Charlie's Diary: The High Frontier, Redux

The High Frontier, Redux

(I am currently suffering from a bad cold, and it's screwing with my ability to think straight. So rather than risk damaging my real work in progress, I decided to tidy up some thoughts I've been kicking around for a while, and bolt together this essay. Which will, I hope, begin to highlight the problems I face in trying to write believable science fiction about space colonization.)

I write SF for a living. Possibly because of this, folks seem to think I ought to be an enthusiastic proponent of space exploration and space colonization. Space exploration? Yep, that's a fair cop — I'm all in favour of advancing the scientific enterprise. But actual space colonisation is another matter entirely, and those of a sensitive (or optimistic) disposition might want to stop reading right now ...

I'm going to take it as read that the idea of space colonization isn't unfamiliar; domed cities on Mars, orbiting cylindrical space habitats a la J. D. Bernal or Gerard K. O'Neill, that sort of thing. Generation ships that take hundreds of years to ferry colonists out to other star systems where — as we are now discovering — there are profusions of planets to explore.

And I don't want to spend much time talking about the unspoken ideological underpinnings of the urge to space colonization, other than to point out that they're there, that the case for space colonization isn't usually presented as an economic enterprise so much as a quasi-religious one. "We can't afford to keep all our eggs in one basket" isn't so much a justification as an appeal to sentimentality, for in the hypothetical case of a planet-trashing catastrophe, we (who currently inhabit the surface of the Earth) are dead anyway. The future extinction of the human species cannot affect you if you are already dead: strictly speaking, it should be of no personal concern.

Historically, crossing oceans and setting up farmsteads on new lands conveniently stripped of indigenous inhabitants by disease has been a cost-effective proposition. But the scale factor involved in space travel is strongly counter-intuitive.

Here's a handy metaphor: let's approximate one astronomical unit — the distance between the Earth and the sun, roughly 150 million kilometres, or 600 times the distance from the Earth to the Moon — to one centimetre. Got that? 1AU = 1cm. (You may want to get hold of a ruler to follow through with this one.)

The solar system is conveniently small. Neptune, the outermost planet in our solar system, orbits the sun at a distance of almost exactly 30AU, or 30 centimetres — one foot (in imperial units). Giant Jupiter is 5.46 AU out from the sun, almost exactly two inches (in old money).

We've sent space probes to Jupiter; they take two and a half years to get there if we send them on a straight Hohmann transfer orbit, but we can get there a bit faster using some fancy orbital mechanics. Neptune is still a stretch — only one spacecraft, Voyager 2, has made it out there so far. Its journey time was 12 years, and it wasn't stopping. (It's now on its way out into interstellar space, having passed the heliopause some years ago.)

The Kuiper belt, domain of icy wandering dwarf planets like Pluto and Eris, extends perhaps another 30AU, before merging into the much more tenuous Hills cloud and Oort cloud, domain of loosely coupled long-period comets.

Now for the first scale shock: using our handy metaphor the Kuiper belt is perhaps a metre in diameter. The Oort cloud, in contrast, is as much as 50,000 AU in radius — its outer edge lies half a kilometre away.

Got that? Our planetary solar system is 30 centimetres, roughly a foot, in radius. But to get to the edge of the Oort cloud, you have to go half a kilometre, roughly a third of a mile.

Next on our tour is Proxima Centauri , our nearest star. (There might be a brown dwarf or two lurking unseen in the icy depths beyond the Oort cloud, but if we've spotted one, I'm unaware of it.) Proxima Centauri is 4.22 light years away.A light year is 63.2 x 10³ AU, or 9.46 x 10¹² Km. So Proxima Centauri, at 267,000 AU, is just under two and a third kilometres, or two miles (in old money) away from us.

But Proxima Centauri is a poor choice, if we're looking for habitable real estate. While exoplanets are apparently common as muck, terrestrial planets are harder to find; Gliese 581c, the first such to be detected (and it looks like a pretty weird one, at that), is roughly 20.4 light years away, or using our metaphor, about ten miles.

Try to get a handle on this: it takes us 2-5 years to travel two inches. But the proponents of interstellar travel are talking about journeys of ten miles. That's the first point I want to get across: that if the distances involved in interplanetary travel are enormous, and the travel times fit to rival the first Australian settlers, then the distances and times involved in interstellar travel are mind-numbing.

This is not to say that interstellar travel is impossible; quite the contrary. But to do so effectively you need either (a) outrageous amounts of cheap energy, or (b) highly efficient robot probes, or (c) a magic wand. And in the absence of (c) you're not going to get any news back from the other end in less than decades. Even if (a) is achievable, or by means of (b) we can send self-replicating factories and have them turn distant solar systems into hives of industry, and more speculatively find some way to transmit human beings there, they are going to have zero net economic impact on our circumstances (except insofar as sending them out costs us money).

What do I mean by outrageous amounts of cheap energy?

Let's postulate that in the future, it will be possible to wave a magic wand and construct a camping kit that encapsulates all the necessary technologies and information to rebuild a human civilization capable of eventually sending out interstellar colonization missions — a bunch of self-replicating, self-repairing robotic hardware, and a downloadable copy of the sum total of human knowledge to date. Let's also be generous and throw in a closed-circuit life support system capable of keeping a human occupant alive indefinitely, for many years at a stretch, with zero failures and losses, and capable where necessary of providing medical intervention. Let's throw in a willing astronaut (the fool!) and stick them inside this assembly. It's going to be pretty boring in there, but I think we can conceive of our minimal manned interstellar mission as being about the size and mass of a Mercury capsule. And I'm going to nail a target to the barn door and call it 2000kg in total.

(Of course we can cut corners, but I've already invoked self-replicating robotic factories and closed-cycle life support systems, and those are close enough to magic wands as it is. I'm going to deliberately ignore more speculative technologies such as starwisps, mind transfer, or AIs sufficiently powerful to operate autonomously — although I used them shamelessly in my novel Accelerando. What I'm trying to do here is come up with a useful metaphor for the energy budget realistically required for interstellar flight.)

Incidentally, a probe massing 1-2 tons with an astronaut on top is a bit implausible, but a 1-2 ton probe could conceivably carry enough robotic instrumentation to do useful research, plus a laser powerful enough to punch a signal home, and maybe even that shrink-wrapped military/industrial complex in a tin can that would allow it to build something useful at the other end. Anything much smaller, though, isn't going to be able to transmit its findings to us — at least, not without some breakthroughs in communication technology that haven't shown up so far.

Now, let's say we want to deliver our canned monkey to Proxima Centauri within its own lifetime. We're sending them on a one-way trip, so a 42 year flight time isn't unreasonable. (Their job is to supervise the machinery as it unpacks itself and begins to brew up a bunch of new colonists using an artificial uterus. Okay?) This means they need to achieve a mean cruise speed of 10% of the speed of light. They then need to decelerate at the other end. At 10% of c relativistic effects are minor — there's going to be time dilation, but it'll be on the order of hours or days over the duration of the 42-year voyage. So we need to accelerate our astronaut to 30,000,000 metres per second, and decelerate them at the other end. Cheating and using Newton's laws of motion, the kinetic energy acquired by acceleration is 9 x 10¹⁷ Joules, so we can call it 2 x 10¹⁸ Joules in round numbers for the entire trip. NB: This assumes that the propulsion system in use is 100% efficient at converting energy into momentum, that there are no losses from friction with the interstellar medium, and that the propulsion source is external — that is, there's no need to take reaction mass along en route. So this is a lower bound on the energy cost of transporting our Mercury-capsule sized expedition to Proxima Centauri in less than a lifetime.

To put this figure in perspective, the total conversion of one kilogram of mass into energy yields 9 x 10¹⁶ Joules. (Which one of my sources informs me, is about equivalent to 21.6 megatons in thermonuclear explosive yield). So we require the equivalent energy output to 400 megatons of nuclear armageddon in order to move a capsule of about the gross weight of a fully loaded Volvo V70 automobile to Proxima Centauri in less than a human lifetime. That's the same as the yield of the entire US Minuteman III ICBM force.

For a less explosive reference point, our entire planetary economy runs on roughly 4 terawatts of electricity (4 x 10¹² watts). So it would take our total planetary electricity production for a period of half a million seconds — roughly 5 days — to supply the necessary va-va-voom.

But to bring this back to earth with a bump, let me just remind you that this probe is so implausibly efficient that it's veering back into "magic wand" territory. I've tap-danced past a 100% efficient power transmission system capable of operating across interstellar distances with pinpoint precision and no conversion losses, and that allows the spacecraft on the receiving end to convert power directly into momentum. This is not exactly like any power transmission system that anyone's built to this date, and I'm not sure I can see where it's coming from.

Our one astronaut, 10% of c mission approximates well to an unmanned flight, but what about longer-term expeditions? Generation ships are a staple of SF; they're slow (probably under 1% of c) and they carry a self-sufficient city-state. The crew who set off won't live to see their destination (the flight time to Proxima Centauri at 1% of c is about 420 years), but the vague hope is that someone will. Leaving aside our lack of a proven track record at building social institutions that are stable across time periods greatly in excess of a human lifespan, using a generation ship probably doesn't do much for our energy budget problem either. A society of human beings are likely to need more space and raw material to do stuff with while in flight; sticking a solitary explorer in a tin can for forty-something years is merely cruel and unusual, but doing it to an entire city for several centuries probably qualifies as a crime against humanity. We therefore need to relax the mass constraint. Assuming the same super-efficient life support as our solitary explorer, we might postulate that each colonist requires ten tons of structural mass to move around in. (About the same as a large trailer home. For life.) We've cut the peak velocity by an order of magnitude, but we've increased the payload requirement by an order of magnitude per passenger — and we need enough passengers to make a stable society fly. I'd guess a sensible lower number would be on the order of 200 people, the size of a prehistoric primate troupe. (Genetic diversity? I'm going to assume we can hand-wave around that by packing some deep-frozen sperm and ova, or frozen embryos, for later reuse.) By the time we work up to a minimal generation ship (and how minimal can we get, confining 200 human beings in an object weighing aout 2000 tons, for roughly the same period of time that has elapsed since the Plymouth colony landed in what was later to become Massachusetts?) we're actually requiring much more energy than our solitary high-speed explorer.

And remember, this is only what it takes to go to Proxima Centauri our nearest neighbour. Gliese 581c is five times as far away. Planets that are already habitable insofar as they orbit inside the habitable zone of their star, possess free oxygen in their atmosphere, and have a mass, surface gravity and escape velocity that are not too forbidding, are likely to be somewhat rarer. (And if there is free oxygen in the atmosphere on a planet, that implies something else — the presence of pre-existing photosynthetic life, a carbon cycle, and a bunch of other stuff that could well unleash a big can of whoop-ass on an unprimed human immune system. The question of how we might interact with alien biologies is an order of magnitude bigger and more complex than the question of how we might get there — and the preliminary outlook is rather forbidding.)

The long and the short of what I'm trying to get across is quite simply that, in the absence of technology indistinguishable from magic — magic tech that, furthermore, does things that from today's perspective appear to play fast and loose with the laws of physics — interstellar travel for human beings is near-as-dammit a non-starter. And while I won't rule out the possibility of such seemingly-magical technology appearing at some time in the future, the conclusion I draw as a science fiction writer is that if interstellar colonization ever happens, it will not follow the pattern of historical colonization drives that are followed by mass emigration and trade between the colonies and the old home soil.

What about our own solar system?

After contemplating the vastness of interstellar space, our own solar system looks almost comfortingly accessible at first. Exploring our own solar system is a no-brainer: we can do it, we are doing it, and interplanetary exploration is probably going to be seen as one of the great scientific undertakings of the late 20th and early 21st century, when the history books get written.

But when we start examining the prospects for interplanetary colonization things turn gloomy again.

Bluntly, we're not going to get there by rocket ship.

Optimistic projects suggest that it should be possible, with the low cost rockets currently under development, to maintain a Lunar presence for a transportation cost of roughly $15,000 per kilogram. Some extreme projections suggest that if the cost can be cut to roughly triple the cost of fuel and oxidizer (meaning, the spacecraft concerned will be both largely reusable and very cheap) then we might even get as low as $165/kilogram to the lunar surface. At that price, sending a 100Kg astronaut to Moon Base One looks as if it ought to cost not much more than a first-class return air fare from the UK to New Zealand ... except that such a price estimate is hogwash. We primates have certain failure modes, and one of them that must not be underestimated is our tendency to irreversibly malfunction when exposed to climactic extremes of temperature, pressure, and partial pressure of oxygen. While the amount of oxygen, water, and food a human consumes per day doesn't sound all that serious — it probably totals roughly ten kilograms, if you economize and recycle the washing-up water — the amount of parasitic weight you need to keep the monkey from blowing out is measured in tons. A Russian Orlan-M space suit (which, some would say, is better than anything NASA has come up with over the years — take heed of the pre-breathe time requirements!) weighs 112 kilograms, which pretty much puts a floor on our infrastructure requirements. An actual habitat would need to mass a whole lot more. Even at $165/kilogram, that's going to add up to a very hefty excess baggage charge on that notional first class air fare to New Zealand — and I think the $165/kg figure is in any case highly unrealistic; even the authors of the article I cited thought $2000/kg was a bit more reasonable.

Whichever way you cut it, sending a single tourist to the moon is going to cost not less than $50,000 — and a more realistic figure, for a mature reusable, cheap, rocket-based lunar transport cycle is more like $1M. And that's before you factor in the price of bringing them back ...

The moon is about 1.3 light seconds away. If we want to go panning the (metaphorical) rivers for gold, we'd do better to send teleoperator-controlled robots; it's close enough that we can control them directly, and far enough away that the cost of transporting food and creature comforts for human explorers is astronomical. There probably are niches for human workers on a moon base, but only until our robot technologies are somewhat more mature than they are today; Mission Control would be a lot happier with a pair of hands and a high-def camera that doesn't talk back and doesn't need to go to the toilet or take naps.

