[Rod_Cloutier]

A new movie came out this week called 'Interstellar'. Despite being a space film of the 2001 a space odyssey genre, the movie was mostly about the consequences of humans rendering the Earth uninhabitable, so we must search for a home somewhere else.

Like the film, Gravity, this stays well within the framework of existing mainstream space science. No warp drive, transporters, or anything fantasy like that in this one. It's the story of how people live 3 generations from now; the consequences of catastrophic climate change in full force, the economy collapsed to a fraction of what it once was, the collapse of all large scale organizations.

The last ditch effort to find an alternate world to recolonize in the face of human extinction, vs the stark reality that there's not much out there, nothing even remotely as habitable as the Earth was.

It was also the story of a man leaving his family, facing the time dilation effects of relativity, and that in order to save the world his family must live out their entire lives and survive without him being there. A touching, heartbreaking film about family, love and loss the likes of which I haven't seen in years.

The characters seemed real, with excellent casting, direction, and a focus on the story rather than on special effects, the space scenes were bland at best. This is what movies used to be. I highly recommend the film, here's one of the movie trailers:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=p ... faDG6g#t=1

[JohnnyOnTheFarm]

It wasn't a little long for you?

It was a good film though.

[Ibon]

Kaiser Jeep's wet dream captured by Hollywood.

[Rod_Cloutier]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', '&')quot;No warp drive, transporters, or anything fantasy like that in this one." just time travel??

[JohnnyOnTheFarm]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Repent', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', '&')quot;No warp drive, transporters, or anything fantasy like that in this one." just time travel??

[Rod_Cloutier]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'b')light. It wasn't quite linked to industrial society was it? Just started devouring the crops, upping the nitrogen levels.

[JohnnyOnTheFarm]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Repent', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'b')light. It wasn't quite linked to industrial society was it? Just started devouring the crops, upping the nitrogen levels.

[Sixstrings]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Repent', 'N')o, the new planet we were relocating to was in orbit around a black hole, rather than a star. (A little far fetched) However, most of the story was about the environmental fallout on Earth of industrial society gone amuck.

[Sixstrings]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Ibon', 'K')aiser Jeep's wet dream captured by Hollywood.

[Ibon]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Sixstrings', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Ibon', 'K')aiser Jeep's wet dream captured by Hollywood.

[Strummer]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Sixstrings', 'S')tephen Hawking is one of the smartest men there is and he says the species has to do it -- if you won't listen to him, I don't know what to say.

[AgentR11]

Space is for robots. Earth is for humans. Its really that simple. I mean think about it... taking gravity away is hard on humans and easy on robots; taking humidity and air is hard on humans and easy on robots. Exposure to -100C or +100C really sucks for humans, but just requires a bit of engineering to be fine for robots. Waiting 8 months doing nothing before you start work is really hard on humans, and trivial to robots.

People often talk about the immediacy or dexterity of humans in space. You know what you do in space? You run down massive checklists, step by step, screw by screw, so you don't mess up and kill yourself instantly. You know whats really good at running down a 2000 line, precision checklist? Robots. You know what a robot calls a 2000 line checklist? A trivial program an undergrad could write for $100 and some coffee.

Maybe human tourists into space, assisted by robotics could be fun and economic for the children of oligarchs. But otherwise. No. Humans in space is a dumb idea to start with, and its only gotten dumber with improvements in technology. Sorry.

By the time you could get 4 people to stay alive 6 months on Mars you could put hundreds of spider leg and wheel based robots there, and they could stay alive for much, much longer. (little Opportunity, closing in on 4000 martian days is STILL alive and kicking).

Strummer's really got it. Get some rational asteroid defense up and running; and give some thought to a Siberian Traps or Methane apocalypse response; and ease up on the shredding of the biosphere. Those don't need to be huge projects, you don't need to save millions, just my daughter and a few obedient servants. lol. Nah, seriously, I suspect there's sufficient survivability in military command bunkers and nuclear powered warships to handle those sorts of things already.

