Distributing human populations to ensure survival. With current tech the lunar colony couldn't be self-sustaining but the ideal is that humans would be able to propagate and sustain themselves outside of Earth so that a single event couldn't end human civilization. Also creating a jobs program that will produce the technology necessary for a lunar colony will improve materials science, medical understanding, logistics.
I don't think distributing within the solar system is going to do much for us. What takes out the Earth will probably take out everything else - we'll be backstopped on Earth for centuries after we have spaceborne civilization.
I think opening up a new frontier however, is valuable - in fact specifically, the transition which would be good would be to move heavy industry out of the biosphere entirely. You can imagine a nearer future where a place like Earth is treated as the paradise it is, and the idea of polluting it when we have all the rest of the uninhabitable space of the solar system to do that in is thought of as ludicrous.
And this isn't really unreasonable - beyond a certain point, the resource and energy availability of space is far greater then the places we can reach despite the advantages of the biosphere - whether we do it by robots or with manned exploration.
There's a zeitgeist change that I think would accompany having enough people working frequently in space: where its a couple of degrees of separation from someone who's looked at the pale blue dot and gone "you have no idea how valuable this is" (I do think we should have a program which sponsors any world leader who wants to on a trip around the moon: send the people making the big decisions out past the dark side, where the thing bubble of air, steel and alloy is the only thing keeping them alive - might not always work but at least then we can know they've had the opportunity for that perspective).
Self-sustaining human colonies in space or on other celestial bodies are very distant dream, probably it will take several centuries or millennia to happen. The main reason is human body: we haven’t figured out reproduction in low gravity yet. Unless some fascist state will do it, we will never experiment with it until full confidence in safety for the mother and the child.
It's a very distant dream that will always remain distant if we don't work on it. We have a lot of things to test before we get to testing the gravitational requirements of human reproduction. As it stands, we don't even know our basic gravitational needs. All we know is that 0g is too low. It's entirely possible that it turns out we can function relatively fine at something low but non-zero, like 0.1g.
That wouldn't prevent one off extinction type events like asteroids. We can improve our understanding of ecology by trying to design such systems for lunar colony artificial biospheres.
I do agree that we should better manage our impact on the only system that we know works.
> That wouldn't prevent one off extinction type events like asteroids. We can improve our understanding of ecology by trying to design such systems for lunar colony artificial biospheres.
To be kind of blunt, even an extinction-level asteroid hit with near-total biosphere destruction is probably still more conducive to human life than any other planet or satellite in the solar system, as evidenced by the continued existence of at least a few forms of life past the extinction event. And many of the events people worry about are far less destructive than even that (nuclear winter, for example, would probably roll Earth's climate back to pre-industrial temperatures, maybe as far as Little Ice Age, which is, uh, nowhere near extinction-level threat to humanity).
It's also worth pointing out that it's possible to do closed ecological studies without the expense of running it in space (e.g., Biosphere 2). The only thing you need space for studying in that regard is "what is the effect of non-1g environments on biological forms?" (to which existing studies suggest the answer is somewhere between "bad" and "horrible").
It's a very unlikely for one, we haven't had an extinction asteroid in 65 million years. Detection and mapping is very good today, and they're relatively simple to deflect given even with current technology, and a long enough lead time. Obsessing about asteroid impact is just an excuse to engage in fantasy.
But saying "We can improve our understanding of ecology by [designing] artificial biosphere", is just the chef's kiss of bullshittery. It's like saying, that we can understand the ocean by getting a fish bowl. Not exactly, and it certainly won't teach us anything about the actual biosphere. Instead, all you'd learn about is atmosphere scrubbers and water reclamation.
I recommend taking a look at the article I shared. It might help you gain more insight on the topic, rather than continuing to post critical comments without all the information.
>> That wouldn't prevent one off extinction type events like asteroids.
> This is the lamest of all excuses.
> It's a very unlikely for one, we haven't had an extinction asteroid in 65 million years.
He said "like astroids". Quite frankly we don't know how frequent extinction events happen. We've had nuclear weapons for less than 100 years, and have a couple of close calls[1] already.
We could just build giant bomb shelters. It’s cheaper, holds more people, and doesn’t require nearly the investment in a completely closed ecosystem. But that ain’t sexy.
If you want something that uniquely requires leaving the planet for somewhere you have truck in literally everything except rocks, you’re pretty much limited to the sun becoming a red giant. That and gamma ray bursts. That’s pretty much it.
A gravity tractor is the simplest solution with enough lead time. It's theoretical, but doesn't involve any exotic technology or materials.
Essentially you have a spacecraft park itself beside an asteroid. It's gravity will minutely change the asteroids trajectory. With enough lead time that's all you need. Since you're not blowing up, or applying a large focused amount of energy to the asteroid it doesn't matter what the targets composition is. You won't break it up.
> Don't understand this lefty obstinance against preparing for the unexpected when the negative outcome is the death of humanity. Is it because you don't like Elon?
No, it's merely incredibly difficult. Sustainable living off Earth is far beyond that.
Humans definitely can't leave. Humans are even less well suited to interstellar travel than they are to living at the bottom of the ocean, something they also don't do and have no idea how they could ever do.
So, with tremendous effort humans could visit one of their neighbouring planets. All of these planets are terrible. Mars is by far more hostile to life than anywhere humans have even visited, let alone had a permanent settlement. But we could do it. To what end?
Live here, or die here, those are your options and you should get used to it.
It's difficult, but I don't think it is _that_ difficult. Ecologies, like any living systems, can self-heal and regenerate. There are practices that allows us to tap into that regenerative power as societies. They may not happen fast relative to our individual human lifespan, but 50 years is more than enough time to restore wastelands or reverse desertification.
I don't have a good answer to how sustain an economy based upon mining, refining, and manufacturing things out of mineral resources. Many of us have gotten used to modern conveniences (at its own cost related to mental and emotional health, and social cohesiveness). I think what most people balk on are on the perception of having to go back to barely surviving off the land, or having to alter lifestyle. Lifestyle may have to change, but the same regenerative power of ecologies also gives us significantly more resiliency.
To have the species survive if anything ends all life on Earth - apparently not a priority for you but it is for those that enjoy humanity existing.
Also to explore and learn more about the universe we live in. Do you truly not see value in that? Have you never left the city/state/country you were born in?
> To have the species survive if anything ends all life on Earth
Nothing the universe has thrown at Earth in the past 3 billion years has been capable of ending all life. And nothing that could happen in the next million years seems possible of doing that either.
When we say life on earth we mean human life and civilization. Prokaryotes, while alive, are not really what people mean. Yes they would survive asteroids, nukes, possibly nanobot swarms.
Maybe we can find alternatives besides those industries.
As far as cleaning up pollutants themselves, there are some amazing work by Dr John Todd for cleaning up pollution. Two examples of his work — a system capable of breaking down DDT within 40 days. Another where he cleaned up a superfund site that had all ten of EPA’s top toxic pollutant list.
