Dissolving the Fermi Paradox

[mesonoxian]

I don't really agree with your risk assessment, space is a very dull environment. This means there aren't a lot of surprises and once you've solved a problem in a reliable way, it will tend to remain that way.

So certainly, if you say built an O'Neill cylinder in a stupid and foolish way, it could be a major catastrophe risk. But it's not like you have to though, while I imagine early versions might, with refinement they'd probably eventually become very reliable. Like other major engineered systems that are well enough understood.

As such I'd argue long term space is probably the safer habitat, unlike Earth where the planet itself is constantly prone to high energy events causing catastrophes over large areas. From Hurricanes to flooding, or Earthquakes to Tsunamis. We've engineered ourselves to do better against them, but even now they are far from a fully solved problem.


Another factor would be if WW3 ever happened, then everyone being in one very small area (ie a planet) might be pretty dangerous. Being off world might have a higher survivability then being near ground zero of such a conflict.


As such I'm seeing at least two plausible benefits space has on Earth.

Click to shrink...

It takes a far smaller impact to endanger a space habitat than an entire world. The planet has gravity holding its atmosphere in place, and isn't reliant on pressure. Cosmic radiation would be mostly blocked out by the atmosphere of the habitat, but a large electromagnetic event like a solar flare could cause massive problems, exacerbated by the total lack of resources to fix anything without calling Earth. A single blight can't destroy all the food crops on Earth. It is relatively easy to ship disaster relief to neighbors on Earth. Rescuing a failing habitat is a much, much bigger cost.

If a nuclear war destroys civilization on Earth, the habitats will most likely collapse next time they have a crop failure, hull breach, or disease outbreak. If not, they will probably fail when they can no longer repair the equipment necessary to control their orientation, or maintain their waste and water systems.

Essentially, these would be huge wastes of resource4s that would continuously demand more resources to keep their populations viable.

 

[Navarro_Refugee]

Living in habitats within the solar system, close enough to be supplied from Earth, makes the prospect feasible. I can't imagine it being terribly desirable, though. The price is enormous, and the potential for catastrophic failure is much greater than living Earth bound. And when these things fail, the cost in lives and resources would be staggering.

The people who left Europe to go to the Americas were going to an already heavily human altered part of the same planet, and they still died in droves because living far away from a technological and agricultural support base means you have very little margin for failure. The European emigrants got an entire continent of resources to exploit for their troubles. Our O'Neill colonists are getting a small island's worth of territory, and materials they already paid for and shipped there, except in a much less stable environment.

So yes, if someone wanted to build near Earth orbital habitats, they could probably make them viable on the short term. But I don't see any plausible benefit that comes close to offsetting the costs and risks involved.

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If you're building space habitats that are worth living in, they aren't going to be supplied from earth. As with anything else humans build, space habitats benefit from economies of scale, and as the infrastructure to build them is developed and expanded the cost to live in them will fall. Frankly at the point where you are seriously discussing colonizing or economically exploiting the solar system in any serious way the cost of megastrucutres becomes fairly inconsequential. That small island's worth of territory can support multiple millions of people comfortably, and much larger structures that can support far more people are possible if you substitute the steel of the original concept for something with greater tensile strength (say, graphene).

It takes a far smaller impact to endanger a space habitat than an entire world. The planet has gravity holding its atmosphere in place, and isn't reliant on pressure. Cosmic radiation would be mostly blocked out by the atmosphere of the habitat, but a large electromagnetic event like a solar flare could cause massive problems, exacerbated by the total lack of resources to fix anything without calling Earth. A single blight can't destroy all the food crops on Earth. It is relatively easy to ship disaster relief to neighbors on Earth. Rescuing a failing habitat is a much, much bigger cost.

If a nuclear war destroys civilization on Earth, the habitats will most likely collapse next time they have a crop failure, hull breach, or disease outbreak. If not, they will probably fail when they can no longer repair the equipment necessary to control their orientation, or maintain their waste and water systems.

Essentially, these would be huge wastes of resource4s that would continuously demand more resources to keep their populations viable.

Click to shrink...

