Space is not the New World
Jan. 12th, 2005 06:20 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mishalakI grew up believing the revealed truth that man's future was in space just as Europe went forth to conquer and settle the Americas. It was inevitable as gravity that we'd find huge advantages to living in space and we wouldn't be displacing any locals this time. We would build giant habitats out of asteroids, special smelting systems powered by solar mirrors, and fast inexpensive rocket ships. The brave future of colonizing the solar system and eventually the galaxy.
Looking again I think it more likely that space will be more akin to Antarctica. It will be a place tourists will go, where scientists will go, and it will remain uninhabited. The resources of the southern continent would be easier to exploit and we do not. Why oh why would we go mine asteroids and build glass domes on mars when we don't do it in the more forgiving extreme environs of Terra?
Until there are domes over high mountain valleys in the Andes I think it terribly unlikely that we'll be glassing over craters on Mars or the Moon. The future of man living in space is still more than a century away if it comes at all.
Looking again I think it more likely that space will be more akin to Antarctica. It will be a place tourists will go, where scientists will go, and it will remain uninhabited. The resources of the southern continent would be easier to exploit and we do not. Why oh why would we go mine asteroids and build glass domes on mars when we don't do it in the more forgiving extreme environs of Terra?
Until there are domes over high mountain valleys in the Andes I think it terribly unlikely that we'll be glassing over craters on Mars or the Moon. The future of man living in space is still more than a century away if it comes at all.
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Date: 2005-01-13 05:02 am (UTC)I wonder if so much early science fiction would feature people in space if they'd known how cheap and easy automation and remote exploration would be? After all, we've got two explorers on Mars that have overstayed their original trip, and we don't have to worry about getting them back.
As you say, the problem is there isn't really a *need* to go into space yet. But we'll see...
(no subject)
Date: 2005-01-13 08:25 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-01-13 08:41 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-01-14 02:14 am (UTC)