Ask Lemmy
A Fediverse community for open-ended, thought provoking questions
Rules: (interactive)
1) Be nice and; have fun
Doxxing, trolling, sealioning, racism, toxicity and dog-whistling are not welcomed in AskLemmy. Remember what your mother said: if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all. In addition, the site-wide Lemmy.world terms of service also apply here. Please familiarize yourself with them
2) All posts must end with a '?'
This is sort of like Jeopardy. Please phrase all post titles in the form of a proper question ending with ?
3) No spam
Please do not flood the community with nonsense. Actual suspected spammers will be banned on site. No astroturfing.
4) NSFW is okay, within reason
Just remember to tag posts with either a content warning or a [NSFW] tag. Overtly sexual posts are not allowed, please direct them to either !asklemmyafterdark@lemmy.world or !asklemmynsfw@lemmynsfw.com.
NSFW comments should be restricted to posts tagged [NSFW].
5) This is not a support community.
It is not a place for 'how do I?', type questions.
If you have any questions regarding the site itself or would like to report a community, please direct them to Lemmy.world Support or email info@lemmy.world. For other questions check our partnered communities list, or use the search function.
6) No US Politics.
Please don't post about current US Politics. If you need to do this, try !politicaldiscussion@lemmy.world or !askusa@discuss.online
Reminder: The terms of service apply here too.
Partnered Communities:
Logo design credit goes to: tubbadu
view the rest of the comments
Never. I don't think large-scale habitation of Mars or any other planets will ever happen.
Even if we were to establish a permanent largish base, they would be specialists only. It will always be expensive to get there and it’s always a long term stay in an expensive habitat with strict rules that someone has to pay for.
While I like the realism of The Expanse, I just don’t see the existence of a non-terrestrial lower class or even middle class: what could they possibly due to pay for any possible living costs. I do hope we’ll develop permanent bases throughout the solar system but it will be a few specialists and lots of robotics. Nothing else makes sense
I sure as fuck hope not. I am unapologetically opposed to any and all space colonization.
The only sensible answer.
Even if we discovered unobtainium there, robots would do the mining.
I think we’re all being misled by “mining”: it’s difficult to imagine how having to return something from space will ever be competitive with mining the same thing on earth, regardless of unobtanium.
What mining in space is good for is …. Space economy. And the goal is not to mine things that have value on earth but those that have value in space. For the foreseeable future, the goal of mining in space would be to reduce the cost of the space economy by reducing launches of bulky, heavy, or consumables. Think of all the rocket fuel spent on rocket fuel, water, food, oxygen, construction materials and shielding. Thats much higher cost than just carrying the people. Think of how much cheaper a manned space mission can be if you can instead use what is at your destination. Cutting the required number of launches in half is cutting the costs in half