The Space Thread

There's something I started thinking about after a discussion on fossil fuels on other planets. Since we'd have to live in bubble cities anyway would there be any problems with using fossil fuels and spewing it out into the environment? I'm not saying we should do this since there could be microbes that would be damaged but would there be any other issues?

Well, one of the more popular ideas about colonizing Mars involves attempting to pump carbon dioxide into the environment to warm it up. But for a city encased in a dome you're going to need some kind of air filter to keep people from asphyxiating. I imagine everyone would be encouraged to have plants in their living areas to help with that. *shrug* The problem may not be spewing things outside so much as keeping enough of the stuff inside so we can continue breathing. Something that ejects stuff out could also be a way for poisonous gases to get inside.

In other news, the GRAIL probes (used to map the interior of the moon) are going to smash into the lunar surface, live in about 20 minutes. Good times!

Story.

NASA livestream.

I've heard of that. Too bad it will take thousands of years.

KAMAKAZZZIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII!

This is pure speculation, of course; but I get the feeling that ultimately, it will be easier to modify humans to adapt them to non-terrestrial environments than to modify non-terrestrial environments to make them compatible with humankind as we know it.

And I think A- people will NOT want that done and B- it'd be harder than you think. as far as i know theres no way to make us breath carbon dioxcide.

Plants breath carbon dioxide. Although that's because they use photosynthesis.

Lesser thought of fact: most modern plants also respire like animals do... They just have a tendency to over-produce a net gain of oxygen as waste than they can use. <shrugs>

edited 17th Dec '12 3:54:04 PM by Euodiachloris

Exactly. we'd have to give people chlorophyll AND move at about the rate of a plant wherever we went. not exactly productive.

I thought plants couldn't move because photosynthesis didn't provide enough energy for that. Humans that photosynthesize would still be able to take in nutrients in other ways.

This is something I'm just making up mind you. I have a hard time believing this would actually be possible.

That's good. it's really not. i mean, TECHNICALLY we could try but it wouldn't be worth it.

plus you'd probably have shit like potatoes growing in your ears or something happen.

The show I saw about it, some big special from one of those science channels, was thinking more like like decades to a couple hundred years rather than thousands of years. But that's because they were suggesting we try setting of chemical reactions in the soil and ice that's already there rather than just relying on human and mechanical output into the atmosphere. And also try seeding the ground with moss and shit almost immediately after we start that.

Also, adapting us to other environments would seem to require a lot of genetic and other kinds of alterations. Not everyone, even those drawn greatly to the idea of colonizing space, are going to be all that thrilled at the idea of altering themselves and their possible offspring like that. Nor is everyone we invest that kind of work in going to be all that enthused about actually doing the space travel.

we should just study what we can do now to terra form mars and send the cheapest option there to get a head start.

i've also got a plan. 1. build orbital ships that cant push comets so their orbits put them on collision course with mars.

2. watch them crash, spreading water on mars.

3. send microbes and mosses

4. ???

5. profit!

edited 17th Dec '12 4:59:39 PM by Joesolo

Currently, mind you. Attitudes towards that kind of thing may change in the future.

I doubt it.

I don't see why not. :o Cultures and attitudes change. And as the processes become more refined, or perhaps if people start living in other parts of space, it may eventually be tried.

Modifying people isn't liked today, partly because it's new, and partly because it's dangerous. But that doesn't mean it will always be that.

edited 17th Dec '12 5:24:35 PM by Zersk

Joesolo, the first part of the plan is probably far more costly than just sending water from Earth. It's costly just getting to Mars, let alone going to the asteroid belt or catching a comet and fucking with their orbit.

And mosses and lichen are just the first step in making a place habitable for plant life; the documentary I saw, as well as other shows about volcanoes, shows that moss and lichen are the the first thing to grow in a new area, provided all the nutrients are available in the soil. Then you get bugs and simple grasses as the moss and such decays. And as those grow you get the animals that eat the bugs and grasses, then trees, and so on up the food chain. Takes decades on Earth in the areas where volcanoes recently erupted, but it's a well documented process. The main problem comes in whether Martian soil has the sort of stuff needed to feed plant life, in addition to the issue of water.

Zersk; anything that involves tinkering with the genetic code is probably a pipe dream. Stuff of a more mechanical nature is becoming more likely, but I don't think most people are going to willingly replace parts of themselves that still work just fine. The whole transhuman thing is kind of overrated far as I'm concerned.

your missing the "fucking with the stuff that says were human".

Yeah uh, you're forgetting that half of humanity is insane. I don't have the sources handy, but people comes to mind, like the girls in japan who glue lenses to their eyes to look like animes, the girl that got surgery to look like a cat, that guy who cut his tongue and tattooed his skin to look like some reptile.

I'm 100% certain that there will be a line in front of clinics that offer to modify your body once that become a thing.

Those guys get on the news because they're a stand out minority for doing stuff like that. It's also likely that sort of bodily transformation is likely to be prohibitively expensive. Hell, it can't have been cheap to get full body tattoos. Or that weird surgery. These are not cheap services, and they're not going to be made cheap in the future due to the training and time it takes to do these things.

You'd be surprised at what some people will do. It wouldn't surprise me in the least if it became somewhat readily available.

Neither was plastic surgery, and that's not even something that's particularly useful compared to other stuff.

I know I'd sign up for such things in a heartbeat.

edited 17th Dec '12 6:56:11 PM by Deboss

Accessibility is not the point here, the point is that some people will totally be into it.

I've got a question for anyone who knows something about child development.

If I understand correctly, the closest thing we have to sleeper ship technology is frozen embryos. If we had the technology to send a ship full of frozen embryos to another planet, then artificially incubate them until they can move around on their own and provide them with the necessities of life, what would happen?

I assume the first generation would be insane or "feral" from a lack of adult interaction, but would that state last forever, or would they eventually learn to form a society among themselves? What exactly would the symptoms be? Would they be a danger to themselves and others?

First question would be how would they survive to even become feral? There would have to be some kind of teaching and training program. Btw, James P. Hogan wrote a book looking at exactly this, Voyage from Yesteryear. This was before he went completely bonkers.

edited 17th Dec '12 7:18:14 PM by tricksterson