At the point where we are talking serious space habitation they really aren't going to be anything you can call fragile anymore, and again, there is no way you are building or maintaining these things with material shipped from earth. I don't know why you would think they should be so fragile; these concepts aren't for some scaled up lunar module type thing with walls you can breach with a misplaced hammer swing, these kinds of megastrucutres can easily support an outer hull upwards of a meter thick, which is enough to protect from small impacts, electromagnetic effects, and radiation (the atmosphere is definitely not used for radiation shielding). I struggle to imagine crop failures being a common issue on these things since they're most likely going to be utilizing some sort of hydroponics system; if one of your greenhouses shows signs of blight you just quarantine it while you resolve the problem. You're blowing the fragility and vulnerability way out of proportions here.

 

[mesonoxian]

If you're building space habitats that are worth living in, they aren't going to be supplied from earth. As with anything else humans build, space habitats benefit from economies of scale, and as the infrastructure to build them is developed and expanded the cost to live in them will fall. Frankly at the point where you are seriously discussing colonizing or economically exploiting the solar system in any serious way the cost of megastrucutres becomes fairly inconsequential. That small island's worth of territory can support multiple millions of people comfortably, and much larger structures that can support far more people are possible if you substitute the steel of the original concept for something with greater tensile strength (say, graphene).

At the point where we are talking serious space habitation they really aren't going to be anything you can call fragile anymore, and again, there is no way you are building or maintaining these things with material shipped from earth. I don't know why you would think they should be so fragile; these concepts aren't for some scaled up lunar module type thing with walls you can breach with a misplaced hammer swing, these kinds of megastrucutres can easily support an outer hull upwards of a meter thick, which is enough to protect from small impacts, electromagnetic effects, and radiation (the atmosphere is definitely not used for radiation shielding). I struggle to imagine crop failures being a common issue on these things since they're most likely going to be utilizing some sort of hydroponics system; if one of your greenhouses shows signs of blight you just quarantine it while you resolve the problem. You're blowing the fragility and vulnerability way out of proportions here.

Click to shrink...

I don't think habitats worth living in are ever likely to be practical. There are too many costs to start them up, and too many potential points of failure.

Thick hulls are nice, but the thicker they are, the more resources they cost to construct and repair. And even a thick hull will eventually be damaged. These things are huge and in orbit for decades or centuries. They will eventually suffer a critical failure. A solar flare might not injure the population, but it could easily destroy a lot of the sensitive electronics and solar panels these things will rely on.

Like I said, building them is not in the realm of sheer fantasy like interstellar colonies or terraforming. But it is a huge price tag for very little benefit. I suspect that there are going to be a lot of failures. Simulating the functions of a planet for millions of people or crops means a continuous strain on vast amounts of equipment, and the continuous use of resources to maintain the equipment of the habitat, and to keep it where you want it in space.

This is something we could do, but I don't think it is something we ever will do.

 

[galahad]

I don't really agree with your risk assessment, space is a very dull environment. This means there aren't a lot of surprises and once you've solved a problem in a reliable way, it will tend to remain that way.

So certainly, if you say built an O'Neill cylinder in a stupid and foolish way, it could be a major catastrophe risk. But it's not like you have to though, while I imagine early versions might, with refinement they'd probably eventually become very reliable. Like other major engineered systems that are well enough understood.

As such I'd argue long term space is probably the safer habitat, unlike Earth where the planet itself is constantly prone to high energy events causing catastrophes over large areas. From Hurricanes to flooding, or Earthquakes to Tsunamis. We've engineered ourselves to do better against them, but even now they are far from a fully solved problem.


Another factor would be if WW3 ever happened, then everyone being in one very small area (ie a planet) might be pretty dangerous. Being off world might have a higher survivability then being near ground zero of such a conflict.


As such I'm seeing at least two plausible benefits space has on Earth.

Click to shrink...

Biggest existential risk to an advanced technological species like us would be ourselves. Man himself is the primary reason for not having all your eggs in same basket. See the idea that it is easier to construct hardened shelters on Earth than go to space makes sense, and would be true if we were a race of spherical cows in vacuum. But we are not, civilization is a fragile construct, in a world of stupid and hateful men with ever increasing methods of destruction.

 

[Havock]

This is something we could do, but I don't think it is something we ever will do.

Click to shrink...

I think "ever" is too large a timespan to conclusively make such a statement one way or another.

 

[Quickshot0]

It takes a far smaller impact to endanger a space habitat than an entire world.

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Sure, that's entirely true. Similarly it takes a far smaller impact to endanger everyone in a plane, then it does to endanger a similar number in cars or on foot. Yet it's planes that are safest, cars that are next safest and walking that least safe.

