Sculptor wrote: ↑Thu Nov 18, 2021 10:52 am
There is no good reason to send people into space outside earth orbit.
I predict that in the next 400 years the human race shall not have achieved an independant self sustaining colony anywhere outside earth's orbit.
The elephant in the room, that NASA do not tend to mention is just how hostile it is in space. Beyond earth it is simply too cold. Nearer the sun it is too hot. Venus has a massively dense corosive atmosphere and surface temperatures could easily melt lead. Mercury is a wasteland with no atmosphere.
Mars in the only candidate, but the surface temperature in the middle of summer at the equator at noon only just manages to reach room temperature, for a short while. The trip there is always going to be a 2 year journey, since there is the little problem of the sun being in the way for most of the time. You would have to take EVERYTHING with you.
You only have to consider the technology to have something as simply as a toothbrush to know that a colony is never going to be self sufficient. And the energy required to get there is enourmous, costly more than anything you could earn by going there.
Consider this.
If there was a mountain of gold bars on the Moon, it would not be economically viable to collect them.
Space is full of cosmic radiation. It has not air, no pressure. it is empty, it is dark.
By contrast humans have adapted to live in earth. Earth has everything we need to live. It recycles our very breath, our shit. Food just grows on trees, and walks about on the surface where is can be collected and cooked, with fire supplied by the rich oxygen atmosphere.
Earth has a range of temperatures, where humans have managed to live and thrive. It has rich aquatic resources, most immediately fit for human exploitation and drinking water literally FALLS FROM THE SKY.
There is no where known in the entire universe where any of this is available. And even if it were, it would take more than a life time to get there.
We have one earth and we are not looking after it.
We need to address that problem now.