or to ever hold a atmosphere and has no water.Mars actually has a lot of water. Much of the soil is permafrost and something like 18% water by weight,there is even standing saltwater.No doubt there is underground water like on Earth as well.
The em field won't matter when you're underground. When the atmosphere is thickened up it should be ok at least on a human time scale of thousands of years.
Mars isn't 2hot/2cold it's right on the margins of survivability and we can make it work/fix it. In summer it's over 70 degrees at the equator during the day.
No.745
>>738Fuck the market, we need those resources to survive and thrive as species, not for an asshole to have a new private jet.
No.755
>>738>mars has hardly any waterStopped reading there.
>moon Have fun with Radiation and no protection from asteroids and solar storms, and have fun your spine fucked up from low gravity 24/7 (same thing is on mars but it much less).
No.759
Another one How do you guys feel About Interactions with Alien Civilizations? Are you Isolationist or would you have Heretical Friendly interactions with them
No.767
>>738De Beers is sitting on 0.3 times the amount of diamonds that are in the market in order to maintain scarcity. A company or nation with a pet asteroid could do the same, and get many times their investment back on the eased release of the first haul.
Once you have multiple asteroid-mining companies, most of the technology has been researched, and it becomes orders of magnitude cheaper. That means that on earth, rare earths would be over a hundred times cheaper than now, and you've got shitloads of raw materials in orbit, most notably water (which is mere electrolysis away from being rocket fuel). Once they figure out how to safely transform asteroids into hulls for spaceships, and provided we can find some organic-heavy asteroids or comets, all we really need to send up for space exploration is people and stuff we can't yet make for less than $10M/kg in zero g. Like parachutes.
No.768
>>745If that's your attitude, you might as well become a communist.
We have enough resources on Earth, they're just expensive (because of those same assholes with private jets).
No.769
>>759>yelling loudly in central park at 3 amNo thanks.
No.770
File: 1416519741706.jpg (156.59 KB, 1024x850, 512:425, Peragus_Mining_Facility[1].jpg)
>>767>get many times their investment back on the eased release of the first haul.I'm not so sure about that. Since getting to the asteroid is so fucking expensive in the first place, they'll be very far in the red when they do. They'd have to sell a lot of their asteroid just to break even.
Perhaps whoever financed doesn't care that they don't pay back their debt for decades, but that aside, wouldn't their debt get in the way of sitting on the stockpile?
Also if De Beers owns only a third of all diamonds, how is that a big deal? If they sold all of them, wouldn't diamond price only go down by a half?
>Once you have multiple asteroid-mining companies, most of the technology has been researched, and it becomes orders of magnitude cheaper.Well, most of the technology is already researched. We know how to send rockets up. It's just that you need a lot of expensive rocket fuel to get out of Earth's deep gravity well, which is also why it will never be that cheap.
Perhaps economies of scale or discovery of new propulsion systems will make it cheaper, but I don't know if you can predict any major revolutions at this point.
I still think it's a better idea to set up a base in orbit or on the moon, and then launch from there for a fraction of the cost.
>rare earths would be over a hundred times cheaperWell, what if we just get a De Asteroeeds instead, and everything stays the same (maybe more expensive due to manipulation) and McAsteroidMiner buys a dozen private yachts?
Anyway, would rare earths being cheaper really change all that much? It would certainly disrupt the market (in a good sense), but things like electronics today are not expensive because of the materials, I thought. Materials are a fraction of the cost.
I suppose there are things like superconductors that currently are not marketable
because the materials are too expensive, but what current product is heavily depended on material prices?
>transform asteroids into hulls for spaceshipsEh, that's a lot of digging, plus it would need a lot of engine power to move back to Earth where it can be used. Also a lot of these asteroids have shit power (sun is too far), so that makes work even harder - though maybe you could ship over a super light nuclear reactor or something.
Still not seeing how you could possibly make an asteroid ship sooner than you could just build an orbital shipyard (maybe with an elevator) on Earth. Although non-moving asteroid
base is another matter - that could be much cheaper and easier. Especially if you put a badass reactor on it, it could act as a resupply station for a swarm of battery-powered miners nearby.
