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[MonkeyHead]

Though IIRC its the UN who has stipulated that, and we all know how good they are at making things happen.

[Aseaheru]

well, if we can go to other solar-systems we can get around that. by saying to earth "feck off. we are gone."

[Sheb]

Oh, so you want to save human knowledge, fondation-style? Well, send computers in orbit. There, no need for a colony, and it's way cheaper.
 
Otherwise: 1) Any enviromnental impact of a small-scale colony on earth would be negligible. You're talking about a middle-sized city.
2) Even if you decide you want self-sustaining librarians with your library, I still do'nt see why Alaska wouldn't be a better choice than Luna or Mars. Just buy the damn mining right, it's not like the US government is preventing any mining in Alaska.



Now, let's move on to something more interesting. If asteroid mining become a reality, will companies pay royalties? Who will they be paid to? The UN? It'd be nice to have royalties use to fund up all those causes that developing countries need to beg or all the time.

[GreatWyrmGold]

2. I highly doubt anyone would try to evict an NGO which worked hard to set up a home on Luna or Mars and didn't cause trouble, especially since no one has claimed either of those worlds.

2. Internation Space law: Any partaking country (Ie, pretty much anyone) is responsible for anything that it's citizens/NGO's/coorporations do in space. I also believe that claiming planetary bodies is illegal.

How do multinationals count, and what if they don't actually claim the body in question?

As for unclaimed land on Earth. There's a lot of it. Most isn't of very good quality though, or should be better used as a natural reserve, but anyway.

You left out how much of it is in the form of little chunks of land in the ocean.
Yes, you could make similar colonies on Earth, and it would probably be cheaper. It would just probably be smaller, almost certainly negatively affect the environment, and certainly not avoid all the problems that the idea is to get away from in the first place.

Not that much actually. Most of it's locked up in the world's deserts, or other inhabitable areas. Rainforests and such. I was talking about the expand to avoid pop density problem btw.

Well, at some point it's just not worth arguing...such as if the other guy is right.
(It would be kinda stupid to try and settle the rainforests large-scale, though. The soil sucks, the biodiversity's valuable, and there's already people living in them.)

Besides, a large scale Mars colonization project isn't viable before we get space elevators, or some other way to reduce launchcosts. You just end up spending more resources/ energy on sending them up than you'd needed to store them on Earth.

Agreed. Three things: 1. Luna first. Not a big difference, but everyone seems to be assuming I'm advocating we colonize Mars now instead of getting a working colony on Luna first, to test the ideas and get our feet wet. 2. Of course you'll spend more resources getting stuff into space than keeping them on Earth; warehouses are theoretically costless. 3. Space colonization has benefits, which must also be accounted for.

1. Same principle. Launch costs for mass migration projects to anywhere not Earth are simply too high.
2. I was talking about the people. Getting everyone a decent living will be much more practical on Earth than shooting them into space is.
3. The freedom to be irradiated? Less silly, there are some benefits, but they are few and far between and only apply to select sections of industry. Most people only get hindrance.

1. Yes, but people keep picking at me for supporting a view I don't just because of the thread title. Stupid derails...
2. Probably cheaper...but it loses most of the benefits I keep mentioning, so it's not actually an alternative.
3. I was referring to benefits like far away from Earth's madness, not specific industrial benefits. (Which would still exist, mind you.)

Okay, 7 or even probably 15 billion people could survive on Earth. But not at our current standard of living, certainly not with our current environmental practices, not for the long run.

Not that it's scientifically accurate[1], but you put me in mind of the Caves Of Steel world of Asimov.  That has a world population of eight billion!  And they're forced into a "cellular and modular" underground lifestyle to squash everyone on the planet into a viable subterranean living volume, with the emphasis on communal space over personal space included.
Trantor (probably the intellectual result of the Caves Of Steel prototype, both in-universe and conceptually) is at one point posited to house 40 billion souls (and is mostly a produce importer, rather than self-sustaining, at that point).  I can't guarantee the scientific or sociological accuracy of this latter case, either.  I just thought it an interesting point to add.  I may well be wrong.

The thing to consider is that, in that case, the surface would likely be being largely used for food production or wilderness. Heck, I would probably support advancements that make underground cities practical for just that reason. Will such measures be needed? Not for a while. Would they help the lives of many? Probably. Will they happen before they are desperately needed? No.

Just a general note. The largest problem for a Crocusant style planetary city would be overheating. Energy can't be 100% efficient, and these stacked infrastructure tends to work as a gigantic heat magnet. Last numbers I heard would be that the Earth could reliably, using state of the art technology sustain about 20 billion people. This would have it's effect on standard of living and environement.

Whatever. It's really not germane for this discussion, nor for my argument.