Thus the danger value is not actually determined by some hypothetical damagability rating, but instead by how safe you can actually engineer something to be.

In this respect as I said before, Space is remarkably dull, stray objects below our artificial clutter in low earth orbit is very rare, as in, we don't even bother armoring our random interplanetary probes for it. But you can easily create a detection array to see and help intercept any such dangers anyway. And solar flares are actually not that big of a threat either. The type of danger is poses is well understood and thus you can engineer the dangers away from it.

There are plenty of other things you could do as well, like perhaps designing self healing hulls, compartmentalization which helped ships so much, emergency shelters, radiation shielding, etc. All of which would mitigate even the remaining risks to even further degrees. As well as mostly eliminate the single failure destroys everything mode, in to a more localized problem only.


As such, in practice in the long term as these are all eventually designed in to space stations, there is some reason to think that space will be safer then Earth. Considering Earth has relatively random high energy events all the time, while still being vulnerable to solar flares as well, and to a smaller degree impactors as well. Meaning Earth even carries over a moderate amount of the risk space has as well.


So Earth could still withstand a bigger total detonation before the end then a space station? Sure, absolutely. But in Space you'd just build a lot, and not all clustered together but spread out over a very large area. So in practice any such disaster would be localized and less able to hurt everyone in all of them, so here to they're basically safer.



In summary, I think your risk assessment is wrong and that long-term Earth is actually the more dangerous place.

 

[mesonoxian]

Sure, that's entirely true. Similarly it takes a far smaller impact to endanger everyone in a plane, then it does to endanger a similar number in cars or on foot. Yet it's planes that are safest, cars that are next safest and walking that least safe.

Thus the danger value is not actually determined by some hypothetical damagability rating, but instead by how safe you can actually engineer something to be.

In this respect as I said before, Space is remarkably dull, stray objects below our artificial clutter in low earth orbit is very rare, as in, we don't even bother armoring our random interplanetary probes for it. But you can easily create a detection array to see and help intercept any such dangers anyway. And solar flares are actually not that big of a threat either. The type of danger is poses is well understood and thus you can engineer the dangers away from it.

There are plenty of other things you could do as well, like perhaps designing self healing hulls, compartmentalization which helped ships so much, emergency shelters, radiation shielding, etc. All of which would mitigate even the remaining risks to even further degrees. As well as mostly eliminate the single failure destroys everything mode, in to a more localized problem only.


As such, in practice in the long term as these are all eventually designed in to space stations, there is some reason to think that space will be safer then Earth. Considering Earth has relatively random high energy events all the time, while still being vulnerable to solar flares as well, and to a smaller degree impactors as well. Meaning Earth even carries over a moderate amount of the risk space has as well.


So Earth could still withstand a bigger total detonation before the end then a space station? Sure, absolutely. But in Space you'd just build a lot, and not all clustered together but spread out over a very large area. So in practice any such disaster would be localized and less able to hurt everyone in all of them, so here to they're basically safer.



In summary, I think your risk assessment is wrong and that long-term Earth is actually the more dangerous place.

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Walking is more dangerous than driving for the same reason driving is more dangerous than flying. Namely lots of human controlled vehicles on the ground going fast enough to kill someone.

Space probes are relatively small and don't carry any people. They are also only important to us for a few years. The habitats are many orders of magnitude larger, intended to survive indefinitely, and are full of people. The greater the surface area, the more likely collisions are.

There are numerous ways the survivability of a habitat could be compromised that become lethal because there is no place to go and no margin for failure. Think of all the various ways urban infrastructure breaks down, or that agricultural projects fail. Now imagine those things happening with no ready source of fresh water, disaster relief, or means of evacuation. Plus habitats need technologically advanced equipment to be maintained in working order for decades or centuries. On Earth the atmosphere shields us from lethal radiation and impacts. In space, that equipment is going to be constantly bombarded, which means more points of potential failure, when the margin of survival is already narrow.

You could probably make it work with enough time and public willingness, but I sincerely doubt they'd be viable without Earth based support. And I don't think the benefits of their existence would come anywhere close to being worth the cost of constructing and maintaining them.

