The worst Ebola outbreak in history - it's on the move

[broncosteven]

Europa and Titan? It's like negative 300 Fahrenheit there. Sure, there might be some sort of life in the oceans, but we aren't equipped to survive there

Yet...because we haven't tried. Have only sent a handful of robotic craft through the vicinity.

Mars is too cold for humans but it hasn't been crossed off anyone's list.

Despite the temp and lack of sunlight the moons of Jupiter and Saturn host volcanoes and water geyser's. If there is a will there is a way. Methane, Water, Possibly some form of edible life (plant or type of fish), alternate heat sources. We know as much about light at the end of the universe as what we know about the planets and moons in our own back yard.

[broncosteven]

I posted a quote in another thread where he stated we would be extinct within 1000 years if we don't leave the planet/begin colonizing/extracting resources.

And idiot politicians/citizens think there is no point to NASA and the space program.

It should be receiving more funding, not getting it cut.

We as a society value sitting at home and blowing weed over challenging the next generation to do great things and discover the undiscovered countries that lay outside our current grasp.

[ShiftyEyedWaterboy]

We as a society value sitting at home and blowing weed over challenging the next generation to do great things and discover the undiscovered countries that lay outside our current grasp.

Yep

We have to start long-term planning pretty quickly. You can only shuffle it off into "tomorrow" so many times before its too late.

I wonder what has to happen before people start taking the concept seriously? An asteroid wiping out a city? Famine, plague, natural disaster, war, resource depletion?

Not trying to be debby downer here but people don't realize how fragile our existence is. Like balancing on a knife's edge.

[broncosteven]

Yep

We have to start long-term planning pretty quickly. You can only shuffle it off into "tomorrow" so many times before its too late.

I wonder what has to happen before people start taking the concept seriously? An asteroid wiping out a city? Famine, plague, natural disaster, war, resource depletion?

Not trying to be debby downer here but people don't realize how fragile our existence is. Like balancing on a knife's edge.

You would think something like the threat of global warming (it is global cooling here in the Chicago area with temps only in the 70's in late July) would get peoples attention but not even that makes people look up.

[Mogulseeker]

any hard numbers for earth's sustainability are made up garbage at this point. no one knows, because any hard number is an artificial barrier. for one, technological efficiency directly alters our sustainability. for another, population density is grossly uneven, so any hard global numbers are essentially nonsense. and wealth distribution has a huge effect on both the efficiency and quantity of resource consumption. each American consumes and produces a whole lot more than each Indian, and the infrastructures that service and ameliorate the effects of our footprint share essentially nothing in common.

That's kinda the point. We're past the tipping point for "natural" food already. That's why our food is loaded with chemicals and engineered bacteria designed to repel pests.

Medicine is advancing, too, but I remember reading my generation is the first generation in history to have a shorter life expectancy than the prior.

Broncenstein could probably chime in on that one.

[extralife]

That's kinda the point. We're past the tipping point for "natural" food already. That's why our food is loaded with chemicals and engineered bacteria designed to repel pests.

this has more to do with corporate capitalism than with some magical natural limitation

[Kaylore]

It's threads like this that remind me how stupid you guys are.

[SonOfLe-loLang]

Yet...because we haven't tried. Have only sent a handful of robotic craft through the vicinity.

Mars is too cold for humans but it hasn't been crossed off anyone's list.

Despite the temp and lack of sunlight the moons of Jupiter and Saturn host volcanoes and water geyser's. If there is a will there is a way. Methane, Water, Possibly some form of edible life (plant or type of fish), alternate heat sources. We know as much about light at the end of the universe as what we know about the planets and moons in our own back yard.

I get that and I'm all for exploration and innovation, but settling a planet where no human could survive the climate sounds like a fools errand. There's plenty of good reasons to study those moons, but for future habitation??

[ZONA]

Exploring and colonizing moons and other planets in our solar system sounds all good and everything but we're nowhere near where we need to be for that to be sustainable. We need to find means to travel faster and much more energy efficient. Realistically, we need to be traveling at near light speeds, develop artificial gravity, develop artificial magnetic fields large and strong enough to sustain space travel. And that's just the mechanical part of the equation. Who knows what else we need to do for the human body to travel and adapt to long term space. I have no doubts we will have to venture into cloning and tweaking DNA in order to survive and endure space travel of those types of distances.

[ghwk]

Europa and Titan? It's like negative 300 Fahrenheit there. Sure, there might be some sort of life in the oceans, but we aren't equipped to survive there

I have to admit I do kind of like getting up in the morning to go outside and get the paper without having to put on a spacesuit first

[broncosteven]

Exploring and colonizing moons and other planets in our solar system sounds all good and everything but we're nowhere near where we need to be for that to be sustainable. We need to find means to travel faster and much more energy efficient. Realistically, we need to be traveling at near light speeds, develop artificial gravity, develop artificial magnetic fields large and strong enough to sustain space travel. And that's just the mechanical part of the equation. Who knows what else we need to do for the human body to travel and adapt to long term space. I have no doubts we will have to venture into cloning and tweaking DNA in order to survive and endure space travel of those types of distances.

