Colonizing Mars

[irizarry]

Suppose colonizing Mars or any other world turns out not to be such a big problem. And suppose some sort of life is found on or in the surface of Mars. How do we treat Mars then? That is should it now be treated as a reserve (a protective park for scientific research only) or say that’s how the exploration/colonization cookie crumbles and develop a Martian economy. It would be interesting to know how people feel. Keep in mind the roles could be reversed, a more advanced civilization could be eyeballing earth!

[Kirsten]

Well, I think that would depend on what kind of life was found. Are we talking about moral agents or not?

[irizarry]

In regards to Kirsten’s comment:

If you want to talk about morals and ethics that’s “kewl”. What I was implying was the practical part of getting the job done, followed by a pun. One discussion might be what we (Earthlings) can do to prevent contamination of the new world before we have a chance to discover anything. Similar to what NASA does by sanitizing planetary probes prior to launch. It would be a sad state of affairs to send a probe contaminated with domestic bacteria and then use million dollar experiments to detect life we brought there. I personally believe in space colonization on a grand scale, building the infrastructure that actually generates a self sustaining space economy. Especially in our own back yard (our solar system). Unfortunately, the expansion into space is agonizingly slow. Some people might say we’ve done a great job since the Wright brothers. Sure if mediocre is your standard. That’s just my opinion. Another issue would be indigenous life. Would this not be a natural resource? Imagine finding yeast-like organisms on Titan that could refine aluminum from ore. A good question to ask might be is there an effort to itemize the natural resources available in our solar system barring the isolated research that goes on? From the stand point of the entrepreneur “Der be gold in dem der hills”.

[timeshifter]

So, if we should treat any indiginous life as a natural recourse, then what the hell have we been doing with all the life on Earth?!? We treat horses like slaves with no regrets. Just because we don't know their language or what they are thinking does not make it right. I for one am a believer in animal rights, and I think if we find life, we should leave it be until it has a chance to develop.

How do we know that some alien race did not visit our planet before we evolved into what we are now? If they did, they must have let us be and were planning to make contact when we were sufficiently developed. We might be, we might not be, but they might not be either. Maybe they developed space flight before us, checked us out and decided to leave us alone?

Now we may have surpassed them in technology, but they still got to our planet before we developed into what we are. So, my point- we leave them alone for very good reasons. First off, they may evolve faster than us and eventually overpower us if we did not treat them like we may have been treated. In which case, the human race would be in danger. But, if we are a spawning of an alien race, then they still showed us mercy by letting us develop at our own rate.

Do you see my point? So what if there are aliens out there that can do things much easier than we can. Does that give us the right to use them? They are life forms just as us. As it is, we are more developed than any species on this planet, and we only treat a few species with any respect. That is just wrong. Every living thing on this planet is a life form in its own respect, so why do we take advantage of things when they could form beings that can communicate with us and help us even more, only under their own free will?

[irizarry]

Timeshifter offers some very good arguments. However it is philosophically biased. If an alien race did make an early visit to us what makes you think we are not the product of their tampering. I would like to believe that galactic civilizations are the amiable people we think they are but nature is not a democracy and life, at least on earth is either survival of the fittest or is the law of niche exploitation. Yes I believe we have a moral obligation to preserve all life because I believe we are connected to that life somehow even if it’s extraterrestrial. Which I guess makes me a life protectionist. I however was addressing the uses of life in the behalf of humans. Cows are cool, but we still eat them! Of course there is no present threat that cows will become extinct anytime soon, especially when there is an industry dedicated to breeding them. What I am interested in is what the universal policy might be for exploiting life on other worlds. If we find bacterium that can produce proteins or oxygen we cannot ignore these guys if we hope to colonize at least our local regions. We have to be careful here because as you have suggested there maybe a civilization out there that might look at us and say, great we found a species that produces carbon dioxide and can build stuff. Let’s use them! Is there any proof or argument that they would be even remotely morally concerned? Would they hold themselves to the same standard as we would hold ourselves? Is this just a human concept that has no equivalent? Unfortunately I know of no supporting data. Is the human race in danger? The human species maybe in danger just by its mere existence. Some eyes maybe coveting us or our world at this very instant. In order to strengthen our galactic position and hopefully our position in the universe space colonization maybe a necessity of survival, a necessary strategic step of evolution, a demand for respect, a birthright, and the true coarse of humankind. Stagnating societies and stagnating species either evolve or get out of the gene pool and this means invading other biological niches and exploiting other species. I hope we don’t loose our morals on the way; the universe may have a correction mechanism built in for this! To reply to your last question. Of course it would be better to communicate. It’s much better to ask someone to help rather than force someone to give something up. Who has our best interests in mind lately? We have disease, war, famine and I don’t see some superior race coming down and offering their great wisdom. For the moment we are on our own. I’m sure when most people go to the park they aren’t the slightest concerned about the bugs they squash when they play Frisbee.