[AgentR11]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Sixstrings', 'S')tephen Hawking is one of the smartest men there is and he says the species has to do it -- if you won't listen to him, I don't know what to say.

[dinopello]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('AgentR11', 'I') really hate magical space thinking. I really do.

[Sixstrings]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('AgentR11', 'Y')ou greatly overestimate how much protection Europa, or any other moon of Jupiter or Saturn could offer; not to mention the amount of time you'd be exposed, completely unprotected, while trying to get something heavy and fast into orbit around something like Europa and then landing without being splattered like a bug on a windshield.

[Sixstrings]

How about asteroid colonies?

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'A')dvantages

Low gravity greatly reduces the cost and risk of "landing" compared to the much deeper gravity wells of the Moon or Mars, and simplifies construction technologies (such as cranes) and reduces structural strength requirements

Large number of possible sites, with over 300,000 asteroids identified to date

Asteroids' chemical composition varies (see asteroid spectral types), providing a variety of materials usable in building and fueling spacecraft and space habitats

Some Earth-crossing asteroids require less energy (delta-v) to reach from Earth than the Moon

Material mined from asteroids could be a basis for a trade economy, and precious metals may even be returned to Earth or other colonized worlds from asteroid mines for economic gain

High surface-to-volume ratio enables effective exploration and exploitation of mineral resources and provides maximal portion of useful building ground on the surface and interior

High vacuum and low gravity would facilitate the evolution of some hi-tech industries such as material engineering and physical electronics (crystal growth, epitaxy)

Many asteroids (especially the extinct comet cores) contain large amounts (more than 5% of total composition) of water and other volatiles, as well as carbon, which are all necessary for life support.

These resources would not only be useful within the asteroid colonies, but could also be "exported" to other locations in the solar system where they were needed, and for a fraction of the energy cost of launching such materials from larger bodies such as the Moon or Mars.

Isaac Asimov pointed out the advantage of building cities inside hollowed out asteroids, since the volume of all the asteroids put together is a great deal more than that of a mile-high building covering the Earth would be, and thus could accommodate a large population
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colonization_of_the_asteroids

[KaiserJeep]

I am following this debate with some amusement. I only want to point out that Science has NO BASIS WHATSOEVER for the existence of "wormholes" that instantly transport a person from one part of space to another. Wormholes are of course one long-existing fixture of Science Fiction, discussed since the 1940's as a plot-simplifying device enabling a lazy author to postulate interstellar travel without the necessity to invent a star drive technology good enough to promote the essential "suspension of disbelief". The terminology was popularized by the movie Stargate (1994) and the various TV series that followed. "Warp Drive" is another one of those cheater plot devices, in use since Gene Roddenberry invented the term for the original Star Trek (1966-1968). In fact there is no credible scheme of faster-than-light-travel that Physics accepts today - even though such diverse minds as Einstein and Stephen Hawking sometimes use the word "wormhole" in their publications, the term has the same actual significance as "Schrödinger's cat", it is actually a "thought experiment".

What I find highly interesting is that BOTH recent popular SF movies Interstellar (2014) and Gravity (2013) contained serious violations of Physics and NONE OF YOU even noticed. I have spent countless hours explaining that the colonization of space advocated by me requires no Scientific advances whatsoever, and is entirely based upon known physical laws and technology. Both recent popular movies above eschewed absolute Scientific accuracy in lieu of conventional plot devices (which I freely admit increased their entertainment value), and none of you are aware of this - or at least none of you are bothering to discuss these facts.

It is indeed true what one of my professors told me with an obvious sense of great sadness: "Many people study Physics, but few ever use it for anything."

The last movie to attempt absolute Scientific accuracy was 2001 A Space Odyssey (1968). Prior to that, one credible attempt was Destination Moon (1950). Another was When Worlds Collide (1951). Although all three classic films have been charmingly dated by recent technology, if you were not already aware of the true status of the three classic SF films I mentioned, your judgement on matters of Science must be seriously questioned.

If you think that Star Wars (1977) was "great SF", then you are totally hopeless, please remove yourself from the debate about space colonization.