There is a long, long, long list of reasons to go into space, with sudden devastating ecological damage being relatively low on the list. Resources in space is one of the big ones (mining asteroids or siphoning gases off the giants will be relatively easy once we're actually up there), and overpopulation on Earth is another. The only reason we aren't in space right now is because it costs a lot of time and money, which means any politician who campaigns on it will be out of office before it bears fruit.
It depends on exactly what setting you want. Do you want there to be no one left on Earth except possibly scavengers? Then major war with WMD's will work. Do you want Earth to be the center of an empire that spans the entire system? Let it evolve a bit more slowly and naturally in the backstory.
Tourism? Sure a stay in space would be expensive, but I'm sure there'd be plenty of people willing to pay.
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Tourism would be a reason to visit, not necessarily to stay.
But yeah, resource extraction and you know space (as in room) are probably the biggest reasons. There are probably some industrial factors as well. Once resource extraction is completed it's probably easier to build the stuff up there rather than hauling it up and down a gravity well. And there are likely to be some processes that need micro-gravity to take place (or at least are easier in micro-gravity).
Plus the ability to intercept potentially dangerous hunks of rock headed towards Earth.
A cold war could also speed things up and give it a kick start with a space race for the lowest hanging and/or the best fruit.
Ignoring the potential stumbling blocks of politics and money, there are the simple desires to explore and expand, as well as the more long-term desire to have humanity survive the expected eventual death of Earth.
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reason to go to space...
because it's up there? Okay, I mean For Science!. if you want earth as a setting as well, you can make it so that they want to go to space to look for a safe dumpsite for crap so earth stays green.
or maybe they're just experimenting on living in space.
Is dast der Zerstorer? Odar die Schopfer?
Realistically? There arent any. There is nothing human being can do in space that robots cant do cheaper. Oh, there are reasons to have a small population of transient experts out there- robots need maintenance, after all. Scientific stations can serve a limited role, a la Antarctica. But major populations and colonies dont make a lot of economic sense. The upfront costs are too great, the return on investment too uncertain.
To get large numbers of people out into space on a permanent basis, someone would have to pay for it. That means that someone would have to believe they could make a profit quickly enough to justify the huge expense. By relying on robots and drones, you cut the expense of life support systems and lose a little performance for a huge savings.
Maybe I could see a few thousand people across the solar system, but I think interstellar colonies are right out in practical economic terms.
"Hey Bob, see that nifty looking hill over there about three hundred meters away? Race ya to it!" - said while on Mars.
An equivalent action by robots would have a 1 hour turnaround time for communications and each course command and three months travel time. It'd take human astronauts a couple minutes to reach, sift through and decide whether or not it's worth fucking around with.
In short you cover more ground in less time with greater results than little puny rovers. Simple human curiosity can catch things rovers would find uninteresting or otherwise unnoticeable.
edited 17th May '14 1:55:04 AM by MattII
Doing it to manage overpopulation isn't very realistic, because we are having babies far, far faster than we can launch people into space. Doing it because the Earth's environment has gotten too bad isn't very realistic, because the Earth would have to get really, really bad in order for any other place in the Solar System to be better.
The most obvious reason is to protect ourselves against existential threats. Right now we have all our eggs in one basket, and all it would take is one giant asteroid hitting the basket to render our species extinct. If we don't want that to happen, the answer is to have self-sustaining colonies in other places. We can't sit here forever and expect nature to just stay away from us, it doesn't do that.
Solar wind. The sun produces massive amounts of charged particles as well as light. Much of this energy is lost to Earth's atmosphere. However, what if you used a magnetic field to pull those charged particles in and, instead of slamming into the atmosphere and producing nothing but an impressive light show, ran them through a series of conductive meshes? You could extract a fairly massive electric charge this way. Quite possibly enough to fuel an industrial complex when combined with traditional solar energy which is ten percent stronger than on earth.
Industry could also benefit from the conditions in space. Heavy industry could move objects more easily in zero G and proteins crystalize oddly without gravity. However, the most lucrative industry would be carbon nanotube manufacture. Normally for chemical vapor deposition you need to flood the chamber with noble gasses so the reactants (carbon, carbon, and more carbon) don't react with the air. Vacuum not only provides nothing to react to (beside the rare hydrogen ion) but also drops the temperature needed to vaporize carbon. Holding the containers in vacuum means that the chambers are well insulated so you don't have to keep them warm to keep the reactions going. Think crystal growth, the more time you take the bigger the crystals. Finally, the lack of gravity means there is no mechanical limit to how long your fullerene strands can get.
edited 17th May '14 1:06:07 PM by Belisaurius
@Major Tom: Seriously? You think we're going to spend an order of magnitude more money sending people so we can engage in short marathons? Yes, the same actions using robots would take longer, but it would also be a lot cheaper and safer. The way you cover more ground in less time is by sending more bots than you could send humans, so the overall difference over time is less than you might think. As for humans being smarter than robots, yes, that's also true, but no one is going to pay to send human brains to Mars until there is something up there worth the expense and the risk. What would that something be?
@Belisarius: Yes, there are certain industries that might work better in space. And energy is not in short supply up there. Unfortunately, everything else is. The real problem is shooting the building materials up, and then bringing the finished products back down. That makes it all more expensive than it's worth, really.
Who said anything about bringing it back down? You're right, the gravity well is the primary barrier to space travel. So you shoot up a small team with remote drones (which since they'll be controlled from a few kilometers away if not closer won't have to worry about the three hour roundabout) to set up space stations, manufacturing plants, and everything else people might need. Then later come the colonists.
