What would a 'real' spaceship actually look like?

[Ranthe]

Cody could be on to something, you know.
All the plant and yards on 'our' side of the Moon, and aim the asteroids at the other side - they would even be conveniently broken up, and nobody would notice all the extra craters

I'm sure that's what they said about using the Moon as a nuclear waste dump in Space: 1999...

[Astrobe]

More discussion on the general topic of colonize space and the Moon in particular: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9933839

[spud42]

its been 45 years since we first landed on the moon. It doesnt look like we will be there again any time soon.

as for the asteroid belt ,well it is mostly empty space. the belt is not at all like it is depicted in SciFi movies/books/TV.
but there is some interesting stuff out there. Assuming we can get out there,I dont think waiting till it gets to earth is a good idea. mining should start as it is on its way.
start boring a hole into the rock. seal it up with an airlock. start to mine. treat it like a fly in/fly out job with replacement miners and food,water ,air etc shipped in and miners and ore sent back. by the time the asteroid gets here it can be hollowed out and most of the mass removed making it easier to manouver into orbit.

this is assuming we have the technology to get to the asteroid belt in under 10 years travel time.

some interesting facts of the belt

http://space-facts.com/asteroid-belt/

looks like the entire belt added together is less mass then the moon!

[Smivs]

...start boring a hole into the rock. seal it up with an airlock. start to mine. treat it like a fly in/fly out job with replacement miners and food,water ,air etc shipped in and miners and ore sent back.

Hey, you've just invented the Rock hermit!

[Wildeblood]

as for the asteroid belt ,well it is mostly empty space. the belt is not at all like it is depicted in SciFi movies/books/TV.

Yep, most of the mass of the belt is in the three spheroids, Ceres, Pallas & Vesta. The rest are just mountain sized chunks of rock floating around millions of miles away. We have thousands of mountain-sized chunks of rock here on Earth, and they've been mined for thousands of years. Asteroid mining is a furphy. It'll only ever happen in video games.

The real prize in the inner solar system - and this should be the explicit long-term goal of the space program - is moving the three spheroid asteroids into Earth orbit, so Earth would have four moons. Why should humanity undertake such an ambitious and seemingly pointless endeavour? To demonstrate that we can. That should be reason enough. We're human beings, not bacteria. As Kennedy said of the Apollo programme, "We choose to do these things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard." The operative verb being choose; waiting for necessity to give birth to invention is a strategy for deadbeats & plantae, not for men.

Terraforming Mars should have begun decades ago and ought to be well underway by now. There is no technical impediment, just a lack of will. That's what you get for dumping flouride into your water supply, two generations of people growing up lobotomised from birth, completely lacking any ambition. Phooey!

(This chick on #QandA is irking me: talking really fast to try to disguise the fact she isn't saying anything. WTH is an "innovation strategist" anyway?)

[Diziet Sma]

This chick on #QandA is irking me

Serves you right for watching TV.. a bad habit I gave up years ago..

[Wildeblood]

This chick on #QandA is irking me

Serves you right for watching TV.. a bad habit I gave up years ago..

It's not "TV", comrade, it's "the national broadcaster". It's paid for by your taxes that used to go into useless things like the CSIRO, so it's your patriotic duty to support it.

[Diziet Sma]

It's paid for by your taxes that used to go into useless things like the CSIRO, so it's your patriotic duty to support it.

It's my patriotic duty to support something funded with money extorted from me by means of a legalised protection racket? I must have missed something, somewhere...

[Smivs]

Terraforming Mars should have begun decades ago and ought to be well underway by now. There is no technical impediment, just a lack of will.

Well, it might be best to wait until we are sure there is no life there. We wouldn't want to 'terraform' our nearest neighbours out of existence even if they are only bacteria or whatever.

[NigelJK]

Terraforming Mars should have begun decades ago and ought to be well underway by now

Much tho' I'd love to see that happen the 'Red sand huggers' would stop any attempts long before it left Earth.

Well, it might be best to wait until we are sure there is no life there.

Oh no it's already started.

[Disembodied]

Learning to live within our own means on our own planet as a technological civilisation should have begun decades ago and ought to have been figured out by now. There is no technical impediment, just a lack of will.

Probably best we get our own house in order first, before we go thinking of spraying our biome all over the place. If we can't manage to operate a self-contained ecology the size of Earth, for which we are ideally suited, then our chances of making it as a spacefaring species are, let's face it, nil.

[Diziet Sma]

There is no technical impediment, just a lack of will.

More to the point, there's no profit in doing so.

Heck, one Corporate CEO (I forget who) is even on record as stating that "Slowing the collapse [of Western civilisation] may not be profitable."

[SteveKing]

Heck, one Corporate CEO (I forget who) is even on record as stating that "Slowing the collapse [of Western civilisation] may not be profitable."

And I think that may be about as scary as it gets.

[Wildeblood]

Heck, one Corporate CEO (I forget who) is even on record as stating that "Slowing the collapse [of Western civilisation] may not be profitable."

And I think that may be about as scary as it gets.

I can vaguely recall seeing an economist saying that when asked about (ir)responsible "corporate citizenship", but not an actual CEO. In any case, it should go without saying, it's so obvious.

In a world with consumerism as its economic model and -ism-sensitivity guiding public policy, we're doomed. That's why I am so hostile to representative democracy, and no longer afraid to say to so. The current economic and political models are luxuries we just can't afford any longer.

[Diziet Sma]

I can vaguely recall seeing an economist saying that when asked about (ir)responsible "corporate citizenship", but not an actual CEO.

That may be one of the details I mis-remembered.. in which case, it was a prominent, well-regarded economist, at least..