Oh? How do you get enough food? (Hypothetically, you could use the same sort of greenhouses I've been proposing for Lunar or Martian colonies, but space on a cruise ship is MUCH more limited. Related:) Where will you put everything and -one? How will you get resources to make new clothes, books, whatever when the old ones wear out? What will you do, bereft of any kind of mineral or other resource, many of which are so common on Mars, when something inevitably breaks?

You have pretty much unlimited space around you in the form of ocean.  Making a floating greenhouse isn't all that difficult.

...Even pretending that the ocean's surface is worthless for all causes at the moment and ignoring political consequences, weather alone will cause more problems than Luna's environment ever will (assuming a good standard of construction for the colony). And the ocean surface is pretty important for, you know, phytoplankton and such...ever hear of it? Base of the marine food chain, produces 50% of oxygen on the planet? A single greenhouse might not impact it much, but there would be impact, meaning that it's not "unlimited."

Solar storms are freaky, if unlikely. Normal storms are evadable, and usually not that bad. A good modular,flexible colony should be able to weather them without problems. People inside will get sick, probably. (Actually, it depends. If the entire thing weights enough, it might just ignore the waves at all. Same reason why a modern Cruise ship doesn't experience waves that much, but a small fisherboat would be thrown over immediatly.)

1. Solar storms are in fact bad, but deserve classification under "Radiation" rather than "Weather," because they're just radiation.
2. Normal storms? No problem. Big storms? Problem. Especially given that global climate change seems to be making worse oceanic storms...

Also, since you're going to be eating that plankton, and encouraging it's growth, you'd end up increasing the amount of carbon fixated. Provided you let enough plankton live, and open up enough space for fishes, you can expand quite far.

...How would the growth of plankton be increased?

Getting resources on the ocean is pretty irrelevant since you were talking about the limits of space.

So? You'll still need resources once on-site. Are you going to ship steel and plastic to your greenhouse

Bioplastics?

Expand and explain, please.

I was just pointing out the absurdly bad return on investment of colonizing mars for land area, for a fraction of the cost of making people live in cramped conditions on mars you could make them live in luxury on the ocean.  And we haven't even filled up very attractive landmasses like New Jersey yet.

"Live in luxury?" I doubt it. Not unless you want to spend more resources, which you could by the way also spend to make the Lunar colony more spacious. And Earth's surface is a lot more useful than Luna's or Mars's.

Launchcosts alone justify the earlier statement.

Yes, it costs more. Guess what? It also offers more of the benefits which I was talking about.

If you want space then just make space habitats, they'd be vastly cheaper then mars.

Than, and space habitats have the exact same major disadvantage as floating ones: The difficulty of obtaining resources. It's worse, in fact, due to not having an easy way for the outside world to ship them steel or whatever and not being able to take anything from outside their living space.

Space habitats being cheaper is doubtfull actually. They might be in the short term, but space habitats might have a larger launchcost(Habitat needs much more reinforcing than say a dugout on Mars/Moon), have troubles with taking up orbital space and having to evade spacegarbage.

Yeah, space habitats aren't a good idea for much of anything except zero-gravity and spaceports. Maybe not even those.

Oh, so you want to save human knowledge, fondation-style? Well, send computers in orbit. There, no need for a colony, and it's way cheaper.

That's a technicality and only lasts as long as the computers (a couple decades at most). Besides, knowledge is useless without humans to know it...and, um, this isn't the first time I mentioned this.

Otherwise: 1) Any enviromnental impact of a small-scale colony on earth would be negligible. You're talking about a middle-sized city.

Depends on the area.

2) Even if you decide you want self-sustaining librarians with your library, I still do'nt see why Alaska wouldn't be a better choice than Luna or Mars. Just buy the damn mining right, it's not like the US government is preventing any mining in Alaska.

Guess what? You're still vulnerable to every-freaking-thing that affects Earth! WHICH IS EVERYTHING I'M SUGGESTING MAKING A FREAKING LUNAR COLONY FOR! IF YOU OFFER ALTERNATIVES, MAKE SURE THEY ARE ACTUALLY ACHIEVING THE SAME GOALS!

Now, let's move on to something more interesting.

...Space colonies aren't interesting?

If asteroid mining become a reality, will companies pay royalties? Who will they be paid to? The UN? It'd be nice to have royalties use to fund up all those causes that developing countries need to beg or all the time.

That would be nice. Doubtful, but nice.

[Morrigi]

Just going to restate that all evidence points to the moon being a very large, spherical rock with minimal natural resources. Mars, on the other hand, has copious amounts of liquid water, a carbon dioxide atmosphere, complex geological formations, fertile soil, a day/night cycle similar to that of Earth's (growing plants on the moon would not work because of its 30 day cycle), a relatively high level of deuterium, and large amounts of hematite and almost certainly other metal ores. Out of all these resources food, fuel plastics, building materials, potable water, and possibly geothermal power can be produced. If you take a few chemical reactors, an air pump, and a greenhouse, Mars wouldn't be an insurmountable goal.

