The Future
GifMike: To guarantee the survival of the human race…anyone?
Locke: First thing is to get off this planet. Anything can happen and all our eggs are in one basket. We need space stations capable of supporting human life indefinately and we need to send out colonies.
Demosthenes: Agreed for once. We need to spread our seed as far and wide as possible to avoid extinction by cosmic cataclysmic events. Suns burn out, planets die. This planet is already overcrowded and dying and it’s resources are limited. Human beings have become their own seperate eco-system and food chain. This rock will not be able to sustain us for long.
GifMike: Lots of questions need answers first. What do you mean by ‘our own eco-system’?
Demosthenes: I mean that we are no longer in the natural food chain. Our only real preditors are us and disiese. We’re growing completely independant of this planets’ circle of life.
Locke: I’m not sure I agree with that. We are seperate but we still rely on it. Our existance and the way we live will eventually destroy it, but we are going to need to build synthetic self sustaining eco-dome systems, if you will, if we’re going to survive independanly of the planet.
GifMike: Then that’s the first step.; And not an easy one. There’s still a whole lot we don’t understand about the intracacies of our environment and the whole circle of life thing. Right now if a certain species of animal or bacteria die out there always seems to be natural redundancies to help the circle recover. If we go out into space, beyond solving the problems associated with the lack of gravity, If we introduce the wrong strain of lice or bird or fish, a false eco-system could break down in a day.
Locke: If we populate other planets we’ll still have some gravity.
GifMike: True but we’ll have to build a viable space station or possibly a moon base to test these systems in low or no gravity centuries before we could get a colony to another planet.
Demosthenes: We may need to overcome the gravity obsticle first. Our own bodies deteriorate in null gravity at a frightening rate.
GifMike: That’s only if you return to Earth. Theoretically without the wear and tear of gravities’ constant pull we would live much longer healthier lives. We’re going to need volunteers to live out their entire lives in space in null gravity. They’ll have to procreate also so we can test the effects on birth conditions. Otherwise the space station will have to be huge to attempt to create some form of false gravity and a station that big would have to be far enough from the planet so as to not be affected by our planets or the moons gravity. That’s going to be much much more expensive.
Locke: With a station that big though and enough people and starting resources we could begin mining hydrogen directly from asteroids and/or the moon to mitagate the costs.
Demosthenes: We will eventually do that no matter what and we won’t need a particularly large station to do it. As fossel fuels run out hydrogen will start being mined en masse from the moon for planetside everyday use. Mining platforms like those in the ocean right now will be the first template for our future space stations on the moon. Then pre fabbed modules will start to be linked together to support larger and larger support staffs.
GifMike: Yes, mining should be the very first goal. If there’s money in it people and resources will come. A full self sustaining eco-system won’t be immediately required. There’s no guarantee that there’s signifigant water and/or hydrogen stores on the moon though.
Locke: So the actual first step is mining hydrogen and/or finding some way to pull profit from space. Our space program is dying because, albeit scientifcally interesting, it can’t pull it’s own weight. Is that the only way to make profit from space?
GifMike: Good question…
to be continued…