When we look at the rest of the solar system, the picture is even bleaker. Mars is ... well, the phrase "tourist resort" springs to mind, and is promptly filed in the same corner as "Gobi desert". As Bruce Sterling has puts it: "I'll believe in people settling Mars at about the same time I see people settling the Gobi Desert. The Gobi Desert is about a thousand times as hospitable as Mars and five hundred times cheaper and easier to reach. Nobody ever writes "Gobi Desert Opera" because, well, it's just kind of plonkingly obvious that there's no good reason to go there and live. It's ugly, it's inhospitable and there's no way to make it pay. Mars is just the same, really. We just romanticize it because it's so hard to reach." In other words, going there to explore is fine and dandy — our robots are all over it already. But as a desirable residential neighbourhood it has some shortcomings, starting with the slight lack of breathable air and the sub-Antarctic nighttime temperatures and the Mach 0.5 dust storms, and working down from there.

Actually, there probably is a good reason for sending human explorers to Mars. And that's the distance: at up to 30 minutes, the speed of light delay means that remote control of robots on the Martian surface is extremely tedious. Either we need autonomous roots that can be assigned tasks and carry them out without direct human supervision, or we need astronauts in orbit or on the ground to boss the robot work gangs around.

On the other hand, Mars is a good way further away than the moon, and has a deeper gravity well. All of which drive up the cost per kilogram delivered to the Martian surface. Maybe FedEx could cut it as low as $20,000 per kilogram, but I'm not holding my breath.

Let me repeat myself: we are not going there with rockets. At least, not the conventional kind — and while there may be a role for nuclear propulsion in deep space, in general there's a trade-off between instantaneous thrust and efficiency; the more efficient your motor, the lower the actual thrust it provides. Some technologies such as the variable specific impulse magnetoplasma rocket show a good degree of flexibility, but in general they're not suitable for getting us from Earth's surface into orbit — they're only useful for trucking things around from low earth orbit on out.

Again, as with interstellar colonization, there are other options. Space elevators, if we build them, will invalidate a lot of what I just said. Some analyses of the energy costs of space elevators suggest that a marginal cost of $350/kilogram to geosynchronous orbit should be achievable without waving any magic wands (other than the enormous practical materials and structural engineering problems of building the thing in the first place). So we probably can look forward to zero-gee vacations in orbit, at a price. And space elevators are attractive because they're a scalable technology; you can use one to haul into space the material to build more. So, long term, space elevators may give us not-unreasonably priced access to space, including jaunts to the lunar surface for a price equivalent to less than $100,000 in today's money. At which point, settlement would begin to look economically feasible, except ...

We're human beings. We evolved to flourish in a very specific environment that covers perhaps 10% of our home planet's surface area. (Earth is 70% ocean, and while we can survive, with assistance, in extremely inhospitable terrain, be it arctic or desert or mountain, we aren't well-adapted to thriving there.) Space itself is a very poor environment for humans to live in. A simple pressure failure can kill a spaceship crew in minutes. And that's not the only threat. Cosmic radiation poses a serious risk to long duration interplanetary missions, and unlike solar radiation and radiation from coronal mass ejections the energies of the particles responsible make shielding astronauts extremely difficult. And finally, there's the travel time. Two and a half years to Jupiter system; six months to Mars.

Now, these problems are subject to a variety of approaches — including medical ones: does it matter if cosmic radiation causes long-term cumulative radiation exposure leading to cancers if we have advanced side-effect-free cancer treatments? Better still, if hydrogen sulphide-induced hibernation turns out to be a practical technique in human beings, we may be able to sleep through the trip. But even so, when you get down to it, there's not really any economically viable activity on the horizon for people to engage in that would require them to settle on a planet or asteroid and live there for the rest of their lives. In general, when we need to extract resources from a hostile environment we tend to build infrastructure to exploit them (such as oil platforms) but we don't exactly scurry to move our families there. Rather, crews go out to work a long shift, then return home to take their leave. After all, there's no there there — just a howling wilderness of north Atlantic gales and frigid water that will kill you within five minutes of exposure. And that, I submit, is the closest metaphor we'll find for interplanetary colonization. Most of the heavy lifting more than a million kilometres from Earth will be done by robots, overseen by human supervisors who will be itching to get home and spend their hardship pay. And closer to home, the commercialization of space will be incremental and slow, driven by our increasing dependence on near-earth space for communications, positioning, weather forecasting, and (still in its embryonic stages) tourism. But the domed city on Mars is going to have to wait for a magic wand or two to do something about the climate, or reinvent a kind of human being who can thrive in an airless, inhospitable environment.

Colonize the Gobi desert, colonise the North Atlantic in winter — then get back to me about the rest of the solar system!

Posted by Charlie Stross on June 16, 2007 3:26 PM | Permalink

Comments

Charlie, I essentially agree with you on all of your points, though I'm not sure that will prevent us from colonizing.

Leaving aside ideological arguments -- only 3 of the original 13 colonies were founded for ideological reasons, and they got their funding because investors were stupid. Despite what our national mythos might have us think...

And barring FTL -- which is the only way we'll get the traditional interstellar colonialism of SciFi and Space Opera.

The only way I see interstellar colonization happening is via seedships. Leave out the human you postulated in your trips, just send self replicating machines with instructions on how to recreate earth life and humans to target stars. They can take a couple centuries, however long your machines last, it doesn't matter. Even then, I think antimatter would be the only power source that's reliable, unless you could count on Earth to beam power to a ship for a century or two -- not something I'd place my faith in.

So you'd load up your ship with enough energy to crack open a planet's crust and send it out, never to hear from it again unless you happen to be immortal. Once there, the ship would get to work, mining the target solar system, doing terraforming as needed, building industry and settlements, and only then creating the colonists. Perhaps we'll have tech to digitize human minds, in that case we might have some actual people from earth to resurect into new bodies. Otherwise robots are raising them from scratch.

Of course, the catch here is that to do this we need a post-scarcity economy and AI of some form or another. Which means that we could be doing a lot more interesting things back in the Solar System.

If interstellar colonization does happen, it will be as an afterthought of some eccentric post-humans.

As for colonization in the solar system, we'd need to discover some economic rationale that's not there right now for it to happen. We could make colonies on the Moon or Mars within the next century, if there was something to justify the cost. Giant self contained cavern cities if nothing else. Or we might be able to terraform Mars over the course of a few centuries. That would make colonization much more practical, even if there's no Earth-Mars joint economy, some people would settle on a terraformed Mars. Of course, that raises the question of who would terraform Mars which brings us pack to post-humans with time on their hands...

Posted by: Andrew G. | June 16, 2007 5:00 PM

The assumption of decelerating at the destination is a killer. It squares the mass ratio. Hence one thinks of (1) what can usefully be done at the destination if there is no deceleration of the entire payload; and (2) can one decelerate without rocketry?

Two useful links:

Starflight without Warp Drive

and

Hydrogen Ice Spacecraft for
Robotic Interstellar Flight

Posted by: Jonathan Vos Post | June 16, 2007 5:07 PM

Typo: "Mars is a good way further away than Mars". ITYM "than the Moon".

Good piece - pretty much in line with what I've been thinking, though you've actually done the 1st-order approximation of the math.

The only reasons I see for putting humans on Mars, at least until we have a major technology breakthrough, are PR and politics. I'd rather spend my money elsewhere.

Posted by: Hildo | June 16, 2007 5:12 PM

But, But, you miss the essential purpose of interstellar travel. Obviously, it's to find new life forms, hover in front of rural individuals, occasionally abducting them and probing their nether orifices. Of course this might be achieved by robotic probes but that would take all the fun out of it.

Posted by: monopole | June 16, 2007 5:36 PM

Andrew G: are you including the failed colonies in that count? Not just Roanoake, but things like the Darien scheme?

Hildo: typo fixed, thanks.

Personally I'd rather see the money spent on manned Mars expeditions than on aircraft carriers and nuclear weapons. The weapons will either soak up huge amounts of cash and do nothing, or they'll maim and kill huge numbers of people for no reason that will make sense even fifty years later[*]; whereas the first Mars expedition, however over-budget and uneconomical, will be one of the landmarks of history. (Yes, I do have a romantic streak, however tightly I try to keep it reined in.) Unfortunately I fear it's not an either/or choice between weapons and space at this point in time.

[*] I will concede that it is possible to make a case for some wars being morally justified, but I don't see any on the horizon as remotely unequivocal as, say, the struggle against Fascism in the 1930s and 1940s. And certainly not enough to justify the delta from peak cold war US military spending to current US military spending — which, even if you set aside the ongoing costs of the Iraq occupation, is about equal to a gold-plated crewed Mars exploration program every 18-24 months.

Posted by: Charlie Stross | June 16, 2007 6:15 PM

typo: setting the Gobi Desert -> settling the Gobi Desert?

Posted by: Stephen | June 16, 2007 6:52 PM

Stephen, that's Bruce's typo. But I'll fix it anyway ... :)

Posted by: Charlie Stross | June 16, 2007 6:54 PM

Charles,

I enjoyed reading the essay. The metaphor alone puts so much into perspective. Maybe my optimism got the better of me when starting the thread over at Asimov's, but it still made for some fun speculation.

Posted by: b | June 16, 2007 7:31 PM

Charlie: If you count all the colonies, rather than just the ones that were around in 1776, there were far more both economically and ideologically motivated ones. For instance, Puritans also settled in the Bahamas in an attempt to do what they did in New England. And Plymouth Colony destroyed the colony of Merrymount, basically because the founder was trying to set up a society the opposite of their own. There's a big list...

I completely agree with you about military vs. space spending. I'd far rather see a moonbase or mission to Mars than a war and bloated military. Even half of the world's military budgets could do amazing things in space. And space programs could support the same industries and create jobs like the military does. Research spin-offs would be even more beneficial to the economy if anything. Just imagine the uses the technology put into autonomous robotic exploration of Mars would have on industry here on Earth. Exploiting and colonizing the Arctic and Antarctic would be childsplay compared to Mars...

Posted by: Andrew G. | June 16, 2007 7:33 PM

10:

I think expansion into interplanetary space is much more plausible than colonization of solar planets; the easy availability of energy might be an economic enabler. The North Sea, I think, is a red herring--space habitats will necessarily have controlled environments. There are major, and difficult engineering problems, mostly to do with life support, and these aren't resolved yet, but, granted a space elevator technology, it's a fairly plausible thing to do, and there will be people who want to go. This also touches on the reason that space is different from earth's oceans; earth's oceans are full of life. But perhaps, eventually, interplanetary space will also be full of life. As for interstellar travel, I wouldn't rule out a magic wand; we've already discovered many magic wands; the physical world seems to have back doors. On the other hand, we don't have that wand yet, and you're right--it's not going to be done until we have it.

"We live in extremely interesting ancient times."

Posted by: Randolph | June 16, 2007 7:42 PM

11:

I've always thought the same about the distances, and when seen it put in Earthly perspective-terms really shows it. That's why I don't believe in UFO's or even SETI at this point. The distances are daunting!

- most folks have no idea of this, in fact, most layfolk see little difference between stars and planets, at least in their daily lives, and think we know all there is to know!

Posted by: michael c | June 16, 2007 7:51 PM

12:

Randolph, I figure space colonies are technically feasible -- subject to issues like how to avoid being slowly fried by high energy cosmic radiation -- but there are other social problems. Imagine you get the offer of a chance to emigrate to a frontier city. (Yes, it's going to be an intensely urban environment, even if there are arms and parks there. Urban equals high volume to surface area ratio, and the surface is where you intersect with the hostile environment, so you want to keep it as small as possible compared to the habitable volume.) The problem is, your ticket is going to cost you $25,000. (Going by the more optimistic cost estimates for getting into orbit via a space elevator, plus some subsequent rocket travel.) Do you take it? Well, when moving to a new city, one of the first things you ask is, "what are the neighbours like?" Now imagine that you don't know the answer to that question for sure (because the city is as far away as Antarctica) and the cost of a round trip to see if you like it is $50,000. What do you do?

Small introverted city-states could go anywhere. They could turn out to be as laid back and civilized as Amsterdam, as uptight and draconian as Singapore, or as dangerous and violent as Mogadishu. And unlike on Earth, you can't walk away. Walking out and becoming a refugee is not an option if things turn to shit. You're potentially in a backs-to-the-wall situation.

Circumstances, social expectations, and communications bandwidth may moderate this picture, but it's altogether too much like throwing yourself on a raft in the middle of the Pacific for a five year voyage with a bunch of strangers for my liking.

Posted by: Charlie Stross | June 16, 2007 7:54 PM

13:

Charlie, well, yes, but you're not 20 any more--younger people have fewer ties and are more willing to break the ties they have. There will after all be reporting and correspondence from space cities, as well as trade--they won't be complete unknowns. Broadly, I think the pattern will be similar to the conquest of North America; first small groups, then expansion and, if travel becomes cheap enough, actual migration. At least it will not be actual conquest; as far as we know there are no natives to object (unless interplanetary space is full of energy creatures). I can easily imagine the second wave of immigrants being refugees--that was after all the big drive behind post-1850 immigration to the USA, as indeed it is the drive behind Mexican immigration to the USA at this time.

Posted by: Randolph Fritz | June 16, 2007 8:19 PM

14:

In Phoenix and Vegas we have colonized the desert.

The reason that Mars or the Moon might make sense is the same reason that these artificial cities are growing by leaps and bounds to this day. That's politics. Why today do people flee perfectly good hometowns with much more livable environments in Massachusetts or Illinois to move to Phoenix? Why did thousands of Mormons journey to Salt Lake? For the same reasons, others will someday flock to the moon.

The distance from meaningful political control, like America's 1800's distance from control will be the draw. Maybe they are pirates or a religion or prisoners or eugenics freaks, but $10 million/family will seem cheap to them. Also expect that we would not like it at all. Imagine the anger at Osama sitting up there in the moon broadcasting taunts, untouchable by anyone.

If the world could credibly agree not to ever interfere at all with the North Atlantic or Gobi the same inrush would happen there.

