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There's a great sci-fy novel called Heart of the Comet where we've colonized Halley's Comet in order to move it's orbit and mine it. The doctor keeps releasing "challenge viruses" to keep everyone's immune systems healthy.
LOL, people keep ending up with colds and bitching, but they know it's a necessary evil. Never seen this explored before or since this article.
Can't be healthy if you're not sick 🤔
Microbial diversity in relation to space travel seems like such a huge issue to think about but no one talks about it that much it seems. I've been thinking recently that the most dangerous thing about any aliens making first contact by just landing in a field somewhere would be the pathogens we would exchange immediately. It's the pivotal moment in War of the Worlds, for instance, and I can't see any way to avoid it. I did suddenly realise recently, talking about that movie, that although everyone was completely on board with the aliens dying from our bugs, no one questioned why their bugs didn't kill us too?
My understanding of the lore is that Martians got so good at fighting pathogens, they eradicated all of them, which lead to their immune systems gradually weakening over generations.
Oh yeah! I think I remember that now. So that explains why we can't catch stuff from them cos they haven't got anything to pass on.
To be honest: I don't think that's much of a problem (unless...). The pathogens on earth are all adapted to attack (if you want to use this verb on a cellular level) us and others on earth. They would most likely not pose a threat to any other lifeforms that have evolved on other planets, unless our way of evolution is the only one which is able to produce life. And that is a big unless, because apart from the panspermia theory (life came to us with a meteor) there is no reason to assume that life has to work the same way it does for us.
Time travel interactions however, those could be a problem
The main issue to conquer once we are able to go back, is how to go back without dieing or killing off a significant fraction of our ancestors, creating temporal paradox.
It's the pivotal moment in War of the Worlds, for instance, and I can't see any way to avoid it.
I can think of a way to avoid it. And it's obviously a better first contact scenario when you think about it. It's simple, when you arrive at a planet for first contact, don't make it on the planet, make it at the largest space station found in orbit.
You can literally make contact in space suits, in space. If initial contact goes well and their required atmospheres (and necessary atmospheric pressure) are compatible, you can make further contact in the station, limiting the spread of any possible contamination.
Additional benefit: first contact will be made with scientists and engineers, not with politicians or nut jobs.
I had a dream last night that aliens arrived in huge ships and just started blasting us from on high like they were just disinfecting the planet. It was quite vivid and reminded me that this is probably the most likely scenario lol
Man, my house must be extremely ideal then.
Maybe but please don't forget your dishes and laundry!
Turns out Earth 2 was right
Unpopular opinion, I know, but humans simply are not built for space. Trying to force this square peg into a round hole is such a tremendous waste of resources at this point.
I wish we could divert all of human space flight budget to automating probes. We’d be mining the asteroid belt by now. Once we have space-based automated manufacturing, then it will be the time to bring in the humans.
Regardless, we would need some understanding of the subtle and complex effects of leaving the planet before we could mitigate issues that would arise.
Absolutely. I just think we’re putting the cart before the horse, and human space flight should come later.
I mean we send probes too.
Totally. And we should ramp up the funding of those teams to send more, even to the detriment of human space flight programs.
Sending probes makes you good at sending probes, it'll never make you good at sending humans. Further, it is because things are untested that we send humans. Because we can think and adapt. We're able to do a lot more than even controlled rovers can do. There is no real training data for a spacefaring AI and genAI does not exist. Humans however, can figure out new situations.
Yes, there are difficulties in human space travel but they aren't difficulties that an automaton is going to be able to indicate to us. What probe would let us know about human health in space? What probe can share any real perspective about what it's like to see a sunrise not on earth.
Making space purely robotic is depressing.
Yeah. It’s not a very romantic truth. But we’re dealing with finite budgets, and we need to set aside some romanticism for practicality.
I'm not getting the practicality of sending probes if the eventual goal is to send humans. I don't get removing the romanticism if you want people to work towards it. I don't get the point about giving space to commercial consumerism without giving a chance to everything else.
Because we’re now at a technological level where we can begin the push for space-based manufacturing, which is the key to unlocking the solar system for our species. Our biggest limitation right now is we have to launch every single bolt up out of the gravity well.
If we can dismantle the military industrial complex, and reappropriate the budget for the space program, there’s no need to choose. But if we’re going to continue to work with these limited budgets, I think it’s more beneficial to put human space flight on hold for this.
Space manufacturing is not a feasible thing anytime soon. It would require input, which means either sending raw materials which is wasteful or being able to like grab asteroids out of orbit which is not a stage we're at.
We absolutely need to be grabbing asteroids. We’re not there yet because we’re not devoting enough resources to it.
Isn’t that mostly what has been happening? We send humans to do things humans need, and send robots when it’s impractical for humans.
I would argue it’s almost always impractical to send humans.
Even on the ISS? They do real science than can’t be done on earth, and we didn’t have technology to do that science with robots. Maybe we do now, but it’s probably more worthwhile to develop those robots for deeper space activities rather than a dying space station orbiting earth.
I think we do have it now. It’s time to shift.
wish we could divert all of human space flight budget to automating probes.
If we spent half as much resources on the space industry as we did on war and conflict, we'd have colonized the entire system by now. Space is such a tiny fraction of the things the world spends money on. It's pathetic. It's not this massive drain on resources you think it is. The US military wastes an entire Apollo program's worth of money in probably a month.
Space exploration has always been at mercy of politicians, especially manned spaceflight. It's only recently we've got a long-term space station used for real research, and it's about to be decommissioned because there is no political clout to be gained from sending humans to low Earth orbit anymore. Unlike planting a flag on Moon or Mars for which politicians are willing to spend trillions (but which has dubious scientific value).