No.775
>>770
> It's just that you need a lot of expensive rocket fuel to get out of Earth's deep gravity wellyou can stop pretending like you know anything at all
No.777
>>770If we Ship 3D printers up there and small facility parts and eventually make a rocket factory up there then use The materials up there to make it easier to leave earth to the point where it would be like trying to manipulate the cost of Aluminum, there would simply be so much of it no one could ever contain it.
No.779
Okay Here's another one,
How would a Human based multi-stellar Government/Empire be governed?
No.780
>>779>/sci/
>interstellar politics No.781
>>775Where does the cost of early stage rockets fall?
>>7773D printers can't just print out of whatever. The ones that exist now print using things like plastic resin. It's far from a universal material.
No.784
No.785
>>770I should think that companies would want cheaper materials, as it makes production costs go down and leads to better margins. Consumers might even see lower prices due to this.
No.804
Okay another one, how do you think the shape of spaceships will evolve?
And how do you think Colonies on the Moon/mars Look like? will they be mostly underground? In a Lava tube? Megalithic structures built to house an entire forest?
No.806
>>768Communism is the same shit.
>We have enough resources on Earth, they're just expensive For now, but we will leave Earth sooner than later, and it will be easier to gather resources on the spot rather than moving them from Earth
>(because of those same assholes with private jets).yup
No.807
>>759I would be very very sceptical, it would take a lot to interact with them.
No.834
Invest in more solar power.
It's expensive sure, but the trade-off is immeasurable as the sun isn't going anywhere for another billion or so years. It throws away megatons worth of energy. This could very easily put us in the type one civilization category in a pinch. Type two if we learn how to just sap anything remotely radioactive. Blackholes apparently cum fart several dying suns worth of energy. You mean to tell me we could not make "hyperdrive" space travel with that kind of energy output? We wouldn't even have to get near the blackhole to do it.
The soviets had a cruder version of this plan where they'd basically just tie several nuclear missiles to a rocket and propel it forward.
No.837
>>834
>The soviets had a cruder version of this plan where they'd basically just tie several nuclear missiles to a rocket and propel it forward.Wasn't that prohibited? can't see a reason why.
No.866
>>834
>Jim ProfitFiAsuvc4GI >Invest in more solar power.Nuclear and wind it is.
No.914
>>804(same person) In my opinion at first they will be big and bulky most likely made from a steel/lead alloy and maybe other metals to keep out radiation, but as Mineral wealth increases we will be able to plate them with Titanium outer layer (or something harder) and then inner layer be a very expensive platinum group metal to keep out radiation, this way it could easily bump off asteroids and assuming we don't have a space elevator and/or we are landing on other planets or moons with atmospheres then we will want them sleek and smooth (for style as well)
Okay new topic, How would measurements of time change should we be in space for 400+ years? will each individual planet have its on Clock? or would they have Daylight savings every day?
No.942
Revive Buran when?
No.945
>>942Last year, after those ridiculous Proton launch failures, Putin said he was going to re-nationalize much of Russia's space industry. I seem to recall that some industry journalist or someone said that it might mean the return of the Energiya booster…
But that's pretty unlikely, considering they seem to be going all-out on pic related.
No.961
ayy
No.965
>>914Centrifugal force is probably necessary to keep people healthy on long voyages. Ships would need an airtight fast-rotating pressurised crew compartment surrounded by vacuum, which restricts ship design quite a bit.
No.1050
YouTube embed. Click thumbnail to play.
That prototype Angara just launched today… skip to :40 for a short view of the launch.
No.1051
YouTube embed. Click thumbnail to play.
>>1050A few more, better views.
No.1072
>>716Do you think interstellar arks will be possible now that EM Drives are a thing?
I'm one of those weirdos who think constantly about mankind's survival until heat-death or whatever ends the universe.
No.1107
>>738> you will saturate the market. If you survive the markets going nuts, you'll have to face the fact that your second mining trip will be much less profitable.Good.
It will allow for MASSIVE projects and will allow for a significant increase in training for the younger workforce. Most metals will be too expensive to land and will be used in space instead. I think only specially manufactured material/parts that can only be made in space will make it back to earth, that's when thinking of Iron.
Rare-earth metals will likely be immediately profitable to land on earth.
No.1108
>>770>Still not seeing how you could possibly make an asteroid ship sooner than you could just build an orbital shipyard (maybe with an elevator) on Earth
>still not seeing..>space elevatorCome back to reality, space elevator doesn't exist.
