Vocal Voices

Which means No Earlier than 8th April 2022. It is a space launch terminology which states that a space launch will happen on, or after, this date.

This is the date that the Axiom corporation launches a fully private mission to the International Space Station. The very first of its kind.

Since the start of space travel, all missions were government run. Yes civilians were "invited", but they were government missions. In the last year there have been several totally private missions to "space" as in outside our atmosphere, but no missions to the ISS. SpaceX did launch a mission to an orbit higher than the ISS, all civilian, but didn't dock with the ISS.

This mission is a change. It is fully civilian from launch to the transfer vehicle to the crew and will complete docking is space with the ISS.

Axiom intends to start launching modules for a new space station which will build out to a new, fully private, space station. Free of Government control and open to anyone who can both pay and get there.

Another step on the journey away from our planet and another step in the privatisation of the access to space.

https://www.newscientist.com/article/23 ... o-the-iss/

Impressive toys for rich girls and boy but nowhere near a step away from this planet. That is not going to happen for many generations of both hardware and humans: if ever

We are struggling to get people on our nearest planetary neighbour, Mars, and will be for some while yet. Even then it will only be a few tens of people: at most.

There are over 50 exoplanet discovery projects and they have found nearly 5,000 exoplanets in almost 4,000 systems and hardly any of the planets are in the habitable zone and even fewer are rocky Earth sized / mass. Only one, TOI 700 D, is confirmed to have liquid water and it is 101.4 light years away.

The fastest known objects in space are runaway stars, and the fastest of them has been clocked at 30 million miles per hour. It would take it some 225 years to reach TOI 700 D and we are at a snail's pace by comparison.

We have to face facts. There is no Earth 2.0 within reach so we have to work damned hard to preserve the only one we have.

I agree we have to preserve the one we have.

But if the Dinosaur's demise wasn't warning enough, the earth rotates in a shooting gallery and some of the "bullets" are so large that no conceivable effort, after discovery, could save us from them.

The time to create options is before we lose the opportunity.

Yes we need to save this planet. But given that around 75% of the people on the planet either don't give a crap or don't believe we have a problem (look out the window, yup, same as last year), then not preparing for the ultimate outcome of our own folly is reprehensible.

Space operations are like whole country infrastructure. Huge, very expensive and very slow moving. Even SpaceX, moving at light speed in space terms, are still going to take at least 2 decades to get people to Mars, let alone have them live their sustainably.

I also agree that 100 light years is not feasible as an option. It would take over 300 years before we even learned that it would be feasible to send more settlers.

So my take is do it now and do it fast. Once we can do it and sustain it, we can reassess whether expansion of that is worth it or not.

Mind you leaving the solar system for somewhere new is significantly easier from Mars than from Earth..

I am not saying that we should not advance, of course we should.

What I am saying is that leaving Earth (Moon or Mars if easier) for somewhere else inhabitable is a pipe dream. There is nowhere in the Solar system and anywhere outside it is simply too far away according to the current known laws of physics.

Our nearest known Earth sized exoplanet in the habitable zone is Proxima b in the Alpha Centaurai cluster some 4.24 ly away. It has no known atmosphere or water. Project Breakthrough Starshot (currently a proof of concept) would like to send light sail robotic craft to do a fly-by

Wikipedia wrote:At a speed between 15% and 20% of the speed of light, it would take between twenty and thirty years to complete the journey, and approximately four years for a return message from the starship to Earth.

Nobody knows how to build the ships or to get them to the speeds mentioned.

We need to keep our feet on the ground, the one currently under them.

So my take is do it now and do it fast.

Do what?

Workingman wrote: Do what?

Spread off this planet. To our nearest neighbours first obviously. Thereafter that is up to the future generations.

Clearly we won't try and go multiple light years when we don't even know the impact on the physiology of humans between Earth and Mars.

Who knows how many extinction events there have been on Earth and how many times the inhabitants of Earth have had to climb out of the Zero age (stone age is well above that), before being knocked over again.

We have the capability and it is clear there is a need, not just about destroying the liveable biosphere through greed, but about the threat from celestial bodies which might just tip us over the edge.

Suff wrote:Spread off this planet. To our nearest neighbours first obviously.

Our neighbours, all of them, are hostile to us. Even the most benign, Mars, is only habitable for small colonies re supplied from Earth; and they would have to live underground due to the intense extremes of hot and cold and cosmic radiation bombardment. The other 7.5 billion of us would be stuck here....

As for mass extinction events: there are known to have been about five of them over the past 500 million years and they usually lasted tens of millions of years to complete. Only one, the famous asteroid, did the job in short order. It could be another 66 millions of years till the next one or they could come like buses - boom, boom, boom - next month, next year, next century, sometime whenever. We will one day be able to predict, deflect / destroy them, but not yet.

What we will never have is the capability to leave, Battlestar Galactica fleet like, and head off for Earth 2.0. Star Trek and Star Wars are works of fiction.

Workingman wrote:Our neighbours, all of them, are hostile to us. Even the most benign, Mars, is only habitable for small colonies re supplied from Earth.

Small colonies need to be supplied from Earth.

Plans are for much larger colonies which become self sustaining. Certainly I don't think that most people realise just how much technology you need in order to become self sustaining. However AI robotics may be the route to this reality. Because AI robotics can build the parts for replacements, be designed and built to do all of the manufacturing jobs supplied by Earth and don't need to grow up and go to school to be trained. These robotics can also do farming activities on the surface where radiation is prohibitive.

We are in the 21st century. Nearly a quarter of the way to the 22nd century. These things are not beyond us.

I read things about why Mars colonies would be a disaster. One 'spurt pontificated about how a colony would produce too much oxygen with their hydroponics and either blow up or poison themselves.

Yep real risk on the ISS. Mars? Atmosphere full of CO2? Bottle the oxygen and let more CO2 in for the plants to absorb, use daylight lamps to encourage them.

Of all the reasons I've seen for not being able to colonise Mars, only two of them have stood up against the reality of 21st century capabilities.

1. We don't know how to get people to mars without them getting a potential overdose of radiation
2. We don't have the technology to send the required goods and equipment to Mars for long enough for a colony to become self sustaining.

#1 will be answered fairly soon as we start government and commercial crew missions to Mars.
#2 is being solved right now and at a furious rate of production. Yes it is true with rockets which cost $1bn to launch and only put 27t to Mars. Rockets which cost $20m to launch and can lift 150t to Mars, or even more, are in development right now and one thing is sure. They will succeed.

So why should I not assume that the best thing for Humanity, right now, is a plan B which means the species doesn't die out from its own stupidity.