Posted by: Josh | June 16, 2007 8:26 PM

15:

Josh, I hear where you're coming from and raise you Jonestown.

On the plus side, if we see "Osama sitting up there in the moon broadcasting taunts, untouchable by anyone", then he and his followers can't touch us. We get to regain some of the sense of space we've lost from our home world over the past two centuries. (Back then, a month's wages and 48 hours would get you across the English home counties, or maybe Massachusetts, by stage coach. Today it'll get you to New Zealand and back, the long way round.)

It'd suck to be a woman or an apostate in such a society, though. (Especially when they put you in the airlock without a spacesuit for getting uppity ...)

Posted by: Charlie Stross | June 16, 2007 8:38 PM

16:

Boing Boing summarizes your essay as explaining the futility of space exploration, but as even you explained at the start of the article state, its only futile on economic grounds, but ideological grounds know few boundaries of wallet or logic.

The argument of not putting all out eggs in one basket is pretty powerful, and one that could easily motivate a multi-billionaire philanthropist to spends a few billion on a seed ship. Its notable that many of the backers of commercial space expansion are our internet age billionaires with nothing better to do with their money.

Yes, space colonization is futile from a mass emigration point of view, but it seems inevitable that 50-100 years from now humanity's seeds will be spreading far and wide.

We do still throw out messages in a bottle into the ocean, dont we?

Posted by: Surur | June 16, 2007 8:57 PM

17:

Surur, you interest me: would you like to explain why "the argument of not putting all our eggs in one basket" is so powerful? That is, what can it do for you, for me, or for anyone else on this planet today?

(Hint: I think it boils down to a category error we often make, in confusing our own self-interest in not experiencing personal extinction with the existence of a species-wide collective self-interest in not experiencing species extinction. But I'd be interested in hearing other explanations.)

Posted by: Charlie Stross | June 16, 2007 9:00 PM

18:

I say anybody so intimidated by the stars shouldn't write science fiction anymore.

Posted by: Grant Entwistle | June 16, 2007 9:14 PM

19:

It may be in part a category error, but it also could be a biological drive that says "continuation of the species is important to me", the same one that helps people decide to have children. From an economic standpoint, having kids is not a wise decision. You diminish your earning power, add another ongoing cost sink to your household, and any economic return you might see at the end of the day is limited and possibly nil. And yet people decide to have kids all the time.

Posted by: Stephen Granade | June 16, 2007 9:15 PM

20:

Your argument does make sense, but so did the arguments at the turn of the 20th century that we would never reach the moon. It simply was not economical to build the giant cannon required to blast monkeys into orbit. So, yes, with today's technology, interstellar travel and interplanetary colonization remain more viable plot devices than possible human futures.

One other thought, interplanetary colonization represents a strong selection pressure for those humans who have the psychological fortitude (or psychosis) to want to be ripped from out little blue jewel here and plopped onto a barren wasteland. Maybe the universe favors extremists? History does have precedent here, e.g. Mormons/Utah, Calvinists/North America, Scientists/Antarctica. I'm just saying.

Posted by: Lance | June 16, 2007 9:21 PM

21:

Von Braun was pessimistic about interstellar travel too!
We should try fixing the mess on Earth and renewably survive and detox for a few generations before shipping our problems to space.
The Apollo missions and a possible manned expedition to Mars have and will give us the perspective and hope to be able to sustain this work.

Posted by: Avi Solomon | June 16, 2007 9:26 PM

22:

Grant @18 ... I'm currently writing a space opera. One that plays by the scale-factor rules. (It's not impossible, it's just rather an interesting challenge.)

If I'm going to try and write hard-SF, I'd rather get it right than risk tripping into a puddle of vacuous misconceptions and mistaking it for a universe of possibilities.

Stephen @19: I'm deeply suspicious of appeals to biological drives, because as a species we seem to exhibit rather a remarkable degree of behavioural plasticity. I know Richard Dawkins has taken to stomping on lots of peoples' bunions recently, but I would still strongly recommend reading "The Extended Phenotype" to anyone who still believes in group selection arguments. As for teleologists and believers in some numinous destiny, that's basically a religious argument and not falsifiable (or worthy of airtime, IMO).

As for lots of people deciding to have kids ... I assume you don't live in a country where the total fertility level is sub-replacement, right?

Posted by: Charlie Stross | June 16, 2007 9:26 PM

23:

Perhaps I'm reading the article wrong - but you seem to be saying space travel is just plain futile. Not only for now, but for all time.

Although you do a good job "scaling" the journey of space travel, you don't do anything to scale the advances in travel that mankind has made.

A few hundred years ago, travel from NY to LA took months, now it takes hours. It's proposed that in the near future, that trip could take minutes (i.e scramjets). You talk about the journey to reach Jupiter taking years, yet the New Horizon's probe just did it in months.

I'd put my money on the fact that Technology will move us closer to choice C (i.e. the "magic wand" method) then most people can probably imagine. It might not happen in my lifetime, but I'm betting that the technology that got us from "first flight" to "space flight" in less then a hundred years has a few surprises left for the future of mankind.

Posted by: VonSkippy | June 16, 2007 9:28 PM

24:

Lance @20, I thought I was being fairly clear: I've got a beef with magical fantasies about space colonization -- not the same thing as space exploration -- and I'm interested in extrapolations that play by the rules and eschew magic wands and silver bullet solutions for dealing with the physics werewolf. Obviously the prospects for a lunar expedition didn't look good at the turn of the 20th century, unless you were Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, and even then, it wasn't until somewhat later that folks like Herman Oberth and Robert Goddard began trying to actually build liquid-fueled, and later multi-stage, rockets.

You'll note that I explicitly mentioned starwisp-type probes, nanotechnology, and uploading as possibilities -- then decided not to explore them. Because, y'know, we don't have any definite knowledge of whether they're even possible, yet. If they are possible, then we may actually be able to contemplate interstellar colonization at a not-too-outrageous price -- and we may even be able to go and visit the neighbours -- but it's going to look very different from your traditional SFnal scenario.

VonSkippy @23, see this earlier blog entry. Note also that the energy input required to attain a given non-relativistic velocity scales as the square of the velocity, not linearly, and if you want to decelerate at the other end and are using a reaction drive it effectively scales as the fourth power of the velocity. For relativistic travel -- anything much above .4 of c -- it gets even worse.

(Do kids actually still study physics in school these days? I despair ...)

Posted by: Charlie Stross | June 16, 2007 9:32 PM

25:

Charlie, I see your point. But sitting here with my kids running amok while I'm trying to focuse, I can't help myself. I do hope for a universe with a human presence! If I had a quadzillion bucks I'd invest them in human space colonization anytime... (AND it can be argued that everything we do is motivated by selfinterest, so why not this???).

Posted by: LucretiusCaro | June 16, 2007 9:38 PM

26:

Charlie @22: I don't think a biological drive is the whole story, or necessarily the majority of it. People choosing not to have children is a fine example of how we ignore any effect of such drives. However, having children or not having children is, assuming you're in a first-world country, a decision with personal ramifications and costs that you can quickly figure to first order. The costs of space travel aren't nearly that easily figured out by people. As proof, I'd point to the response to this very post.

And country of origin doesn't really enter in: there are still plenty of people across the globe deciding to have children, even if the probability of such declines with increasing education and purchasing power.

Posted by: Stephen Granade | June 16, 2007 9:42 PM

27:

Doing deeds for all time is a real and proven motivator, and has the immediate benefit of glorifying the person who initiated the effort in the first instance. Without this motivation we would never have the Sistine Chapel for example.

The whole conservation movement is about inconveniencing ourselves now for the benefit of distant future generations. When we talk about limiting global warming in 2050, anyone in their 30's will probably dead by then.

Sure, "putting all our eggs in one basket" is less powerful in dictating our spending priorities than having a bigger screen to watch TV on, but Americans have been happily spending $55 per year on just that by funding NASA.

To bring this ramble to a close, the immediate benefit to the donor is the same as sponsoring a puppy/gorilla you will never see, for the civilization that launches such a probe it will bring a similar amount of glory as other massive ego-boo projects, and it satisfies our biological drive to perpetuate our DNA, even if its only distantly related.

There seem reason enough for us to launch at least a few every hundred years, and it only takes one to succeed for us to have a interstellar civilization in 1000 years time.

Posted by: Surur | June 16, 2007 9:45 PM

28:

Mrf, I forgot one other point, so a back-to-back post. Charlie, have you had a look at the newer multilevel selection theories? I know Dawkins isn't persuaded by them, but there are some aspects of e.g. Wilson's work that I find intriguing.

Posted by: Stephen Granade | June 16, 2007 9:48 PM

29:

Surur: okay, I see where you're coming from. (And if there was an international equivalent of NASA you could subscribe to, I'd be in with my $55 a year on general principles.) But I still maintain that the urge to immortality thing -- at least when divorced from reproduction -- is essentially religious in tone; you won't ever see any results, so you're basically doing it on the basis of faith in something you will almost certainly never see.

Interstellar civilizations (as opposed to interstellar colonies) strike me as being an absurd idea, but that's another essay. Put it this way: in the absence of cheap FTL travel or other "magical" solutions to the scale problem, what on earth is there to bind two interstellar polities together -- except possibly the exchange of cultural data, bartered on a tit-for-tat basis ("I'll keep exporting my soap operas as long as you keep me updated on yours")?

Stephen @28: Nope, I'm woefully out of date in evolutionary biology.

Posted by: Charlie Stross | June 16, 2007 9:52 PM

30:

And how!

It's weird how it's always the libertarians and conservatives who are into this crap. They think it's bad for society to care for the sick, or to protect the environment of the only habitable planet we've got, but wet themselves dreaming of The Human Species colonizing other planets, even though as explained above it's economically pointless and well-nigh impossible. That includes you, Jeff Bezos.

Just for fun:

H.R.4286

Title: A bill to establish a National space and aeronautics policy, and for other purposes.

"Title IV: Government of Space Territories - Sets forth provisions for the government of space territories, including constitutional protections, the right to self- government, and admission to statehood."

http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/D?d097:6:./temp/~bdvtDF:@@@L&summ2=m&

Posted by: Chris | June 16, 2007 9:52 PM

31:

"unless interplanetary space is full of energy creatures"

Well, there's our endless energy supply right there! That's whyu we should go into space - to capture and enslave these energy creatures.

Posted by: Patrick | June 16, 2007 9:54 PM

32:

Charlie @12 typo "arms and parks": ITYM "farms and parks".

Posted by: Cole Kitchen | June 16, 2007 9:57 PM

33:

Executive decision (this means you, Cole :) ... I am willing to fix typos in the original essay, but life's too short to fix typos in comments!

Posted by: Charlie Stross | June 16, 2007 9:58 PM

34:

Charlie, your reasoning of dismissing not putting our eggs in one basket of "That is, what can it do for you, for me, or for anyone else on this planet today?" is incredibly myopic. By your reasoning, we should abandon any efforts into reducing pollution, global warming, etc. since anything we do today can't harm us in 50 years, no matter what it does to our children's children.

While I agree that colonization may not be practical from the economic standpoint, simply saying that it doesn't benefit you today is a selfish reason.

Posted by: JohnM | June 16, 2007 10:00 PM

35:

As we know (mostly to the detriment of the world) religious ideas are very powerful motivators.

Regarding the trade in ideas, we are half-way there already. With automated fabrication they will only become more so. In the end, it will come down to energy, matter and ideas, and two of those are commodities.

With individual wealth and power increasing, some billionaires will chose to make atom bombs, and some will fund star wisps. Its inevitable. They may even stock it with their own embryos.

Posted by: Surur | June 16, 2007 10:11 PM

36:

"can't even figure out how to live in the Gobi desert or the ocean's floor" ???

We're not even really trying, so I wouldn't say "can't" - can't be bothered, perhaps.

Posted by: bria | June 16, 2007 10:14 PM

37:

Interesting article. I agree that deep space exploration will have very little effect on the lives of people for a few generations to come but human beings are very inventive and are bound to discover methods of travel we can't even conceive of. We're nomads, we always want to see what's over the next hill. I say 'we' when I mean 'them'; you and I will be long dead but our species will be out there colonising the universe; perhaps that's how we got 'here' in the first place....

Posted by: Darren | June 16, 2007 10:18 PM

38:

typo: are robots are all over it already. Ours are, indeed.

Posted by: Toby | June 16, 2007 10:19 PM

39:

Typo: "are robots are all over it already" (are = our).

As a species, we do things which are altruistic, benefitting an unrelated group. We pay taxes, which in some countries are part used to fund educational services which tax payers without children do not benefit from. Police officers intervene to protect strangers and firemen rescue people from burning buildings. Soldiers voluntarily fight for their country, an abstract concept if ever there was one. Other complete strangers have been known to put themselves at risk to save a drowning child who is not their own. We assume that these acts are part of civilization and society, and when they are not the dominant tendencies, we say that civilization has broken down, or society has failed. As a species, we're also very hung up on moral codes, which is no accident, but is the thing that makes civilizations and societies cohere and function. The confusing thing is that there obviously is an evolutionary basis for both group level altruism and imposition of moral structure, but I am suspicious about appeals to group selection. Anyway, maybe it's a combination of altruism and an attempt to attach it to a moral framework that leads to the "all-our-eggs-in-one-basket" justification for space colonisation?

Posted by: daen | June 16, 2007 10:19 PM

40:

Charlie,
Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars trilogy is one of my favorite depictions of solar system colonization. The idea of wiping the slate clean and struggling to build a utopian government from scratch appealed to me, and I also liked the way Robinson portrayed colonization as a mechanism for the various cultures and factions of Earth to find their own space. Just as a reader with no scientific background, I found it plausible.
But, Charlie, would you say that Robinson's scenario, which involves space elevators and terraforming, falls under the category of a magical fantasy about space colonization?
I do have an insatiable hunger for reading space opera, and I was pleased to see in No. 22 that you are writing something in that subgenre, despite your skepticism about the real-world possibilities of colonization. I'll be interested in seeing how you handle the scale-factor rules.
I stumbled here via Andreessen's list of the top 10 sf authors of the 00's, and based on the descriptions there, I'll pick up "Singularity Sky" and "Iron Sunrise" as entry points into your work.

