Space colinization!

Okay so after reading up on it the director of nasa states that he doesnt think we have the technology to get the materials from different planets, do you think he is right or wrong?

I want to be the very best that no one ever was.

Earth isn't quite depleted yet, and we have no technology to return men and materials from other planets (because putting things into orbit takes huge amounts of fuel which weight a lot; rockets will need to be many times more powerful than Atlas V or Energia to bring a few thousands kilograms of ore back to Earth).

But colonization needs to be started right now.  I think we should produce as much robotic probes and builders as possible and send them around Solar system to test new propulsion systems and possibility of using different building materials to construct planetary bases.

>>3
Define 'depleted'. The amount of matter leaving the planet is insignificant in comparison to the junk raining down on us.
"The Earth gains mass each day, as a result of incoming debris from space. This occurs in the forms of "falling stars", or meteors, on a dark night. The actual amount of added material depends on each study, though it is estimated that 10 to the 8th power kilograms of in-falling matter accumulates every day."
- Samantha Dong -- 2002

Lol, dong.


Space exploration is costly and likely ineffective - much better to focus on not being idiots and using what resources we have to better effect.

there's no aboriginal people in space to fuck with

>>4

You're a fucking idiot.  He clearly meant "depleted" of USEFUL material.  Most meteorites don't contain gold for circuitry, or fossil fuels, or any other useful material besides iron.

>>1

We have the technology to do it, but we don't have the means to do it efficiently.

>>6
You know what does contain gold for circuitry? Circuits do. Just a matter of effectively extracting it from dead hardware.
The concept of 'useful' materials being depleted in itself is idiotic - they aren't going anywhere.
If someone gets around to developing some proper general-purpose material synthesis techniques, then all of that so-called useless material's going to become pretty useful.

>>7
"General-purpose material synthesis techniques" huh? Yeah that's called alchemy.  We tried that in the middle ages and it didn't work so well.

And the fact that recycling can get back used raw materials doesn't change the fact that meteors contain nothing useful. That 10^8kg of material the earth gains everyday doesn't matter.  Even if we do reach some magical point where we can efficiently turn dirt into platinum, I think we've got plenty of that stuff lying around without meteors refilling our supply.

>>8
We tried mechanical flight a while back too, seems to work pretty well these days.

My point about the accumulation of mass by the earth was simply that we are not losing material, we're in fact gaining it gradually. Sourcing more material from off-world is ludicrously wasteful, unless you're planning on constructing Unicron or something.

There is ZERO effective willpower (hence, capability) in the West to colonize space.  O'Neill's dream is as dead as the Empire he grew up in that allowed him to dream in the first place.  The critical point of Western Civ has past, and the center of Human expansion has either moved to China or it has dissipated.

The West no longer wants to expand Human civilization and arrive at a greater Human condition.  The West only wants to re-arrange things in finance games in order to mint a few more millionaires.  The dream is dead.  What we have now is bleating sheep in the West who still think their civilization is progressive and expansive.  Sad.  Really sad.

Colonisation is expensive; sedation wins out any day. Why bother going to the effort of beating the commies/terrorists/hippies when you can just hand the public cheap beer, TV and internet?

Not that I'm promoting the uselessness of the general populace, but it makes sense from a certain point of view.

the only plausable reason that colonization would occur would be to get new resources...if people start saying overpopulation it wouldnt work as by then a war would prob happen and take out a few hundred million...+ not nuff food to match population

As a misanthrope, I sure hope we kill ourselves through nuclear fallout before we figure out a way to colonize other planets. I think the odds are in my favor, too.

maybe if RedCream would stop polishing the working man's knob for a 2 minutes we can get some shit done around here!