Irizarry
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[timeshifter]

That right there is exactly what I mean. I guess I could have said it a little better than I did, but it is nice to know that someone understands my screwed-up way of typing.

Still, though, what if there was some superior race watching us as we talk, walk, research, etc.? When you really think about it, I find it kind of scary, to know that space is endless and we know so little about it, let alone who may be watching under some cloak.

[irizarry]

I hear you loud and clear timeshifter and others. This is what attracted me to science. Just thinking about the options can rock my world! However this is the danger, to each individual personally. The more science you know the more you can theorize about and build on previous knowledge. But in reality everytime we think we have a handle on it we find out we know a lot less about the universe. I heard a recent estimate that we are in the dark on about 90% of the universe. When this happens I see the general practice of getting more mystical or occult like. This is where “will power” comes in. I think about this stuff in some corner of my small mind and would like to go metaphysically nuts! But the real test of scientific thinking is to build a standard model and press on from there. I don’t fall in love with this standard model because I know its just a very rough draft. When it comes to extraterrestrial possibilities however there is no real rough draft of a rough draft. This is a tough nut to crack. Which brings me to my theory of scientific luck, and paraphrased by someone else:

“Even a blind squirrel finds a nut!”

It not original but right at the moment this is all I can offer?
Irizarry
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[budcamp]

This was a great discussion!

A couple of things to think about are:

While all life is valuable, we don't want the Ebola Virus to spread. It considers humanity as a food source. We want it endangered!

If one wants to know humanities place in the universe, it is good to go out into the country, lie down on the ground, and look at the stars. After awhile try to stretch you mind to imagine the distances involved and the number of stars within those distances. On a good night you can see Andromeda. 2.3 million light years away; and it is “the kid next door”. Once you leave our local group, your mind really has no chance of visualizing the dimensions involved.

We talk about "all of the stars in the sky". There are no stars in the sky. The sky is only about 20 miles thick. What we have surrounding our tiny world is “The Great Void”. Because our sky is blue we only rarely see the stars. If instead of blue, the sky were clear and dark, and humanity had looked at the stars day and night for all of these years and really understood the thing at which they were looking: what would we be like today.

Any civilization that has learned to cross “That Great Void”, would probably never ever find us amongst all of the other star systems. But, if they do, it would probably be a good thing to treat them with great respect. Let’s not try to exploit them right in the beginning.

I think we need to go to Mars with a self-sustaining colony or two. Watching how humans function on a different world, should give us a much better idea of which human characteristics are part of our biological system, and which are controlled by our environment. Also it provides for species survival if the earth got zapped.

.

[PhysBrain]

First of all, I'd like to open with the following thought...
We should ask, critically and with appeal to the numbers, whether the best site for a growing advancing industrial society is Earth, the Moon, Mars, some other planet, or somewhere else entirely. Surprisingly, the answer will be inescapable - the best site is "somewhere else entirely."
Gerard O'Neill - "The High Frontier"
That somewhere else entirely is open space. When most people think about space colonization, they are invariably suffering from planetary chauvenism; as if the only suitable places for humanity to grow and expand are on the surfaces of large planetary bodies. There is a lot to be said for open space colonization, not the least of which is plenty of elbow room and available resources. And, as an added bonus, you get to keep the surfaces of your planets undisturbed for as long as you like.

There is a rather healthy debate going on about which is a better location for off-world colonization, but in the end, life will go where it has the best chance of surviving and flourishing.