 

[terma]

Biggest existential risk to an advanced technological species like us would be ourselves. Man himself is the primary reason for not having all your eggs in same basket. See the idea that it is easier to construct hardened shelters on Earth than go to space makes sense, and would be true if we were a race of spherical cows in vacuum. But we are not, civilization is a fragile construct, in a world of stupid and hateful men with ever increasing methods of destruction.

Click to shrink...

Outside of a biosphere collapse (which we are so good at we'll have trouble keeping it off a space habitat as well) what makes you think that, if WW3 erupts, the Chinese moonbase won't nuke the Indian space habs and vice-versa?

 

[Navarro_Refugee]

I don't think habitats worth living in are ever likely to be practical. There are too many costs to start them up, and too many potential points of failure.

Thick hulls are nice, but the thicker they are, the more resources they cost to construct and repair. And even a thick hull will eventually be damaged. These things are huge and in orbit for decades or centuries. They will eventually suffer a critical failure. A solar flare might not injure the population, but it could easily destroy a lot of the sensitive electronics and solar panels these things will rely on.

Like I said, building them is not in the realm of sheer fantasy like interstellar colonies or terraforming. But it is a huge price tag for very little benefit. I suspect that there are going to be a lot of failures. Simulating the functions of a planet for millions of people or crops means a continuous strain on vast amounts of equipment, and the continuous use of resources to maintain the equipment of the habitat, and to keep it where you want it in space.

This is something we could do, but I don't think it is something we ever will do.

Click to shrink...

I feel like you grossly underestimate the impact that economic exploitation of the solar system would have on costs. Price is relative and at the point where you're in a position to seriously entertain the idea of building these things you necessarily must have a fairly well developed orbital infrastructure and off-earth mining industry; at that point those costs you're stressing cease to be the roadblock you're imagining them to be. The thought of investing millions of tons of materials and machinery into a giant space habitat is basically unthinkable with the means available to us today, but if your people are already mining asteroids and shipping material across the solar system then the odds are pretty good that you already have more material than you know what to do with and an infrastructure in place for building and maintaining structures in space. Exploiting that for large habitats is relatively easy once you're already at that point and the bigger your network of asteroid miners and space-based infrastructure is the easier it gets. Again, economies of scale is a thing.

I agree that there probably isn't anyway that these things can exist without some sort of support infrastructure, but such an infrastructure needs to exist for them to be built in the first place so there really isn't any reason they would be unable to acquire replacement parts and materials. Hell, there's no reason that a habitat couldn't have its own asteroid mining operation and factories. They certainly have the population for it, and at that point the question of maintenance becomes fairly moot. What does "critical failure" even look like for structures of this size, short of some sort of major impact that compromises the superstructure? Smaller impacts can be handled by a thick hull or active defenses, and larger impacts can be screened for and averted. It's really not that hard to shield against solar flares, a Faraday cage is more than adequate to protect against the electromagnetic effects and you can just build that into the hull during construction. The only reason modern spacecraft have to worry about them so much is that putting adequate shielding on them isn't feasible given their mass budgets, and even then you can protect the electronics by turning everything off before the flare hits. They don't move at the speed of light, and there are warning systems in place even today.

 

[Quickshot0]

There are numerous ways the survivability of a habitat could be compromised that become lethal because there is no place to go and no margin for failure. Think of all the various ways urban infrastructure breaks down, or that agricultural projects fail. Now imagine those things happening with no ready source of fresh water, disaster relief, or means of evacuation. Plus habitats need technologically advanced equipment to be maintained in working order for decades or centuries. On Earth the atmosphere shields us from lethal radiation and impacts. In space, that equipment is going to be constantly bombarded, which means more points of potential failure, when the margin of survival is already narrow.

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I wish you'd consider your failure scenarios more.

No place to go? What about the evacuation bunkers I suggested? Compartmentalization? Or you know, other space stations in the area? If one is serious about building safe space stations, there would be plenty of places to go. Each station it's own city, just like Earth has cities across its surface. Which makes disaster relief like on Earth, a city gets destroyed, the people go in to shelters and then later on get evacuated to the other cities.

The equipment all being bombarded by radiation etc makes no sense. Why would you put all your equipment on the outside of your station outside your protective area? Far more logical is to place it all inside the protections if you can. This means only things that have to be exposed would be exposed and that everything else is just operating in normal Earth like conditions. So just some solar panels, door systems, cameras and so. All things we've had a long history of working successfully in high radiation environments in a vacuum already.