No.1395
>>723>Also for another topic how to you faggots feel about colonizing mars?Cannot wait for this.
>>742>undergroundHopefully more like the left than the right.
No.1479
>>1395they both look breddy good, I would life left be town square and the rite be private residence or something.
No.1485
>>1395>that furniture Holy shit, the 70s called..
No.1531
>>942No more rocket pr0n pls
No.1734
>>770Here's a thought; orbit the asteroid to the earth, taking care of the hardest bit, survey it for minerals. THEN sell the mining rights off to third parties and let them compete to offer the best price.
No.1735
>>914You clearly do not understand how radiation shielding works, mass is typically way more important then density.
The most efficient way to do it is to have everything radiation sensitive (people, electronics) in the inside and everything not (machinery, supplies, fuel) around the outside where they will act passively as radiation shielding.
No.1736
>>1735Another alternative is to capture an asteroid and build your ship into that, but then you've got the problem of having a MUCH heavier ship.
But then again if you've got a nuclear power source and engine with a high enough ISP perhaps it doesn't matter and the benefits outweigh the downsides.
(Plus you can mine your purdy space rock and use it's mass for a small amount of gravity, just enough to be useful so that things will generally start floating towards the center)
No.1737
>>834Solar AFTER fusion because once we get fusion down we can happily tow solar arrays into and around space, we will get MUCH more energy from flying it within a mosquito's fart of the sun and then beaming it back, probably enough to make back the energy losses in efficiency of converting and redirecting energy back to where it's needed (but this system would also allow you to create effectively a power grid throughout space, probably a series of lasers simply shining down on another solar array and so and so forth, the efficiency is low, but you're talking about incredible distances, I wouldn't be surprised if it's better per mile then many national grids, especially as the technology improves).
It's essentially building an infrastructure though, because once you have the power you can use it to build and move more arrays, and eventually you supplement with fusion and fission deeper into spess. Boom, type one civ pretty quickly.
No.1738
>>767Interesting fact about DeBeers.
However, let me pick a nit. Aren't diamonds formed where coal deposits get super compressed and heated? Coal (along with oil and natural gas) are formed from organic matter. They are "fossil fuels" but only a place where you have forests growing on top of themselves century after century will you get these deposits.
Of course anywhere you get big carbon deposits for whatever reason you could get diamonds.
More to the point of your post there will be lots of mineral wealth. Lithium for example is much more common elsewhere than on earth.
No.1739
Here is what I see happening:
Things continue as they are (larger governments buying space hardware from people like SpaceX.
Some billionaires get together and build a tax haven in orbit. They move up there with family, friends and a servant class.
This eventually gets crowded and they expand or build another habitat.
And so on.
Once we have converted all the available mass in the Sol system into habitats it will get crowded and someone will decide to take off for another system where they will have a whole bunch more resources to build with. Then they will fill that one up.
And so on.
No.1766
>>1738>Aren't diamonds formed where coal deposits get super compressed and heated?That would be a very good reason why diamonds would be a finite resource (and expensive), but we can make them in labs quite easily now. They're mainly used for science applications because DeBeers has convinced the average person that grown diamonds are "fake diamonds". After all, who would want to marry a man who loves his woman so little he buys a cheap, fake diamond over a genuine® one?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synthetic_diamond No.1768
>>1108I don't understand this post.
>get ship parts to earth orbit>build shipis somehow supposed to be easier than
>get ship parts to earth orbit>orbital transfer to asteroid>dig out middle of asteroid>get power from ???>build ship?
No.1769
>>1734>orbit the asteroid to the earthAnd where is the Delta-V for that coming from?
No.1770
>>1768>>1769We are going to need fusion or something else as handy to do any of this.
No.1775
>>1770How far away are we from fusion thrusters anyway? I mean the main challenge with fusion reactors for power is making them efficient, not containing them. Considering the electrical efficiecy of a reactor designed to dump the reaction in a certain direction is probably insignificant compared to the actual fuel used for the sustaining the reaction, it seems like a (small-scale) fusion thruster may actually be more feasible than a fusion reactor used for power.
No.1776
>>1769Solar sails for the most part, then electric thrusters and maybe some aerobraking.