As for any moral obligation which we as upstanding human beings should feel: I think Robert Heinlein put forth an appropriately pragmatic moral philosophy in his book "Starship Troopers" (the book, not the crappy movie). Basically, moral behavior is survival behavior. To be sure, there are several layers to this moral behavior. Most life on this planet obeys only the lowest level, and that is survival of the individual. Higher forms of life are capable of supressing some instictive behavior in favor of survival of the clan/group/family. This continues on up until you have lifeforms capable of considering that the survival of the species or of all life in general is more important than individual survival, and will act accordingly.

That being said, I think that if we find extra-terrestrial life, we will do whatever is in our own best interest. Now what our best interest might be by the time we discover this life will depend as much upon our "moral evolution" as it will on the nature of the lifeform.

As far as a lifeform's right to exist and develop at its own pace, I don't think such a thing exists. All life on Earth has been climbing on top of each other for as long as life has existed. One could even say that the pressure of survival of the fittest and niche exploitation are active drivers of evolution. Any lifeform left to itself in an uncompetitive environment will most likely stagnate and no amount of protection will permit it to develop beyond its basic ability to survive and reproduce until it consumes all available resources (in which case it dies) or reaches some form of symbiotic equilibrium with its environment (sustainable, but still stagnant).

One of the first things Martian colonists are likely to do when they finally set up shop to stay, is to begin experimenting with plants and animals which can survive and flourish in the Martian environment, bioengineering them as necessary. This is the only way a human colony will be able to sustain itself.

Much more can be said on this topic, but for now I'd like to hear what the rest of you think.

[K6-III]

Free-space colonies beyond LEO become a very big problem due to cosmic and solar radiation as initial destinations. Also, the relative lack of resources makes free-space colonies harder to work.

The moon, followed up by mars/asteroid belt colonization seems to be the most likely configuration, with free space colonies being build out of and inside asteroids...

[irizarry]

Could you enlighten me on what is meant by “Free Space Colonies”? Are you implying they are self-sufficient? If so, to what degree? Any inter-colony economy? (I'm not questioning your wisdom-I'm just not familiar with the terms).

Irizarry
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[irizarry]

It is absolutely true that colonizing space is not confined to planets. Of all the possible considerations, space stations, gateways at an LX equi-gravitational point, asteroids (inside and on the surface), moons, moons of asteroids, wandering weigh stations between adjacent orbits, Dyson spheres, ring worlds about a celestial object, tethered natural objects, tethered natural and artificial objects, etc., still seem to me to be places were people would go when they are actually going somewhere else. I will have to admit I am a Planetary Chauvinist of the worst kind. I still want tidal forces to shape my shoreline, pleasant surprises in the weather like a sun shower on a hot afternoon, the land reform brought on by plate tectonics, a permanent unadjustable rotational and orbital period, and a fixed gravity not subject to committee vote. Naturally occurring seasons are fun although I bitch like no other when winter parades itself in full glory. It is analogous to-Why eat something synthetic when you can have the real thing! With the exception of the “Twinkie”.

Irizarry
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[K6-III]

Originally posted by irizarry
Could you enlighten me on what is meant by “Free Space Colonies”? Are you implying they are self-sufficient? If so, to what degree? Any inter-colony economy? (I'm not questioning your wisdom-I'm just not familiar with the terms).

Irizarry
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A free space colony would be any colony not living on the surface of a planet.

[PhysBrain]

A free space colony could, in theory, be built anywhere. The most obvious places are near places with abundant resources, or desireable orbital locations (ie. mining towns, or trade centers). I will admit that quite a bit of space-based infrastructure will be required to develop any free space habitat. The point is that both planetary and free space colonies are probably going to be developed, and there will most likely be people who prefer one or the other and decide to make a life out of colonizing somewhere that no one else has ever been. The advantage to FSC's is that you never run out of places to go. You are only limited by the availability of resources and/or the infrastructure required to deliver required resources to the colony.

