Space colonization good 2 Space Colonization Good- laundry List 2
e. planets are uninhabitable and resources are almost impossible to mine
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- Ext. Takes Too Long
- - Travel is too slow
e. planets are uninhabitable and resources are almost impossible to mineWilliams 10 (Lynda, M.S. in Physics and a physics faculty member at Santa Rose Junior College, “Irrational Dreams of Space Colonization”, Peace Review: A Journal of Social Justice, 22.1, Spring, pg 5-6)What do the prospects of colonies or bases on the moon and Mars offer? Both the moon and Mars host extreme environments that are uninhabitable to humans without very sophisticated technological life- support systems beyond any that are feasible now or will be available in the near future. Both bodies are subjected to deadly levels of solar radiation and are void of atmospheres that could sustain oxygen-based life forms such as humans. Terra-forming either body is not feasible with current technologies and within any reasonable time frames (and may, in any case, be questioned from an ethical and fiscal point of view). Thus, any colony or base would be restricted to living in space capsules or trailer park–like structures that could not support a sufficient number of humans to perpetuate and sustain the species in any long-term manner. Although evidence of water has been discovered on both bodies, it exists in a form that is trapped in minerals, which would require huge amounts of energy to access. Water can be converted into fuel either as hydrogen or oxygen, which would eliminate the need to transport vast amounts of fuel from Earth. According to Britain’s leading spaceflight expert, Professor Colin Pillinger, however, ‘‘You would need to heat up a lot of lunar soil to 200C to get yourself a glass of water.’’ The promises of helium as an energy source on the moon is also mostly hype. Helium-3 could be used in the production of nuclear fusion energy, a process we have yet to prove viable or efficient on Earth. Mining helium would require digging dozens of meters into the lunar surface and processing hundreds of thousands of tons of soil to produce one ton of helium-3. (25 tons of helium-3 would be required to power the United States for one year.) Fusion also requires the very rare element tritium, which does not exist naturally on the moon, Mars, or Earth in the abundances needed to facilitate nuclear fusion energy production. Currently, there are no means for generating the energy on the moon needed to extract the helium-3 to produce the promised endless source of energy. Similar energy problems exist for the proposed use of solar power on the moon, which has the additional problem of being sunlit two weeks a month and dark for the other two weeks. f. Moon dustGugliatta, 07 (Guy, Reporter of Science- Washington Post, Discover Magazine, “Can We Survive On the Moon?” Discover Magazine- March 2007 Issue, http://discovermagazine.com/2007/mar/can-we-survive-on-the-moon) For those who would explore the moon—whether to train for exploring Mars, to mine resources, or to install high-precision observatories—regolith is a potentially crippling liability, an all-pervasive, pernicious threat to machinery and human tissue. After just three days of moonwalks, regolith threatened to grind the joints of the Apollo astronauts’ space suits to a halt, the same way rust crippled Dorothy’s Tin Man. Special sample cases built to hold the Apollo moon rocks lost their vacuum seals because of rims corrupted by dust. For a permanent lunar base, such mechanical failures could spell disaster. Regolith can play havoc with hydraulics, freeze on-off switches, and turn ball bearings into Grape Nuts. When moondust is disturbed, small particles float about, land, and glue themselves to everything. Regolith does not brush off easily, and breathing it can cause pulmonary fibrosis, the lunar equivalent of black lung. There is nothing like it on Earth. “Here you have geological processes that tend to sort and separate,” says geologist Douglas Rickman of NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center. “On the moon you have meteorite impacts that mix everything together.” Ext. Takes Too LongTakes too long- Space exploration would take thousands of yearsDonald F. Robertson, freelance space journalist, 3-6-2006, “Space Exploration,” Space News, http://www.space.com/spacenews/archive06/RobertsonOpEd_030606.html Dangerous it will be. Detailed exploration, let alone settlement, of nearby worlds will be the single most difficult task humanity has ever tackled. Most likely, it will take many hundreds, or even thousands, of years. Our first attempts to establish a base on Earth's Moon or Mars may well fail. As on the oceans, many people will die: we cannot insist on levels of safety that make the exercise technically impractical or unaffordable. - Travel is too slowNikos Prantzos, nuclear astrophysicist in the Institut d'Astrophysique de Paris, France Our Cosmic Future, 2000 p. 152-3 Another important question is raised by the discussion in the last section, for reasons which will become clear in the rest of this chapter. If the human species ever masters the art of interstellar travel, either slow or rapid, how long will it take to expand across the whole Galaxy and settle in even the most distant regions? It is clearly difficult to give a reasonable answer to this question. A lower limit is imposed by the size of the Galaxy, which measures almost a hundred thousand light-years in diameter (see Fig. z.z) . Even using relativistic vehicles, cruising at nearly the speed of light, hundreds of thousands of years would be needed just to cross the Milky Way. In slow-moving world ships, with speeds of a few thousandths the speed of light, the time required to cross the Galaxy becomes hundreds of times greater again, of the order of ten million years. The time required to colonise would clearly be greater still. Directory: files files -> Answer True False 2 points Question 2 files -> Integer programming and game theory files -> 4 Integer Programming files -> Bpa vehicle Window Repair Scenario #1 task: Procure vehicle window relacement. Objective files -> Pop Warner History files -> North Carolina Inclusion Initiative Mapping Where Children with ieps are Being Served Purpose files -> Fall 2013 Spring 2014 Program Data: Standard 1 Exhibit 4d files -> Hanban – asia society confucius classrooms network 2010 request for proposal files -> Northern England’s set-jetting locations Download 216.21 Kb. 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