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?
Headquarter location, ie where they pay their taxes, and the country which legalisation they are supposed to follow. Also, a nation is responsible for everything it's citizens/organisations do even if they don't claim anything. If they drop a sattelite on someone's house, the compagny (or the governement) has to pay. Also, you don't get to keep the sattelite. All launched objects remain property of their original owner. 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. Radiation, and waves of ionized plasma.
2. Normal storms? No problem. Big storms? Problem. Especially given that global climate change seems to be making worse oceanic storms...All depends on the design. If you're really scared of storms, you can even have sinkable habitat that takes shelter below the sea.
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?
How do you increase the growth of plants? Give them nutrients / food. In the ocean's case, probably iron and other minerals. You're going to get it back in food anyway, so after the initial investement everything should be alright.
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.
You got algea. And biological compounds. This, with some basic advanced chemistry and other stuff allows you to create a wide range of carbon based plastics that can be used for most of what you need. Since the main ingredients are carbon, water and energy, a supply shortage is unlikely.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.
Not really. The only "large" benefit you've been talking about would be being away from Earth. Far away from any help your colony might need should anything go wrong. And besides, since your plan requires mass space transport to work, that "advantage" will have been lost before the colony can be founded. Any kind of disaster and Mars is going down with the Earth, or at least being severly troubled by refugees/collateral damage.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.
Might as well inscribe some pictures on golden plates and shoot them into space. Those'll probably last way longer.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!
Point above. By the time the colony is a technical viability, it's no longer really usefull. Or at least the isolation will no longer be the major advantage. Prevention is much better than trying to fix what's broken. 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.
Currently a leading issue in space Law actually. Nobody has decided yet who owns the spacerocks.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.
Geothermal is unlikey. Or at least, will have a seriously limited power production. Air pressure is way to low for human survival (Really, carbon dioxide athmosphere really doesn't count. For most purposes, it might as well be non existant. It's more of a problem, through weather). Deuterium is mostly worthless. It's tritium or He-3 we're looking for.
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.
Asteroid belt has nothing to do with asteroid impact risks. (Besides, the asteroid belt contains mostly planetoids) Also, I doubt your ring can avoid microasteroids. The first thing you see of those is a hole in the hull.
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?
Yeah, you're just incurring double launchcosts. (And shooting planets for minerals is just silly)
Redundancy -- just build another ring.
Or...another colony!
If they're in the same orbit, adding rings actually reduces survival change due to a space garbage chain effect.
You're also leaving out radiation, the biggest danger in space. Mars? Underground bunkers or something. Space station? Coffins.
He's also forgetting a couple of other things. Namely fire, the long term effects of variable g. (You can't do full gravity. The station'd just tear itself apart.)
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...
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.
You're going to scrub the athmosphere. Mars has these nice month long global dust storms, you know.
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.
You really consider railguns not to be advanced technology. Let me tell you these things are not finished. Certainly not for usage on the moon. Problem one is that they are a giant recievers for solar flare radiation, frying the entire system during each and every flare. Second is the fact that moon dust is completely magnetized. Meaning that it'll creep in everything it can creep in to, which is hell for moving/electronical components. Thirdly is the whole mining resource on the moon thing.
Really, for your plan to work we'd have to have the tech to set up a moon colony, and at that point it'll be easier to scale up then set up a space habitation station.
10 meters of bulk mass should do it. Or just keep the station inside the earths magnetosphere. Although there are some idea to make an artificial magnetosphere.
10 meters of bulk mass around a station spinning fast enough to provide 1 g gravity. That thing is going to tear itself apart before you get even a third of the way. As for the Earth's magnetosphere. It isn't perfect. Astronauts get about ten times normal radiation. I believe it's comparable to working in a nuclear plant*. (The inner parts, not the control centrum and other radiation proof areas). Fine for a short time, but living there isn't agreeable.
Oh, and just to repeat myself. Solar flares. A strong enough flare will damage a station, and the larger it is, the worse the damage.
*Don't quote me on this
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Topic: Humans, and eventually a colony on Mars. (Read 66957 times)