How would you colonise space?

[Tormod]

International agreement at this time is that no Nation may lay claim to the Moon. Some guy is selling land there though & legally can because he is not a Nation. What no one is discussing is emergence; things arise which aren't predictable by intiial conditions. Life is what happens while we're making plans. :hihi:

Actually, it stretches further than that.

 

Declaration of Legal Principles Governing the Activities of States in the Exploration and Use of Outer Space

http://www.oosa.unvienna.org/SpaceLaw/lpostxt.htm

 

United Nations Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space - resolution 1472

http://www.oosa.unvienna.org/SpaceLaw/gares/html/gares_14_1472.html

 

Off to bed for me...till later!

[Turtle]

The Moon may never manifest sufficient resources to support colonization; especially on any scale above a few dozens. The question then is Earth capable to supply two celestial bodies? Economically, ecologically, & logically? It's supply & demand & no one has mastered the ability to predict what people will demand in the future. :hihi:

[Stargazer]

Unless we discover hostile life forms or even any life forms who don't want to turn over their property or be our slaves, there will probably be too many other obstacles to overcome before we start fighting with each other over territory. It's quite roomy out there. I should think colonizing the solar system, galaxy, universe, would be a good way for people to become united. We may be the seeds.

Yes there's plenty of space for us all out there, from Mercury to the moons of the outer planets, but also of course the possibility to place space colonies freefloating in space. Hopefully there wont be any conflicts regarding territories. United... in some ways I suppose.

[Stargazer]

It's the fighting in the ship, not outside it, that is the problem. Let's not forget the possibility of new technology. Maybe we'll just stay on Earth & drive it to a new star when Old Sol dies? We are already space travelers. :hihi:

Are you talking about the psychological factors here?

[Stargazer]

I don't see why it would be much different than when we civilized the old west.

 

Perhaps the government will grant territorial rights to people who want to go in order that the Moon could be exploited for whatever natural resources that there may be there. That makes perfect sense to me, because greed will be the motivation.

 

One problem though--what government is gonna be intitled to grant access to what part of the moon? Does the moon belong to the USA? Or does it belong to the world. And if it belongs to the latter, what kind of concessions will any mining operation have to make to, let us say, Afghanistan, or Morrocco, or maybe the African nations?

Sadly it's possible that the Moon belongs wo whoever can control other people's access to it. So one way or another, someone will go there and control their own territories etc. And I can't see how an Earth-bound government can control the outer space, since their territories and therefor their jurisdiction don't go that far. Unless they take control over it and decide to take it.

[syntax]

Sadly it's possible that the Moon belongs wo whoever can control other people's access to it. So one way or another, someone will go there and control their own territories etc. And I can't see how an Earth-bound government can control the outer space, since their territories and therefor their jurisdiction don't go that far. Unless they take control over it and decide to take it.

 

You are probably correct about that. So, assuming that at some futire date, someone, probably a mining company, will commence operations there, (now here I am assuming that the problems of a self sustaining colony are solved) the question I have is--are there any minerals on the moon worth going after?

 

What is the potential for gold, for example? I don't think there is any oil there of course, :) but why wouldn't the expectation to find precious metals and jems be as good as it is here on Earth, albiet conditions a little harder to work in?

 

Also, since we know that deep mines on Earth are hot, because we are getting closer to the molten core of the Earth, would that same thing occure on the moon? :)

[alxian]

with a ship the size of the moon full of hot blond chicks..

 

and a robot crew. of femmebots

 

i like those odds.

[Stargazer]

You are probably correct about that. So, assuming that at some futire date, someone, probably a mining company, will commence operations there, (now here I am assuming that the problems of a self sustaining colony are solved) the question I have is--are there any minerals on the moon worth going after?

 

What is the potential for gold, for example? I don't think there is any oil there of course, :D but why wouldn't the expectation to find precious metals and jems be as good as it is here on Earth, albiet conditions a little harder to work in?

 

Also, since we know that deep mines on Earth are hot, because we are getting closer to the molten core of the Earth, would that same thing occure on the moon? :)

 

There are various metals to be found on the moon, as well as He-3 and oxygen, which might be useful as well. I doubt there's a lot of gold there though. As for the temperature, I don't think it will be much hotter at the core. I think the moon is pretty inactive geologically (selenologically?)

[masonswanson]

Well first i would get some people to go to the moon with me to build a base and then we would just claim the whole moon as our property we could then use the money from exploiting the richy folk that want to vacation there to pay for a shitload of space ships to send to outer space and colonize everything and every country would be named "mason" you know how in the movies the badguy wants to take over the world just cant cuz there is to many people to kill well why dont they just take there money and start there own ****in world?