That's 99% "free stuff"
No.1801
>>716I think the moon would make a lot more sense and be easier than mining asteroids.
But I think there are treaties that prevent this kind of thing.
No.1802
No.1803
>>1802The reactor would be small enough to fit in a truck and generate enough energy to light 80,000 homes
No.1809
>>1801>But I think there are treaties that prevent this kind of thing.None of them are really of any importance right now, hot air gentleman agreement. Sadly it's likely that they won't mean shit until a war is fought over them.
Just wait until the first vessel containing 1000 kg of spacegold comes to Earth. Then people are going to get serious.
No.1812
>>965>Centrifugal force is probably necessary to keep people healthy on long voyages.I favor simulating earthlike conditions in every way but there is a way around this for small craft.
Bones suck up calcium from the blood because they are piezoelectric. When there is pressure on the bone it generates a tiny bit of electrical current so they electroplate themselves with calcium ions from the blood. So all you have to do is run a small current through it and the bone stays strong.
Probably painful and time consuming so I like your way better but this might have it's applications.
No.1813
>>1776>Solar sailsDavid Brin did the math for his novel "Existence". Solar sails can get you to 5% of c, 15,000 kps, and brake you on the other side.
And like you said; 99% free.
No.1819
>>1812>Bones suck up calcium from the blood because they are piezoelectric. When there is pressure on the bone it generates a tiny bit of electrical current so they electroplate themselves with calciumThat's one of the coolest things I've heard all day. Is it real?
No.1860
>>1819Yep.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piezoelectricity#Bone"The piezoelectric effect is generally thought to act as a biological force sensor.[21][22] This effect was exploited by research conducted at the University of Pennsylvania in the late 1970s and early 1980s, which established that sustained application of electrical potential could stimulate both resorption and growth (depending on the polarity) of bone in-vivo.[23] Further studies in the 1990s provided the mathematical equation to confirm long bone wave propagation as to that of hexagonal (Class 6) crystals.[24]"
No.1881
YouTube embed. Click thumbnail to play.
A video of the stuff going on at Mojave, including the first real pictures of Stratolaunch's massive carrier aircraft.
No.1890
>>779>>779>multi-stellar Government/Empire be governed?Without FTL, every star system is a de facto autonomous nation.
No.1891
>>834>You mean to tell me we could not make "hyperdrive" space travel with that kind of energy output?If relativity is correct, or correct enough, there's no FTL. Not Albecurrie warp drive, not "muw wormholes", not teleportation, nothing.
Relativity _could_ be wrong, but you can't just assume that with enough power "warp drive" becomes inevitable.
No.1892
No.1893
>>1892Shit needs a review.
No.1900
>>775I'm not so sure that's accurate.
>>804I like to think that the first colonies will be in the Great Martian volcanoes, it gets my dick hard thinking about a New Cappadocia inside Olympus Mons.
No.1920
>>1891Alcubierre drives are a prediction of GR, not excluded by it. The "FTL" behavior it undergoes is the same type which is universally accepted to occur in the universe as a whole - metric expansion - but localised.
Yes, if they're possible, time travel is possible, but don't say it's GR which bans it.
No.1932
>>1920>Yes, if they're possible, time travel is possible, but don't say it's GR which bans it.Well, technically GR (or even SR) says any FTL violates causality.
In my book, that means relativity says "no FTL", although I'm wrong if causality can be broken.
No.1953
>>1932Next you say GR says the big bang is wrong because it violates conservation of energy. Or inflation is wrong because it violates thermodynamics.
The laws of reality are descriptive, not prescriptive. If the assumptions for the law are no longer valid, the law no longer needs to be valid. Causality holds in a universe without time travel. We observe no time travel, therefore we observe causality.
The question why we don't observe time travel if it exists is valid, but the law of causality is a mere consequence of that fact.
No.2146
OP here and I suck Dicks, Lets talk about Terraforming/Paraforming(huge ass domes), or should I just Make another thread? I think I should because I don't think it would go good with the discussion here.
>>1776
I hear if you use the Ice on said asteroid you can convert H20 into Liquid Oxygen and separate the heavy hydrogen from the normal hydrogen.
Both of which are very effective rocket fuels.