Urban infra breaks down? Water sources fail? These are the same problem as a city on a planet has, and with much the same consequences as in both cases if unaddressed the city is over. So in practice other cities/station would support the ailing location and recover it. Though in practice as we can see in reality, cities tend to go quite out of their way to prevent total infra collapses, so this is a rare failure mode. And otherwise can be handled line on Earth.

And habitats needing advanced tech to keep running is well... all modern cities need advanced tech to keep going, else they fail catastrophically. So this isn't a new failure mode either, it's just the standard city failure mode, but expanded to just having a few extra infra bits to handle. It seems unrealistic to think a city couldn't handle that. And in the real world we have an example of this on country scale even, The Netherlands is a go to example for catastrophic failure after all. They'd get flooded out if their water defenses failed with vast destructive effects. But as their history shows compartmentalization, solid infra work and backups can keep you going in such a situation century after century. Even in case of disasters the surviving parts bailing out the destroyed areas where the local defenses collapsed.


Over all as such, I think you're underestimating what engineering can do. How well catastrophic failure modes can be handled. And underestimating the ability of humans to keep things going for centuries.

Basically the margins of survival can be made to be far far larger then what you seem to imagine. And your proposed risks are in general not much different from ones found on Earth and thus all to often can be solved in the same kind of ways.


Space I do believe as such really can be engineered to be safer then Earth, as it lacks several major disaster types that Earth has, disaster types with a long history of being difficult to fully counter. And thus safety is a benefit space stations can have over Earth cities I believe.

 

[mesonoxian]

I feel like you grossly underestimate the impact that economic exploitation of the solar system would have on costs. Price is relative and at the point where you're in a position to seriously entertain the idea of building these things you necessarily must have a fairly well developed orbital infrastructure and off-earth mining industry; at that point those costs you're stressing cease to be the roadblock you're imagining them to be. The thought of investing millions of tons of materials and machinery into a giant space habitat is basically unthinkable with the means available to us today, but if your people are already mining asteroids and shipping material across the solar system then the odds are pretty good that you already have more material than you know what to do with and an infrastructure in place for building and maintaining structures in space. Exploiting that for large habitats is relatively easy once you're already at that point and the bigger your network of asteroid miners and space-based infrastructure is the easier it gets. Again, economies of scale is a thing.

I agree that there probably isn't anyway that these things can exist without some sort of support infrastructure, but such an infrastructure needs to exist for them to be built in the first place so there really isn't any reason they would be unable to acquire replacement parts and materials. Hell, there's no reason that a habitat couldn't have its own asteroid mining operation and factories. They certainly have the population for it, and at that point the question of maintenance becomes fairly moot. What does "critical failure" even look like for structures of this size, short of some sort of major impact that compromises the superstructure? Smaller impacts can be handled by a thick hull or active defenses, and larger impacts can be screened for and averted. It's really not that hard to shield against solar flares, a Faraday cage is more than adequate to protect against the electromagnetic effects and you can just build that into the hull during construction. The only reason modern spacecraft have to worry about them so much is that putting adequate shielding on them isn't feasible given their mass budgets, and even then you can protect the electronics by turning everything off before the flare hits. They don't move at the speed of light, and there are warning systems in place even today.

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Asteroid mining would be a necessity for these habitats to be constructed. Even so, building and refining materials in space is always going to be harder than doing the same on Earth. Without being able to gather materials already outside of Earth's gravity well, I'd consider the project impossible rather than just ll advised.

Critical failure would include things like a collapse of the food supply, major outbreak of illness, a failure of the systems used to position the habitat, contamination of the water supply, loss of atmospheric pressure, loss of the solar panels that provide power to the habitat, etc. Things fail and fall apart. On Earth we can respond to catastrophes by moving people and materials extremely quickly to the disaster site, and people can be evacuated, or even walk away from them. Here, you have thousands of miles of vacuum between you and aid, that is likely to have to crawl out of a gravity well to help you.

If there were a huge advantage to being in space, these things might be worth addressing, but I can't see much value in them. We can exploit space without living there, and if Earth is somehow destroyed, the habitats are unlikely to survive for long. Either they will also be taken out, or they will still be dependent enough on Earth to delay our extinction by a century or two at the outside.