[GreatWyrmGold]

Just going to restate that all evidence points to the moon being a very large, spherical rock with minimal natural resources.

What, no minerals?

Mars, on the other hand, has copious amounts of liquid water, a carbon dioxide atmosphere, complex geological formations, fertile soil, a day/night cycle similar to that of Earth's (growing plants on the moon would not work because of its 30 day cycle), a relatively high level of deuterium, and large amounts of hematite and almost certainly other metal ores. Out of all these resources food, fuel plastics, building materials, potable water, and possibly geothermal power can be produced. If you take a few chemical reactors, an air pump, and a greenhouse, Mars wouldn't be an insurmountable goal.

...Wow. Suddenly Mars seems like a better option. I change my vote back in the Bay12 Space Program thingy.
You'd need a sealed greenhouse, though. Air pressure still sucks. High enough that you probably won't die of decompression, I think, but that's about it.

[Morrigi]

Inflatable dome would do it, and you could fill it with mostly CO2 if you wanted to, so the overall pressure would be less, therefore the dome material could be thinner.

[vadia]

I'm pretty sure that a permanent space station is much more practical than Mars for about 100% of the claims.

Fear asteroids?  Mars has no protection against them -- so you'd have to dig massively.  A ring can move out of the way of anything dangerous.

Want minerals -- either send a ship to shoot the stuff off of a planet (for the massive amounts of material factor) or the more subtle mining.

Redundancy -- just build another ring.

Energy -- beam it from Mars get it without a shred of dust to worry about.

I do think that Mars may happen because we seem to be planning for it. http://sciencefriday.com/segment/01/11/2013/simulating-the-red-planet-on-the-pale-blue-dot.html  But I think that the benefits are less than advertised.

[Morrigi]

People said the same about colonies in the New World, I'm sure.

[GreatWyrmGold]

Fear asteroids?  Mars has no protection against them -- so you'd have to dig massively.  A ring can move out of the way of anything dangerous.

Mars has about the same chance of being struck by an asteroid as Earth--lower gravity, but closer to the asteroid belt. It's still pretty low, especially for anything that affects a single colony.

Want minerals -- either send a ship to shoot the stuff off of a planet (for the massive amounts of material factor) or the more subtle mining.

And how is that better than having all the hematite you want at your feet?

Redundancy -- just build another ring.

Or...another colony!

Energy -- beam it from Mars get it without a shred of dust to worry about.

This makes no sense. How would dust get in the way of Martian power used on Mars, but not Martian power beamed to a space station?

You're also leaving out radiation, the biggest danger in space. Mars? Underground bunkers or something. Space station? Coffins.

I do think that Mars may happen because we seem to be planning for it. http://sciencefriday.com/segment/01/11/2013/simulating-the-red-planet-on-the-pale-blue-dot.html  But I think that the benefits are less than advertised.

It's better than space stations, though. Seriously, I can't think of any real benefit that a space station would do better than Mars. Unless you're really afraid of that vanishingly small chance of an asteroid hitting right next to your colony more than the rather higher chance of a solar flare or something...

[Morrigi]

If you insist on using solar panels on Mars, dust might get in the way. But you could, you know, send someone out with a broom or something.

[PanH]

Want minerals -- either send a ship to shoot the stuff off of a planet (for the massive amounts of material factor) or the more subtle mining.

Energy -- beam it from Mars get it without a shred of dust to worry about.

I fail to see how shooting stuff from Mars is more interesting than using them on Mars.

In terms of technology, space stations (semi autonomous, I guess), are harder than Mars colony (which can technically be autonomous).

[Sheb]

GreatWyrmGold, the problem is that there is nothing the threaten civilization on Earth that you cannot protect yourself from by digging deep. So yeah, staying on Earth would mean you won't be protected from whatever is happening on Earth. But given the fact that Mars or the Moon are irradiated wasteland without an athmosphere, if you can survive that you can survive whatever is going to happen on Earth.*



Okay, I guess a really big asteroid would do the trick. On big enough to melt the whole surface. But I think it's easier to have a anti-asteroid system than to settle Mars, and a Fondation at this point would be moot, as there would be no-one to recover your knowledge anyway. 

[mainiac]

In terms of technology, space stations (semi autonomous, I guess), are harder than Mars colony (which can technically be autonomous).

In terms of technology we already have every piece of technology we'd need for a space station while Martian colonies would require a lot of new stuff.  The needs for a station are actually pretty easy:
gravity (spin it)
food (grow it)
oxygen (photosynthesize it)
energy (solar panels)
materials (build a catapult on the moon)

The most advanced thing in this list is solar panels and we'e had them for forty years.  The only thing stopping us is the massive up front investment.

[Sheb]

You forgot the radiation shielding stuff.