How long will the human race survive and why?

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Mars is approximately 300 million miles away and will take around 9 months to get there. That is an awfully long time for nothing to go wrong. It's also an awfully long time to be cooped up in a small spacecraft. And then there's the journey back. So the first manned flight to Mars will be gone for around a year and a half, encountering untold hazards and with expectations that the crew will stay fit and healthy both physically and mentally.

Neptune is almost 3 billion miles away, a round trip of maybe 20 years.

With no easily habitable planet in our solar system, we then move on to the next star which is Proxima Centauri which is over 4 light years away. That's a round trip of 300,000 years. And chances are that there will be no habitable planets there either.

Which is why I believe that other than a base on the Moon, and a larger, more permanent space station, we will never even try to travel to another solar system, let alone galaxy. The distances are just too great, the risks are far too great and no-one is going to be able to finance such a venture.
I honestly can't see terraforming being a viable option, and again it would be too risky and too expensive for anyone to be able to try even if they could.

At best we may see habitable buildings on Mars, with people living in them much the same way as they might at the North or South Pole. But is that really living?

Luckily for us there is the perfect place to live; one with fresh water, plenty of food, a breathable atmosphere and all the properties needed for humans to live happy, healthy lives. But we have to start to appreciate what we've got, appreciate just how lucky we really are and take responsibility as its custodians. We must ensure that those same conditions we enjoy are still there for our descendants to enjoy in two thousand, five thousand or twenty thousand years time. Because once it's gone it's gone forever.
 
paranoid marvin said:
Mars is approximately 300 million miles away and will take around 9 months to get there. That is an awfully long time for nothing to go wrong. It's also an awfully long time to be cooped up in a small spacecraft. And then there's the journey back. So the first manned flight to Mars will be gone for around a year and a half, encountering untold hazards and with expectations that the crew will stay fit and healthy both physically and mentally.

Neptune is almost 3 billion miles away, a round trip of maybe 20 years.

With no easily habitable planet in our solar system, we then move on to the next star which is Proxima Centauri which is over 4 light years away. That's a round trip of 300,000 years. And chances are that there will be no habitable planets there either.

Which is why I believe that other than a base on the Moon, and a larger, more permanent space station, we will never even try to travel to another solar system, let alone galaxy. The distances are just too great, the risks are far too great and no-one is going to be able to finance such a venture.
I honestly can't see terraforming being a viable option, and again it would be too risky and too expensive for anyone to be able to try even if they could.

At best we may see habitable buildings on Mars, with people living in them much the same way as they might at the North or South Pole. But is that really living?

Luckily for us there is the perfect place to live; one with fresh water, plenty of food, a breathable atmosphere and all the properties needed for humans to live happy, healthy lives. But we have to start to appreciate what we've got, appreciate just how lucky we really are and take responsibility as its custodians. We must ensure that those same conditions we enjoy are still there for our descendants to enjoy in two thousand, five thousand or twenty thousand years time. Because once it's gone it's gone forever.
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That is a good summary of Buckminster Fuller's classic "Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth."

Internet archive copy_
archive.org

Operating Manual For Spaceship Earth - Buckminster Fuller - (1969) : Lost Library of the Atypical and Unobtainable : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive

Operating Manual For Spaceship EarthBuckminster Fuller1969
archive.org
 
paranoid marvin said:
Mars is approximately 300 million miles away and will take around 9 months to get there. That is an awfully long time for nothing to go wrong. It's also an awfully long time to be cooped up in a small spacecraft. And then there's the journey back. So the first manned flight to Mars will be gone for around a year and a half, encountering untold hazards and with expectations that the crew will stay fit and healthy both physically and mentally.
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If the crew of a nuclear submarine can spend 6 months inside, I don't see why specially selected astronauts couldn't spend 9.

And spacecraft don't have to be cramped. Add an inflated section.
 
Swank said:
If the crew of a nuclear submarine can spend 6 months inside, I don't see why specially selected astronauts couldn't spend 9.

And spacecraft don't have to be cramped. Add an inflated section.
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Yes it's possible, but will the first manned spacecraft that sets off for Mars have the same living conditions as found on a nuclear sub? And how will they be after almost 2 years in space? It's possible, it's quite probably going to be necessary. The problem is that the larger, the more complex you make the spacecraft, the more likely it is that something could fail. And if that happens weeks/months into the voyage, then it's likely to prove fatal.