If you had some sort of automated system that had AI Powered bulldozers and haulers and have them excavate the Ice then dump it into a filtration system which will separate the dust and rocks, then pump it into the separation chamber which separates the Hydrogen from the oxygen and so forth.
I don't have all the details but in The Mars Trilogy that's what they did with Deimos for political reasons.
Also nice 'murrica get
No.2147
Hey guys whats some good space colonization/setting Books that aren't shit and the authors actually know some of the science they're saying?
>>769
what?
No.2156
>>745
I take it you don't understand markets too well, although I might be mistaken.
Consider that every currency on the planet is valued as fiat. If a nation derives its wealth from, say, commodities, such as Australia, then an influx of those commodities would make the price plummet, driving the major factor in the Australian economy out of business.
Within a matter of years, the entire country would devolve economically, and collapse under the weight of ever-growing debts and international finances and investment paid in to try and keep it afloat. Families don't get fed, taxes rise, governments fail, riots ensue, and in the worst case scenario, a civil war breaks out and foreign peacekeepers intervene, or perhaps a coup d'etat occurs.
In any case, the stability of the market is sacrosanct and analogous to the stability of the country and the ability to 'survive and thrive as a species'. Even then, we were only considering a market collapse from the view of a single country, rather than the entire global economy. Investment in space is an extremely high risk for an extremely high reward. I'd suspect that whoever first manages it will give birth to the archetypical Rockefeller, Rothschild, or JP Morgan tycoon families of the coming centuries.
No.2175
>>741
>advocating for price fixing
No.2176
>>742
>The moon doesn't have enough gravity to live there
[citation needed]
>and has no water
[citation needed]
No.2177
>>770
>I suppose there are things like superconductors that currently are not marketable because the materials are too expensive
more like cooling is too expensive.
No.2178
>>834
>board doesn't have usernames
>namefag titles still visible
No.2179
>>1920
>Alcubierre drives are a prediction of GR
…if negative mass exists.
No.2184
Why not not build a rail way to celestial bodies?
No.2237
Guys I got an Idea for (kinda) terraforming Europa/Enceladus.
What if underground Colonies with Nuclear(or if invented yet Fusion) Reactors to create energy and have all that cold subsurface ocean water be used for the cooling system?
After a while the subsurface ocean will start to get warmer, Then we could add some forms of ocean bacterial life, then maybe in the end some complex lifeforms may even be able to live in the water.
pretty sure this idea has faults but I think something along these lines would work pretty well.
No.2242
>>2237
the problem is whether or not you could get the initial infrastructure set up for the colony to start excavating the subsurface. you would need millions of people working constantly, all needing energy to heat the water, generate air with electrolysis, and harvest and feed crops.
No.2259
File: 1430790463030.jpg (89.51 KB, 1108x623, 1108:623, bloody difficult this game….jpg)
Wonder if any /sci/ play Kerbal Space Program. It's a bit expensive. The game, simply put, is a NASA simulator.
Gonna land on the Mun soon. Hopefully I can reach Pluto by the end of this month.
No.2263
>>2242
the heating of the water is a byproduct of the Nuclear plants, and by the time any of this is possible I believe AI's will advance enough they could take on most of the work.
No.2271
I bet Chris Hanfield gazed some females without their consent.
No.2272
>>2271
*Chris Hadfield
I had Chris Hansen on my mind.
No.2276
>>2259
>the 1.0 hype train
>one mineable resource
>tumblr-tier delusional community
>Val has more courage and lower stupidity than Jeb, which Squad did to pander to fucking tumblr, which they host their "devblog" on
>still nothing to do while EVA
>still no digital vspeed/periapsis/apoapsis instruments readable while not in map view
>still no attachable fuel ducts during eva, like KAS
>still nothing to do IVA, not even MFDs like RasterPropMonitor
>this from a hyped 1.0 update
>gonna take ages before vanilla is truly feature complete
You better have pirated that game, for advertising/hyping that 1.0 update? They're incredibly incompetantat their original jobs.
No.2277
>>2276
>incompetantat
incompetent*
That's what I get for taking a shit while posting.
That's literal shitposting.
No.2280
>>2276
not >>2259 , but i got the game early on for 10 or 15 dollars I think.
But yeah the 1.0 hype was bullshit and i don't bother with the community much.
