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"Moldy Tater Gangrene, even before Moscow Marge."
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Location: Dallas, TX
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From a strictly technical standpoint, I think we're better off capturing an asteroid and hollowing it out. Then spin it so that it gives us earth-like pseudo-gravity. First, the main problem would be a heat source. No sunlight worth speaking of for thousands of years (assuming 1/1,000 light speed -- still 670,000 mph). Without that, we can just throw in the towel, unless we can survive inside a gas giant (Jupiter generates more energy than it absorbs from the sun, so I think we'd be safe enough in there with a "cloud colony" of some sort inside the atmosphere.
Assuming we can get a good heat source that'll last for thousands of years, I think we could have soil and organic material easily enough. That takes care of the food supply. Water? One of the most common substances in the universe. With some seeds or lichens, we could have plenty of oxygen soon enough. Also, there'd have to be population controls - no more than 2 live births per woman per lifetime.
And this is the most optimistic scenario! In all seriousness, I doubt there'd any place in this solar system
From a strictly technical standpoint, I think we're better off capturing an asteroid and hollowing it out. Then spin it so that it gives us earth-like pseudo-gravity. First, the main problem would be a heat source. No sunlight worth speaking of for thousands of years (assuming 1/1,000 light speed -- still 670,000 mph). Without that, we can just throw in the towel, unless we can survive inside a gas giant (Jupiter generates more energy than it absorbs from the sun, so I think we'd be safe enough in there with a "cloud colony" of some sort inside the atmosphere.
Assuming we can get a good heat source that'll last for thousands of years, I think we could have soil and organic material easily enough. That takes care of the food supply. Water? One of the most common substances in the universe. With some seeds or lichens, we could have plenty of oxygen soon enough. Also, there'd have to be population controls - no more than 2 live births per woman per lifetime.
And this is the most optimistic scenario! In all seriousness, I doubt there'd any place in this solar system
I mentioned that our whole solar system would be unsafe in this scenario...but I didn't say how. We know the star will destroy Earth. Maybe it would be best to just colonize Mars and hope it passes through without dragging us out of the solar system or irradiating us.
In the video, someone has the idea of an enormous, rotating cylindrical ship. The rotation would produce gravity. For light, they would run a rod down the center of the ship. They'd have to make a daily light cycle because our bodies, and any plants we bring, are built for that. The speaker mentions hundreds of thousands of people living in one of these cylindrical crafts, but doesn't specify any details about how we'd go about making a ship so large that could travel to another solar system.
Methods for achieving noteworthy percentages of light speed in the video are things like antimatter as fuel (which would be extremely dangerous, because we'd have to keep it from touching matter to avoid the craft's destruction). We could use sails pushed by lasers if we could build a sail large enough. The lasers would require a ridiculous amount of power. Solar powered lasers would be the only option, I'd think. We might use thermonuclear fusion to reach, I've read, maybe 1/10th the speed of light or so.
Regarding the thermonuclear fusion idea, Project Orion was begun all the way back in 1958. The plan was that a 4,000 tone vehicle would be powered by .15 kiloton bombs. Approximately 800 of these bombs would be needed to reach orbit. The designer estimated that some day this type of technology could allow ships to go 1/3 the speed of light...but I've heard more sources say repeat that it could go 1/10th the speed of light.
Research down that route was stopped because of nuclear weapons prohibitions.
It might be better to build our ship/ships around the moon than Earth. Earth's atmosphere is littered with dangerous space debris.
I've read that Jupiter's moons are bombarded with deadly radiation, 1000 times what is needed to be lethal to a human. I'm wondering if that type of radiation would make it too dangerous to live around gas giants of any kind. If we could figure out some reliable way of protecting ourselves from that though, perhaps an icy moon of Jupiter or an icy moon of another gas giant would be a good destination. Jupiter is certainly far from Earth...which we know will be destroyed by our neutron star, so that's a good thing. Even if Jupiter gets flung from the solar system by the neutron star, that may not be such a bad thing. It's basically a solar system in itself. We could just spend the rest of human history mining the moons of Jupiter as it flings across the galaxy as a rogue planet.
I would think attempting to build cloud cities on Jupiter would result in is just getting dead due to the pressure and winds. NASA has made ideas for cloud cities on Venus though. At a certain altitude, the Venusian atmosphere is more Earthlike than anywhere else in the solar system. I'm not sure if it would actually be more advantageous to live in cloud cities on Venus than simply in space stations in deep space...but it could hypothetically be done. I suppose leaks would be less dangerous in the Venusian atmosphere than deep space. If space debris were to hit is, we'd just have to deal with unsafe gases, which would be bad, but probably better than people being sucked into the void.
I do not think a "single ship" is a viable solution.
Space colonization, via immense orbital habitats, is a viable solution, especially for eliminating the pressures for terrestrial war.
Space colonization is mutually dependent upon world peace. For with world peace, more resources can be diverted to space colonization. And with space colonization, humanity is no longer bound by the limitations of planet Earth, nor need to endlessly fight over resources.
