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[Egan_BW]

I am very disappointed that no one pointed the single greatest advantage of space colonization: it dramatically reduces the chances of complete human extinction.

Humans are probably still long-term fucked in the case where the only living humans are away from Earth. We're kind of really not well suited to living other places at all.

[Bumber]

I am very disappointed that no one pointed the single greatest advantage of space colonization: it dramatically reduces the chances of complete human extinction.

Jury's still out on whether that's an advantage or disadvantage.

It also likely includes animal extinction.

[PTTG??]

I am very disappointed that no one pointed the single greatest advantage of space colonization: it dramatically reduces the chances of complete human extinction.

Humans are probably still long-term fucked in the case where the only living humans are away from Earth. We're kind of really not well suited to living other places at all.

Who says? There's no reason to suppose that a decent 2000-person colony on Mars wouldn't be able to survive post-earth.

[Dunamisdeos]

I am very disappointed that no one pointed the single greatest advantage of space colonization: it dramatically reduces the chances of complete human extinction.

Jury's still out on whether that's an advantage or disadvantage.

It also likely includes animal extinction.

Depends on your perspective, and whether or not we live in a well-populated universe or no! If there's us and only a tiny, super-rarity of other intelligent beings (or, heaven forfend, we are alone) then really it doesn't matter, at all, what we do to our own planet and others we come across.

[LordBaal]

2k people is too small for a long term healty population me thinks. I believe have read the minimum is 10k people or far smaller but with frozen eggs and sperm and strict planned breeding for a set amount of generations.

[Karnewarrior]

I am very disappointed that no one pointed the single greatest advantage of space colonization: it dramatically reduces the chances of complete human extinction.

Humans are probably still long-term fucked in the case where the only living humans are away from Earth. We're kind of really not well suited to living other places at all.

Who says? There's no reason to suppose that a decent 2000-person colony on Mars wouldn't be able to survive post-earth.

Exactly.

And as far as the profitability of asteroid mining, Iridium currently costs 1,460 USD/ozt, as of the fourth of April 2019. This is after a relatively slight decline, with the general price of each troy ounce trending upwards since the earliest estimates of my source site.

Asteroids can contain tons of Iridium, and in more easily extractable and refinable configurations as well. Currently the metal is used for delicate scientific instruments due to it's insanely high melting temperature, but it's also notably dense, making it a very, very good radiation shield. And current production of Iridium is very, very low, since we currently can only get chance amounts of it while refining other metals. In other words, Iridium alone would turn an egregious profit, speculated to be to the tune of quadrillions of dollars on the upper end, and billions on the lower. Of course, the price will likely drop once the means of getting Iridium becomes more common, but the first company up there is going to make one fuck of a splash.

And notably, this is ignoring more mundane metals. Iron, Nickel, Gold, Platinum - metals are in very high numbers in asteroids and on other planets. I'd be willing to bet we could find some relatively sizable iridium deposits on the moon if we liked, along with Iron and whatever else we needed. The hard part is getting people there and keeping them there long enough without them getting cancer - something that will be much, much easier when we can just plate the tops of our habitats with Iridium, basically stopping all the radiation. And that's just in it's raw form. With quantities to allow it, there's going to be alloys invented that could do any number of things. For all we know it's one of the key components of Adamantine, and we've just not figured it out because we haven't had enough to play with.

Getting a Lunar base up and running may or may not be neccesary; you could make an argument for a large-scale space habitat if you liked. But it won't hurt, and the only reason the 1%ers aren't slobbering to get it done now is because it won't look good next quarter, just next year, and you know how adverse they are to temporary losses.

I am very disappointed that no one pointed the single greatest advantage of space colonization: it dramatically reduces the chances of complete human extinction.

Jury's still out on whether that's an advantage or disadvantage.

It also likely includes animal extinction.

Depends on your perspective, and whether or not we live in a well-populated universe or no! If there's us and only a tiny, super-rarity of other intelligent beings (or, heaven forfend, we are alone) then really it doesn't matter, at all, what we do to our own planet and others we come across.

My personal belief, as silly as it might be odds-wise, is that we somehow managed to be the first one in our neighborhood to wake up. We're surrounded by life, but it's all pre-radio, at least to our sensors.

It's not the most likely scenario, but it's simple and I like it. Also I'm a colonialist bastard so having some natives to exploit EUIV style makes my E-peen hard.

[Starver]

Ultimately, the choice may be between Branno, Gendibal and Novi, but it won't be my choice to make.

[Dunamisdeos]

Other civs are either pre-radio, or post-radio. Until we have first-hand knowledge, both are equally as likely.