Which is why I think that a manned flight to Mars is a long, long way off.
 
Rodders said:
Space has to be profitable before we can start to exploit it.

Personally, i think we're on the cusp of something awful.
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Agreed. The way forward is going to be through corporations rather than countries. However the more there is of something, the less will be its value. Imagine the financial impact there would be globally if it was found that large amounts of precious metals metals such as gold and silver could be easily be obtained from space?
 
paranoid marvin said:
Yes it's possible, but will the first manned spacecraft that sets off for Mars have the same living conditions as found on a nuclear sub? And how will they be after almost 2 years in space? It's possible, it's quite probably going to be necessary. The problem is that the larger, the more complex you make the spacecraft, the more likely it is that something could fail. And if that happens weeks/months into the voyage, then it's likely to prove fatal.


Which is why I think that a manned flight to Mars is a long, long way off.
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Size and complexity don't have to go together. Ships mid voyage don't need to be strong or even rigid. Add space and privacy and there will be fewer strains on the crew, plus more room for leafy plants.
 
Common sense skeptic does a good analysis of the problems of sending even a few astronauts to Mars, never mind colonising it. One problem is shielding: a minimum of 3 feet of water or equivalent is necessary to protect astronauts from Cosmic radiation (so they don't come back to Earth in body bags). That would equate to about 500 extra tons on Musk's starship which puts it immediately out the running.

Another problem is artificial gravity: you have to have it for a 2-year trip. Or reach Mars after 6 months' weightlessness and see that first step turn into an embarrassing collapse as the astronaut will be too weak to stand.
 
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We do have a problem of digression here at Chrons don't we.

That we can go into space at all is a miracle. But consider this. Since November 2, 2000 our species has continually lived both on Earth and in space.

First Crew to Reside on Station
November 2, 2000​

NASA Astronaut Bill Shepherd and cosmonauts Yuri Gidzenko and Sergei Krikalev become the first crew to reside onboard the station. Expedition 1 spent four months onboard completing tasks necessary to bring the ISS "to life" and began what is now more than 20 years of continuous human presence in space.

Will a moon or Mars base be another 50 years? probably. But the question is:

Does our species make it for another 50 years? 500? 5,000? 5 billion?
What will our species look like in 5 billion years?
doctor-who-dr-who.gif
 
Cthulhu.Science said:
We do have a problem of digression here at Chrons don't we.

That we can go into space at all is a miracle. But consider this. Since November 2, 2000 our species has continually lived both on Earth and in space.

First Crew to Reside on Station​

November 2, 2000​

NASA Astronaut Bill Shepherd and cosmonauts Yuri Gidzenko and Sergei Krikalev become the first crew to reside onboard the station. Expedition 1 spent four months onboard completing tasks necessary to bring the ISS "to life" and began what is now more than 20 years of continuous human presence in space.

Will a moon or Mars base be another 50 years? probably. But the question is:

Does our species make it for another 50 years? 500? 5,000? 5 billion?
What will our species look like in 5 billion years?
Click to expand...
Not really a digression since we're exploring the option of making mankind a multi-planet species as a way of avoiding the eventual demise of life on Earth.

Keeping an average of 6 astronauts alive in LEO is, as you say, a miracle. It's also a huge expense. The ISS cost $150 billion to build. It costs $3 billion per year to maintain (that's NASA's figures). The crew are protected from solar flares and Cosmic radiation by Earth's magnetic field; if the ISS was moved, say, to a lunar orbit, the crews would soon contract cancer and die.

Keeping people alive in LEO is something we've done since 1960, and always at great expense. We simply cannot afford to do more. That's the brick wall for manned spaceflight (bar the odd brief foray further afield). A moonbase for example would have to be dug underground to create shielding for the crew - you can't just plonk a prefab habitat on the surface. Then there's the huge problem of regolith that destroys human lungs over a not-so-long period of time (the astronauts on the Moon all acquired breathing problems during their stay). And what do you do on the Moon? Where's the payback? First line of defence against aliens?
 
