Space is the New West.

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In the 1600's, the Americas were the West, it was a land that had opportunity for a new life away from the insanity of the highly populated and corrupt governments of Europe. In the 1800's, the lands west of the Louisiana Territory were the West. Now though everything on Earth is owned and everything is run by governments of various degrees of corruption and insanity, so what is the West now is everything that is not Earth. Currently, without FTL, this means the rest of the solar system is the West. The moon, Mars, the moons of the gas giants, the Plutoids, the asteroid belt, etc. I know Ruveyn here advocates the moon as being the first place to colonize since it is closer, and that's fine and a lot of people agree with that as far as I've seen, although I still prefer Zubrin's aim of Mars since it's further away and has a 24 hour and 39 minute day as compared to a month long day and much more mineral resources for agriculture. However it's done though, whether the Earth's own moon or Mars is used as the springboard into the rest of the solar system, it will just be good if anything is ever done other than wasting time here on Earth while everything continues to worsen.

Now, there is a pattern here though. What is West continues to move outward as cities build and fill up space and politicians fight for their petty hill-kingdoms. However, there are plenty of people to remain and enjoy the annoyance of city life while the people who can't stand it move elsewhere and expand ever further outward. East may follow West, but even so there's no lack of space to become West while the East trails behind it and encourages those who hate laziness and politics to move outward to a new frontier.

Last edited by iamnotaparakeet on 21 Mar 2012, 6:31 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Living in space would be nice If jupiter was a planet that people could live on I would soo live their.

With the exception of Io, its other three larger moons might be able to be dwelt upon in artificial habitats. If a somewhat safe spot to set up a base, perhaps an automated base, there were located and built upon Io could be used as a "geo"-thermal power plant. Using energy from the heat of the magma to boil water and run Faraday induction generators - which in turn could either charge batteries to be shipped up or transferred using a Gerard O'Neill style microwave beam power transfer arrangement or perhaps a few other systems or arrangement or variations upon these general ideas - Io could be the power plant of the Jupiter colonies. Although it would be preferable that power sources for each colony be found at their own locations rather than on another planetoid, at the beginning at least since power supply demands will increase along with population. Agriculture would need to be done with artificial lighting alone, but it's not impossible.

What about the poison gases found on most of the other planets also how would be be able to build a spaceship big enough for people to space travel not to mention the large amounts of fuel needed to get people to other planets?

There is a romanticism that is curiously American around "exiting."

The Pilgrims left Europe to escape religious pluralism and find the freedom to establish religiously rigid communities.
The Pioneers exited the industrial east to find the freedom to establish themselves in open territory (but, alas, not unoccupied) to the West.
Now that there is no where left to exit to on the planet, the same romaniticism is now turning towards the extra-terrestrial.

Now, that's not to say that this romanticism is a bad thing. The idea that human beings are free to pull up stakes and move to greener pastures is an important facet of fundamental liberty. But I do think that the romanticism needs to be coloured by the practical. Migration should not be the default answer to a political or economic climate gone bad. Remediation should be the first answer.

It's like the West, but much, much harder. It's frustrating for the generation who saw the emergence of spaceflight to realize that it's going to be a slog and take another century or more.

Ultimately I think it's the machines who will continue to go and work there. But I could be wrong.

Having independent habitats with their own internal atmospheres and environments.



For going to Mars, since Mars has an atmosphere aerobraking can be done so as to not need to carry as much fuel as when landing on the moon, so that more mass in useful payload is able to be shipped rather than just fuel. Also, there's the redundancy of multiple independent launches each shipping a fraction of the total supplies and equipment for a self sustaining settlement prior to the launches of the settlers.

Another option is that of von Braun's Mar's Project idea of building the ships in orbit from piecemeal shipments from the surface.

As for fuel, of all the tens of thousands of suborbital nuclear missiles built, they didn't care about fuel then. While those are necessary as a deterrent via M.A.D., it would be far better of an expenditure to fuel the rockets of peaceful launches for the purpose of interplanetary colonization. If it is financed privately, why then should there be any whinging?

Not religious pluralism did the Pilgrims leave due to, but religious persecution. In the years previous, the Catholic church had attempted the slaughter of "heretics" already, at the start of the 17th century was the 30 Years War in which the Catholic Hapsburgs were attempting to stamp our Protestantism in Germany and Austria. In England, people like Bloody Mary did some fairly crappy things also. Then there's the Anglican version of the Catholic church which treated other Protestants just about as badly as regular continental Catholics did. They left not due to there being more than one branch of Christianity, but because of the insanity of dealing with this crazy situation.

