Solar System Candidates for Colonization

This is a great subject. I am pissed off that I will not live to see serious movement by humanity beyond the Earth as a spacefaring and colonizing species. And I am also pissed that we don't even have permanent bases on the moon yet.Unfortunately, we may have missed the window of opportunity to make exploitation of space resources a viable enterprise. The work at building the underlying infrastructure just has not been done. Little research, and no progress at growing crops for food, oxygen, waste recycling and to produce useful materials.This is really surprising, but as far as I know, no one has successfully demonstrated a method of agriculture in an enclosed environment.A few years ago, the Biosphere 2 Experiment was a complete failure, mainly because they tried to recreate a bunch of earth habitats in a supposedly closed system.The first experiments should really be to throw a bunch of plants and other life forms into a bunch of different tanks that duplicate what we expect the conditions of a long term closed system, and see what thrives. The survivors are what we want to learn to exploit. Plant life that a whole space crew depends on cannot be something that has to be coddled to survive.In my opinion, we should start with space stations rather than planetary bodies. They should be built in asteroids that provide shielding, and materials (metals) as well as lots of internal space.Life on this planet is vulnerable to natural and man-made disasters and we have done almost nothing to figure out how to save ourselves. Instead, we are squandering our resources, shitting in our messkit, and squabbling about petty tribal and idealistic bullshit.

I try to remember that while the US thinks solely short term other nations have a history of taking the long term view and so Japan, Korea, China, India or others will likely make the investment needed to colonize other worlds.

You think that's going to stop if you move some of us to a spacestation on a distant asteroid?

I do not think we can accomplish such a worthwhile goal until we mature enough to leave that crap behind us.

I hope you are correct, but I wonder if any nation-state can make it a success alone. It seems like this is a project so grand that it will take a global initiative, which seems increasingly unlikely.

Good luck with that.So much for worthwhile goals.

Frontier societies are far different from mature societies.The US is closer to a frontier society than many, but it is evolving away from that.The nice thing about colonizing the solar system is that there will lots of new frontiers.Some of us are far more suited to those kinds of societies than others.

One advantage that should be considered is the value of extraterrestrial colonies as places to house dissidents, convicts and other undesirables similar to how the English hoped to use Savannah and the Provence of Georgia or New South Wales, or France used Guiana, New Caledonia and Louisiana. The advantage of course is that only the exporting Nation has access to transportation to or from extraterrestrial colonies and so passage is a one way cost. Should the deportees survive and thrive then at some future date they will have arrived at an economic and industrial state where the initial causes for exile no longer held and in fact will likely increase the overall wealth of the system.

The wimpy effort known as the International Space Station already is a cooperative effort between the US, the EU, Russia, Japan, Korea, and India, among others.Notice who is missing?Let China or even better some Muslim nation put up a space station or moon colony and see how quickly that space race starts again. Most governments may not give a damn about their own people but they sure as hell give a damn about their own perpetuation. Perhaps people should consider a contrary ideal, namely being more concerned with the perpetuation of species instead of the perpetuation of the specious.Besides increased competition could serve the greater good, like in banking or internet service providers to name a few.

An interesting concept that may turn Venus into a source of materials\energy. I was just reading a story that used L-5. The moon with elevator makes the materials readily available. This basically transforms the moon into a large space station. One large enough to be self-sustaining.And if you build the ring with a coil you can generate a magnetic field for radiation protection, powered by solar panels.Another advantage to the moon: the orbit is stable so a spacestation-moon won't need orbit adjustments, which even L-5 would need.It would need international cooperation so it could be a vehicle for peace, especially as it would be visible nearly every night.Enjoy

I do not share your pessimism, nor do some of the inhabitants of China or India.Yes I am a Pollyanna, and yes you bring up a very disconcerting issue.Life survives beyond the individual because that is its very purpose, despite the apocalyptic rantings of various theistic traditions.In my youth I grew up with the belief space exploration and indeed occupation would have progressed a lot further than the current state. Does anyone remember Kubrick's 2001?Unfortunately the vision did not work out that way, but does anyone remember an alternative outcome?Nuclear annihilation?It seems to me neither my optimism, nor my detractors pessimism is the outcome, instead the future unfolds in unexpected ways.

I consider your proposal an elegant short term solution. The long term requires water and I think it would be a lot cheaper to alter cometary orbits than it would be to drag water out of the Earth's gravity well. Of course one must be very careful when altering orbits lest they happen to lay waste to us as they did former apex predators. I suggest a solar orbit at first, just to ease it in gently especially if it is a Virgin attempt.Edited by anglagard, : Forgot to capitalize the V