Over the past few months, I have been particularly occupied with an idea for a FSC that does double duty as a trade hub and a vital part of the space transportation infrastructure. Imagine, if you will, a 2001'ish-style rotating wheel, or O'Neill habitat/colony, as big or small as the situation warrants. This structure would be assembled at some key orbital location within the solar system, such as Lagrange points or other significant positions. Radiating out from this rotating structure in all directions are tethers which range from ten's to hundreds of kilometers long. The length of each tether can be adjusted to anywhere in this range. Cargo and transport ships arrive at the station and dock with a tether which has had its length adjusted so that the velocity at the end of the tether exactly matches the velocity of the incoming ship. While docked, the ship can undergo any number of transactions with the station, and when its time to leave, the tether is extended to the length required to give the ship its desired velocity, and then released at precisely the moment needed to send it on the next leg of its journey. This concept is known as a momentum exchange tether, and I believe this specific configuration is referred to as a bolo or momentum bank (see http://www.tethers.com/ ).

The reason I think this is such an important type of structure is because the need to carry onboard propellant for course corrections and momentum boosts is greatly reduced. One could almost say that this is as close as we are going to get to "massless" or "propelantless" space transportation in the forseeable future.

[K6-III]

Well, by that time we may well have Fusion within our grasp, giving us the option to try either.

[irizarry]

Thank You PhysBrain for that hyperlink. I think there is enough material under the publication page to keep several people busy for a long time. I’ll have to educate myself more on the topic. The first thing that comes to mind in tethered systems although promising is that classical mechanical systems obey conservation of momentum. I’m sure these people who have designed these machines have considered it. The point I wish to make is since there is a change in rotational speed either by the receiving system or the transporting system to accommodate the traveling object some fuel is spent for this adjustment. So although it’s a good idea and probably extremely economical some fuel will have to carried by the receiving/transporting stations that are hubs of activity. I realize no one has claimed otherwise. I’m just making the point we are back to the “we need fuel again” problems that plague most space systems. I especially like the sling shot apparatus designed for LEO at the same sight. It looks elegant! I can easily see a planetary to space tether system between
Mars/Earth/Moon/Phobos that use huge cables for momentum transfer orbits. It may be more economical (in the long run) than an idea I had were large warehouse ships are in synchronized transitional orbits between Mars and Earth that are set up as highly spaced apart train cars. Just move your stuff to a passing car and jump off at the other end. Then again I’m spending fuel to catch up to the freight train car. Back to fuel consumption again…”What a Web we weave…”

Irizarry
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P.S. How big or small are fussion sytems? Aren't they generally accepted as being large mosters of mass?

[K6-III]

Mass won't be a problem. Longevity and incredible specific impulse should suffice.

[PhysBrain]

The transfer of momentum in the tether system can go both ways. If a ship requires a momentum boost to get out of a gravity well or to transfer orbits, then it essentially borrows the momentum from the station in much the same way that our space probes have gotten gravity assisted boosts from the planets in the past. The lost momentum shows up in a change in the orbit of the station. However, since the station is so much more massive than the ships, the change will be minute. The station can then get a reboost in its orbit by slowing down incoming ships. If a ship is in a high momentum trajectory, it can give up some of its momentum to the station using exactly the same mechanism only in reverse. Thus, the station could maintain its orbit as long as traffic is fairly balanced both ways.

If, however, there is an asymmetry in the momentum flow, there must be some means onboard for the station to correct its orbit. Another great property of the tether systems is that they act like natural dynamos. That is, the long cables are usually going to be moving through a magnetic field which will induce a current in the cable. This enegy can be used to power the station at the expense of orbital momentum, thus lowering the orbit. Alternatively, if an onboard power source is available, then the same technique in reverse, pushing off of the magnetic field, can be used to add orbital momentum, thus raising the orbit.

The reason tether systems will work economically is because of the vast amount of angular momentum already present in the solar system. My point is simply this: Why waste so much energy accellerating and decellerating using propellants? Using tethers, you can borrow a little momentum over here, and return it over there. Overall, the net angular momentum of the solar system is conserved.

Chemical, fission, fusion, and matter/antimatter reactions are all methods of producing energy. That energy comes at the expsense of destroying mass. Once the energy is used, though, it cannot be regained. These systems will be vital to any space infrastructure that develops. I'm just saying that momentum transfer through tethers, or some similar mechanism, is the most efficient way to handle the bulk transport of mass throughout the solar system.

[K6-III]

I am in agreement. Nonetheless, fusion will have to precede them.

We'll need fusion to put the masses into position initially and get them going...