Anyway, I think migration is the better answer as it allows more resources to be made available, encourages more technologies to be developed, allows more people to live free of the insanity for a few generations at least, and it's not an either or since those who stay behind can do what they like still while those who have had enough enjoy their freedom.

I think we either become a spacefaring civilization in this century or it may never happen. Between environmentalists seeking policies to destroy economies, people in the middle east acting like bloody Daleks crying "EXTERMINATE! EXTERMINATE!", and everything else there's only going to keep being more and more worse situations to take precedence and detract from spaceflight. If we don't go soon, I think we may never go. So much could have already been done decades ago, but it just plain hasn't, and now we wait eternally for nothing to continue to happen when so much can still be done if we ever just get around to doing rather than naysaying.

Yes, Mars, the Moon, the other orbital objects, they do have more risks and dangers involved, but the freedom from this rotting world is worth it in my opinion at the very least. I would be willing to go myself if ever the possibility is made real.

Try going into space with just a little bit of loose change. It can't be done.

At one time all a person needed was a wagon and a team of horse to pull it. Many could afford it out of pocket. Going into space is much too expensive for many to do it.

ruveyn

'Exiting' is a lot more practical to changing things that cannot be changed. The only alternative to "exiting" a lot of the time involves a lot more guns.

At that time the value of a dollar was a lot greater also, but even so - if Oregon Trail is any source of information - it would be quite a bit more than just pocket change needed to get everything necessary for overland wagon travel. But even so, I'm hoping that perhaps SpaceX might adopt the Mars Society's idea of the "Transorbital Railroad" which might have the potential of reducing the cost of launches tremendously. Once underway, the cost of buying a scheduled launch could even be down to $25,000 or so. It would be worth saving for, buying a house and selling it when the time is right (if it ever is, that is, which I hope it may be sooner rather than later.) A coordinated colonization effort would be the best route though, shipping everything that's not alive first - supplies, equipment, tools, etc - and then sending out the colonists after the reliability of the rockets and vehicles is more established.

Yep. And the scarier form of remediation is just further corruption, involving insane population control measures and otherwise treating people like they weren't people "for the greater good" or whatever the next excuse will be.

Oooh, you had it going so well until you forgot a really important part. See, the Puritans (may they burn in their own Hell forever for being the crazy bastards they were) left England after causing a crapload of trouble and strife (including burning down the Globe theater - TWICE) but they didn't immediately go to the United States. They took sanctuary with the Dutch, and then left not because the Dutch were being persecuted, but because the Dutch enforced freedom of religion and the Puritans (may they burn. In. HELL) couldn't stand it.

By "leaving due to religious persecution", I think you mean that the government didn't let them persecute everyone else in England, so they had to come to New England to create their theocracy.


There is an important difference between "quite more than pocket change" and "something that is theoretically possible, but not with the present technological level, and might not be for some time".

Also, there is a difference between a strip of unexploited land in Oregon and a strip of unexploited land on Mars or on the Moon. Even though there are differences, everything in any version of "the West" still resembled closely to whatever was "East". The agriculture was more or less the same, there are basically the same resources to mine for, similar fish and animals. It was basically about doing the same thing as before, elsewhere. Mars and the Moon... not the same. It would require a very large, global effort. It is an entirely different experience. It requires building an entire closed ecosystem. On Earth, it already exists.

Finally, apart from the purpose of proving we can do it, and doing it because we can, I don't see any purpose of colonization. Even if we found some resource not available on Earth, it would still have to be useful enough to warrant massive freight costs.

If there is any off world site that will be inhabited first it will be the Moon. 1. The Moon is close enough to be supported from Earth. 2. The Moon has practical uses. Possibly as a source of Helium 3 and certainly as the place to build the best telescopes ever. No atmosphere, great seeing and enough gravity to make it possible for humans to live in a healthy fashion. And it takes only three days to get there! With a trip to Mars count on 18 months with the current burn and coast technology. An 18 month trip will leave the crew debilitated and weak. Mars is a bad choice. The Moon is the place to exploit first until we finally get decent propulsion technology.

ruveyn