> We need near Earth asteroid mining to understand the complexities of resource extraction in space, we need lunar colonies to study the day to day realities/psychology/etc of space colonization
We already know about the realities of space colonization: it’s not possible. People in space for a month already have permanent health defects. If you are up there you have to constantly be training your body to not disintegrate. Unlike other places where there are living beings, there is nothing in space for a reason!!
People don’t want to accept that space science fiction is as real as Middle Earth or Hogwarts, but there is already an abundance of evidence that the human body is not capable of existing for years on end in space.
People said just over 100 years ago that we'd never be able to fly, yet here we are. We're welll aware of the issues but there are solutions. I mean, we happen to exist in space, so it's not impossible, is it.
I'm not so sure - I have this slab of crystal I can use to talk talk to people on the other side of the Earth, see things from above and make things do my bidding without touching them. And apparently it can transfer ideas in text form to your head.
Also looks like I can fly if I book the right tickets.
They could be though, at current tech level. It's the infrastructure that doesn't support it. Smartphones are as close as we got, but they reveal couple unfortunate things about the real world, such as:
- In a competitive market economy, everything ends up sucking as much as it can get away with;
- Magic wands would offer individuals more autonomy than the market, and possibly civilization, can sustain without self-destructing.
> wizards don't exist
Within constraints of the above, sure they do.
> Magic still doesn't exist.
_joel already provided the obligatory quote, but to expand on it, most of the magic in fantasy literature could be made possible with current technology, but would require supporting infrastructure to avoid breaking rules of thermodynamics. If you want to go less conspicuous, we'll have to wait for molecular nanotech ;).
> We already know about the realities of space colonization: it’s not possible.
Not with that attitude. ISS would like to differ, anyway.
> People in space for a month already have permanent health defects. If you are up there you have to constantly be training your body to not disintegrate.
Yes. But that's not because space is evil or haunted or a domain gods reserve themselves. It's because of weightlessness. We know how to solve this problem - it's precisely the kind of things GP is talking about: an engineering challenge we know how to solve on paper, but need to actually do it, to a) learn all the little peculiarities that always come with something new, b) actually have this working on some piece of space infrastructure.
> Unlike other places where there are living beings, there is nothing in space for a reason!!
There's lots of stuff in space. Within the distances past manned missions already covered, there's way more of everything than on Earth itself - except life. That one is on us to get there, you can view this as a natural process of life evolving to settle other niches :). And while space itself by volume is mostly empty, the reason you're talking about is just gravity.
> People don’t want to accept that space science fiction is as real as Middle Earth or Hogwarts
On the contrary, people treat these as equivalent and considering them just fantasy entertainment, instead of realizing that most aspects of sci-fi are somewhere between artist's concept (soft end of sci-fi) to engineering blueprints (hard end of sci-fi, which often literally describes real engineering blueprints in prose!).
People used to take inspiration from softish sci-fi; for all my love of Star Trek, it's as soft a sci-fi as it gets, and it managed to drive a couple generations of people to STEM, and predict, inspire and/or pre-market plenty of new technologies. Would iPhone and iPad become so popular so quickly if not for a large part of US population, and Western culture itself, having been familiar with those concepts for two decades already, thanks to Star Trek: TNG? You got a whole generation there, growing to await stationary and portable touchscreens.
Point being, people used to look up to sci-fi ideas, and stuff happened. Now they don't, stuff doesn't happen, and even sci-fi gets sadder and more boring year by year. It's like the whole culture advanced from energetic young adult stage into a depressed, bored middle-aged suburbanite stage.
(Also, a lot of Middle Earth / Harry Potter stuff is doable too, you just need a sprinkle of molecular nanotechnology and a post-scarcity economy where people can afford spending an order of magnitude more effort on showing off than on utility aspects.)
> but there is already an abundance of evidence that the human body is not capable of existing for years on end in space.
There's an abundance of evidence that human body is not capable of existing for years anywhere but on specific terrain in a small latitude band on the planet. Everywhere else, we exist thanks to technology. That's literally the story of humanity: inhabiting the previously inhospitable areas by building tools we need to survive. Space is no different.
Hate to break it to you, but ISS is not technically in space. There is still some athmosphere, a ton of gravity (comparing to "actual space"), and plenty of protection from the earth's magnetic shield.
Its actually quite the equivalent of "lets try this in antartica first".
> Hate to break it to you, but ISS is not technically in space. There is still some athmosphere
There's still some atmosphere quite high away from Earth, the transition from "not space" to "space" is asymptotic.
> a ton of gravity (comparing to "actual space")
It doesn't matter because ISS is in orbit. Weightlessness is weightlessness, whether you're free-falling in circles, straight at something, or so far away from anything it's hard to calculate who's pulling on you the most.
> plenty of protection from the earth's magnetic shield
Fair enough.
But I reserve my right to hold ISS as being in space, to counterbalance the parent's claim: "We already know about the realities of space colonization: it’s not possible.".
>There's still some atmosphere quite high away from Earth, the transition from "not space" to "space" is asymptotic.
Not saying otherwise; however, 400km above surface and eg. Stationary orbit are quite different things.
>It doesn't matter because ISS is in orbit. Weightlessness is weightlessness, whether you're free-falling in circles, straight at something, or so far away from anything it's hard to calculate who's pulling on you the most.
Actually, we don't know that. From a perception perspective, you are right;From a biological perspective, we actually don't know if there is any biological process that may be affected by the free-falling effect, specifically.
>"We already know about the realities of space colonization: it’s not possible."
The op's assertion seems to be right - most of what we know to date seems to confirm it. Maybe "not possible" is a strong statement, but certainly not feasible, and that is not going to change anytime soon.
You need a big centrifuge where you can live or at least sleep and do physical exercises. It should eliminate the health problems caused by low gravity.
We already know about the realities of space colonization: it’s not possible. People in space for a month already have permanent health defects. If you are up there you have to constantly be training your body to not disintegrate. Unlike other places where there are living beings, there is nothing in space for a reason!!
People don’t want to accept that space science fiction is as real as Middle Earth or Hogwarts, but there is already an abundance of evidence that the human body is not capable of existing for years on end in space.