If you have the resources to build a habitat, you can buy an island. Hell, you could build an island. Colonists on Earth could be, and often were, very poor. They were also going to place with abundant resources they could exploit directly. Purchasing those resources and then launching them into space before using them seems like an unnecessary extra step.

 

[Navarro_Refugee]

Asteroid mining would be a necessity for these habitats to be constructed. Even so, building and refining materials in space is always going to be harder than doing the same on Earth. Without being able to gather materials already outside of Earth's gravity well, I'd consider the project impossible rather than just ll advised.

Critical failure would include things like a collapse of the food supply, major outbreak of illness, a failure of the systems used to position the habitat, contamination of the water supply, loss of atmospheric pressure, loss of the solar panels that provide power to the habitat, etc. Things fail and fall apart. On Earth we can respond to catastrophes by moving people and materials extremely quickly to the disaster site, and people can be evacuated, or even walk away from them. Here, you have thousands of miles of vacuum between you and aid, that is likely to have to crawl out of a gravity well to help you.

If there were a huge advantage to being in space, these things might be worth addressing, but I can't see much value in them. We can exploit space without living there, and if Earth is somehow destroyed, the habitats are unlikely to survive for long. Either they will also be taken out, or they will still be dependent enough on Earth to delay our extinction by a century or two at the outside.

If you have the resources to build a habitat, you can buy an island. Hell, you could build an island. Colonists on Earth could be, and often were, very poor. They were also going to place with abundant resources they could exploit directly. Purchasing those resources and then launching them into space before using them seems like an unnecessary extra step.

Click to shrink...

I just can't see this dependency on earth being a thing. We haven't even reached the point of manufacturing or refining in space, so I don't see how we can make any kind of judgement on whether or not it will ultimately be harder or easier, but even if its harder that doesn't necessarily mean you wouldn't want to do it. Fracking is harder than standard oil drilling after all, but people are still doing that and making a killing off of it today, and there are plenty of reasons you might want to manufacture in space instead of on earth. Not having to worry about any kind of environmental regulations or zoning laws for one thing; you can't exactly pollute space once you move beyond LEO after all. There's more space to build in than we could ever plausibly fill so you can expand your facilities as much as you want so long as you've got the materials and infrastructure. Even if the cost per unit for space manufacturing proves to be higher the sheer volume of facilities you could build could out-compete earth based facilities through sheer output the same way that fracking operations are hurting traditional oil operations today. Moreover, I actually think we could reach the point where manufacturing in space becomes nearly mandatory simply because people may want minimal amounts of that going on on earth for environmental reasons given the option.

Most of the failure modes you list can be dealt with with proper redundancies, and outside of a major impact a loss of atmosphere scenario isn't particularly plausible. Disasters are perhaps more dire on a habitat, but I will argue that they are actually considerably less likely and more predictable than they are on a planet. You built it, you know the failure modes, and outside of stray asteroids nature cannot meaningfully mess with you and those aren't that hard to account for.

 

[mesonoxian]

I just can't see this dependency on earth being a thing. We haven't even reached the point of manufacturing or refining in space, so I don't see how we can make any kind of judgement on whether or not it will ultimately be harder or easier, but even if its harder that doesn't necessarily mean you wouldn't want to do it. Fracking is harder than standard oil drilling after all, but people are still doing that and making a killing off of it today, and there are plenty of reasons you might want to manufacture in space instead of on earth. Not having to worry about any kind of environmental regulations or zoning laws for one thing; you can't exactly pollute space once you move beyond LEO after all. There's more space to build in than we could ever plausibly fill so you can expand your facilities as much as you want so long as you've got the materials and infrastructure. Even if the cost per unit for space manufacturing proves to be higher the sheer volume of facilities you could build could out-compete earth based facilities through sheer output the same way that fracking operations are hurting traditional oil operations today. Moreover, I actually think we could reach the point where manufacturing in space becomes nearly mandatory simply because people may want minimal amounts of that going on on earth for environmental reasons given the option.

Most of the failure modes you list can be dealt with with proper redundancies, and outside of a major impact a loss of atmosphere scenario isn't particularly plausible. Disasters are perhaps more dire on a habitat, but I will argue that they are actually considerably less likely and more predictable than they are on a planet. You built it, you know the failure modes, and outside of stray asteroids nature cannot meaningfully mess with you and those aren't that hard to account for.

Click to shrink...

