Pacific wrote:Frazzled wrote:Wait, did we answer why we want to spend multi trillions to do this again?
You say "why", but I say "why not?"
Globally we spend trillions on creating weapons that could destroy civilisation and send us back to the dark ages. Why not balance it out and have some money going towards a continuation of the human race also?
Optimists might say that as earth worsens to an extent even the politicians cannot avoid the issue and not even for the short term then a last minute fix is possible.
my answer to that is that a global epiphany should be followed by a green revolution. Why travel for a century in a colony ship to terraform a distant planet. If we want to terraform a planet to make it a paradise, why not this one?
I hope the realization occurs, however it more likely that only a few will realize before it is way too late and some never will. After all when green regs have been implemented those who ignore them get to the the wealthiest. This is why fishing quotas dont work, the more you limit fishing the more lucrative it is to overfish on the quiet because demand is high competition is low and prices have gone up. To stop fething up earth we will need more thasn just to control the enviroment and our own population growth, we will need to throw away our entire economic model and our material desires.
Because of how we run our planet, the easiest way to start over it to leave, with same thinking individuals, to form a new society under new rules and educated/indoctrinated to live in accordance with them.
Pacific wrote:
The alternative [to terraforming] would be to alter our own genome to make it suitable to live on the planet. The chances of us being ideally suited to any world, despite what Star Trek teaches us, must be very small. I like the idea that we can ultimately transcend our physical shell, downloading our consciousnesses into bodies which are ideally suited to that environment - although I realise that this is somewhat more sci-fi than fantasy at the moment..
I would prefer to remain human frankly. You might get some takers though.
Still as the problems of living in a xenobiome is not the alien beasties, but alien microbes you would need to cjhange the colonists so utterly that it would take genwerations to adapt and those generations could not live together as they would be imersed in different cultures - literally, of microbes.
I really dont like that idea, but cant dismiss it as a solution. We will need to develop elite virology and genetic engineering skills to do this, way in excess of what we currently possess and will need to have that set up on the colony. That may be difficult to do at any scale as its a top end industry.
Leigen_Zero wrote:In sort of agreement with DoctaDeth here. Tech is quite a dangerous thing to be taking on massive space voyages.
Yeah we may have the most advanced computer to man on board, but we don't possess a means to produce a near indefinate supply of parts for it then we are doomed.
What we actually need is Robust technology, more than 'the most advanced'.
Think about it, we got to the moon with computers less powerful than your average smartphone, but nowadays we can't make an all-singing-and-dancing laptop with a lifespan of > 3 years. (I understand and appreciate the term 'controlled obsolescence' is at work here as well) , but sometimes simpler and robust is better than advanced and fragile. Imagine what would happen if, say, the ion drives were controlled by a quantum computer and the QPU conks out, unless we have a means on-board the ship to manufacture more QPUs, we're floating aimlessly in space.
DoctaDeth and yourself are entirely right that the populace need be prepared for a low tech solution. However my counter argument is they they will have that anyway. The low technology industries are available through developing and maintaining a skill base, but a firm but basic knowledge of agriculture can be learned by a farmer with an automated colony farm and a farmer who has to do it all by hand because he has no choice. However the latter cannot upgrade.
In the initial plan outline on the first page I explained that manual farming was helpful to keep the colonists occupied for the journey, it also maintains the skillbase.
Also DoctaDeth talked about having a natural ecosystem balance. This is desireable as it is most stable in a closed system to minimise decay, however ecobalances are delicate, so high tech backups are needed. For example yes have enough trees to produce oxygen, but also have oxygen filter systems filled with seaweed or even chemical filters and recyclers for those filters. Not only do you have the advantage of having a backup in case of an imbalance, like a forest fire, or a disease amongst the trees, it also maintains the technology base so that options are open for how to ecobalance sealed domes and even other colony structures.
Any technological helper brought along does two things, it provides backup for the low tech solution and it provides a reference so that the colony does not technologically decline.
Frazzled wrote:
Here's the other problem. Its the X factor......
An understable worry. If aliens pick up the broadcasts they will likely have a dim view of our species, and if we turn up in orbit with a colony ship. hmm, things will get ugly fast.
Frazzled wrote:
....What if a planet has a perfect environment. Good air, good water, just absolutely like Earth's view of paradise.
But no salt.
Not that unlikely.
IIRC oceanic salinity is due to millions of years of biological factors, some believe earths early oceans were fresh water.
Say this happens, its likely a good thing, it means the planet is equivalent to when earth was starting to develop life, so oxygen content will be poor but fixable by adding vegetation and the seas will not be ready for fish. But big xenobugs will not a be a problem, any like on the planet it likely soup at best, we can biobomb and take over with no moral worries.
A good colony ship can act as the habitat, in orbit. There main jobs now. Start the terraforming by adding first soil microbes, then later plants. Second for the decades it will take for this job to complete build dome colonty buildings on the surface, turn some into towns others into farms. Third use the colony construction vehicles (probably the same ones used to build the colony you came in) to build more colonies and spread your offworld population around at least two colonies, preferably three or four. Now you have a type 2 civlisation. Noone lives outside yet, but you have a ground city and several orbital ones, all with extensive terran biomes. Its a good start.
You could also find isolated lakes salinate them and oxygenate them, somewhere to store the excess oceanic fish etc population. others you just oxygenate and fill with fresh water organism. Then start to work on another lake.....
It wont be long before youn have 'mulitply dedundant' biomes in space and on the surface ensuring species survival. You would have multiple redundancy of biomes on the colony to begin with, but thats another scale.
Frazzled wrote:Tibbsy wrote:Frazzled wrote:
Here's the other problem. Its the X factor. What if a planet has a perfect environment. Good air, good water, just absolutely like Earth's view of paradise.
But no salt.
Salt is just Sodium Chloride right? (or am I getting mixed up with something else?
) Surely, somewhere on the planet you could find sodium and chlorine. Then you just make your own, after all, you would have probably brought a guy with you who knows chemistry
Sodium is an element correct? What is there is no sodium on the planet? Uh ohhh.
Careful Frazzie thats science your talking.