● NASA has estimated the mineral wealth of the entire Asteroid Belt could be as much as $700 quintillion, or a seven followed by 20 zero. That’s $100 billion for every one of the 7 billion people on Earth!
The key point is not to use humans in space to build the requisite vessels, processed minerals and colonies. Instead, use autonomous, self replicating robotic fabricators "seeded" across the solar system. As they geometrically multiply and incrementally build bigger tools and machines, they will fulfill the need for processed materials, hulls, storage tanks, machinery and space vessels.
Once a colony is completed, and parked into orbit near Earth - then launch humans, and other biomass (seeds and fertilized ova). Creating a high duty cycle cost effective launch system to orbit is well within the realm of science and engineering. Hopefully, future economics will not be marred by money madness, so that interested parties will be able to pool resources and establish such necessary lift capacities instead of wringing hands over “lack of money.â€
Once staffed, then "surf gravity" to a new orbit, and repeat the process.
Not only can these autonomous habitats be used to orbit the sun, planets and moons, but they can be used as transportation, cycling between planetary orbits. A traveler need only 'hitch hike' from colony to colony, slowly, but safely, moving about the immensity of outer space.
“The key advantage of space settlements is the ability to build new land, rather than take it from someone else. This allows a huge expansion of humanity without war or destruction of Earth's biosphere. The asteroids alone provide enough material to make new orbital land hundreds of times greater than the surface of the Earth, divided into millions of colonies. This land can easily support trillions of people.â€
We're going to need habitat for more than a few trillion!
Just think - if population doubling rate remains constant at 50 years, humanity may pass 6.520 E+21 in 4000 A.D.
That's 6.52 Sextillion people. Woo-hoo.
(We’re going to need quite a number of giant space habitats in orbit around Sol.)
Like with the movie 2012 it will have to be financed by those with money & those with money will be the one's to be on the ship. Let's put that aside & say that the government's had the money to build these ships, the governments are going to take people into space such as scientist, doctors, & let's not forget politicians. They would likely do the one's going no typical families with 2.5 kids. Of course they would take some animals with them mostly farm animals. Your average is doomed & while I believe that the human race needs to carry one I think we might try & destroy one another getting on a ship.
Like with the movie 2012 it will have to be financed by those with money & those with money will be the one's to be on the ship. Let's put that aside & say that the government's had the money to build these ships, the governments are going to take people into space such as scientist, doctors, & let's not forget politicians. They would likely do the one's going no typical families with 2.5 kids. Of course they would take some animals with them mostly farm animals. Your average is doomed & while I believe that the human race needs to carry one I think we might try & destroy one another getting on a ship.
One difference between this neutron star scenario and the movie 2012 was the amount of time people had to prepare. In the 2012 movie scenario, everyone was caught off guard. They needed cash fast. In this neutron star scenario, we have a little less than 75 years to prepare. Those old farts that filled the lifeboats in the 2012 movie would probably not be alive between the time most of them donated to our escape-the-neutron-star project and the time the ships left. I think that would at least reduce the problem of ships filled with rich old farts with family histories of cancer and heart conditions. That could still be a problem though.
One advantage of choosing people based on ideal genetics is that it's about as fair as we can get. If we want public support for the project (by which I mean people not climbing over each other/sabotaging the ship) we want the choice of who goes to be fair. We might also try to get people of as many different cultures and nationalities chosen as possible for genetic diversity, and so the project-doers are not accused of genocide or something.
Farm animals, or nonhuman animals, would be rare...although we might bring along insects for protein or something, and we'll bring along plenty of bacteria and microbes we, and much life, depend on. Raising livestock is fine if your world already has hordes of natural vegetation you can't eat anyway. If you can't eat grass, but sheep can eat grass, you can grow the grass and feed it to the sheep and eat the sheep. In space stations though, or spaceships there wouldn't be room for much, if any, large livestock. The survivors would most likely be forced to become a species of vegetarians and, maybe, insect-eaters.
no worries. We make the next life form in less than 200 years.
we can't now nor will we ever make this call.
The universe has already decided.
I think if something were to happen to force is into a spacefaring society that doesn't touch the surface of a planet for a few decades, the cultural changes might as well make us the new species, more or less.
We'd be forced to be more cooperative, more boring, and less rebellious towards society. We'd become vegetarians and efficiency would be more important to us, because we'd have to...because every rebel would increase the danger to everyone. We'd change to a species that's used to building everything it has ever known, with children that have never seen that which their grandparents call "natural." They probably wouldn't even understand the term as their ancestors knew it.
Bingo: new species. Well, technically not a new species...but there'd be more behavioral differences between us and our ancestors than between many nonhuman species and their close relatives.
And considering the limitations of our current technical knowledge and abilities, combined with the vastness of space....this would hypothetically be way, way, way into the future. At our current speeds available it would simply take too long, a person would exceed their life span before reaching the destination we would probably be aiming for.
And considering the limitations of our current technical knowledge and abilities, combined with the vastness of space....this would hypothetically be way, way, way into the future. At our current speeds available it would simply take too long, a person would exceed their life span before reaching the destination we would probably be aiming for.
Yep. Centuries.
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