[Tormod]

with a ship the size of the moon full of hot blond chicks..

and a robot crew. of femmebots

i like those odds.

 

start there own ****in world?

 

No need for sexist posts and improper language, guys!

[masonswanson]

well there are these bacteria that can live in an oxygenless environment i would take those and start my own food chain with them at the bottom just take a lot of phytoplanton which is what converts most of earth's co2 to oxygen

[masonswanson]

ok i accidentally stopped doin that one back up there^so i guess ill just finish

ok so i would just take a big *** ship full of people and take them as far away from earth as possible and generations of people would only be travelers i mean really far the **** out there almost farther away from civilization as where i live hahaha.........that was a joke dumb dumb hey whoever this is that is reading my rants you should instant message me i have aim and msn my screenname on both is masonswanson my msn is at hotmail.com well if you have anything to say about this or if you just want to bs do it.

[alxian]

i'd like to say my post was not sexist. it was my fantasy.. and an on topic response!

 

furthermore

 

as per my yet unwritten novel, the best way to convey ourselves to the stars is by radio transmission

but this requires that civilizations out there can interpret our signals and care to reply so that we can establish a dialogue

 

otherwise sending capsules of engineered super viruses (or nano bots) on the wake of a laser beam to the stars at light speed like pollen or spores seems cost efficient. once the capsules find land and a solvent they release their contents which begin life primordial.. it'll take a few million years for this process to produce other civilisations depending on the efficiency of the transport vectors (virus-bacteria-nanobots).

[GAHD]

Some how I can't romanticise sending superviruses out into space quite as much as I can hordes of space-faring privateers and pirates in a poorly charted void without mercy.

[alxian]

sign me up for privateer (pirate duty)

 

i imagine spending half a lifetime building a ship and reputation and a camp on a main belt rock for a few years waiting for a big score. a ship full of pure ore (platinum maybe). plunder it and return to mars selling it all off and come back to earth or venus space station or ganymede base to life out my life in the tropics, cloud tops (or digging for fossils on the venusian surface), moon hopping around jupiter till a turn a crispy brown... on the inside from the radiation.. respectively.

 

that or sleep away to proxima. hopefully a planet will await us upon arrival. that is to say one terraformed before hand by the aforementioned super pathogens or nano robots.

 

the nano robots would be assemblers like stargates mechanical pests, but more like the startrek borg in that they will be coded to create life (evolved life) in pools of solvent (lakes or oceans) with available resources, call it noahs ark in a can. they'd have to evaluate on the spot based on preset encoded into them what kind of life would survive best in the given environment and then start replicating both conditions to suit life and the creatures them selves, at first zooplankton and other water born creatures to create feed stocks then the rest of the food chain after, up until the colonists arrive, at which point they can be decommissioned with ECMs from orbit or converted to infrastructure building mode (by forming up into larger beast of burden type mechs to facilitate the building of roads and shelter.

[Timmetie]

Firstly, i believe there is water on the moon, near the poles. And that the plan was to get hydrogen and oxygen from that, and not the other way around.

 

Secondly, sending Nanobots out to colonise worlds, has some huge problems. Movies like Terminator, Virus, Matrix, some mars mission movie which name i dont remember, stargate and star trek teach us that computers will go mad, and that they will kill people : )

And nano technology may be damaging to humans, there is research being done that sais the nano particles do damage when we breath them in.

 

And will the race for space be done commercially, ofcourse, just look at Space Ship one and the X price, those people are racing forward. And they and 10 other teams will have caught up with nasa and even the russians in a decade or less.

 

But why would a tourist wanna go to further then mars? why go to an asteroid? space is space.

 

And ofcourse i like the automated mining things, but i dont believe they'll quickly be able to make a profit. The distances are simply too huge.

 

I'm not sure why we'd want to colonise mars, but if we do, we have to do it full out. Nuke that ice out of the ground, stamp the atmosphere out of the ground with machines (macro machines, not nano) and yes, wait a couple of hundred years.

 

until then, space stations are big enough of a challenge for us, let us experiment around here, every year we wait the colonising of mars will get cheaper, faster and easyer.

[the5thhorseman]

I would need to stop the aging process of humans . I would need a form of travel that can attain the speeds necessary for the trip ...

 

the ship would have to be built space because I imagine it would be pretty dam big,

it would need to be able to sustain people for the hundreds of thousands of years required for the trip outside the solar system to another.

 

either that or some form of interdimentional travel that skips the space and time problem would be nice. :eek: