Thoughts on the worthwhile difficulties of settling space.
35 thoughts on “The Real Expanse”
Except I think that when we talk casually about expanding into the cosmos we typically ignore the most obvious challenge – that in itself will force the experience to be an opportunity for radical social and conceptual growth.
I think we will find that humans will be the same as they have always been, including those who always think they can change human nature through social engineering. Putting humans in space wont make them magically evolve into superior-socialists.
Conceptually, growth will come from things like learning about what kind of environment humans need to create in order to feel free and remain mentally healthy. This will mean some public works type of projects but it also will mean catering to one’s own individualism. Individualism is often at odds with people who see opportunities for forced collectivism.
Agree regarding balance of society vs. individual.
Here’s a cross-post of part of my sci-am comment:
“But we’d have to also convince ourselves that we’re not going to make just as big a mess of new worlds as we’ve done here on Earth.”
No we wouldn’t. In my humble opinion, it just takes a few people wanting a different life, for various reasons, away from civilization. Those people just need to convince themselves they have a chance to do the best they can for themselves and their families. Whether from the top of society, or the bottom, I don’t believe the explorers, settlers, colonists, “escapees” have ever taken the weight of the whole world on their shoulders. That sounds like hubris.
That challenge is how awful it will be.
False assumption or self fulfilling prophesy… take your pick.
There is absolutely no reason why it has to be awful and many reasons why it could be better than we imagine. Yes, even what I imagine!
Millions of people dream of the real opportunity mars represents (even though most don’t realize it) that has little chance of happening to most people on earth. Building a better mousetrap on earth is hard because you’d have to compete with all the other mousetrap builders. Land is expensive on earth, but free on mars. Resources on earth have been mined for millennia on earth but untouched on mars.
Mars has millions of sq. km. per person for at least the next century. We used to call that elbow room and the spirit of the frontier.
The only reason it will be awful is if we strangle the effort in the nest. Please name something awful so I can refute it (easily.)
Please name something awful so I can refute it (easily.)
Humans can’t properly gestate at 1/3g and all of the human babies born on mars have insufferable birth defects. Obviously this is conjecture, but seeing as we have no data for baby-making at points other than 1g, who knows?
Maybe 1/3g is as deleterious to human health as 0g. Also conjecture, but we only have data points at 0g and 1g; what happens in between?
Failure to use the centrifuge wing at the Maternity Suite is clearly child abuse in that case.
Since you correctly identify it as conjecture Pug, there is no reason for me to refute it. Next!
I will point out we have birth defects at one G. We really don’t know enough, or if there is a problem, how difficult it would be to mitigate.
We really don’t know enough, or if there is a problem, how difficult it would be to mitigate.
So you’re saying this could be an awful situation? 😉
No. I’m saying it’s the boogy man. I spent a year on my back in a hospital bed while they pumped me full of antibiotics. So you could say I have personal experience very similar to studies done to simulate the bodies response to low G. Keep in mind those studies were done with young healthy volunteers. I was neither young, healthy or a volunteer.
I got to the point I could not even turn on my side and it seemed that walking was not an option. I’ve mostly recovered from that although I still have trouble standing from a low seat.
Martians with be carrying heavy suits while on the surface. In there normal shirtsleeve housing I’m sure they will maintain health with running. I bet a 26 mile marathon on an indoor track is nothing for the typical martian even at 10 psi.
As for gestation, it’s been tested on mice with no birth defects. But of course it will vary from person to person.
If we can’t adapt to this simple problem we should all just commit suicide now.
For the last 30 years doctors have been telling me I’ll be dying soon and currently have hospice care. My plan is to live another 40 years, so don’t mind me if I scoff at the idea that losing a little weight will kill us.
There are two types of learning, formal and informal. Formal learning is like a classroom or reading a book and informal is learning by doing.
The conundrum here is that there can’t be formal learning on something that no one has experienced. We can’t go to school and learn about the effects of different levels of gravity on the human body. We can learn about some of the effects of microgravity and some of the effects of 1/6 gravity but still not know too much about either.
The only way for a body of information to be established is for people to experience it and report back. Of course this should include animals but if it doesn’t happen concurrently, humans will have to experience it eventually.
I don’t think people in the space community have a greater aversion to informal learning than anyone else, maybe less so. But society in general places more emphasis on formal learning because it is easier to understand, predict, and control.
A good way to find out what we need to know, is with small measured risks. In the context of space based activities, there are not many small measured risks right now. Everything has a high price tag in terms of money, time, and ethical risk.
A variable gravity station could be able to answer these questions for us. It might be a wash in a cost comparison to build one than a lunar base but perhaps not a Mars base.
I spent a year on my back in a hospital bed while they pumped me full of antibiotics.
This is actually a good Mars analogy, although I doubt its the one you intended. A man on Mars is like a person in a hospital, unable to work, totally dependent on his savings or insurance or the charity of others for his livelihood.