Posted by: cjp | June 16, 2007 10:53 PM

41:

cjp, I think the Mars trilogy is about the most totally optimistic take on solar system colonization that I can absorb. Even so, he rushes it -- giving his protagonists longevity treatments so that they can see out a 300 year project, and then pushing through the terraforming of Mars in a fraction of the sort of time period currently considered necessary.

(The current space opera project I'm working on sidesteps the problems of human space colonization by, er, sidestepping humanity 1.0. We are, after all, the weakest link in the whole endeavor. So I suppose you could reasonably accuse me of waving a magic wand. My excuse is that it's a work of fiction, and I'm not using a really big wand :)

Posted by: Charlie Stross | June 16, 2007 10:57 PM

42:

As a slight correction, it takes only two and a half years to get to Jupiter using a Hohmann orbit.

I have other comments on Economist's view web log.

Posted by: John H. Morrison | June 16, 2007 11:10 PM

43:

John: I was looking at a table of round trip times, not one-way. Fixed.

The species survival utility you mention is an interesting one, but as I've noted, it's not a clear economic benefit to us, here on Earth, to know that humans on another planet or space colony will survive even if we're clobbered by a wandering comet. If that's a concern, it makes a lot more sense to put the money into detecting and developing techniques for zapping Earth-grazing comets, or remediating environmental problems here on Earth, than it does to try and bootstrap a colony in a hostile environment while writing off 99.99999% of the existing human species as colateral damage.

Posted by: Charlie Stross | June 16, 2007 11:18 PM

44:

As for magic wands, modern cosmology probably has at least three up its sleeve: dark matter, dark energy, and whatever it was that drove inflation in the first 10^-33 seconds of the big bang. There are a half dozen more gaps in the foundations of physics that don't get as much attention as unifying the standard model of quantum field theory with gravity right now. Dark energy is specifically an anti-gravity phenomenon.

But these are all red herrings if we don't care to exploit them. So we need to understand why we care. "Darwin's universal solvent" undergoes a mind-bending amplification when evolutionary variation finally discovers modes of organization that are capable of imagination and planning. Species whose individuals envision their descendants' survival and work according to plans for that survival have survival rates higher than species of equal complexity whose individuals don't care.

Ever since earlier primates discovered their ability to plan for their childrens' futures, we've been selected for caring about our kids' future and doing everything we can to make sure that they have one.

Even if group selection doesn't work for ants or fishes, it is surely working for H.sapiens now.

Posted by: George Loomis | June 16, 2007 11:18 PM

45:

Charlie,

But. Even with todays technologies, we could have viable orbital habitats. Oh, not the tin-can ISS, but places where we actually look into 0-G chemical and biological synthesis. And we only have to haul most of the raw materials UP, the transfer vessels downwards don't have to be a spaceship, they just have to fall correctly.

Oh, and an asteroid capture mission is viable as well. Even NASA is considering looking at a near-Earth orbit asteroid visit. That could be interesting.

Posted by: Andrew Crystall | June 16, 2007 11:24 PM

46:

George @44: yup, you're not wrong. I'm going to be curmudgeonly and insist on standing on my base until some sort of application of one of those wildcards in physics comes along -- see also starwisps, mind uploading, etcetera -- but I'll admit the possibility. Your point wrt. group selection is also worth noting. (I'd like to add, though, that sometimes human beings do things that are really fscking stupid, maybe with a side order of evil on top -- under the fond illusion that they're doing it for ends that justify the means. We may be trying to do the right thing, but it does not follow that the thing we are trying to do is right.)

Andrew: I'd love to see even a one-person closed-cycle biosphere run for twelve months on end. We're crap at that kind of environmental engineering. Nuclear subs that can cruise underwater for months nevertheless are able to exchange gases with their ambient fluid (and extract oxygen by electrolysis); the Space Shuttle is so leaky it gets through a complete air change in about a week, IIRC. Humans only consume a few kilograms of oxygen per day, so for short to medium duration space missions -- anything up to a 300 day sojourn on a space station -- it makes sense to ship LOX and food along, rather than to grow/recycle your own. Which means we've never really had to take that kind of recycling seriously before. But the first remotely serious attempt at space colonization will have to do so ...

Posted by: Charlie Stross | June 16, 2007 11:33 PM

47:

I'm surprised no one has mentioned Robert Zubrin's The Case for Mars. Zubrin makes a very thorough case for the idea that Mars settlement is not merely feasible, but fairly straightforward, using existing technology. He also does some math I don't pretend to understand saying that it's actually less fuel-intensive to settle Mars than the Moon.

Posted by: Geno Z Heinlein | June 16, 2007 11:35 PM

48:

Solid article. Well researched. The math seems optimistic. Real-world cases probably come out significantly worse than you estimate.

Robert L. Park has a chapter debunking manned interplanetary space flight in his 2001 book Voodoo Science.

As for space colonies...the International Space Station, as everyone just heard, nearly shut down due to a computer glitch. 100 billion to support 3 people in orbit, and it almost became uninhabitable 'cause of a computer crash. (Doesn't make you too optimistic about uploading your consciousness, does it? AN UNEXPECTED APPLICATION ERROR HAS OCCURRED - CORE DUMP OF YOUR CONSCIOUSNESS BEGINNING...) So much for L5 colonies or Solar Power Satellites.

The real problem with manned interplanetary space flight, as Park points out, involves human exposure to cosmic rays. Estimates suggest that an unshielded crew would get enough high-energy nuclei blasting through their bodies to die from cancer during a trip to Mars. Hohmann transfer orbits obviously greatly worsen this problem, since they take the longest time. TANSTAAFL.
www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn7753

As an example of just how high energy these cosmic rays are, Apollo astronauts reported seeing intermittant flashes when the particles blasted through the vitreous humor inside their eyes. There's also the issue of osteoporosis caused by microgravity. Exercise doesn't seem to help much.

Enough shielding to cut down the cosmic rays to a survivable level would increase the payload so much that the rocket equation beats you to death. Of course, a magnetic shield offers an alternative possibility, but once again, at a brutal energy cost. TANSTAAFL again.

The thinking now is that space elevators might not be practical since they'd take passengers through the Van Allen Belt -- lethal radiation again. Once again, shielding issues, a huge increase in the cost per pound to orbit: once more, no free lunch.

Alas, you'd need a truly huge rotating wheel to generate artificial gravity and avoid osteoporosis. A smaller rotating capsule risks Coriolis effects which could give you a ceberal embolism if you turned your head too fast. Once again, a great honking Battlestar-Galactica-type spaceship is required to support a huge rotating wheel for artificial gravity. Of course, we might be able to fix the osteoporosis problem with gene therapy. Not so sure about the cosmic ray issue. Maybe. Gene therapy might be a free lunch there. Peter Watt's novel Blindsight uses that technique during the protagonist's trip back to earth.

Ah, for the days of Niven's World of the Ptavvs, when fusion-powered torchships accelerating to Neptune at one G seemed plausible...

Posted by: mclaren | June 16, 2007 11:56 PM

49:

Hmmm.... you also don't take into account that lifespans are increasing quickly. Would a person who takes LiveForever(TM) medications and a ton of medical DNA-resequencing equipment with an extended lifespan of 5 or 6 centuries even care about a 50-year space voyage??

And don't be so negative about propulsion technology.... we have gone from 35mph to Mach20 in the space of only one century. Would not a stone-age villager in Borneo (they still exist) looking up at the contrail of a 747 or SR-71 wave it off as "magic technology"??

I am heartbroken that we stopped the Moon flights 30 years ago and wasted our time with the Shuttle, but the only thing we'll achieve by turning our backs on space is to doom mankind from either boredom or a stupid local accident.

Posted by: Gerry | June 16, 2007 11:59 PM

50:

Dear Charles:
1) Of course interplanetary and interstellar colonization are not going to look like the European colonization efforts. Nor did the European colonization effort look like the Indo-European migration that established those populations. Nor did the migration, 10,000 years ago, that established the Indo-Europeans; or the migration 100,000 years ago that established a human presence outside Africa. Different technology levels and different circumstances dictate different behaviors.

Barring the sort of magic wand you have used in your space operas, colonization of other bodies in this system will take decades or centuries, and interstellar exploration will likely be centuries to millenia even for the nearest stars -- at tech levels quite different from our current status.

This does not intimidate me. We are five centuries into the colonization of the Americas at this point, and approximately one hundred centuries into the out-of-Africa project. Are those doing well so far? Providing good returns on investment? I thought so.

2) Your estimates on launch of humans from Earth assume all life support and other mass is to be launched from Earth. It has been recognized for upwards of fifteen years now that space travel cannot be large-scale economical without utilizing off-Earth resources. This requires extra start-up capital, which is why it has been delayed, but pays off in the long run.

I hate to break it to you, but your objections are not new and have already had some serious thought devoted to them.

3) You wrote: "But the domed city on Mars is going to have to wait for a magic wand or two to do something about the climate." Of course, that's exactly what terraforming is all about. I admit that I think terraforming would take more time than is posited in, say, K. S. Robinson's space opera; but that is mainly because I do not foresee much a massive capital investment in terraforming Mars. Your previous comments indicate similar sentiments.

Nevertheless, in the short run, I agree with you: I think the rest of the first century of spacefaring will be dominated by tourism, research, development, and manufacturing in Earth orbit, one or more bases on the Moon (some research, some tourist), probably one research base on Mars, and perhaps some mining bases in the asteroids to deal with the automated mining fleets. That's what we are capable of with current-plus-immediately-researchable technology.

I also think technology will not sit still, and I know you think the same. It won't stay that way. Take Robinson's story again: asteroid colonization doesn't take place until the 23rd century, after a century plus of deep-space mining operations advance the technology far enough.

4) You wrote: "Colonize the Gobi desert, colonise the North Atlantic in winter... then get back to me about the rest of the solar system!"

Be careful for what you ask for; you just might get it. The point about Las Vegas has already been made, of course. The Inuit are another counterexample, as are the Polynesians. In general, humans have proven to be remarkably adaptable to conditions.

However, your point is also specious because of the extreme proximity of the Gobi and the North Atlantic to more hospitable regions. If you want to live off the proceeds of the North Atlantic, you don't build a ship to sit in the North Atlantic; you live on Nantucket and Nova Scotia. You could alter the environment, but because the Earth's climates are interdependent we're not likely to do that. I do not foresee the Moon ever being colonized extensively; there's no point when Earth is so close.

The advantage of extraterrestrial environments is that, since there's no pre-existing life (except perhaps on Mars) to disturb, you can do anything you want to the environment. You can make it as pleasant as Earth is, for a suitable price -- all you really need is cheap energy (solar or fusion) and time. This is a task harder than European colonization of the Americas (where all the groundwork was done by the native Americans) but easier than the out-of-Africa migration (where the environment could not be altered, and had to be learned through trial and error with close to zero technology).

I read with amusement your description of Septagon system in Iron Sunrise. In lieu of Niven's Law of Fictional Assumption ("There is a technical term for anyone who thinks that a fictional character's biases and prejudices are those of the author's; that technical term is: 'idiot'."), I will not assume that you share the Eschaton's opinion of the space colonization crowd... but your essay does little to convince me otherwise. I agree with the implicit criticism that ideology will not conquer space. I disagree with the assertion that it won't happen. I agree with the assertion that it won't happen the way we expect. (Who predicted tourism and the dot-com boom as the keys to renewed rocket research? I don't think anyone thought of that...)

5) @14: I see your Jonestown and raise you Moses in Sinai. Now there was a crazy migration project if I ever heard of one... religiously motivated, too... probably wasn't pleasant to take part in... and yet look at all the civilizations whose heritage traces back to that one. Was it worth it?

6) @16: It is a personal choice as to whether you give a damn what happens after you die, if you have children, and whether you care what their survival chances are. If your answer to all these questions is "no" then few arguments (genetic, memetic, religious, or otherwise) will have much effect on your positions on long-term plans, as you have denied any possible benefit for making them. However, consider these corollaries:

a) Would you like to live in a world where the vast majority held the same position?
b) Would you even exist if, in the past, the vast majority held the same position? If so, what would your life be like?

7) @46: I agree that closed-loop recycling needs more work. Do you really think that work will not be done?

Posted by: Catfish N. Cod | June 16, 2007 11:59 PM

51:

Ack, for shame, Charlie! Even at sub-replacement, you still can't say that "lots" of people don't decide to have children! How many millions do, even in, say, Italy?

Nice essay -- but going by the usual rule, I'd say this almost guarantees that there will indeed be some kind of interstellar colonization. But yeah, it probably won't consist of transporting canned meat. Talk about doing something for religious reasons!

Posted by: Michael | June 17, 2007 12:01 AM

52:

...............here's the bottom line:
as the Moon landings, humans will walk on Mars
Just To Prove it's not worth it. it will be done
several times (not in my lifetime) and then abandoned.
Portugal/Spain got the credit for the New World.
USA got the Moon.
? Mars.

Posted by: john of sparta | June 17, 2007 12:30 AM

53:

Another typo, penultimate paragraph:

'and live their for the rest of'

Posted by: Nigel | June 17, 2007 12:32 AM

54:

As far as seedships building people on the other end, I liked Alastair Reynolds' take on it. The people of Yellowstone in his main series with Revelation Space and such are the second people to have colonized their planet in near lightspeed craft. The first were from America (loosely) and built by automated systems on the other side, no live cargo. Of course, being raised by robots or computerized systems turns out to have not given them the requisite amount of proper human contact. Their personalities had some rather nasty quirks which were propagated culturally (the kind that seem to involve people using axes or otherwise going like "The Shining") and within a couple of generations, they had wiped themselves out...

Posted by: Al | June 17, 2007 12:45 AM

55:

Though the Sun is larger than the Earth, it is
also further away.

You left out the Heinlein ("Universe") solution.