[Trekkin]

I am very disappointed that no one pointed the single greatest advantage of space colonization: it dramatically reduces the chances of complete human extinction.

That would be because, as distressing as it usually sounds, preventing human extinction isn't fundable. It's beyond NASA's remit, as are most of the other things that laypeople tend to opine we "should" be doing with other people's money to put lots of infrastructure in space, particularly outside LEO. The scales at which you need lunar bases are not ones at which any space agency can seriously consider operating.

[wierd]

indeed.  It would be astoundingly expensive, and science fiction levels of challenge.

However, the moon is close enough that the delay time between action and confirmation would be sufficiently low that robots could feasibly be used for construction, and that is about the only way it could be feasible.

(You send robots to the moon, and control them from earth. The robots are used to construct a spartan set of human habitations and work areas, and then you cough up the heavy dough to send a small human workforce to continue the work past that point.)

Sending a landing craft with human construction workers onto a barren lunar surface is laughably absurd.
Sending fully built habitats on rockets and landing them on the moon is also laughably absurd.

Sadly, building sufficiently robust construction robots that also meet launch cost budgets... Is also laughably absurd.  (Just less absurd than the first two.)

Right now Musk and Co are working on rockets.  Inexpensive, reusable ones.  This is a reasonable place to start if Musk is really serious about his ambitious goals. It is essential to being able to spend expensively heavy construction robots to the moon.   However, he still needs to develop those robots. Those are still science fiction at this point.

[Trekkin]

The problem is as much about efficiency as cost, though. Even if we set aside indefinite manned habitation of space, there's still the question of why a project has so grossly overbudgeted its consumables as to leave usable resources in space with all the extra launch mass that implies -- and who is going to pay for its maintenance once the project is over, particularly since there's no guarantee that what it might leave in space is going to be of any use to the next project when it can't be dependent on that infrastructure in the planning stages.

That rules out most of the things space agencies actually want to do; the ISS was extremely limited in scope compared to a lunar base and it's soaked up an inordinate fraction of NASA's budget to build, and that's still in low orbit. There are extremely expensive, fanciful projects of global benefit like sun shades and moon-based space debris deorbiting where that infrastructure does make sense, but again, out of scope.

This is usually where people get huffy and start with the Oregon Trail analogies, but the infrastructure they want is tantamount to those pioneers saying how much they'd love to settle in California if only someone would pretty please build them a railroad to Sacramento first and maintain a series of hotels along the way prior to there being a Sacramento to build towards.

[Frumple]

... I mean. To be fair. One of the easier ways to get a Sacramento built is to lay down a railroad and series of hotels leading there. Generally faster to build something like that with transit infrastructure and whatnot already built and giving you a nice trail to prime real estate.

[Karnewarrior]

I mean, I for one would have few problems with a "suicide squad" of initial settlers going to Mars to set up a proper town, but economically speaking it's not as easy as just walking a long way and not starving to death.

The Oregon Trail isn't the best metaphor to use. Rather, the best metaphor to use is Columbus and other explorers during the late renaissance. The Queen of Spain had no idea if Colombus would turn up anything worthwhile, she didn't even know if he would straight-up die (which, IIRC, he did). She funded him anyway, though, because the chance of getting such an easy stranglehold on the spice market was something she deemed worth the expense of three ships, and as it turns out she was even more right than she imagined, with the New World bringing about wealth that was literally unheard of before it's discovery.

Iridium and Platinum are our spices, Space is our Atlantic Ocean - All we need is a Queen of Spain mad enough to fund the venture, a "caravel" capable of crossing the void, and a Colombus dumb enough or daring enough to put his life at risk going out there, and we roll the dice on another explosion of wealth for the entire damn species. Even if there's a chance it'll come up snake-eyes, it's still worth it in my opinion, particularly since Space Exploration isn't actually all that expensive on a national scale compared to things like defense infrastructure and social services. If we actually turned our national attention to the project for more than just optical reasons I could definitely see great leaps being made.

[MrRoboto75]

TBQH We got a lot of tech as a secondary of the first, tech thats useful for shit other than landing on a moon.

[Dorsidwarf]

Iirc One of the main objective NASA wants that Moonbase at the moons south polar  cap for (after “FIRST!!!!”) is to actually explore the future viability of producing spacecraft fuel from water ice  reserves, and what kind of issues arise in practice when doing so in a low-gravity vacuum.

NASA like their big showy vanity missions, but they always bring science and research along on the flag-planting trips too. If nothing else, it’s something to do while you sit around being bored in the dark.