You find out by starting with other mammals that have shorter gestation and generational cycles. Mice and rats are the obvious place to begin, since there are laboratory strains of both species with uniform genetics and known development characteristics. Assuming that they show no major issues after several generations (data you’ll have in a year or two), it becomes probable that other mammals, including Homo sapiens will be able to reproduce successfully.
If you want to be super-cautious, you could also establish a breeding population of non-human primates (probably squirrel monkeys or rhesus macaques) and see if they show problems after several generations. However, rodents are probably a sufficiently close model organisms to get the necessary evidence one way or another.
And even if it turns out that human reproduction needs a full 1g, eventually it’ll be possible to build large habitats with fully Earthlike environments. Especially if telerobotics, etc makes it easier to build space infrastructure in situ, and if we can get faster propulsion systems BEO, it may become an effective non-issue.
And if it is possible to run human consciousness on a machine substrate, we may also have a substantial part of the human population that chooses to go post-biological, and who sleeve themselves into whatever machine body best suits the project they’re working on at the time.
Leigh, thanks for your thoughtful reply. My background is engineering, so it’s not obvious to me when it is/isn’t appropriate to draw conclusions about humans from mice.
Funny, I posed a similar question in response to an article at NASAWatch a long time ago and received a thoroughly snarky response from Keith Cowing. His answer was there’s been vertebrate centrifuge experiments on ISS, so case closed! I was genuinely looking to learn, but Keith used it as an opportunity to be, well…Keith.
Some people view a discussion as a mutual search for truth. Others see it as a contest, in which the goal is to score points, and the quickest way to win is to humiliate the other person into silence.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but I was under the impression that there have been no vertebrate reproduction experiments in a centrifuge on the ISS because the funding for the centrifuge module was cut. In which Mr. Snark is not only being an ass****, he’s also doing it with “alternative facts.”
> Correct me if I’m wrong, but I was under the impression that there have been no vertebrate reproduction experiments in a centrifuge on the ISS because the funding for the centrifuge module was cut.
Have there been non-centrifuge, i.e., microgravity, vertebrate reproduction experiments on ISS? If so, what were the results?
“fertilization can occur normally” in space, but standard Earth gravity may be needed for embryo development.
So fertilization is fine and note this experiment was in space, not 0.38G. So it says nothing about embryo development on mars. Rate of birth defects may be higher (or not) but that’s not unusual right here on earth.
Mortality rates for birth right here on earth don’t get higher until very old age.
Sperm counts are also lower in microgravity, but again this says nothing about mars and low counts are not a show stopper.
It may not be worrying about nothing, but it comes darn close.
As a matter of fact, supposing low gravity does harm health? It might be just the thing to study resulting in saving lives right here on earth as well as in space colonies.
China did some experiments with mice reproduction but IIRC, they brought embryos up to space. I don’t know if anyone has studied implantation.
Other than for surface workers, living on Mars will be similar to living on Manhattan, just hopefully nicer. James Blish knew this in Cities in Flight, as did Asimov in The Caves of Steel. As for surface workers, I used to be a sewer worker. I’m sure I would’ve preferred Mars.
Excellent points!
The living underground part applies equally to the Moon, and it doesn’t have to be that uncomfortable. Ben Bova has some quite nice living spaces including large, open public areas in the main city.
As to how crowded it would feel, that might depend on the ratio of robots to people. For the “Manhattan” feel, as you point out, Caves of Steel is about right. Asimov’s companion work, The Naked Sun, was about the opposite, 10,000 robots for every human. That would give me a feeling of real isolation, which was the author’s intention. The point is, with the right balance of automation, people could build themselves a nice home.
I’m still gobsmacked that Rand thinks mining will be a big issue. Somethings humans have been doing before everything except perhaps picking berries.
“But we’d have to also convince ourselves that we’re not going to make just as big a mess of new worlds as we’ve done here on Earth.”
Really? As we advance, we’ve also cleaned up our messes to the point where the planet overall is better off than it was before our arrival (at least in advanced societies). We are the only living organisms to intentionally do so. This is a bogus “concern.”
Isn’t it ironic that those that warn us about destroying another world don’t follow the dictum to clean up their campsite better than they found it?
You left of the best part.
Is it worth finding an existential backup plan off-world if we’re going to be just as miserable there?
Reading the rest of the paragraph, it is the other people and capitalism that make the author miserable, not just the environment. Space isn’t something that should be experienced unless it is by the “right” kind of people. No one else it worthy.
“Is it worth finding an existential backup plan off-world if we’re going to be just as miserable there?” could be the thesis statement of Kim Stanley Robinson’s Mars trilogy. After reading the first novel I put him on my Do Not Read list.
Right. Consider those individuals and small groups considering leaving civilization as they knew it, and jumping off to the frontier. They didn’t think “Oh, wait, I can’t leave till I solve absolutely all of society’s problems.” No, they just decided to take the chance and do the best for themselves, their families, and their own little groups.
I’m a lot more comfortable with this kind of individual thinking, than with those who want to control the world, for it’s own good, of course.
rivers and streams that you can now dump coal ash and toxic fracking chemicals into are better off than it was before our arrival?
Show me some data that the health of rivers and streams are becoming healthier under reduced oversight and data collection?