Posted by: Peter H. Salus | June 17, 2007 1:11 AM

56:

I have a dumb question, Charlie, prompted by the fact that I am writing this from Carolina, an incredibly pleasant suburb of San Juan.

Doesn't most of your solar system argument boil down to the fact that Earth is the only real estate worth squat in the vicinity? Unless I'm missing something --- I agree that a desire to spend money on species-survival is essentially religious, but is also pretty widespread --- your argument would change if Mars were a bubbly blue sphere with places like Carolina on it. Right?

Posted by: Noel Maurer | June 17, 2007 1:17 AM

57:

There is a quasi-religious argument, based on the Gaia hypothesis, which states the whole point of intelligence is to spread the biosphere to other (hopefully lifeless) planets. Being a believer in memes and an infinity of parasites (self-inserting sequences on plasmids, plasmids, cells, organisms,flea, bigger flea, human, societies, nations, civilizations, planets and life itself) this has always seemed elegant to me.

Posted by: Surur | June 17, 2007 1:33 AM

58:

The article was worth the read but you really need work on your author's tone. It's really condescending.

Posted by: Alex White | June 17, 2007 1:35 AM

59:

The most glaring error I see is what appears to pass for "moral thinking" in Libertarian circles:

"The future extinction of the human species cannot affect you if you are already dead: strictly speaking, it should be of no personal concern."

As if moral behavior is strictly limited to individual concerns. The author gets centuries of moral thought bassakwards. Chris @ 30 gets it exactly right.

The author also seems to perpetuate a number of myths about third-world economies and population rates. See Hans Rosling's :
Debunking third-world myths with the best stats you've ever seen.

You didn't mention another major obstacle to space travel, even travel within our solar system... gravity. Astronauts who spend a lot of time in low gravity environments come back much worse for wear. I don't know the current knowledge, but it seems to me that any prolonged trip, even if it is only as far as the Moon, is a one way trip. Your heart, weakened by having no resistance would not be able to handle the extra load of a return to Earth. Besides, what is the lifetime of a human on the Moon or Mars? We don't know. Our bodies are exquisitely tuned to 1g, how long will they even function in low or micro gravity? Many of our bodily systems depend on gravity to move our fluids around and remove waste products. All we are is bags of offal held together by thin membranes.

Peter Watts in Blindsight proposes an "antimatter-teleportation (telematter) drive". This is just for exploring within the solar system but has great promise.

As for an economic incentive, wouldn't the asteroid belt be a huge resource? Lots and lots of raw materials out there and in the rest of our solar system to boot.

I do agree with others who have said we should get our home on Earth in order first. If we don't get global climate change under control it is doubtful we'll make it past 2100 let alone survive long enough to fund interstellar exploration.
Global warming 'is three times faster than worst predictions'

Posted by: noen | June 17, 2007 1:48 AM

60:

" your argument would change if Mars were a bubbly blue sphere with places like Carolina on it. Right?"
But no Country Club. Or Hill Brothers.Or those public housing projects were they shoot at each other A la Gaza every few weeks. Right?

Posted by: Lemmy Caution | June 17, 2007 1:48 AM

61:

meh... so no monkeys get to jaunt around in space. sfw.

i think that's why i've enjoyed various authors takes on the robotic space travel/singularity premise, from clark to yours to vinge. we're too fragile to adapt to anything but terrestrial life.

but is that really such a great loss? what distinguishes us is that we're thinking monkeys. maybe all we need send is the thought, the meat can stay at home and enjoy a few more sunrises.

and thanks for the interesting comments. will have to steal some ideas for my own amateur writing....

Posted by: che tibby | June 17, 2007 1:48 AM

62:

...You know, between you and that idiot, Gregg Easterbrook, it's no wonder that the gullible are easily bamfoozled into thinking space exploration is a waste of time. If defeatist schmucks like you were in the right, Columbus - or anyone else - would have never set foot in the Americas. The fact that you and your ilk refuse to acknowledge is that it's in Humanity's basic nature to explore, to see what's on the other side of the hill. Your asinine argument demands that we, as a species, renounce what has clearly separated us from the beasts. If you're so adamant that this core aspect of human nature is a bad thing, then do us all a favor and remove yourself from having to deal with it directly.

Preferably before you contaminate the gene pool, natch.

Posted by: OM | June 17, 2007 1:49 AM

63:

Hello again. I just wanted to point out, Charlie's example of the Gobi Desert as a place we have yet to inhabit is only superficially true. It's true because there are no European cities there, but the place has been marginally inhabited for centuries, if not millenia, by nomadic tribes. The Mongols, for example, occupied that hellish place. Recently even, Chinese colonization, er "land reclamation effort" have created a modern city in that frigid sandbox. In fact it's called Shihezi looks pretty comfy to me.

Posted by: Lance | June 17, 2007 2:06 AM

64:

I like the essay, and like that Cory et al point to it from BoingBoing, however they spun it.

The crude rule of thumb is that fission drives are 0.1% efficient at converting mass to energy, and fusion drives are 1% efficient at converting mass to energy.

Typing this from what was once The Old West, the economic bottom line is this. In 2007 dollars, a fully provisioned covered wagon plus horses, mules, or oxen cost in the $100,000 to $250,000 range

Families headed West, not for the land of milk and honey, but to get away from a family, employer, town, church, or government that they could not stand.

If the cost in 2007 dollars drops to the $100,000 to $250,000 range to put a family in Earth orbit, millions of people will go into orbit. If the cost in 2007 dollars drops to the $100,000 to $250,000 range to put a family on the Moon, millions of people will go to the Moon. Same range for Mars, millions go to Mars. Ditto asteroids.

A cubic kilometer of metal asteroid is worth a quadrillion dollars at current prices. After the first trillion dollars worth of nickel is brought to Earth (nickel foam lifting bodies down through the air, floated on ocean to port, melted to make stainless steel at a regular steel costs) the price of nickel will have equilibrated down to the price of iron, and something else must be mined. But much of that first trillion is profit.

The cost of transforming Mars from undeveloped real estate to fully developed real estate is also order of magnitude a quadrillion dollars. After that, it's all profit.

But my wife asks me to say the following

Re (5): Darien scheme.

Professor Christine M. Carmichael is well-along in writing an alternate history novel in which the Darien scheme succeeded. Mexico and Central America were developed by Protestant Scots. The USA has, in effect, two versions of Canada adjacent to it, one to the North, one to the South.

Posted by: Jonathan Vos Post | June 17, 2007 2:08 AM

65:

You make a stong case, but for a writer of science fiction, I would think that you would have a better imagination. Humans always seem to find ways around physical laws, or at least how to cheat them. Anything that we can think off now, we will have and far more. The electron microscope was only invented roughly 60 years ago and now we're building gears out of atoms for Christ-sake!

Posted by: Atom Ant | June 17, 2007 2:31 AM

66:

This is all a negative "can't do" article by a guy who writes about ninjas? He doesn't explore the possibilities of of close to C speeds or time dialation that could make the trip very short for explorers. He also agonizes over the required energy. without any mention of antimatter energy, solars sails or Bussard Ramjets, all of which have been speculated on for years and are becoming a reality.

Throughout history there have always been naysayers, but nobody will remember them.

Posted by: bill king | June 17, 2007 2:55 AM

67:

for those of you raising an eyebrow at my reference to antimatter drive,,,

check this out...

http://www.nasa.gov/centers/goddard/news/topstory/2006/antimatter_spaceship.html

Posted by: bill king | June 17, 2007 3:03 AM

68:

Re: group selection. Yes, Dawkins has issues with it, but he's the reductionist to end all reductionism. If you pick your group realistically (e.g. semi-isolated human tribes) it can be shown to make sense -- particularly for beings such as us that rely so much on culture for our survival. Survival and the "inheritance" of traits then occur at the group level and off you go.

Which leads me to a related point -- who says any potential colonists would be strictly human? I don't mean human 2.0, but rather the results of cultural and biological divergence amongst human groups settling near(ish) Earth space on asteroids and so forth. If you're going to settle an inhospitable rock, it might as well be one with a really shallow gravity well. Throw in unregulated genetic fiddling and a few technological novelties, and you end up with groups who wouldn't see anything silly about life on a generation ship. Yes, I read Schismatrix when I was young and it warped my mind.

Posted by: A different Chris | June 17, 2007 3:15 AM

69:

Re: 66:

(1) antimatter energy: like hydrogen-fueled cars, the concept is pitched to confuse energy generation with energy storage. By forseeable technology, making antimater in micrograms, let alone tons, is many orders of magnitude more expensive than other forseeable interstellar technologies. I knew Heinlein, who quoted me in his afterword to his Encyclopedia Brittanica article "P.A.M. Dirac, Antimatter, and You" in "Expanded Universe." We corresponded a bit.

(2) solar sails: "Project: Solar Sail" edited by Arthur C. Clarke, David Brin, and Jonathan Post. Penguin Books, 1990. ISBN: 0-451-45002-7 A collection of essays and short stories ...

(3) Bussard Ramjets, as we now understand them, in our part of the cosmos, are more like parachutes than engines; with drag greater than thrust.

I'm pretty sure that Mr. Stross knows the science and engineering of (1),(2),(3). These merely add footnotes to his essay. They do not undercut any of his arguments.

Of course there can be unforseen technologies. I'm sure that there will be. See, for instance:

"Space Travel in the Next Millennium", commissioned poem as summary/frontispiece of:
Proceedings of Vision-21 (Space Travel in the Next Millennium, NASA Lewis Research Center, 2-4 April 1990, NASA Conference Publication 10059, 1991.

Posted by: Jonathan Vos Post | June 17, 2007 3:17 AM

70:

#66: The example drive that Charles uses for his example is WAY more efficient than any theoretical antimatter drive.

Antimatter isn't Propulsion Magic. It's an energy storage technique. The NASA article mentions that the ablative antimatter rocket has an Isp of 5,000 seconds. That's way more than what we can do now, but really pitiful for the task of fast interplanetary or interstellar travel.

Theoretical fusion drives can do a lot better; an Isp of 130,000 seconds was predicted for one type. (Inertial confinement fusion.)

That would make interplanetary travel fairly quick, but that's still not enough to make interstellar travel fast and easy.

Posted by: Stefan Jones | June 17, 2007 3:20 AM

71:

Charlie said:
> And unlike on Earth, you can't walk away. Walking out
> and becoming a refugee is not an option if things turn
> to shit. You're potentially in a backs-to-the-wall
> situation.

My sons would say, "So long as I've got broadband to my friends, who cares?"

Posted by: Joel Finkle | June 17, 2007 3:41 AM

72:

It's not in my narrow self interest to have space travel but, as Richard Dawkins would point out, my genes have other plans. And after all, I'm just a robot my genes built to help them replicate.

If humans ever do go into space, which humans? I would like to suggest that the autistic are somewhat space pre-adapted. A reduced need for social bonds may reduce the necessary size of a generation ship.

If humans colonize the solar system, it will be those humans who then colonize other stars, so there'll be a double selection effect for that. The vanguard is going to build up momentum, and get stranger and stranger. Seems like a trip between stars would give you time to slow down and have some really _big_ thoughts. No need to hurry.

Posted by: Paul Harrison | June 17, 2007 3:50 AM

73:

Huh?

Posted by: Scott | June 17, 2007 4:29 AM

74:

Paul @72, that's an interesting idea there. A selection pressure that favors autism.

Posted by: Lance | June 17, 2007 4:33 AM

75:

the case for space colonization isn't usually presented as an economic enterprise so much as a quasi-religious one

I wonder if this one sentence doesn't actually contain the undoing of the argument, at least in part. Restricting myself to the solar-system part for the moment, the argument against colonization is that it's economically silly, terribly unappealing and generally different & pointless. But surely religion is extremely good at getting people to do things like that? All one needs to see space colonization as a reasonable forecast is to take seriously the idea that the motives are quasi-religious, and imagine them developing into full-fledged religious ones (with or without any metaphysical trappings): if anything can get people to get into space despite economic problems, lack of surface appeal, etc, it's religious motivation.

Sure, the Gobi desert is under (un?) inhabited. But isn't Mecca in a desert? Millions of people go there every year...

Posted by: Stephen Frug | June 17, 2007 4:48 AM

76:

Joel @71: I think your sons might feel differently if they lived in Mogadishu or even Baghdad. For the rest of their lives -- weeks, maybe. Charlie's point is that as long as there's a stable society, things are peachy. But human societies, especially in small, isolated communities, have a spotty track record. I take your point about broadband and isolation, and you're probably right that there's a mitigating factor. But Baghdad had and has broadband (of course, now it doesn't have much electricity) but it's still not way up on your list of places you want to live.

OM @ 62 - wow. Nice attitude, bub. I bet you win lots of popularity contests.

bill @ 66 - you, uh, haven't read anything Charlie has written, except this essay. Have you. Ahem.

Atom Ant @ 65 - same comment. Anybody who can come here and say Charlie doesn't have much imagination really needs to hie him hence to a bookstore or local library. I mean this. Or download Accelerando for a rainy weekend.

Noel @ 56 - Carolina is nice. But come down here to Ponce and you'll see why we say that "Ponce is Ponce, and everything else is parking." You know what town in Puerto Rico is closest to heaven? Juana Diaz (because it's closest to Ponce, get it? We got a million of'em.)

But yeah, I think Charlie's argument does boil down to the fact that Earth is the only real estate in the Solar System that comes with an oxygen and fresh water supply -- and that's a pretty damned good argument. If there were a Puerto Rico on Mars, beaches and all, well, then we would already have terraformed Mars and Charlie's argument would be moot.

Johnathon @ 64 - granted, a cubic kilometer of nickel is equivalent to a metric shitload of money, but why do you need canned meat to go out and get it? It's cheaper and easier to send the robots (OK, OK, after we can build them -- but as I take Charlie's argument, we can build robots much more easily than we can fire smart monkeys around the System.)

Paul @ 72 -- that's a real interesting idea there.