The engineering hurdles involved in refining materials to a usable form in space are considerable. Not insurmountable, but enough that it shouldn't be treated as a foregone conclusion that it will someday be equivalent to terrestrial processing.

Failures can indeed be responded to, but every redundancy you build in makes things that much more expensive, and may or may not actually solve the problem in question, the way back up systems fail on Earth. Every bit of material or expertise not on board the habitat requires a trip through space, involving rockets burning up reaction mass and exposing the crew and passengers of those trips to all the dangers of space flight. This is all doable, but it adds an increasing risk and cost factor to every step of every process.

I fully believe we could develop a technological base capable of maintaining space habitats if we wanted to, But we could also build a moon base or land on Mars right now if we wanted to. We just don't, because the cost is high and the pay off is minimal.

I might be wrong. Maybe things will eventually get much, much cheaper than I suspect. Maybe space flight can be made much safer than we currently suspect. Maybe people will decide space is worth a huge resource and safety cost due to unforeseen shifts in cultural values. But I don't think it is likely.

 

[galahad]

Outside of a biosphere collapse (which we are so good at we'll have trouble keeping it off a space habitat as well) what makes you think that, if WW3 erupts, the Chinese moonbase won't nuke the Indian space habs and vice-versa?

Click to shrink...

The beauty of space is that its infinite, and you can always put sufficient distance between you and troubles. You can hang out in the main belt, or even the outer solar system beyond Jupiters orbit. Or even flee into the Oort cloud and beyond. You dont have to build your space habs around something that will likely become politically contested like the Earth-Moon system or high profile locations like Mars.

 

[mesonoxian]

The beauty of space is that its infinite, and you can always put sufficient distance between you and troubles. You can hang out in the main belt, or even the outer solar system beyond Jupiters orbit. Or even flee into the Oort cloud and beyond. You dont have to build your space habs around something that will likely become politically contested like the Earth-Moon system or high profile locations like Mars.

Click to shrink...

Habitats will be dependent on sunlight. Moving them too far away will cut them off from the major source of free energy in the solar system, and make support from other habitats or Earth increasingly difficult.

 

[galahad]

Habitats will be dependent on sunlight. Moving them too far away will cut them off from the major source of free energy in the solar system, and make support from other habitats or Earth increasingly difficult.

Click to shrink...

Free energy from the sun is nice to have but not a necessity. Fission + (potentially) fusion is a thing.

 

[Navarro_Refugee]

Habitats will be dependent on sunlight. Moving them too far away will cut them off from the major source of free energy in the solar system, and make support from other habitats or Earth increasingly difficult.

Click to shrink...

More distant habitats are not a deal breaker. As galahad said nuclear options exist and solar power can remain viable even into the outer solar system if you increase your light collecting area, either by simply using larger panels or by using inexpensive materials to build mirrors to focus light onto smaller panels. This obviously represents an increased material cost, but that could be worth it for the sake of living closer to major resources such as the asteroid belt or the gas giants.

 

[mesonoxian]

Free energy from the sun is nice to have but not a necessity. Fission + (potentially) fusion is a thing.

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Those provide a major system which can fail in a variety of ways, making distance from other humans a problem. Fusion would be great if you could work it out. Fission is a bit more of a problem, since you'd need fissile materials, which are mostly on the terrestrial planets, and which require intensive and potentially dangerous enrichment to be useful. A RTG can work for low level power needs like for a satellite, but it is going to be insufficient to provide all the energy needed to keep humans alive and fed. Remember, your power source is going to need to replace the sunlight that makes your crops grow.

More distant habitats are not a deal breaker. As galahad said nuclear options exist and solar power can remain viable even into the outer solar system if you increase your light collecting area, either by simply using larger panels or by using inexpensive materials to build mirrors to focus light onto smaller panels. This obviously represents an increased material cost, but that could be worth it for the sake of living closer to major resources such as the asteroid belt or the gas giants.

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I think just being at Jupiter of the asteroid belt would probably be manageable. Going out to the Oort Cloud is a much, much bigger problem. The sun provides minuscule levels of power at those distances, and there is very little reason to bother, since the bulk of what would be useful for a habitat is abundant within the asteroid belt.

 

[Navarro_Refugee]

I think just being at Jupiter of the asteroid belt would probably be manageable. Going out to the Oort Cloud is a much, much bigger problem. The sun provides minuscule levels of power at those distances, and there is very little reason to bother, since the bulk of what would be useful for a habitat is abundant within the asteroid belt.

