If it was built, would be go?

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This thread got me thinking:

http://www.wrongplanet.net/postt185801.html

I didn't read the whole thing because I was struck by an interesting thought. What if our solar system had another habitable planet it in. Would we have visited it by now, or planed to?

Do you think the space program would be years ahead by now if that were the case?

It seems probable, unless that planet also developed intelligent life. I suspect there would be interplanetary war between the species over resources on either planet and elsewhere in the system. Or the biology was largely incompatible with us and thus was left alone except for research purposes.

Mars arguably is a habitable planet; one that can be coaxed into life with our technology. When you consider that space programs are quite young, and that we will be visiting and settling Mars within the lifetime of the first astronauts, I would say we are undergoing right now the thread's conceptual situation. We're lucky to have Mars for a number of reasons

Well...no. I don't. If we thought space travel was worth it, we'd simply be already doing it. From what I've heard, we've wanted manned missions to Mars since the 1960s, and we have the technology to pull it off, just to put it simply, we as a society don't care.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budget_of_NASA


Look at the 1960s, and see the budgets, only in the 60s when NASA took a whopping 4% of the nation's budget, did we accomplish the moon landing. Now we're using half a percent of the entire US budget, and not doing anything. We apparently care much more about entitlements like SSI and Medicare, then going on random silly little wars in foreign lands for vague reasons to do cool things like space travel. The problem is, we've so far not really gotten terribly much reward from space travel and exploration, and we won't see any gains or benefits from it in our lifetimes. And, politicians simply don't care about the future beyond their terms they're in office, so even if the case could be made for space travel, it'd be a bit hard to convince people of the gains, since they wouldn't see any gains in their life. And unfortunately, our society is one where people need $200 a month from the government to buy frozen food that'll kill them faster.

Besides Mars also, there's the seeming awesome possibilities of Europa, and the other various moons of Jupiter. But, people don't care. So, no, "if it was built" nobody would care, because if people did care, we'd already be accomplishing it or heading in that direction, but as it stands now, space travel budgets are being axed across the nations.

Fear of nuclear power is the only thing that is holding back the space program. Tax payers object to the space program because it is too expensive but with nuclear power space travel would be cheap.

Sounds like the old comic book notion that there is an undiscovered twin of the Earth in our own Solar System orbiting in the same orbit as us, but its always on the opposite side of the orbit so its always hidden from view behind the Sun. What if they actually discovered such a thing!?


IF there were a twin of Earth in our solar system- not a Europa, not a mars, not a planet that would need thousands of years of terraforming- but a twin of earth with a verdant biosphere (but with no species equivalent to humans to fight us) that a human astronaut could walk around on without a space suit right now- yes that would speed up the space race.

Every nation would want a piece of such a planet.

But we arent racing to colonize Antarctica.
And the best spot on Mars is a thousand times worse than the worst real estate in Antarctica- and its alot harder to get to.

So there is little to draw us into space as things are now.

It's almost like we were stuck on a little island far far away from everything.

Pretty much.
But you never know what forces might either pull, or push, humanity into space in the future.

A future cold war might prompt another space race. Or a new comet headed on a collision course with us might prompt a scramble to put a system of armed sattelites into space to nuke the threat- and that starts a momentum that continues after the threat is dealt with.

the plans for asteroid or comet interception are already drawn up,

many even have thousands of hours of practical testing behind them, no for that project perse but in the form of repurposed technology used elsewhere either in the military or the space industry,
there was a large summit where it was discussed not long ago.

to me the bounties of the asteroid belt and the prospect of having enough raw materials to expand beyond our planet without tearing it apart is what draws the most.

We are now starting to find habitable planets in interstellar space but the environmentalists don't want us to go because we would have to use nuclear power to get there.

What? There is no ecology in space. Wtf do they care? Especially if one doesn't launch the nuclear spacecraft from Earth and instead builds it in orbit

How? Without a magnetic field? The best we could do is build underground habitats there. That does not sound like "coaxing into life". Mars is dead and it will stay dead for want of a magnetic field.

ruveyn

What are the known mineral resources of the other planets?

Mars, moon, and Venus, may have mineral ores but an ore carrying space frieghter has to fight gravity to get back to earth. So Im assuming that the draw of the asteroids is their lack of gravity.

If any solar planet besides earth were found to have fossil fuels it would be a commercial boon but a scientific shocker because it would indicate that either other planets had had life at one time- or our theories about how coal and oil are formed are way off. But desite the assumed lack of fossil fuels in space they do talk about space as a source of energy. in the eighties they were talking about launching solar collecting satellites from orbiting space cities to turn sun light into energy to microwaved back to earth power stations. The lagrange points in the Earth Moon system would have floating cylinder shaped cities and solar satellites and would become the Persian Gulf of the sky.

Dont know what happened to that idea.

With time and mega-engineering projects. I'm fairly certain I have given an adequate explanation of how before. Nobody says its easy or cheap, or happening tomorrow

How about impossible. No magnetic field, no life except deep underground.

ruveyn

We'll see about that

No we won't. Neither of us will live to see it. Mars can only be inhabited by going underground. It will never be terraformed.

ruveyn