Posted by: Michael | June 17, 2007 4:56 AM

77:

After all this, wouldn't it make the most sense to invest in SETI style communications - both receiving AND sending?

That way, if there is a way to effectively travel these distances we may find that out -- but if there has never proven a way to move about in the galaxy or at the interplanetary level, we may actually learn that as well. Essentially, it's currently the only form of intergalactic trade we know how to execute.

We could start with a simple sequenced laser pulse - like an interplanetary dial tone. Would that not be within both our technological and our financial capabilities?

Posted by: Chris Smith | June 17, 2007 5:36 AM

78:

Charlie,

You are correct on a lot of things, but you miss the forest for the trees.

As for anti-matter being an energy storage method - perhaps at some point in the future we will have an effective method to directly convert matter to anti-matter. Even if we don't, I still won't rule out interstellar exploration and colonization.

We have, frankly, more than a billion years to figure the problem out. Since you seem to like to use a condescending tone, I will return in kind: 1 billion years is at least 10000x the duration of human civilization. I'm pretty sure an idea or two will come out within that amount of time. As for the energy requirements - as we develop our technology, we will begin to take advantage of a greater and greater amount of the energy available - both from direct solar energy and from fusion and fission generation.

I also anticipate we will begin to improve our biologies and also develop cybernetic and robotic technologies to surpass many of our current limitations.

All your article really is simply a summary of how many challenges we will overcome in the eventually. An equivalent list could have been made for the moon landing (yes, the moon landing is vastly easier, but we have a LOT of time to work on interstellar colonization). I can wait a few thousand years. Well, not really (I'll be dead), but humanity can.

Posted by: Cober | June 17, 2007 5:53 AM

79:

Actually, the North Sea oil rig comparison with O'Neil colonies occured to me when I was looking at a model of a futuristic floating city proposal. We don't build floating cities and we're unlikely to build space habitats to service solar power sats.

quasi-religious might also be a good term to the impetious behind the Apollo program. I sometimes wonder whether a milenia from now, people will regard them the way we regard the pyramids: an awsome engineering marvel considering the technology of the time. One that could be duplicated far easeir with current technology but nobody has any desire to do so and no gut understanding of the motivations that drove them to do it in the first place.

And of course high c fraction voyages as postulated in #62 just make the total energy/mass of an interstellar ship worse, not better.

Yes, matter/anti-matter is merely an energy storage system, but as the energy storage that could conceivably have the best energy/mass ratio that would probably be critical to any intersteller probe, robotic or human. Either is really only possible for a society that has Exawats to burn.

Posted by: Jim A | June 17, 2007 6:11 AM

80:

This earth is as much a paradise as it is a prison. We are bound to it so long as we remain shortsighted and ephemeral. Many of our present constraints are relative to the current human mind and body. However, our species is subject to great change.

Perhaps the time will come when millennia pass in our minds much in the same way as days now pass. Whether by technology or evolution, we will change as we make our way into the stars. Our bodies will adapt to the scale of the universe. Our emotions will reflect the impact of this change. It may not be unnatural for a future version of a "human," or a collection of "humans" to feel at peace with roving on some thousand-year voyage, contemplating the universe at an intellectual depth unfathomable by our present minds. In this frame of mind, our bodies may seem more fluid, changing shape like liquid as the years pass like milliseconds.

In other words, we will change to meet the constraints of our technologies.

Posted by: chris | June 17, 2007 6:33 AM

81:

"bill @ 66 - you, uh, haven't read anything Charlie has written, except this essay. Have you. Ahem"
That's true, I got here via the boing boing post and it didn't register that this is charlie's site, so I apologize for the disrespect.

But I still think we willl develop interstellar travel by making use of anti-matter and time dilation. The cost or energy required isnt a problem because I figure we will be tapping into the sun's energy in a big way soon enough and then energy will be plentiful. Solar-powered-satellites...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_power_satellite

Posted by: BILL KING | June 17, 2007 6:47 AM

82:

Hi Charlie,

I enjoyed your essay quite a bit. However, I did have a few questions/comments.

First, you questioned the validity of arguments about "all your eggs in one basket" -- do you mean by this that you don't feel that humans are swayed by this argument, or that the argument itself is invalid?

It seems to me that the argument has a great deal of emotional power: it's fundamentally very similar to arguments about making the world better for our children, and so forth. So it seems to me that as an emotional argument, it's likely that people will continue to be moved by it. Will this be enough that people will expend great resources on the problem? I don't know.

I think that some other arguments can be made for space colonies in terms of Earth's self-interest, as well. For example, you can argue that it would be much easier to recover from a world-wide catastrophe if we had a widespread interplanetary presence, able to provide support and technological assistance. However, I'm not sure that sort of thing is really very credible.

For your point about closed societies in a small space colony, I wonder if some of the previous posters have it right: with modern communications technology, perhaps we're moving into an age where isolation is still compatible with participation in the greater society. For example, even in a small space colony of a few hundred people in say, a LaGrange orbit, would the internet/phones/news etc. tend to keep the colony in line? It might be hard to justify murdering your neighbor if you know the people you buy oxygen from will see it live on TV.

Of course, this argument is kind of opposite to one of the pro-colonization arguments I see above: will people move into space to get away from governments they don't like? If so... the moon may not be nearly far enough!

Also, it seemed to me that much of the argument about interstellar travel (which I agreed with) centered around (cheap) energy production. This made me wonder: many have posited that energy production is one of the great advantages to living in space, since sunlight is reliable and comparatively easy to manipulate there. Assuming an interplanetary civilization as a prerequisite to any interstellar effort, is energy production really that much of a problem?

Posted by: Justin | June 17, 2007 7:09 AM

83:

Food would be an issue, though we could scoop up a ton of cheese off the moon and send that along behind the main spacecraft with a connecting sushi conveyor belt

Posted by: pbrain | June 17, 2007 8:04 AM

84:

Enjoyed the article.

There?s no question it?s a slim to none chance of us ever getting off this planet, let alone out of this solar system.

But???.. and there?s always a but??..there is no way to know what advances might occur in the future. What about a Blade Runner scenario? We create replicants to do all the tough colonization stuff, then join up with them later.

Whatever happens will be in phases. First a moon base, then a Mars base, then the difficulties of getting beyond the solar system will set in. But again who knows what technological or genetic advances will occur?

We do have a human presence in Antarctica, which is the closest thing we have to the Martian environment.

I think people know that colonization is a long shot, but man always seem to go where he is not meant to

Posted by: Martin Turow | June 17, 2007 8:16 AM

85:

I think the argument of not putting all our eggs in one basket is pretty bogus; fact of the matter is, we don't know how to design a self-sustaining ecosystem. Which means all those space colonies are going to be ecologically dependent on earth for the foreseeable future. "All true wealth is biological." In the end life, life that we can live with, is the most valuable thing in the universe to us, and the only place we know we can find it is on earth.

On reflection, James Blish addressed these issues in both *Cities in Flight* and *The Seedling Stars*--very specifically in *A Life For The Stars*. He definitely ransacked the magic wand shop for *Cities*, however. I can't recommend *Seedling Stars*, it has aged badly, but the last story, as a critique of racism, still has a great deal of bite.

Posted by: Randolph Fritz | June 17, 2007 8:32 AM

86:

Noel @56: you're damn right about my argument changing if that was the case. It'd still be difficult to envisage much in the way of trade, at least with current/forseeable technology, but a piece of real estate of that quality would be just within the budget and range of folks with a really pressing desire to leave the Old Country behind for good. (A large chunk of the problem I have with space colonization at current tech levels is that in terms of direct human experience there's no "there" there; just a succession of cramped metal rooms, some of which have windows with a view onto a place that will kill you stone dead in seconds if you ever break the glass. We need to either re-engineer ourselves to exist in such environments, or manage some really extreme breakthroughs, before they actually become useful places to us, as opposed to our machines.)

Alex @58: I prefer to think of my tone as "annoyed by idiots". Of whom there are many with an obsession on this topic.

Noen @59: I didn't comment on Chris's (@30) comment because, like you, I think he hit the nail square on the head. For some reason space colonization is a libertarian and conservative shibboleth, and their usual highly egocentric frame of reasoning gets inverted and/or thrown out the window completely when they get started on the subject of their pet hobby-horse. You should bear in mind that this essay is something of a debunking exercise aimed at this crowd, and when I started going on about the lack of personal benefits accruing from the "all our eggs in one basket" meme, that's the mind set I'm trying to confront with their own inconsistency.

NB: the asteroids turn out to be a lot further apart, energetically speaking, than we think. But as the current record for an ~~astronaut~~ cosmonaut staying in zero gee and returning to earth is Valery Polyakov with 438 consecutive days aboard Mir, we can put a lower bound of "more than a year" on the question of how long people can survive in microgravity. So that objection at least isn't insuperable.

Paul @72: that's a really good idea. (Excuse me while I make a note of it :)

Cober @78: As for anti-matter being an energy storage method - perhaps at some point in the future we will have an effective method to directly convert matter to anti-matter. That's an example of what I mean by a "magic wand". You're basically postulating a free lunch. "Why, if there was such a thing as a free lunch, I could dine out every day, for free!"

As for having a billion years to figure it out -- no, we don't. We, personally, have maybe fifty years, barring breakthroughs in medical research. Odds are that none of us participating in this thread are going to see much more than a renewed Lunar expedition, possibly a base there, and possibly a Mars mission, within our lifetimes. In the long term, the jury is still out on whether our form of tool-using intelligence is an evolutionarily fit adaptation; given that our species is probably less than 0.2My old and we've already triggered a once per 100My level major extinction event, I'm not sanguine about our long term prospects.

Justin @82: I judge the fund-raising effectiveness of the "eggs in one basket" argument by the efficiency with which it effortlessly raises tens of billions of dollars in funding for the project spaceguard project in the wake of the 1992 Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 impact on Jupiter. (That was sarcasm in case you hadn't noticed ...)

On energy production: all we need to do is dismantle Jupiter, surround the sun with enough orbiting photovoltaic and thermovoltaic collectors to trap its entire output, and then use Saturn as a fuel dump, and of course we'll have plenty of fuel and energy for our personal fast relativistic starships. NB: there might be a few minor technical issues with implementing this program, but I'm game to start on it next Tuesday. How about you?

Posted by: Charlie Stross | June 17, 2007 8:51 AM

87:

My original comment: As for anti-matter being an energy storage method - perhaps at some point in the future we will have an effective method to directly convert matter to anti-matter.

Your response: That's an example of what I mean by a "magic wand". You're basically postulating a free lunch. "Why, if there was such a thing as a free lunch, I could dine out every day, for free!"
True, but you ignored "As we develop our technology, we will begin to take advantage of a greater and greater amount of the energy available - both from direct solar energy and from fusion and fission generation." There is a significant amount of potential energy available in fissionables & hydrogen in the solar system which are accessible to a civilization able to colonize the solar system.

In the long term, the jury is still out on whether our form of tool-using intelligence is an evolutionarily fit adaptation; given that our species is probably less than 0.2My old and we've already triggered a once per 100My level major extinction event, I'm not sanguine about our long term prospects.
I agree that human survival is not guaranteed. But if we wind up having 1By, I would suspect that we will be able to crack the interstellar colonization nut. In fact, I would bet that 2000 years could do it, providing we continue to develop.

Posted by: Cober | June 17, 2007 9:26 AM

88:

Unless the development of technology slows down, isn't it a little bit pretetious to think that there aren't any "magic bullets" out there to be discovered? I mean, if 100 years ago (1907) you said that man would walk on the moon 62 years after, you'd pretty much been declared crazy on the spot. Shouldn't we expect that the same is true about trying to predict 100 years ahead (or more) today?

The interesting thing is that development takes other paths than we think - I remember reading an article of future predictions written around 1968 - this had us living on the moon before 2000 and making the common cold extinct in 1990. But it made no mention of the computer revolution, for instance.

But overall, I agree that economics need to be considered - it is the favourable economics that has driven the electronics revolution (as well as making air travel available to anybody in the industrialized world).

Posted by: Karl | June 17, 2007 9:41 AM

89:

You are a fine writer, if not a tad bit too condescending at times (this flirts with the "my Linux server is more secure than your Linux server nanananabooboo" variety web-speak), however I am curious, why exactly are you writing Science Fiction? This paper basically tells me one thing: do not read my books because, well, they are BS! I suspect you are simply flexing your intellect for such matters, but I am highly suspicious of any Science Fiction writer with such a hardboiled stance on the possibilities of the unknown. If this is the way you truly feel about the mysteries of the universe, then I might as well get my Sci-Fi fix from Dr. Phil, because, well, Charlie said that it was all bogus! None of it is real! Space travel? YOU MORON! Look at Charile's date. Why in the world would you read a fantasy book about something so outrageously impossible. Look at his data! Sci Fi is a joke! Charlie said so!

Posted by: ride the snake | June 17, 2007 9:53 AM

90:

Forgive me if this argument has been addressed already. but all of the author's travel time information is based on current-day chemical rocket technology.

Travel times could be drastically reduced by using more advanced technology that is being developed by former astronaut Franklin Chang Diaz. His organization is working on plasma rockets that will substantially increase delta V, so speeds are increased and travel time reduced.

Posted by: Matthew Ota | June 17, 2007 10:18 AM

91:

Charlie,

"On the plus side, if we see "Osama sitting up there in the moon broadcasting taunts, untouchable by anyone", then he and his followers can't touch us."

Ah... wrong. They very much could touch us. Or have you forgotten the premise for the success of the Loonies' revolt in Heinlein's _The Moon is a Harsh Mistress_? As David Weber puts it, he who controls the high orbitals controls the planet. Very good reason to make sure that no one group controls the Moon.

And on the other point, I am very much in favor of not putting all our eggs in one basket. Might be the difference between male and female thinking there.

Posted by: Deann Allen | June 17, 2007 11:19 AM

92:

"Space is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to space."