Presuming that it's legitimate, I believe that there's already at least one private long-term Mars mission
in its initial stages. It's possible that they'll meet funding issues as they progress, but I imagine that they have some plan in mind by which to secure funding.
Regarding building materials, I imagine that such an enterprise would attempt to get as much of its building materials as feasible in space, starting with a very small operation and building it up on materials derived from extraterrestrial sources (although I would think that at least some of the materials involved in initially setting up the basic operation would be shipped from Earth). It would essentially be a project with a very high initial cost, but much lower running costs, allowing it to potentially recoup those initial costs over time.
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But... why?
I think the most likely reason for human colonisation of space/other planets is ideology. It will probably never be economically feasible (though using robots to mine comets for helium or whatever might be), but I could see the 'all your eggs in one basket' argument convincing people under the right circumstances that we should go to Mars (or whatever).
So...
Unless the Earth, or at least one nation on Earth, are ideologically committed to space colonisation... then any resources will have to be brought down to Earth to be useful in the first place. With solar collectors I believe that can be solved by microwave beams.
Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent.
Speaking of ideology, a group that is not able to freely pursue theirs on Earth might be able to set up a colony elsewhere, where they are hard to reach and can live by their own rules. Could be a Cult Colony or something more secular. And once a self-sufficient colony is firmly established, it can attract others; Maybe single immigrants, maybe groups who want to build more. Though if the colony was set up so far to get away from other people, they might not be welcomed until enough time has passed for the colony's general character to change.
@demarquis
Which is why you begin with asteroid mining. That removes the lifting costs to get raw materials into orbit. Getting them back down is comparably cheaper by at least an order of magnitude.
Addressing the original post, it seems to be that if Earth is too devastated to live on then it's probably too devastated to get anyone off the planet, unless the devastation happened well after that.
As for why people are out there, it's fiction you're writing. The answer always seems to be "because enough people wanted to go and live on this other planet/in an asteroid belt." For fiction, you don't really have to puzzle out the why of people going out and colonizing other places. Unless it's specifically about that, which from what little you told us it doesn't seem like it is. If they're already out there, just have them out there. You don't see Star Trek getting bogged down in that detail; they just have people out there having adventures.
Also, the rest of you are being pessimistic. I figure NASA and other groups want to prove their technology can get people out there enough that eventually we will be sending people. Using robots, as useful as they are, isn't the same thing as doing and seeing it yourself.
No. But that's the sort of mission-beneficial thing that can happen with manned exploration. Human curiosity is more effective than any robot.
Let's see, a 7 minute walk to a hill a few hundred meters away vs a month of transit with a roomful of very highly paid technicians monitoring and operating it the whole time all the while the rover itself must survive the major temperature changes between night and day. Not as cheap as you think.
Manned exploration starts paying for itself in discoveries, mapping and samples practically the moment the astronauts leave the lander. It has a sharp initial cost but over time and the longer the mission goes on the cheaper and more cost effective it becomes. It's taken the greater part of a decade and untold problems for Spirit and Opportunity to discover evidence of water and explore a combined area of Mars smaller than Los Angeles. With manned exploration in the same amount of time we'd have mapped out and explored 10,000 times that much ground discovering who knows what along the way. And unlike robots, astronauts on other worlds can utilize the resources of that world to their benefit.
A couple of things, Tom. You're trying to provide a rationale for limited human exploration, but the OP specifically mentioned a "large scale human presence", presumably permanent. You dont need colonies to look at rocks.
But even manned space exploration is controversial. The price estimates to Mars vary from 10x to 100x the cost of robots or drones, depending on what the mission profile is (the more limited the crew and the less time they spend there, the cheaper the cost). You dont need humans in space to get the technical spin offs, or the data you want, you just need to be willing to take a little longer. What's the rush? Mars isnt going anywhere?
We've had this argument before. See this post of mine for more details.
Getting beyond the Wright Brothers/Bleriot stage of development requires firm monetary backing, which means either international competition (as with the first space-race), or a viable commercial aspect (as Bigelow is hoping to achieve).
edited 18th May '14 7:13:33 PM by MattII
It's slow. In the last lifetime alone we went from horses and written letters to rocket ships that put people on the Moon and You Tube. Waiting for robots on Mars is inefficient when you can Zerg Rush the cosmos, you won't find a shortage of volunteer space explorers.
Plus there's the politics and economics involved. If you're perceived as not yielding results or not enough results some politician or executive will see to it your funding's cut or the project terminated. NASA alone has been desperately searching for a purpose since the end of the shuttle program (on top of the identity problems its had since the last Moon mission) and a full scale manned exploration effort of the Moon, Mars and beyond would put some life into their mission. There would be a lot more motivation and innovation than relying on robots.
edited 18th May '14 8:21:45 PM by MajorTom
NASA grew big on the rivalry with the Soviets, but once that rivalry drained away, so did NASA's purpose, and no amount of "wouldn't it be cool if" is going to help. Government organisations are great for pioneering work, but it takes real commercial backing to make something big.
That's why you do it a two-pronged approach. Encourage the private sector to get there too (and/or work with NASA) AND get NASA off their arses. Why the choice between NASA and companies like Virgin Galactic is mutually exclusive I do not know.
Besides you could set up an artificial rivalry in that set-up. Private sector vs NASA, first one to put a man on Mars wins.
Hello Tropers!
I'm beginning to write a hard sci-fi tale set in the solar system. I've read the majority of the Atomic Rockets website and the Rocketpunk Manifesto and currently the only reason I can think of a large scale human presence in Space would be a war so devastating that the only way humanity could survive would be to emigrate offworld. However, I want to use Earth as one of the settings in my story so this wouldn't. Any help would be vastly appreciated!