Government oversight is no guarantee of increased stream health. The worst pollution in a stream in recent memory was caused by none other than the EPA.
North America is today more heavily forested than it was 100 years ago, because it is in our economic interests to farm the trees for paper.
A man on Mars is like a person in a hospital, unable to work, totally dependent on his savings or insurance or the charity of others for his livelihood.
Exactly wrong Jim, but you can see the self fulling prophesy that goes with this thinking.
1) Unable to work.
Wow. Going to mars makes a person unable to work? You’re going to have to explain that one!
2) Totally dependent.
Why? Point 1 refutes point 2.
3) Dependent on charity.
First, there is nothing wrong with voluntary charity. Second, you assume they are unable to work, so welfare is your only solution.
Then you would fulfill this prophesy by not providing people with the start they need. Private property and their own independent skills (supported at almost no cost by a planet of people adding their knowledge to solve industrial challenges like chemical and manufacturing processes and design.)
My point is that a hospitalized person can recover and thrive, but you ignore that point as you ignore the resources available to martian colonists.
1) Unable to work.
Wow. Going to mars makes a person unable to work? You’re going to have to explain that one!
Yes, being confined to what amounts to a fall out shelter severely constrains the amount of work one can do. If you map that shelter to a hospital that is treating a variety of “illnesses” (inability to tolerate low pressure and extreme temperatures, addiction to oxygen and various nutrients, etc) you can see that being on Mars can be compared to a long stay in a hospital with the consequent constraints on productivity.
2) Totally dependent.
Why? Point 1 refutes point 2.
Hardly. Just like in a hospital a man on Mars is totally dependent on highly skilled specialists who make use of very expensive technology. Except on Mars these specialists are very far away and the technology takes a very long time to arrive.
3) Dependent on charity.
First, there is nothing wrong with voluntary charity.
I didn’t say there was anything wrong with it. It’s just not a viable solution for a large human Martian population.
Second, you assume they are unable to work, so welfare is your only solution.
I don’t assume that, I observe that. So far we have detected nothing on Mars that has solved the difficulties of living there. It’s possible we will find microbes in the future. Regardless, the barrenness of Mars is all the evidence one needs of the difficulties of surviving there.
Then you would fulfill this prophesy by not providing people with the start they need. Private property and their own independent skills (supported at almost no cost by a planet of people adding their knowledge to solve industrial challenges like chemical and manufacturing processes and design.)
Ken, anyone can go to Mars and try to make a go of it with my best wishes. But please don’t hold me responsible if no one thinks that “private property and their own independent skills” is up to the task. That’s your failure, not mine.
My point is that a hospitalized person can recover and thrive, but you ignore that point as you ignore the resources available to martian colonists.
And a man on Mars can recover and thrive also…once he arrives back on earth. Did you notice that Musk’s presentation sort of stops once his ship lands on Mars? Did you wonder why that was? It was because he was too embarrassed to point out that all those people he landed on Mars are coming back to earth. Musk has no clue how people are going to support themselves on Mars, that’s why he has designed a Martian sightseeing vessel. Sure, he hopes that someone, somewhere will figure it out and he wants to have a transportation system in place if that happens. But Musk is too canny to count on that.
Yes, being confined to what amounts to a fall out shelter..
Well, that would be stupid, wouldn’t it? They’d have 3 ways to work.
1) Inside: you can have a huge shirt sleeve industrial space. Whatever you need to work on you bring inside with ya. There is no shortage of indoor space. The construction material is basically unlimited.
2) Outside: Telerobotics managed in shifts for continuous around the clock operations. Martians have all the materials required to build new robots and repair existing ones. They only need parts for the first few from earth that they can assemble on mars. These rovers will have decades of life and parts can be made from scratch in just a few months (without any automation which will also happen in time.)
3) Outside (much less often): A suited martian may from time to time go outside to deal with issues the rovers can’t. Mostly to bring something inside where the real work will be done.
They will also work ‘outside’ in pressure domes if they want.
Do you know where they build Boeing 747s and SpaceX Falcons, Jim? Inside. They’ll do that on mars as well.
a man on Mars is totally dependent on highly skilled specialists who make use of very expensive technology.
Wrong again Jim. Everything required to live on mars was invented in the 1800s. A person needs air (in a pressure range) water, food and heat (in a temperature range.). Removing CO2 and providing air circulation and other needs are all gaslight era technologies.
Which is not to say they will not have high tech. they will and it will be indigenous over time, but supplied by new arrivals at first.
I observe that.
I observe the same blindness I see again and again in many others. You see a barren land with no water. I see Las Vegas and Palm Springs. The difficulty in surviving is having the attitude that it’s harder than it really is and not preparing for the actual needs.
That’s your failure, not mine.
That’s the failure of statist thinking. Asserting that something can’t be done when I can show you an unlimited number of times when we did it (and I only need one counter example to show you are wrong, but could give you millions) is so illogical that I am befuddled. If a thing can be done, it can be done. Saying it can’t be done at that point is completely irrational.