Posted by: Auz | June 17, 2007 11:22 AM

93:

(º)(º)

Posted by: wÒÓ† | June 17, 2007 11:39 AM

94:

Bring back Project Orion

Posted by: tc | June 17, 2007 12:14 PM

95:

You can go to Dr. Michio Kaku at www.mkaku.org.

He's already worked all the logistical and energy requirements for Types 1,2 and 3 civilizations.

Posted by: nedders | June 17, 2007 12:54 PM

96:

Minor nitpicking:

This might be read by some people as implying that only Voyager 2 has gotten as far away from Earth as Neptune's orbit, when in fact four spacecraft have (Pioneers 10 and 11, Voyagers 1 and 2).

Also, note that the New Horizons spacecraft took just over a year to reach Jupiter. "Fancy orbital mechanics" isn't primarily useful for getting you somewhere quickly; it's useful for getting you somewhere at lower cost (e.g., via the Interplanetary Transport Network), with a tradeoff in increased travel time.

Posted by: Peter Erwin | June 17, 2007 1:08 PM

97:

Charlie @86:

I think there are a couple of reasons why libertarians love the idea of space exploration. One is that they tend to be forward-thinging technophiles as individuals, they have a lot of faith in technology and don't tend to fear things like nanotech and cloning. Another is that they've idealized the American Frontier of the 19th century, a time when rugged individualists escaped the bonds of society, and they'd like to do that themselves in part. Of course, the only modern frontier is outer space, and never mind that early colonies are likely to need to be much more collectivist or corporate than any in the past. And the third reason is probably Robert Heinlein. I know I was exposed at a young age to a lot of libertarian ideas by reading his books, at the same time as I became enamored with space travel. All of us want to be characters in "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress".

Posted by: Andrew G. | June 17, 2007 1:21 PM

98:

So Proxima Centauri, at 267,000 AU, is just under two and a third kilometres, or two miles (in old money) away from us.

Perhaps a bit nitpicking, but 2 1/3km != 2 miles.

Posted by: Ethan | June 17, 2007 1:56 PM

99:

Um, might I suggest you stick to what you do "best", such as writing about ninjas?

And you aren't that skilled there, either.

Posted by: Thomas Young Galloway | June 17, 2007 2:04 PM

100:

My, don't the comments get rude when people's own little private beliefs get challenged?

What I see as a common theme is pure handwavium: " we don't have any solution now, but one just has to exist [because I want it to]". The appeal to previous intractable problems which were solved by new accesses of technical or scientific know;edge has the problem of assuming that all intractable problems are solvable a priori. It's rather like the claim that because some valid new discveries are greeted with derision, this idea which is greeted with derision must be a valid new discovery: "'They laughed at Marconi! They laughed at Edison! They Laughed at Einstein! They laughed at my Uncle Herbert...!' 'Your Uncle Herbert? But I ain't never heard of your Uncle Herbert!' 'Aha! That's because he was mad!'"

I also see some people who seem to have reading comprehension problems: Charlie isn't rejecting the idea of space exploration (via robot, principally); he's rejecting the probability of effective space colonization (absent magic wands).

Finally, of course, people also seem to be missing the point that, asinde from mundane SF and the like, SF is largely about magic wands...

Posted by: James | June 17, 2007 2:19 PM

101:

Thomas @ 98 - BAHAHAHAHA. The comment to end all comments!

Posted by: Michael | June 17, 2007 2:42 PM

102:

The problem is that so many previous pessimists have been proven wrong (ie. "railroads can never go faster than 30 mph", "I can only see a need for 10 computers in the world" etc.) If you can't see anything coming in the next 100 years that won't change something basic about space exploration, then I think you don't have enough imagination. And then it is a little bit strange to style yourself an SF writer.

Posted by: Karl | June 17, 2007 2:51 PM

103:

Karl, the problem you suffer from is surviver bias. There have also been a lot of pessimists who were proven right, though nobody ever bothers to mention them. There seems to be no merit in predicting that something won't work, unless you provide a (working) solution along with it. And even then your solution has to be implemented.

In short, the existence of any number of pessimists who have been proven wrong, doesn't say anything about the quality of pessimistic predictions. (The same, of course, goes for optimistic ones.)

Posted by: tp1024 | June 17, 2007 3:16 PM

104:

What I love about comment 98 is that it appears to come from someone who has read the Boing Boing story describing Charles as a badass ninja science fiction writer and assumed that he writes SF stories about ninjas. Then, he criticises Charles' writing immediately after making it obvious he hasn't in fact read any of it.

Posted by: Brian | June 17, 2007 3:46 PM

105:

I was quite disappointed with your latest rant, it seems you must have had a very bad week and perhaps a brain tumor. How else to imagine why a science fiction author would so publicly, stridently and logically tear to shreds the hopes of anyone in space travel that you yourself have helped to kindle? And with such... zest?

This is diametrically opposed to the positive "can do" outlook of say for example Heinlein's protagonists. I'm talking about the Have Spacesuit Will Travel type. A young guy who understands analog circuitry and has memorized all the distances of the planets from Earth. Perhaps this is very difficult to imagine today though. Being hard-headed about scientific facts is one thing, saying there is nothing interesting in the Oort cloud, possibly the most fabulous dreamworld to explore in our solar system, is well almost a dirty lie. I think you do have an unshirkable responsibility to recognize that:
1) Expanding our frontiers has never been done by people who think like you, who spend their time saying why we must not hope to go.
2) The crazies who make it to the new world blaze a path and find reasons the slightly less crazy can use to rationalize greater investment and not listening to you.
3) The lack of obvious civilization throughout the galaxy points to a preponderance of people who think like you, whereas there is a big opportunity for people who don't think like you, per se. (They already can manipulate energy at that level you find borderline insane.)
4) If science fiction is anything but masturbation, it is a tool for conceptualizing about the future and what lies around the bend, in other words it is a bootstrapping enabler. It is entirely possible there is a beacon waiting in the Oort cloud to test if we are curious enough to find it, etc. Or more down to earth, satellites are of course the invention of a science fiction writer as you very well know.

So how do you explain the glee with which you apply your literary skillz to shooting down dreams of the future based on only the state of the art as of June 2007? I don't get you.

The problem is that your black humorless grimace seems designed to take the wind out of the sails of anyone who dares imagine such things, and I wonder why you do that.

To me it is quite simple what we need, why I have to tell a sci-fi author is beyond me. We need an absolute mastery of nanotechnology, materials science, artificial intelligence and scavenging of energy and mass first of all. This will enable us to live in the Gobi or anywhere we damn well please. Figure on at least the "seed" technology at the end of The Diamond Age, and them some. Between that, even just current space drives and Martin Lo's (of Genesis Project) gravitationally assisted trajectories ("superhighway") around the solar system we can colonise our own system. As for other stars, why worry about it for now.

By then we may be doing some weird uploading but somehow we'll be able to colonise the galaxy, even if only by robotic proxy and even if it takes millenia. Probably the concept of what "I" is will be quite different around then (if you listen to Moravec anyway).

As we build more and more of these diamond-studded palaces in the sky, sailing along gravity-free paths like so many soap bubbles on a winding stream, we will not be alone out there. We will be as close to our neighbors as the next bubble of life and we will foam out to the next star that way. People out there will not have the same values as you, but that's okay because it will be real for them too. Perhaps they will be constantly trading for new technologies to feed their replicators over broadband through the mesh created by this pseudopod of humanity. Maybe some will develop a more efficient propulsion method and choose to break off from the central limb of humanity to reach the next star faster, there to rejoin.

Here you go, Charlie, a new story and it doesn't really need much tech. It spells out exactly where to funnel our funding and hey when the Gobi desert starts looking inviting after a few hundred years of population growth maybe a magical palace in the sky won't seem too bad after all. Maybe you could write a researched platform for it and open it up to young scifi authors to cut their teeth on.

We need more kids (big and little) to absorb vast perspectives and faith in humanity and science, the kind only informed science fiction can provide. That you find your suburbs more inviting than some spartan spaceship is entirely understandable, unless you choose to imagine a comfortable one.

I only ask that you apply the same brains and talent you use writing fiction, to write non-fiction. Not this low-brow rant. Don't wave your hands at giant concepts by mentioning them as lone keywords while spending all your time explaining how the world is a big place. How about revising your goals to always create something profound and exhilirating, and if you don't have anything good to say on a particular day, save it and think about what you can do about it? Physics itself is grand but if you choose to keep your eyes at ant-level and interpreting physics with a similar perspective, there is no point to sharing your vision with the rest of us.

Thank you and keep up the good work. Hope you feel better next week!

Yours truly,

Matt Rosin
mattr@telebody.net
Tokyo, Japan

Posted by: Matt Rosin | June 17, 2007 3:52 PM

106:

I agree with 101. Necessity is the mother of invention and imagination is the key. It's ok for a Sci/Fi writer to explore the negative side of human nature with things like post-nuclear war earth and aliens taking us over, but never to crush our spirit and dreams.

There is no doubt in my mind that humans will populate the universe.

The reason I am so sure of this is because the quirky phenomenom of time dilation...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_dilation

It's nature's way of providing access to the entire universe, in a single lifetime.

" For sufficiently high speeds the effect is dramatic. For example, one year of travel might correspond to ten years at home. Indeed, a constant 1 g acceleration would permit humans to travel as far as light has been able to since the big bang (some 13.7 billion light years) in one human lifetime. "

Just because the explorers/colonists will forever lose touch with people and society on the world they depart doesn't mean it can't be done, just that they need serious preparation for any eventuallity before they leave. I think this isolation will also help their chances for survival, one, because they begin their journey without safety nets they will use extreme caution and ingenuity to overcome hardships. Two, the isolation will allow them to grow in relative security from human agression. Also, by venturing out into the universe in stages, the task of deep space exploration becomes easier and easier. First stage would be to colonize the Moon, then Mars, then perhaps a few moons on Saturn or Jupiter, then hop to the nearest star, with all the equiptment necessary to set up shop on a planet or moons as we will with those in our solar system.

The ships wont need to be "generation ships" because at 1G constant acceration it will only be a few years at the most for any hop to another closest star. However they will need to be equipt as such since they will need to be self-sufficient/sustaining for many years even after they land.

Of course it isn't going to be easy, but I see our populationg the universe as inevitable.

Posted by: bill king | June 17, 2007 4:04 PM

107:

I LOVE this site! Correct me if I am wrong Charlie but this was just a little essay you knocked up while you had a nasty head cold. A quick piece with some nice analogies and mathmatics. Well i liked it! I don't agree with all of it but the previous few people who are trying to start a flame war really need a sense of perspective.
One of the areas you seemed to gloss over was the military aspect. I think lunar colonisation is inevitable from a strategic angle. (See #91 et al and Nivens Footfall). I can see some fun and games with an expansionist China and an increasingly conservative/broke USA setting off a 2nd space race culminating in a Lunar arms race. :(

Posted by: Toadlicker | June 17, 2007 4:13 PM

108:

I like the Moses approach. Wait until God say to do it, pick up a staff, get a crowd to follow you along, then just take off and rely on the Pillar of Fire to guide you and the manna to sustain you. All you science geeks are relying way too much on math and matter, and not enough on faith and courage.

Posted by: Dale | June 17, 2007 4:23 PM

109:

Hmm... to those of you who feel your dreams are being crushed by Charlie's analysis, let me ask this... do you expect the hoped for solution to interstellar travel to be powered on hopes & dreams, or do you think it is will be a logical, scientific solution? If you think the former, then you should applaud and encourage people discussing and analyzing the aspects that seem to be insurmountable.

Also, I have to say (and this is my personal taste) that I think the best science fiction is really exploring issues (perhaps in the guise of aliens, spaceships, or whatever) that are relevant to our present life on Earth. SF that lives to be predictive tends to be a bit dead & pointless. So I think it's a bit silly to question Charlie's SF writing because he doesn't think the stories he writes are likely to ever come true.

Posted by: Ethan | June 17, 2007 4:25 PM

110:

I am so fricking confused by these comments. I can't tell whether people are being subtly snide, tongue-in-cheek, or genuinely believe it when they say it's "odd" for a science-fiction author to say that the economic reality of space travel is that it won't look like American colonization.

Thanks a lot, Cory. Charlie's forum has often been the site of colossal collisions of world view, but it's rarely been so ambiguous.

Posted by: Michael | June 17, 2007 4:27 PM

111:

Why do libertarians [North American subtype invoked] and conservatives like space colonisation?

James Nicoll strikes. Here is the news, bub.

Charlie, I quite agree with most of your comments here, but I would like to pick up the North Atlantic one and run with it. Yes, people do go to sea, and they do a variety of things there of great economic value. Offshore oil rigs (and in the near future, gigawatt-scale wind power) are one. Ships are another - 90 per cent of international trade goes by sea.

From a literary viewpoint, the idea of a caste of hardhat space engineers who go out there for the money is not without possibilities (although Robert Heinlein copyrighted a lot of them). And the consensus of opinion here appears to be that the possible conquistadors of space are either mercenary aerospace engineers or crazy idealists. Well, a combination of skilled hardhats with an eye to the main chance and crazy idealists with their eyes on the stars gives any project a lot of delta-V, whether it be a shining city on a hill, a global computer internetworking protocol, or a pyramid of skulls - or some combination of those three.

I'd be remiss, by the way, if I didn't point out that the idea of a spacefaring society with a dangerous tendency to go postal with axes is a pretty obvious satire of a certain nation not a million miles from the North Atlantic..

Posted by: Alex | June 17, 2007 4:27 PM

112:

You seem to be ignoring the use of extraterrestrial resources. I have some comments.

Posted by: Rand Simberg | June 17, 2007 4:42 PM

113:

They have been trolled by a master. It is a thing of beauty.

Posted by: Adrian Smith | June 17, 2007 4:52 PM

114:

" Hmm... to those of you who feel your dreams are being crushed by Charlie's analysis, let me ask this... do you expect the hoped for solution to interstellar travel to be powered on hopes & dreams, or do you think it is will be a logical, scientific solution? If you think the former, then you should applaud and encourage people discussing and analyzing the aspects that seem to be insurmountable. "

Actually, I was refering to Charlie's fictitious future human population, but the same could be said for people who limit their edification on the subject to Charlie's rant.