Especially since Scott Manley is a SA Goon and show signs of being a feminist libtard.
No.2283
YouTube embed. Click thumbnail to play.
Looks like the UAE is planning to go to Mars
No.2287
What kind of life forms do you think we'd find on Titan? Titan is the most Earth like body in the solar system, it's the closest we'll get to a true twin planet, even though its a moon. Venus is a screwed world and Mars is dry and cold, but still habitable. I wonder what's on Titan though, if methane based life forms are possible. After all, who says all life must be carbon based?
No.2293
>pic related
What do you think it would be like to live on an Earth-like moon? It'd be magical, I'd bet.
No.2296
>>2287
I doubt there is any, heck even if right next to earth was a planet that all earth life would thrive on without human intervention would still probably have no life on it.
The reason there is life on earth is because
1. Large amounts of liquids on the surface
2. a thin enough atmosphere for Organisms to receive plenty of energy from the sun, but thick enough so every time Noon rolls around the surface isn't scorched to a crisp.
Titan has Number 1, but because it has a VERY thick atmosphere and is pretty far away from the sun that you could barely see the sun on the surface.
So if there is any life there it would be drastically different than ours.
No.2297
>>2293
well usually moons are small so you would have very light gravity, unless it had a fuckton of Iron in it or spun extremely fast, or of course it was very big moon (like if earth got captured by Jupiter).
No.2298
>>2297
Yeah, but who knows how big moons can truly get. We only have our Solar System to go by, and it's become clear over the past few years we're the oddballs, there is a high chance we will find very strange exomoons when the technology comes around for findin them. I mean, just look at Ganymede. It's bigger than Mercury and even has a magnetosphere. Sure, Mercury had its crust most likely blown off a long time ago, but still. It's big, and can most likely get bigger if it was in a different scenario. But yeah, you're probably right. I'm trying to think if a scenario in which a moon rotates super fast. I'm drawing a blank…
No.2299
>>2298
Maybe a Comet or asteroid hits it just the right way?
No.2300
>>2296
Hmm. Oh, of course it would be super alien, methane as a body fluid would make for super slow evolution too. Not a good natural disolvant. But I don't think Titanians could ruled out as a possibility just yet. We just can't figure out how they would work from here. I think the only say to find out would be to send a rover to Titan, take pics, rock samples, atmosphere samples, and especially methane samples. Those lakes seem very promising to me.
While we're at Saturn, send something to Enceladus too. That place is the prime canadite for alien life, with its ice volcanoes confirming a liquid ocean and in the eruption organic material was found, so there is a high chance of life there.
No.2301
>>2299
Huh, yeah. In just the right way though. We don't want what theoretically happened to Venus though, and give it a terribly slow rotation instead. If it were to hit and just the right spot without completly eradicating the moon and taking away its atmosphere, would it stay spinning quickly like that or would it eventually slow down?
No.2302
>>2301
or maybe it was via humans/Aliens to rotate so fast?
No.2303
What it we built hollowed out asteroid Habitats like in >>1739
but from Phobos or dwarf planets and have Generation ships that way?
No.2304
>>2303
Turning Phobos into a space craft should be high in our list in "crazy shit to do in space". I mean, we're lucky that such a large object nearby is hollow and safely orbits Mars, at least for a few more million years anyway.
No.2305
No.2306
Guys how can we restart Mars' Magnetosphere?
No.2307
>>2306
I dunno man. I think Mars is done for. I hate it too.
>>2305
Yup. Phobos is hollow, making it perfect for turning it into a space station. I hope to see that soon.
No.2309
hey guys what do think the equivalent of a World war would be in near-ish future space?
No.2311
No.2332
>>2309
Potentially. Maybe if they revive Project Thor shit would go down.
No.2344
>>2309
I think if earth is involved and the non-earth powers don't abide by the geneva convention they can just orbital bombard earth and completely reck its shit, on the other hand something like a Dome or other structure is easily compromised.
tl;dr lets hope it doesn't happen because lots of people will die.
No.2375
>>2344
But at that point we can already mass produce lots of robot meido to fight for us.