He stopped at getting them to mars because that’s the technical (and financial) challenge. All the parts of living on mars we’ve already done in one form or another. The only challenge to living on mars is the discipline required to avoid winning a Darwin award. Actually living there is quite straight forward. Low gravity is about the only issue we can’t fully prepare for before going and we already know it’s not immediately deadly and have a good idea of various mitigation possibilities. Other potential toxic issues are things we’ve dealt with on earth for centuries.
1) Inside: you can have a huge shirt sleeve industrial space…
2) Outside: Telerobotics managed in shifts…
3) Outside (much less often): A suited martian…
They will also work ‘outside’ in pressure domes if they want.
Ken, all these “solutions” presuppose an advanced industrial society with a population in the tens, if not hundreds, of millions already on Mars. This is beyond the means of a handful of people living underground.
Do you know where they build Boeing 747s and SpaceX Falcons, Jim? Inside.
Do you know where they built the buildings where they built 747s and SpaceX Falcons, Ken? Outside.
Everything required to live on mars was invented in the 1800s.
And for every person living on Mars full time it requires thousands on earth working full time to support them.
I observe the same blindness I see again and again in many others. You see a barren land with no water. I see Las Vegas and Palm Springs.
With your eyes tightly shut you can see anything you want, Ken. You need to fill in the gaps between a handful of people buried in motor homes to a the thriving metropolis you envision. “And then a miracle occurs” will just not cut it.
That’s the failure of statist thinking. Asserting that something can’t be done when I can show you an unlimited number of times when we did it (and I only need one counter example to show you are wrong, but could give you millions) is so illogical that I am befuddled. If a thing can be done, it can be done. Saying it can’t be done at that point is completely irrational.
I must have missed those unlimited number of times when we colonized Mars, Ken. Or any other extraterrestrial location for that matter.
Actually living there is quite straight forward.
It’s straightforward if one has unlimited resources, that’s true. But that’s a fantasy world.
I must have missed those unlimited number of times when we colonized Mars
Exactly right Jim. Every time we did something that has application on mars it’s been done. It’s always a good idea to have integrated tests, but it’s not always required.
Can we build sealed environments? Yes, but getting it wrong as we have in the past doesn’t prove we can’t do it right. Getting it right, as we have done many times on earth and in orbit, proves we can.
Life support, as built for spaceships, is fragile; but the principles are simple and robust. It’s a lot easier to train a person to maintain a simple chemical process than to build a high tech solution (which is fine as a backup.)
Yes Jim, you have missed the millions of times we’ve done everything required to live on mars the same way things can be hidden in plain sight.
You can come up with a million reasons why we can’t colonize mars. I can completely refute them with one example in each case. And with thousands of years of examples I can always come up with more than one solution for each.
The per capita yearly GDP of the US is about $53K.
Tell me when it’s going to be possible to support someone on another planet for that much per year. I don’t think it would be close to possible today, even if transportation costs were zero.
Sure, we’ll be able to support small outposts costing orders of magnitude more than that per person. In no way will these be self-sustaining or provide any sort of “backup” for Earth.
for every person living on Mars full time it requires thousands on earth working full time to support them.
Only if you do it wrong which is what almost everyone presupposes.
First it’s important not to conflate two very distinct situations. 1) Getting to mars. 2) Living on mars.
Getting to mars requires high tech. Living and expanding on mars DOES NOT. As a matter of fact, high tech should be avoided when a simpler, more robust method is available (as there always is.) The low tech solution also makes repair trivial. Every rancher I’ve ever met knows how to weld. Why? Because the smart ones avoid buying stuff they can’t fix themselves. Want to find a rancher that doesn’t owe everything to the bank? They’re the ones not driving new trucks.
Every place that has people now, once didn’t. At some point the very first person showed up. If a million people had shown up on that first day, most of them would have died… even if it was the best garden spot on earth.
Life support is required. This does not require a closed system. So when you hear someone demanding that; note they are making a false assumption. The next false assumption, is that a laundry list of technology is required beyond life support. None of that is a show stopper and all of it is achievable as people with skills are added to the mix.
A single person on mars could have all the skills for survival on mars as well as additional skills to improve their lives. As you add people none of them would be required to have all the skills as long as among them the basics are covered. Basics that millions of teanagers either already know or can be easily taught… Farming, chemical processes, energy production, construction (all things my neighbor kids do today on their family’s farms and ranches… perhaps city kids would have a problem?)
The only thing they’d need to learn is airlock protocols… how hard is that?
Not only that but millions of people on earth, at almost no cost, can provide information support to each person living on mars.
If you want to know how to colonize mars you have to absolutely know the first and last rule of being a martian…
RULE ZERO: Do not depend on anything not already on mars.
The lander is a temporary emergency shelter. Start digging the first permanent shelter the moment after establishing camp.
Bring enough power to produce more local power resources (not just enough for life support.)
Water, power and air should be in production before colonists arrive. Build more capacity from local materials ASAP.
Farm using all known methods. Food from earth should become backup emergency rations ASAP.