Automatic probes are the only real future for space exploration because they are much cheaper than manned space programs (and thus easier to fund) and you can send them farther.
I completely agree. I’m referring to the existing funding mechanism, where decisions have to be made on which programs get a slice of a very small pie. Human space flight operations are an inefficient use of limited funds at this stage.
Especially with regards to Mars. I think it’s a massive mistake to be pushing for Mars colonization at all, until we can manufacture most of what’s needed in space or on Mars, and not have to send every single bolt up the gravity well.
Have you read A City on Mars yet? I'd recommend it!
People are very fervent about space travel as humanity's 'destiny' or last hope, which i agreed with until the book convinced me otherwise. You're correct, we are basically infants coming out of the cradle and expecting to run (space) when we should be learning to walk (Earth).
I haven’t, but I’ll put it on my wishlist. Thanks!
Yeah, I knew I was gonna get downvoted for it. I get it. I am also enamored with human space flight, and it’s why I’m such a massive sci-fi fan. It’s such a romantic notion. I feel no joy in accepting that humanity isn’t meant for the stars.
But Neanderthals weren’t meant to colonize the earth. Sometimes the species needs to leap forward to meet new challenges.
[H]umans simply are not built for space.
Well ... duh. In order for humans to be "in space," we have to send them inside little bubbles of "earth."
A good deal of the point of sending people to space is discovering how people respond to being in space, figuring out which stresses are acceptable and which must be compensated for.
I wish we could divert all of human space flight budget to automating probes. ... Once we have space-based automated manufacturing, then it will be the time to bring in the humans.
And if we did that, we would still have to do the things we're doing right now to figure out how to maintain human beings in spacecraft for long periods of time. There's nothing wrong with doing both at once.
The fact also remains that it is much easier to operate a manned spacecraft than it is to operate an autonomous/remote one, at the scales of complexity that manned craft and their experiments employ.
There’s nothing wrong with doing both at once.
I disagree, so long as space programs remain underfunded. Give them access to the defense budget? Then yeah, go to town and create even more diverse efforts.
I do want to say that you're totally right about space based manufacturing key to any real expansion into space. I mean automated would be nice, but it's not totally necessary. Getting manufacturing to work in space at all is going to take some serious experimentation, so it can't really start 100% automated. But on the other hand, I do expect robotic drones to play a major role, even in the beginning.
It's a scary word to use, but humanity does need some form of eugenics for space travel.
No, not the racial kind.
We need to breed resistance to radiation and adaption to low oxygen or low gravity environments.
We need to be able to be stuck in cramped quarters around other people for years without eventually killing each other.
We need to be able to be cryogenically frozen for long periods of time and then reanimated.
None of this is possible without fundamentally editing the genes of humans. We essentially need to evolve into a new species.
I still think that’s trying to fit a square peg in a round hole. For biological humans to be able to explore the solar system, we need to advance in space-based manufacturing and AI control of those systems. Then there’s no more need for cramped spaces, for one. The AI can capture the appropriate asteroids, start towing them towards earth, and have a massive space shuttle ready to take on passengers when it arrives. Same for planetary accommodations, where the AI can set up everything before we arrive.
Having to launch every single piece of material from out of the gravity well of earth is just not scalable or realistic.
For us to be more than just tourists in our solar system, and especially before we get to other stars, I really think we need to sort out how to digitize human minds.
Or we could just like shield radiation, and provide oxygen/gravity.
Relying on evolution for this sounds like it'd take a couple millennium longer than just like a spinning slab of concrete with a rebreather inside.
We need to breed resistance to radiation
Just put a CRC in DNA, ezpz
humans simply are not built for space.
Humans aren't built for 0g, and I expect we will never live whole lives like that. But living in space does not require living in 0g.
I'm quite certain that if humans manage to survive and continue to thrive for another 200 years, we will absolutely be living in space. And at that point it will be inevitable that the number of humans living in space will eventually come to dwarf the number living on planets.
Gravity isn’t the only issue. Radiation and cosmic rays are a much bigger problem than that. Psychological issues from being in cramped ships for so long. Food production. All sorts of other crap, too.
Radiation isn't that big a deal. If you have a large enough structure for a colony, or even large enough for 50 people, then you have plenty of mass for radiation shielding. At that scale it's a non-issue.
Psychological issues from being in cramped ships for so long.
Well, only at first... Families don't want to live in cramped ships, so they won't. They'll live in artificial habitats with grass and open spaces. Eventually they'll be large enough to have rivers and mountains.
But even without all that, just ask anyone who's served on a submarine if it's possible to survive in cramped quarters. It's doable.
We're not mining the asteroid belt because the cost of getting stuff in and out of space isn't worth it. I don't think that's going to change for a long time. But I actually agree that there's a lot of signs that space and low grav might just be bad for humans long term, period.
By mining the asteroid belt, we’d never need to put anything in space again (except humans and their food). No more limitations on ship sizes based on what we can afford to launch.
One benefit we couldn't get from robots is the disease and medical knowledge we've gained from human space travel
https://www.asc-csa.gc.ca/eng/about/everyday-benefits-of-space-exploration/improving-health-care.asp
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9833174/
https://www.nasa.gov/missions/station/space-station-leads-to-breakthroughs-in-human-health-on-earth/
Some of these could have been done without space travel for sure, but it's hard to predict what we'll learn before we do things
Totally. I think there’s plenty to learn from human space flight. I just think we need to put it lower on the priority list for the moment, unless we can get it better funded.