That is the beauty of doing the hops within the solar system. You can get gravity pushes from the Earth/Moon/Jupiter/Saturn/Mars/Ceres/ etc... you can use an Ion drive that ramps up slowly overtime building speed within the solar system that keeps gaining speed as we stock it and test it and habitate it for Neptune to Earth hops and back dropping miners off on one moon and geologist on another. With 2 Ion drive ships we could shorten round trips in no time.

You know the one thing the men who walked on the surface found the most of? GLASS. YOU can build many things with silica as long as you get it hot enough, you mold it into huts, water storage, even fluid storage tanks that stay in zero G environments. Build a glass ship that has water just under the 1st layer, maybe more silica at the next layer (visa versa) to prevent cosmic radiation from hosing up our brains. We could make these pods stack able and do it all on the moon with the resources there. A small oven or even a small 3d Printer and we start building a craft to explore in and save weight for the structure. Launch the ION Drive and the interfaces to the Computers in the "Bridge" and you have your propulsion, run over to Ecladus and fill up the tanks with all that H20 being gathered from the moons as it is shot up into space and then heat treat it to kill off bacteria with a trip around the sun real close. Then gravity assist from the sun to pick up speed back to Earth and then pick up a crew change/engineer changes and go out looking for places to gather some methane to use as combustible engine to get a pod/lander on the moon of the choice and back again. You can use the Methane to blast off the surface by adding some liquid H to it then reconnect to the next ION drive base vehicle. Hopefully there is some Hydrogen found that can be used in a hydrogen full cell which in it's self makes clean drinking water as a by product.

We can shoot a laser or microwave to a colony to heat them up to core temp that is workable and once we have been on the surface of a moon for enough time we can figure out what would make things better and sustainable. Maybe Europa has enough Clay deposits near the surface that buildings can be built which are then fired clay adobe or they just are used as an outer protection to the inner glass (silica) pressurized building where you could work sleeveless in the base that is heated from Methane imported from a nearby (closer than Earth) base on Titan.

Or we could set up a base on IO that uses the heat generated from the forces of Gravity between the moon and Jupiter which comes to the surface as volcanic activity. Who knows pick one.

Europa has an O2 based if tenuous atmosphere we could breathe without suits, maybe more of a compression suit with a nasal O2 tank providing what we need if we were out side the compound which could be build of ice and glass into modular forms that could be moved as needed to fit into a ship for a long journey or to move to better spots on the same moon.

Not sure why with Silica everywhere no Sci Fi Writer has ever used it to build a star ship.

I could go on and on about how we could live work and play on the surfaces of the moons of jupiter and Saturn but most is just a pipe dream and would take a lot of smart people doing a lot of hard maths...stuff I am no good at.

Anywhoo it is well past my bed time.

[Dr. Broncenstein]

Try not to crap the basement you steely-eyed goofball.

[broncosteven]

Exploring and colonizing moons and other planets in our solar system sounds all good and everything but we're nowhere near where we need to be for that to be sustainable. We need to find means to travel faster and much more energy efficient. Realistically, we need to be traveling at near light speeds, develop artificial gravity, develop artificial magnetic fields large and strong enough to sustain space travel. And that's just the mechanical part of the equation. Who knows what else we need to do for the human body to travel and adapt to long term space. I have no doubts we will have to venture into cloning and tweaking DNA in order to survive and endure space travel of those types of distances.

We don't need to solve near light speed travel, just get out there and learn to live in space and we can then figure where to go and how long it will take, even at near light speed it could take generations to get to a new star. Lets learn to live here and get our resources from the places we don't live on, leave home, alone, and corrupt the other moons that do not have any real meaning for us an use them for the resources they are rather than strip mining our mountains.

[Mogulseeker]

Exploring and colonizing moons and other planets in our solar system sounds all good and everything but we're nowhere near where we need to be for that to be sustainable. We need to find means to travel faster and much more energy efficient. Realistically, we need to be traveling at near light speeds, develop artificial gravity, develop artificial magnetic fields large and strong enough to sustain space travel. And that's just the mechanical part of the equation. Who knows what else we need to do for the human body to travel and adapt to long term space. I have no doubts we will have to venture into cloning and tweaking DNA in order to survive and endure space travel of those types of distances.

Dude all we need is some anti-matter and a few dilithium crystals. Duh!

[extralife]

We don't need to solve near light speed travel, just get out there and learn to live in space and we can then figure where to go and how long it will take, even at near light speed it could take generations to get to a new star. Lets learn to live here and get our resources from the places we don't live on, leave home, alone, and corrupt the other moons that do not have any real meaning for us an use them for the resources they are rather than strip mining our mountains.

except strip mining a saturnian moon costs about a zillion times more than strip mining a mountain on earth, which is why what you're talking about will never ever happen