Except I think that when we talk casually about expanding into the cosmos we typically ignore the most obvious challenge – that in itself will force the experience to be an opportunity for radical social and conceptual growth.
I think we will find that humans will be the same as they have always been, including those who always think they can change human nature through social engineering. Putting humans in space wont make them magically evolve into superior-socialists.
Conceptually, growth will come from things like learning about what kind of environment humans need to create in order to feel free and remain mentally healthy. This will mean some public works type of projects but it also will mean catering to one’s own individualism. Individualism is often at odds with people who see opportunities for forced collectivism.
Agree regarding balance of society vs. individual.
Here’s a cross-post of part of my sci-am comment:
“But we’d have to also convince ourselves that we’re not going to make just as big a mess of new worlds as we’ve done here on Earth.”
No we wouldn’t. In my humble opinion, it just takes a few people wanting a different life, for various reasons, away from civilization. Those people just need to convince themselves they have a chance to do the best they can for themselves and their families. Whether from the top of society, or the bottom, I don’t believe the explorers, settlers, colonists, “escapees” have ever taken the weight of the whole world on their shoulders. That sounds like hubris.
That challenge is how awful it will be.
False assumption or self fulfilling prophesy… take your pick.
There is absolutely no reason why it has to be awful and many reasons why it could be better than we imagine. Yes, even what I imagine!
Millions of people dream of the real opportunity mars represents (even though most don’t realize it) that has little chance of happening to most people on earth. Building a better mousetrap on earth is hard because you’d have to compete with all the other mousetrap builders. Land is expensive on earth, but free on mars. Resources on earth have been mined for millennia on earth but untouched on mars.
Mars has millions of sq. km. per person for at least the next century. We used to call that elbow room and the spirit of the frontier.
The only reason it will be awful is if we strangle the effort in the nest. Please name something awful so I can refute it (easily.)
Please name something awful so I can refute it (easily.)
Humans can’t properly gestate at 1/3g and all of the human babies born on mars have insufferable birth defects. Obviously this is conjecture, but seeing as we have no data for baby-making at points other than 1g, who knows?
Maybe 1/3g is as deleterious to human health as 0g. Also conjecture, but we only have data points at 0g and 1g; what happens in between?
Failure to use the centrifuge wing at the Maternity Suite is clearly child abuse in that case.
Since you correctly identify it as conjecture Pug, there is no reason for me to refute it. Next!
I will point out we have birth defects at one G. We really don’t know enough, or if there is a problem, how difficult it would be to mitigate.
We really don’t know enough, or if there is a problem, how difficult it would be to mitigate.
So you’re saying this could be an awful situation? 😉
No. I’m saying it’s the boogy man. I spent a year on my back in a hospital bed while they pumped me full of antibiotics. So you could say I have personal experience very similar to studies done to simulate the bodies response to low G. Keep in mind those studies were done with young healthy volunteers. I was neither young, healthy or a volunteer.
I got to the point I could not even turn on my side and it seemed that walking was not an option. I’ve mostly recovered from that although I still have trouble standing from a low seat.
Martians with be carrying heavy suits while on the surface. In there normal shirtsleeve housing I’m sure they will maintain health with running. I bet a 26 mile marathon on an indoor track is nothing for the typical martian even at 10 psi.
As for gestation, it’s been tested on mice with no birth defects. But of course it will vary from person to person.
If we can’t adapt to this simple problem we should all just commit suicide now.
For the last 30 years doctors have been telling me I’ll be dying soon and currently have hospice care. My plan is to live another 40 years, so don’t mind me if I scoff at the idea that losing a little weight will kill us.
There are two types of learning, formal and informal. Formal learning is like a classroom or reading a book and informal is learning by doing.
The conundrum here is that there can’t be formal learning on something that no one has experienced. We can’t go to school and learn about the effects of different levels of gravity on the human body. We can learn about some of the effects of microgravity and some of the effects of 1/6 gravity but still not know too much about either.
The only way for a body of information to be established is for people to experience it and report back. Of course this should include animals but if it doesn’t happen concurrently, humans will have to experience it eventually.
I don’t think people in the space community have a greater aversion to informal learning than anyone else, maybe less so. But society in general places more emphasis on formal learning because it is easier to understand, predict, and control.
A good way to find out what we need to know, is with small measured risks. In the context of space based activities, there are not many small measured risks right now. Everything has a high price tag in terms of money, time, and ethical risk.
A variable gravity station could be able to answer these questions for us. It might be a wash in a cost comparison to build one than a lunar base but perhaps not a Mars base.
I spent a year on my back in a hospital bed while they pumped me full of antibiotics.
This is actually a good Mars analogy, although I doubt its the one you intended. A man on Mars is like a person in a hospital, unable to work, totally dependent on his savings or insurance or the charity of others for his livelihood.
You find out by starting with other mammals that have shorter gestation and generational cycles. Mice and rats are the obvious place to begin, since there are laboratory strains of both species with uniform genetics and known development characteristics. Assuming that they show no major issues after several generations (data you’ll have in a year or two), it becomes probable that other mammals, including Homo sapiens will be able to reproduce successfully.