No.2473
No.2488
we could build an o'neill cylinder at a lagrange point and grow our own crops, with better yields because we could control the weather on it essentially. get the metals, dirt, gasses, and water needed from other planets/moons.
we'd also need mass drivers to make it not ludriciously expensive and just ridiculously expensive instead. they apparently exist on a smaller scale already.
i'm not sure how we would store enough gas and water even if we got to a planet or moon that has them. can you just make a giant balloon to store gas and attach it to a ship and tow it back to a lagrange point?
i don't really know much science so maybe someone could point out any flaws in this plan.
http://www.space.com/22228-space-station-colony-concepts-explained-infographic.html
No.2493
>>2488
Easier to just hollow out an asteroid and spin it and make that into a habitat
No.2506
>>2493
an o'neill cylinder in the right position set up the right way will be basically an earth habitat or earth-like because its transparent and lets in the sun's rays and rotates to simulate earth gravity
making an asteroid spin the right way and have the right amount of mass to have earth gravity may be difficult and probably imperfect. it certainly isn't transparent so you're not creating an earth environment in there
No.2508
>>2506
True, if built properly an o'neil cylinder is better, but it would cost probably a couple billion dollars to make and to have the proper radiation protection, then have the fuel to move that shit would cost a fortune, A hollowed out asteroid is better in that it's cheaper, the walls keep out most radiation, and only has one Large window so that while it rotates it simulates day and night. Gravity won't be perfect but to be safe it would be better to have a little bit lower gravity
No.2522
>>2508
O'neil cylinders are a lot more scalable though. You can pretty much keep adding onto them as resources come in until the thing is so massive that its own gravity starts to deform it, and by then you can just shift your equipment a couple thousand kilometers in a direction and start again.
No.2527
>>2522
Huh?
Explain, I thought they were just round hollow wheels that spun and nothing could really be added to them.
No.2537
>>2527
I meant you keep building onto the ends of the cylinders until material limitations prevent you from building further, than moving a short distance away and starting again, since the infrastructure is there, and you can draw from the manufacturing capability of previous cylinders; Versus an appropriately-sized asteroid, which are of a relatively limited size, and are of limited availability versus those that can just be stripped of their resources for said cylinders.
The initial investment for an asteroid base is a lot lower though, which means it does make it feasible as a first base. It's just not as sustainable as mass-producing the cylinders from the raw resources a space-faring civilization would have access to.
No.2551
>>2537
Well there's plenty of asteroids, and I do think the Initial investment is probably better because then you can just build another hollow asteroid. But seriously these things should only be for outposts and transportation, if were talking colonization Planets and moons are the way to go.
No.2586
No.2675
What do you guys think about using project orion styled propulsion?
I mean using nuculear explosion as propelent sounds very effecient in terms of size and weight, it would be relativly simple to use it mid space because you need to change course, however by using mid space I don't mean a WMD class nuke I'm talking about a small one that can propel a 200 ton ship.
Now the only problem now is how to get a ship to stop mid flight….
No.2718
No.2816
So guys whats your estimated date when Humans first walk on Mars?
No.2826
>>2816
The time you first get Laid, AKA never.
No.2979
From the "Newspace will try anything Department":
A company called Escape Dynamics is developing a launch vehicle powered not by chemical means, but by microwaves beamed to it. They would heat the propellant, resulting in crazy-high specific impulse and payload mass fractions 10x that of conventional rockets.
http://escapedynamics.com/beyondcombustion/
No.2980
>>759
Massive genocide and extermination for them.
No.2981
Mining yes. Colonizing no.
Anyone who thinks we'll be doing a whole lot of colonizing vastly underestimates how terrible and vast space actually is. It isn't called space for nothing. There's a whole lot of void inbetween the large bodies of mass for us to sit down upon.
I think the best we will do is figure out a way to occupy nearby planets and moons within our own solar system, we will than mine incoming asteroids etc, and eventually turn our solar system into a galactic minecraft server and keep our sun nice an furnace through mineral deposits.
But we will not "space travel". We will basically do agricultural peasantry on a sci-fi scale.
No.2986
>>2981
>Jim Profit!nOMXoMP0iI
Well it seems like Colonization's going to be a hit but that Asteroid Mining won't do so good.
No.2987
>>2981
Nigger what are Generation ships?
And if cryogenics becomes a thing and/or sending frozen Fetuses and have Machines raise them or something very unlikely and that's only if we don't discover some warp drive or other FTL, although it would be hard to get those if not impossible.