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Oh absolutely, the sun isn't too much better than starlight at those distances and the distance to the Oort cloud combined with the average distance between objects out there make gathering resources from it pretty questionable even for a really generous outlook on space travel. Solar power falls of on a pretty steep exponential curve as you move out from the sun; it's probably workable out at Saturn if you supplement it with mirrors to focus the light (and you can make your mirrors from abundant and otherwise fairly worthless ices at that distance), but it's pretty questionable even as far out as the ice giants. Depending on the estimates you use the Oort cloud could be as far out as half a light year, and that's basically interstellar travel at that point. Even as someone who is generally pretty optimistic about space travel I really don't believe we would ever be launching what amounts to interstellar missions to recover a single comet's worth of resources.

 

[terma]

The beauty of space is that its infinite, and you can always put sufficient distance between you and troubles. You can hang out in the main belt, or even the outer solar system beyond Jupiters orbit. Or even flee into the Oort cloud and beyond. You dont have to build your space habs around something that will likely become politically contested like the Earth-Moon system or high profile locations like Mars.

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The beauty of human spite is that it is also infinite, I can easily imagine someone launching interstellar target seeking RKVs out of spite, because I totally would.

Don't forget that trying to get out of Mutually Assured Destruction range is an attempt to get out of the MAD deadlock that keeps everyone slightly saner, breaking MAD is rushing the other side to push the big red button.

 

[Richardson]

Habitats will be dependent on sunlight. Moving them too far away will cut them off from the major source of free energy in the solar system, and make support from other habitats or Earth increasingly difficult.

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Close-in solar concentrators/collectors beaming lasers to far-flung habitats. Hell, that's proposed as a viable no-fusion required method for interstellar travel, just with relay stations in the oort cloud retransmitting. Or, you know, fusion reactors (if we can get the damn things working)

 

[mesonoxian]

Close-in solar concentrators/collectors beaming lasers to far-flung habitats. Hell, that's proposed as a viable no-fusion required method for interstellar travel, just with relay stations in the oort cloud retransmitting. Or, you know, fusion reactors (if we can get the damn things working)

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I wish the people working on that idea good luck, but I think they are going to run into difficult and expensive problems with no real economic incentive to solve them.

 

[Kaiya]

I don't really agree with your risk assessment, space is a very dull environment. This means there aren't a lot of surprises and once you've solved a problem in a reliable way, it will tend to remain that way.

So certainly, if you say built an O'Neill cylinder in a stupid and foolish way, it could be a major catastrophe risk. But it's not like you have to though, while I imagine early versions might, with refinement they'd probably eventually become very reliable. Like other major engineered systems that are well enough understood.

As such I'd argue long term space is probably the safer habitat, unlike Earth where the planet itself is constantly prone to high energy events causing catastrophes over large areas. From Hurricanes to flooding, or Earthquakes to Tsunamis. We've engineered ourselves to do better against them, but even now they are far from a fully solved problem.


Another factor would be if WW3 ever happened, then everyone being in one very small area (ie a planet) might be pretty dangerous. Being off world might have a higher survivability then being near ground zero of such a conflict.


As such I'm seeing at least two plausible benefits space has on Earth.

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I would much rather be on earth than in space during WW3. Earth is still going to be ridiculously safer.

 

[Quickshot0]

I would much rather be on earth than in space during WW3. Earth is still going to be ridiculously safer.

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Unless you're out of the way enough to not be in the firing line at all, in which case you'd probably be a lot safer.

How viable this method is kind of depends how built up off world colonies are though.

Still, as in previous eras, people will choose themselves if they want to try and go or not, so it's not like you have to take such a risk, all that matters is if others will.

 

[terma]

Unless you're out of the way enough to not be in the firing line at all, in which case you'd probably be a lot safer.

How viable this method is kind of depends how built up off world colonies are though.

Still, as in previous eras, people will choose themselves if they want to try and go or not, so it's not like you have to take such a risk, all that matters is if others will.

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Being out of the way makes you a target. If the colony is incapable of sustaining itself, it is doomed and all is fine, launch a couple dozen nukes at it to be safe. If it can be expected to survive being cut off then it needs, absolutely needs to be destroyed utterly. It's a requirement for the maintenance of MAD.