If you want to be super-cautious, you could also establish a breeding population of non-human primates (probably squirrel monkeys or rhesus macaques) and see if they show problems after several generations. However, rodents are probably a sufficiently close model organisms to get the necessary evidence one way or another.
And even if it turns out that human reproduction needs a full 1g, eventually it’ll be possible to build large habitats with fully Earthlike environments. Especially if telerobotics, etc makes it easier to build space infrastructure in situ, and if we can get faster propulsion systems BEO, it may become an effective non-issue.
And if it is possible to run human consciousness on a machine substrate, we may also have a substantial part of the human population that chooses to go post-biological, and who sleeve themselves into whatever machine body best suits the project they’re working on at the time.
Leigh, thanks for your thoughtful reply. My background is engineering, so it’s not obvious to me when it is/isn’t appropriate to draw conclusions about humans from mice.
Funny, I posed a similar question in response to an article at NASAWatch a long time ago and received a thoroughly snarky response from Keith Cowing. His answer was there’s been vertebrate centrifuge experiments on ISS, so case closed! I was genuinely looking to learn, but Keith used it as an opportunity to be, well…Keith.
Some people view a discussion as a mutual search for truth. Others see it as a contest, in which the goal is to score points, and the quickest way to win is to humiliate the other person into silence.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but I was under the impression that there have been no vertebrate reproduction experiments in a centrifuge on the ISS because the funding for the centrifuge module was cut. In which Mr. Snark is not only being an ass****, he’s also doing it with “alternative facts.”
> Correct me if I’m wrong, but I was under the impression that there have been no vertebrate reproduction experiments in a centrifuge on the ISS because the funding for the centrifuge module was cut.
Have there been non-centrifuge, i.e., microgravity, vertebrate reproduction experiments on ISS? If so, what were the results?
“fertilization can occur normally” in space, but standard Earth gravity may be needed for embryo development.
So fertilization is fine and note this experiment was in space, not 0.38G. So it says nothing about embryo development on mars. Rate of birth defects may be higher (or not) but that’s not unusual right here on earth.
Mortality rates for birth right here on earth don’t get higher until very old age.
Sperm counts are also lower in microgravity, but again this says nothing about mars and low counts are not a show stopper.
It may not be worrying about nothing, but it comes darn close.
As a matter of fact, supposing low gravity does harm health? It might be just the thing to study resulting in saving lives right here on earth as well as in space colonies.
China did some experiments with mice reproduction but IIRC, they brought embryos up to space. I don’t know if anyone has studied implantation.
https://www.inverse.com/article/14486-mice-breeding-chinese-scientists-say-making-babies-in-space-is-possible
Other than for surface workers, living on Mars will be similar to living on Manhattan, just hopefully nicer. James Blish knew this in Cities in Flight, as did Asimov in The Caves of Steel. As for surface workers, I used to be a sewer worker. I’m sure I would’ve preferred Mars.
Excellent points!
The living underground part applies equally to the Moon, and it doesn’t have to be that uncomfortable. Ben Bova has some quite nice living spaces including large, open public areas in the main city.
As to how crowded it would feel, that might depend on the ratio of robots to people. For the “Manhattan” feel, as you point out, Caves of Steel is about right. Asimov’s companion work, The Naked Sun, was about the opposite, 10,000 robots for every human. That would give me a feeling of real isolation, which was the author’s intention. The point is, with the right balance of automation, people could build themselves a nice home.
I’m still gobsmacked that Rand thinks mining will be a big issue. Somethings humans have been doing before everything except perhaps picking berries.
“But we’d have to also convince ourselves that we’re not going to make just as big a mess of new worlds as we’ve done here on Earth.”
Really? As we advance, we’ve also cleaned up our messes to the point where the planet overall is better off than it was before our arrival (at least in advanced societies). We are the only living organisms to intentionally do so. This is a bogus “concern.”
Isn’t it ironic that those that warn us about destroying another world don’t follow the dictum to clean up their campsite better than they found it?
You left of the best part.
Is it worth finding an existential backup plan off-world if we’re going to be just as miserable there?
Reading the rest of the paragraph, it is the other people and capitalism that make the author miserable, not just the environment. Space isn’t something that should be experienced unless it is by the “right” kind of people. No one else it worthy.
“Is it worth finding an existential backup plan off-world if we’re going to be just as miserable there?” could be the thesis statement of Kim Stanley Robinson’s Mars trilogy. After reading the first novel I put him on my Do Not Read list.
Right. Consider those individuals and small groups considering leaving civilization as they knew it, and jumping off to the frontier. They didn’t think “Oh, wait, I can’t leave till I solve absolutely all of society’s problems.” No, they just decided to take the chance and do the best for themselves, their families, and their own little groups.
I’m a lot more comfortable with this kind of individual thinking, than with those who want to control the world, for it’s own good, of course.
rivers and streams that you can now dump coal ash and toxic fracking chemicals into are better off than it was before our arrival?
Show me some data that the health of rivers and streams are becoming healthier under reduced oversight and data collection?