No.2990
>>2987
I think its less if we have the capability and more if we really want to. As cool as it would be to have space cities everywhere, in reality we would probably just end up building earth up to Coruscant levels of density with a sustainable colony at jupiter for some of the more exotic of gases/research with the rest of the galaxy filled with automated miners/harvesters powered by some mercury solar array.
Don't get me wrong, we will have people land at those places to plant flags and explore and maybe escort some tourists around. Just don't expect actual settlements
No.2991
>>2990
Well if the advanced technology to establish colonies is public and widely available then there would be tons of Plymouth Pilgrim like settlements around, and then there would at least be small cities built around tourist destinations like you said, Hawaii and Florida are nice and see how many old people move there, same principle.
That and I would expect some craze where everyone wants to build colonies or something along those lines.
Although a government sponsored Cryogenic ship (if cryogenics is even possible) to other star systems, who knows earlier in the thread someone said Phobos was hollow, if we can work on it and turn it into a Spaceship that would be fucking amazing.
No.3089
colonize phobos
It's hollow so we could easily convert it into a huge ass spaceship.
No.3093
asteroid mining is cool ass shit.
Innovation increases with space programs. This is a fact. During apollo innovation was at a record high by far, and straight after it fell dramatically.
No.3433
>>1739
>>2303
>>2304
This seems like a feasible solution to the Generation ship problem. Not to mention that would be awesome as fuck
>mobile giant fucking spaceship that can produce it's own oxygen, food, and even building materials like Iron and other metals that could be mined.
>It can be mined into even further creating more space
>turn part of it into a shipyard for producing more ships
>pretty much a Travelling Nation
I want this
No.3434
Okay, if Europa/Enceladus don't have life in their oceans, why don't we add life that we have at the bottom of our oceans to their oceans? Miniature terraforming or we could just dig out small lakes in the ice where the geysers spew so it could be a large warmer water place where there could be potential colonies and things.
No.3557
>hollowed out asteroids
>bomb the moons of Mars into crashing into it
>hollow out Phobos and not crash it
>go to the moon of earth, Luna
>carve symbols of Dank memes on the bright side so when on full moon there will always be the face of CIA looking off into the oblivion
No.3605
>>2990
If australia was able to be colonized then space should be no problem.
No.3606
so, say Mars is warmed up, The magnetosphere has somehow been put back into action, and the air pressure is enough to be able to show bare skin but still no oxygen.
What problems would there be further to complete the terraforming?
No.3610
>>3606
No soil whatsoever. You'd have to start the nitrogen cycle first before you could even introduce plants to produce oxygen.
No.3611
>>3606
>>3610
Your best bet would be putting cyanobacteria into the newly formed seas as those can both fixate atmospheric nitrogen and perform photosynthesis.
No.3615
anyone have any nice concept art images of colonies/space?
Also if lava tubes in mars are colonized would they have to be reinforced for air pressure levels needed for humans collapse them?
No.3616
I don't think space as we know it is the final frontier. There are still the theoretical higher dimensions to explore, such as the fourth spatial dimension (string theory posits 10 dimensions). We could possibly explore this through some physical mechanism, probably not traveling with our physical bodies but with instruments, though, maybe a suit or vehicle could eventually be created to allow travel through higher dimensions. I suspect by the time we could create a device to physically (mentally? digitally?) enter a higher dimension that we will be evolved to comprehend the dimension about as well as we do in the third spatial dimension. Maybe we could go backwards and enter into lower dimensions? Are some life forms hidden within these alternative dimensions? Elements? God?
Could there be multiple temporal dimensions?
No.3653
>>1739
Imagine if we did this with Ceres or other dwarf planets..
People ITT are saying Phobos is hollow so most of the work done for us then.
No.3658
I was watching a documentry on the subject of plans for future landings and resarch into colonization of mars. One of the the ideas was to hit the caps with a bunch of atomic weapons and eventually in around 100 years it could theoretically reconstitue the planets atmosphere and would be on its way to developing into and earth-like planet. how valid do you guys think this opinion might be?
No.3659
>>3658
>>3658
Well there would have to be a bit more research on the subject but theoreticly yes all the Frozen CO2 would evaporate and thicken the atmosphere but you have to get it warmer to keep it there.