Re: A Haven Off Earth

Mishalak wrote:

> The ordinary everyday things that we take for granted here on earth
> would have to be totally provided by mechanical systems in space. Even
> in New York, to use your example, if the air conditioning fails one can
> still just go outside to get some fresh(er) air. We're talking about
> building complex systems where there would be virtually no tolerance
> for error or downtime. In a large community at a reasonable cost of
> living that simply is not a realistic goal.

It's not as hard as you're making it out to be, especially when you're
focusing on the simple stuff like air, water etc. What one does is to
have at least one large-scale backup system and some emergency
individual equipment: this, coupled with the presence of a repair
team, would prevent catastrophic failures even with fairly inept
management.

Now, we would have problems doing it on a large scale and long term
using off-the-shelf technology. But life support technology has been
advancing rapidly over the last 50 years, and there is no reason to
assume that it won't continue to do so, especially as the technologies
involved (such as volatiles recycling systems and hydroponics
gardening) have numerous useful applications other than space travel.

If you're talking about a time horizon of centuries, it's a
ridiculously easy problem, because economies of scale takes care of
most of the cost problem and simple incremental engineering progress
solves most of the technical problems. It's not as if it would require
the discovery of any new physical laws.

> If we were able to modify ourselves to such and extent that we were no
> longer dependent upon an oxygen/nitrogen atmosphere at pressure,
> certainly it would be feasible to settle space. Otherwise, I find it
> highly unlikely.

While I do think that eventually at least some spacedwellers will be
modified so that they can survive naked in the void if needs be, it's
technologically _far_ easier to simply provide Mk. 1 Standard Humans
with air, water, heat, power etc. The main difficulties of long-term
life support are more complex and difficult ones: they revolve around
issues like avoiding fungal blooms, parastic infestations, and
localized hot, cold, dry or wet spots in a large-scale life support
system. They may well never be "fully solved", any more than any human
cities we build today are "fully livable", but partial solutions are
more than adequate for most human purposes.

Sincerely Yours,
Jordan

.

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