Justin Swanton said:
Then there's the huge problem of regolith that destroys human lungs over a not-so-long period of time (the astronauts on the Moon all acquired breathing problems during their stay).
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Really? I’d be interested to know your source for that, seeing as the astronauts were in a totally sealed environment at all times. If the lunar module and their suits were enough to keep the breathable gases in, how would any dust get to their lungs?
 
Pyan said:
Really? I’d be interested to know your source for that, seeing as the astronauts were in a totally sealed environment at all times. If the lunar module and their suits were enough to keep the breathable gases in, how would any dust get to their lungs?
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They took their helmets off whilst in the LM - you can see photos of dust everywhere - see here. If they'd stayed a few weeks....
 
Ah, I see - but then it goes on to say:

"A common sense, layered, engineering design defense can solve any apparent problem with
dust during long-term human activity and habitation in the lunar environment."
Jack Schmitt, Ames Research Center

So it would seem that they have solutions for the problem.
 
Justin Swanton said:
Not really a digression since we're exploring the option of making mankind a multi-planet species as a way of avoiding the eventual demise of life on Earth.

Keeping an average of 6 astronauts alive in LEO is, as you say, a miracle. It's also a huge expense. The ISS cost $150 billion to build. It costs $3 billion per year to maintain (that's NASA's figures). The crew are protected from solar flares and Cosmic radiation by Earth's magnetic field; if the ISS was moved, say, to a lunar orbit, the crews would soon contract cancer and die.

Keeping people alive in LEO is something we've done since 1960, and always at great expense. We simply cannot afford to do more. That's the brick wall for manned spaceflight (bar the odd brief foray further afield). A moonbase for example would have to be dug underground to create shielding for the crew - you can't just plonk a prefab habitat on the surface. Then there's the huge problem of regolith that destroys human lungs over a not-so-long period of time (the astronauts on the Moon all acquired breathing problems during their stay). And what do you do on the Moon? Where's the payback? First line of defence against aliens?
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The Moon does has Helium 3 . That might be one reason to set up a colony. Perhaps The Regolith issue m minimized with breathing filters of some kind? And might it even possible minimizes he o presence of Regolith dust within the Lunar Habitat in other ways?
 
BAYLOR said:
The Moon does has Helium 3 . That might be one reason to set up a colony. Perhaps The Regolith issue m minimized with breathing filters of some kind? And might it even possible minimizes he o presence of Regolith dust within the Lunar Habitat in other ways?
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We've no use for Helium 3 at present since we don't have industrial nuclear fusion. Regolith is the very devil. It's extremely fine so gets through most seals and it sticks to clothing and equipment. If you spend time on the Moon's surface I don't know how you could prevent bringing it into a lunar habitat - you'd have to discard your suit in the airlock and take a shower and somehow prevent any dust in the airlock from getting into the main quarters. Good luck with that.
 
Justin Swanton said:
And what do you do on the Moon? Where's the payback?
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What good is a baby? The list of useful things we can get from the Moon is huge...

Lunar resources

Why on Earth Should We Be Mining the Moon?

Here’s how we could mine the moon for rocket fuel

NASA is set to return to the moon. Here are 4 reasons to go back

Incidently, if you type "Why should we go back to the moon?" into Google, you get about 1,040,000,000 results....

And back to the dust problem - if we can't solve that, we might as well give up now, and wait for the asteroid...
 
Pyan said:
What good is a baby? The list of useful things we can get from the Moon is huge...

Lunar resources

Why on Earth Should We Be Mining the Moon?

Here’s how we could mine the moon for rocket fuel

NASA is set to return to the moon. Here are 4 reasons to go back

Incidently, if you type "Why should we go back to the moon?" into Google, you get about 1,040,000,000 results....

And back to the dust problem - if we can't solve that, we might as well give up now, and wait for the asteroid...
Click to expand...
OK, I read the articles. Bottom line: nothing on the Moon could be mined more cheaply than simply mining it on Earth. Not even titanium despite being in concentrations 10 times greater than on Earth. Once you factor in the enormous cost of getting mining machinery and humans to the lunar surface, maintaining them there and getting the mined products safely back to Earth, you have thrown profit out the window. Nobody will do it as a business. Money is a cruel destroyer of dreams....
 
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