Government oversight is no guarantee of increased stream health. The worst pollution in a stream in recent memory was caused by none other than the EPA.
North America is today more heavily forested than it was 100 years ago, because it is in our economic interests to farm the trees for paper.
A man on Mars is like a person in a hospital, unable to work, totally dependent on his savings or insurance or the charity of others for his livelihood.
Exactly wrong Jim, but you can see the self fulling prophesy that goes with this thinking.
1) Unable to work.
Wow. Going to mars makes a person unable to work? You’re going to have to explain that one!
2) Totally dependent.
Why? Point 1 refutes point 2.
3) Dependent on charity.
First, there is nothing wrong with voluntary charity. Second, you assume they are unable to work, so welfare is your only solution.
Then you would fulfill this prophesy by not providing people with the start they need. Private property and their own independent skills (supported at almost no cost by a planet of people adding their knowledge to solve industrial challenges like chemical and manufacturing processes and design.)
My point is that a hospitalized person can recover and thrive, but you ignore that point as you ignore the resources available to martian colonists.
1) Unable to work.
Wow. Going to mars makes a person unable to work? You’re going to have to explain that one!
Yes, being confined to what amounts to a fall out shelter severely constrains the amount of work one can do. If you map that shelter to a hospital that is treating a variety of “illnesses” (inability to tolerate low pressure and extreme temperatures, addiction to oxygen and various nutrients, etc) you can see that being on Mars can be compared to a long stay in a hospital with the consequent constraints on productivity.
2) Totally dependent.
Why? Point 1 refutes point 2.
Hardly. Just like in a hospital a man on Mars is totally dependent on highly skilled specialists who make use of very expensive technology. Except on Mars these specialists are very far away and the technology takes a very long time to arrive.
3) Dependent on charity.
First, there is nothing wrong with voluntary charity.
I didn’t say there was anything wrong with it. It’s just not a viable solution for a large human Martian population.
Second, you assume they are unable to work, so welfare is your only solution.
I don’t assume that, I observe that. So far we have detected nothing on Mars that has solved the difficulties of living there. It’s possible we will find microbes in the future. Regardless, the barrenness of Mars is all the evidence one needs of the difficulties of surviving there.
Then you would fulfill this prophesy by not providing people with the start they need. Private property and their own independent skills (supported at almost no cost by a planet of people adding their knowledge to solve industrial challenges like chemical and manufacturing processes and design.)
Ken, anyone can go to Mars and try to make a go of it with my best wishes. But please don’t hold me responsible if no one thinks that “private property and their own independent skills” is up to the task. That’s your failure, not mine.
My point is that a hospitalized person can recover and thrive, but you ignore that point as you ignore the resources available to martian colonists.
And a man on Mars can recover and thrive also…once he arrives back on earth. Did you notice that Musk’s presentation sort of stops once his ship lands on Mars? Did you wonder why that was? It was because he was too embarrassed to point out that all those people he landed on Mars are coming back to earth. Musk has no clue how people are going to support themselves on Mars, that’s why he has designed a Martian sightseeing vessel. Sure, he hopes that someone, somewhere will figure it out and he wants to have a transportation system in place if that happens. But Musk is too canny to count on that.
Yes, being confined to what amounts to a fall out shelter..
Well, that would be stupid, wouldn’t it? They’d have 3 ways to work.
1) Inside: you can have a huge shirt sleeve industrial space. Whatever you need to work on you bring inside with ya. There is no shortage of indoor space. The construction material is basically unlimited.
2) Outside: Telerobotics managed in shifts for continuous around the clock operations. Martians have all the materials required to build new robots and repair existing ones. They only need parts for the first few from earth that they can assemble on mars. These rovers will have decades of life and parts can be made from scratch in just a few months (without any automation which will also happen in time.)
3) Outside (much less often): A suited martian may from time to time go outside to deal with issues the rovers can’t. Mostly to bring something inside where the real work will be done.
They will also work ‘outside’ in pressure domes if they want.
Do you know where they build Boeing 747s and SpaceX Falcons, Jim? Inside. They’ll do that on mars as well.
a man on Mars is totally dependent on highly skilled specialists who make use of very expensive technology.
Wrong again Jim. Everything required to live on mars was invented in the 1800s. A person needs air (in a pressure range) water, food and heat (in a temperature range.). Removing CO2 and providing air circulation and other needs are all gaslight era technologies.
Which is not to say they will not have high tech. they will and it will be indigenous over time, but supplied by new arrivals at first.
I observe that.
I observe the same blindness I see again and again in many others. You see a barren land with no water. I see Las Vegas and Palm Springs. The difficulty in surviving is having the attitude that it’s harder than it really is and not preparing for the actual needs.
That’s your failure, not mine.
That’s the failure of statist thinking. Asserting that something can’t be done when I can show you an unlimited number of times when we did it (and I only need one counter example to show you are wrong, but could give you millions) is so illogical that I am befuddled. If a thing can be done, it can be done. Saying it can’t be done at that point is completely irrational.
He stopped at getting them to mars because that’s the technical (and financial) challenge. All the parts of living on mars we’ve already done in one form or another. The only challenge to living on mars is the discipline required to avoid winning a Darwin award. Actually living there is quite straight forward. Low gravity is about the only issue we can’t fully prepare for before going and we already know it’s not immediately deadly and have a good idea of various mitigation possibilities. Other potential toxic issues are things we’ve dealt with on earth for centuries.
1) Inside: you can have a huge shirt sleeve industrial space…
2) Outside: Telerobotics managed in shifts…
3) Outside (much less often): A suited martian…
They will also work ‘outside’ in pressure domes if they want.
Ken, all these “solutions” presuppose an advanced industrial society with a population in the tens, if not hundreds, of millions already on Mars. This is beyond the means of a handful of people living underground.
Do you know where they build Boeing 747s and SpaceX Falcons, Jim? Inside.
Do you know where they built the buildings where they built 747s and SpaceX Falcons, Ken? Outside.
Everything required to live on mars was invented in the 1800s.
And for every person living on Mars full time it requires thousands on earth working full time to support them.
I observe the same blindness I see again and again in many others. You see a barren land with no water. I see Las Vegas and Palm Springs.
With your eyes tightly shut you can see anything you want, Ken. You need to fill in the gaps between a handful of people buried in motor homes to a the thriving metropolis you envision. “And then a miracle occurs” will just not cut it.
That’s the failure of statist thinking. Asserting that something can’t be done when I can show you an unlimited number of times when we did it (and I only need one counter example to show you are wrong, but could give you millions) is so illogical that I am befuddled. If a thing can be done, it can be done. Saying it can’t be done at that point is completely irrational.
I must have missed those unlimited number of times when we colonized Mars, Ken. Or any other extraterrestrial location for that matter.
Actually living there is quite straight forward.
It’s straightforward if one has unlimited resources, that’s true. But that’s a fantasy world.
I must have missed those unlimited number of times when we colonized Mars
Exactly right Jim. Every time we did something that has application on mars it’s been done. It’s always a good idea to have integrated tests, but it’s not always required.
Can we build sealed environments? Yes, but getting it wrong as we have in the past doesn’t prove we can’t do it right. Getting it right, as we have done many times on earth and in orbit, proves we can.
Life support, as built for spaceships, is fragile; but the principles are simple and robust. It’s a lot easier to train a person to maintain a simple chemical process than to build a high tech solution (which is fine as a backup.)
Yes Jim, you have missed the millions of times we’ve done everything required to live on mars the same way things can be hidden in plain sight.
You can come up with a million reasons why we can’t colonize mars. I can completely refute them with one example in each case. And with thousands of years of examples I can always come up with more than one solution for each.
The per capita yearly GDP of the US is about $53K.
Tell me when it’s going to be possible to support someone on another planet for that much per year. I don’t think it would be close to possible today, even if transportation costs were zero.
Sure, we’ll be able to support small outposts costing orders of magnitude more than that per person. In no way will these be self-sustaining or provide any sort of “backup” for Earth.
for every person living on Mars full time it requires thousands on earth working full time to support them.
Only if you do it wrong which is what almost everyone presupposes.
First it’s important not to conflate two very distinct situations. 1) Getting to mars. 2) Living on mars.
Getting to mars requires high tech. Living and expanding on mars DOES NOT. As a matter of fact, high tech should be avoided when a simpler, more robust method is available (as there always is.) The low tech solution also makes repair trivial. Every rancher I’ve ever met knows how to weld. Why? Because the smart ones avoid buying stuff they can’t fix themselves. Want to find a rancher that doesn’t owe everything to the bank? They’re the ones not driving new trucks.
Every place that has people now, once didn’t. At some point the very first person showed up. If a million people had shown up on that first day, most of them would have died… even if it was the best garden spot on earth.
Life support is required. This does not require a closed system. So when you hear someone demanding that; note they are making a false assumption. The next false assumption, is that a laundry list of technology is required beyond life support. None of that is a show stopper and all of it is achievable as people with skills are added to the mix.
A single person on mars could have all the skills for survival on mars as well as additional skills to improve their lives. As you add people none of them would be required to have all the skills as long as among them the basics are covered. Basics that millions of teanagers either already know or can be easily taught… Farming, chemical processes, energy production, construction (all things my neighbor kids do today on their family’s farms and ranches… perhaps city kids would have a problem?)
The only thing they’d need to learn is airlock protocols… how hard is that?
Not only that but millions of people on earth, at almost no cost, can provide information support to each person living on mars.
If you want to know how to colonize mars you have to absolutely know the first and last rule of being a martian…
RULE ZERO: Do not depend on anything not already on mars.
The lander is a temporary emergency shelter. Start digging the first permanent shelter the moment after establishing camp.
Bring enough power to produce more local power resources (not just enough for life support.)
Water, power and air should be in production before colonists arrive. Build more capacity from local materials ASAP.
Farm using all known methods. Food from earth should become backup emergency rations ASAP.
None of this is brain surgery.