I agree, this is a worthwhile discussion, I just wish Carl Sagan were here to set charlie straight on a few things!

Posted by: bill king | June 17, 2007 5:07 PM

115:

Putting people on planets may take a while but several comments have rightly mentioned terraforming. Synthetic biology will take us in this direction. Without the human element it may be less than fertile territory for sci-fi, but it's still interesting to think about how long it would take to smother a big asteroid in radiophilic bacteria and fungi (like D.radiodurans) and whether/how you could actually tweak a climate this way.

Posted by: Ian Holmes | June 17, 2007 5:17 PM

116:

I think Charlie's science is pretty solid. But the things that he dismissively waves away as "magic wands" are what science fiction authors would call "technological advancements."

Really, it's just an energy problem. With enough energy we can overcome all the other issues. I don't mean it's guaranteed to happen; we may never be able to produce that kind of energy. But from a science fiction author's point of view, it's at least plausible, and that's all you need to write a story.

I have a fuller discussion here.

Posted by: Jim Stewart | June 17, 2007 5:21 PM

117:

Matt @105: was quite disappointed with your latest rant, it seems you must have had a very bad week and perhaps a brain tumor. How else to imagine why a science fiction author would so publicly, stridently and logically tear to shreds the hopes of anyone in space travel that you yourself have helped to kindle? And with such... zest?

... Because I dislike willful ignorance and I hate being told comforting lies.

In a nutshell -- and my third [non-introductory] paragraph should have been a honking great flashing neon Time Square sized sign -- the space settler enthusiasts have basically swallowed a cartload of ideologically weighted propaganda, cunningly combined with emotive appeals to abstract (and thus unfalsifiable) ideals. Your use of the phrase "the high frontier" is itself a telling one -- and you use the term "frontier" repeatedly. Then you start going on about indoctrinating impressionable young minds to "absorb vast perspectives and faith in humanity and science" as if you think I've got some quasi-mystical duty to teach Ideologically Correct Gerard K. O'Neil Thought, and by implication, any kid who doesn't buy what is effectively a collectivist pie-in-the-sky daydream is deficient, unimaginative, and foolish, and any SF writer who refuses to pander to this political creed is evil and wrong.

I don't like being told what thoughts I'm allowed to hint. I like to question assumptions. And this is just the result of my interrogating some of the assumptions underlying space opera, using the toolkit of Hard Science Fiction -- i.e., trust the numbers. You can take it as a default likely outcome, if certain normative conditions hold true: that is, if there is no AI singularity, if there are no breakthroughs in fundamental physics, and if Drexlerian nanotechnology and molecular genetics don't give us the tools to transform our bodies.

There is no guarantee that one or more of those things are not going to happen, in which case all bets are off and we probably ar going to find that interstellar colonization is a tractable problem; but equally strongly, I'm not placing any bets on the eStandard Model of physics being found to be so strongly broken that two-fisted engineers are building FTL drives or fusion reactors in their basements a year later, or on us all going a-flying up to upload AI heaven.

Bill @106: I suspect the "spirit and dreams" to which you allude are the product of extensive political indoctrination. Please start to consider your starting assumptions? It hurts at first, but at least once you've done it you'll know where you stand.

Toadlicker @107: yeah, I just knocked it up yesterday because I was feeling too crap to work on the current novel. Your point about the moon and militarisation of space makes sense, assuming the current superpower competition model persists for long enough with enough surplus money behind it to make the use of the moon viable. (There are some technical issues to do with what you can use the moon for that need to be questioned -- using it to base missiles, other than a "second strike" capability, is reeeeeal dumb, their rocket plumes can be seen from Earth with a rather small telescope and the warheads would take days to arrive -- but for other purposes such as observation it'd be really useful.)

Michael @110: the sad thing is, I think a whole lot of them really believe it. As in, they believe. It's not rationally grounded optimism with an underpinning of facts, it's religion in disguise.

Rand @112: yep, in situ resource utilization would really help. The "live off the land" Mars expedition ideas that Zubrin hatched, and the idea of synthesizing fuel for a return journey from the Martian atmosphere, is so obviously sensible that I have difficulty believing anyone's looking at plans for Mars missions that don't rely on them. On the other hand, there's one big problem with ISRU; namely, demand for the extracted resources versus the cost of shipping the extraction plant up there in the first place. ISRU only really makes sense when it's cheaper to ship, say, a 100 ton extraction plant to the lunar surface, than to ship 100 tons of pre-processed raw fuel/material from Earth. As part of an actual industrial cycle it's a good idea, but I suspect we've got a long way to go in developing self-contained fabrication systems (and mining/extraction systems to supply them with feedstock!) before we're there. Even worse, here on earth we don't actually need self-contained ISRU systems -- we have a global economy to plug into. So the cost of building such a system is probably going to be high because you've got to go all the way to a fully working one in a single bound, rather than having useful intermediate technologies you can market along the way.

Adrian @113: have a cigar. You called me on it, and you called right. Thank you! :)

Posted by: Charlie Stross | June 17, 2007 5:30 PM

118:

You are no longer invited to consume vitamin pills at my moon base.
:(

Posted by: Nick | June 17, 2007 5:40 PM

119:

So the cost of building such a system is probably going to be high because you've got to go all the way to a fully working one in a single bound, rather than having useful intermediate technologies you can market along the way.

Ah, that's what I call "creationist technology".

Posted by: Alex | June 17, 2007 5:47 PM

120:

Alex @119: doesn't mean it's impossible, but it's the same reason "Fusion is Just Fifty Years Away" has been the slogan for the past ... fifty years.

And what really annoys me is when someone takes a good idea that has viable intermediate tech spin-offs, and tries to go for the money shot in one move, and falls flat on their face.

If the folks at Liftport had focussed on simply making stronger, longer fullerene cables and tapes, then selling them for terrestrial construction projects (to fund developing fullerene cables that are even longer and much stronger -- rinse, cycle, repeat) we might be well on the way to having materials that have the tensile strength necessary for a space elevator by now. There's always a market for a better suspension bridge cable, after all. But my understanding is that they focussed on going straight to the elevator, assumed high-tensile fullerene tapes would come along anyway, took a bite at building a climber along the way ... and are teetering on the edge of going bust.

Posted by: Charlie Stross | June 17, 2007 5:53 PM

121:

I read what the required strength/weight ratio for a space elevator cable was pretty close to the theoretical limit for carbon nanotubes. Never going to get me up in one of those.

Posted by: Adrian Smith | June 17, 2007 6:14 PM

122:

Karl, I don't think Charlie (or anyone else) doubts that new basic science, sooner or later, will yield something that could provide a "magic wand." Maybe on-beyond-nuclear (but easier to manage) energy densities; maybe on-beyond-GR reimagining of spacetime; maybe -- as in the starwisp/upload route -- a change in what we mean by "us" and by "being there" so complete that the idea of shipping meat with life support becomes laughable.

It's simply that by the very nature of such radical departures, the result won't look much like any extrapolation of the technologies we have. So -- at least in technology-projection, R&D-steering mode rather than SFnal mode -- it's hard to say anything concrete enough to be interesting. For all the talk of Columbus, at the moment we're really more like Phoenician coastal sailors guessing at how many shifts of oarsmen it will take to row west to the Land of Jade.

Posted by: Monte Davis | June 17, 2007 6:15 PM

123:

So exactly which idealogically weighted load of bollocks would you prefer that we all subscribe to? Your article hammers pretty hard at the foundations of the shaky edifice of space exploration, but offers little suggestion of what we should build among the rubble you left behind.

Many of the yay-saying posters here seem to echo that depressingly small-minded camp that trumpets the equally vain assertion that we must solve our problems here before reaching for the stars. Given that thousands of years of human history have been inadequate to slay even one of the four horsemen, I doubt that is any more rational a hope than attempting to leave them behind on our shiny rockets.

Frankly, I think the only cure for the human condition is for the species to step aside and make way for the next step in evolution undoubtably brewing in some illegally run lab somewhere.

Until that grim day, I see no harm in reaching for the stars, and swallowing whatever gentle lies the visionaries of our culture tell us to motivate the movers and shakers to open their wallets. I certainly prefer these lies to the ridiculous scenarios for a better world spewing forth from the lips of holy rollers and Kalishnikov-weilding madmen. And, as pointed out already, there is some practical value in holding the high ground in our own terrestial disputes.

It may be a longer journey than most people imagine, but whining about how long it takes to get there is about as conducive to a pleasant trip as that small, relentless voice in the back seat endlessly repeating "Are we there yet? Are we there yet?"

Don't make me turn this thing around...

Posted by: Barry | June 17, 2007 6:18 PM

124:

Isn't it possible to get up to several percent of c using a solar sail? And of course, if you accelerated using a solar wind, you can decelerate the same way...

Posted by: John Hoffman | June 17, 2007 6:21 PM

125:

Creationist tech, Charlie, by reference to this post.

Posted by: Alex | June 17, 2007 6:34 PM

126:

One of the reasons we haven't colonized the Gobi Desert is that there aren't enough people already there to effectively exploit. If there were a population of indigenous Gobians who had figured out how to live there comfortably and extract wealth from the landscape, they would have been overrun centuries ago, regardless of the geography.

If you look at the history of human colonization (as distinct from human migration*), colonies are successful when there's an existing human presence (technologies, infrastructure, agriculture, labor) to leverage. Human beings don't colonize uninhabited places.**

I suspect that the economics of space colonization could change radically if there were alien civilizations out there whose technology and infrastructure we could exploit. And I have no doubt but that ethical objections would never come up.

* I'm going to assume that the atmosphere is an effective barrier to further migration, leaving colonization the only option. I don't see us moving into space gradually by way of trading posts in the stratosphere.

** Ignoring, of course, the many Great National Myths.

Posted by: HP | June 17, 2007 6:35 PM

127:

Actually, we could send a manned expedition to the Centauri system "today," provided we had the determination to do so. The basic science is already done, and all that is left to do is gather the resources and do the greatest engineering job in history.

The big questions are, do we have the will, individually and collectively, and is there a desirable destination for us at the end of the trip.

I'm in favor of starting, sometime in this decade, to design a robot probe to try to find the answer to the second part of the question.

I suspect the occurence of terrestrial planets in proper orbits necessary to support our sort of life is actually quite rare, and the "Hot Jupiter" scenario is pretty much the norm. But, that shouldn't keep us from looking, because we are a curious sort of monkey and that may be a species imperative.

Posted by: Rich | June 17, 2007 6:40 PM

128:

The main problem with this is, to paraphrase Chris Peterson, a future with nanotech and AI may seem like science fiction, but one without them is just fantasy. I've written a book on each subject ("Nanofuture" and "Beyond AI" respectively -- Charlie, check out the latter, you're quoted in it) so I won't go over the arguments yet again.

One point, tho: the trend line for air-travel speed rose exponentially till about 1970 and then levelled off -- for economic reasons, not technical. (Going Mach 1.1 costs 3x going 0.9) But the energy cost of NYC-Sydney is the same in a 747 or orbit. So there's a chance that orbital travel will pick up when the underlying tech curve, projected from the original, would have hit orbital velocity. That turns out to be roughly 2010. Current developments are possibly promising.

Posted by: Josh | June 17, 2007 6:41 PM

129:

If there were a population of indigenous Gobians who had figured out how to live there comfortably and extract wealth from the landscape, they would have been overrun centuries ago, regardless of the geography.

They're called Mongols and they had a leader name of Genghiz Khan...

Posted by: Alex | June 17, 2007 6:42 PM

130:

Charlie sez: I suspect we've got a long way to go in developing self-contained fabrication systems (and mining/extraction systems to supply them with feedstock!)...

To get a bit more -- ahem -- granular, NB the big difference between all-fluid-phase processes, such as Zubrin's scheme for fuel and O2, and anything that handles crunchy, inhomogeneous solids.

For the former, the feedstock is ambient and all you need are highly reliable pumps and valves. We're pretty good at that.

For the latter -- excavating, transporting, crushing, sorting, etc. -- the only way to get long, unattended uptime is very heavy components driven by very large, dependable power sources to simply grind through jams and friction. When people tell me about a handful of astronauts and a few tens of tons of equipment starting an ISRU bootstrap for lunar cinder blocks -- let alone solar cells or linac components -- I know they've never seen a mine, cement works or gravel pit starting up.

Posted by: Monte Davis | June 17, 2007 6:46 PM

131:

It seems to me Columbus would have had the same arguements about a trip to the moon as Mr. Stross. The same could be said about Neolithic man thinking of Columbus's voyage.

The problem here is contemporary thinking about technological structures of the future. If the distances and energy requirements of space flight seems daunting, it is because we think of such things in terms of the limit of our current necessities and abilities.
.

Posted by: redratio1 | June 17, 2007 6:53 PM

132:

Alex, I'm not sure that the Mongols lived in the desert so much as exercised political control over it; I thought their ancestral home was more in the grasslands to the north. And they were fairly strapped for natural resources as I recall; they took some rather extreme measures to address that. But I grant you I could've come up with a better example.

In any event, maybe a better counterexample would be the Silk Road, when parts of the Gobi were well-populated and civilized. However, when better trade alternatives became available, the cities dried up (no pun intended).

The Silk Road kinda reminds me of all that Golden Age SF about the Romance of the Spaceways. In any event, a bad, limited analogy is tangential to the discussion.

Posted by: HP | June 17, 2007 7:06 PM

133:

Barry @123: Okay, so you want a space program? :)

1. Get dug in for the long slog. It's not going to take decades. It's not even going to take centuries. If you want it, you've got to accept that grabbing hold of the universe is going to be a background task for countless millennia to come. Corollaries:

a. Pay some attention to how we're going to survive the next century, pollution, resource depletion, climactic anomalies, and all.

b. Start looking for a sustainable philosophy that doesn't rely on unstable indefinite consumption growth or jam-tomorrow quasi-theological arguments, but that can still provide a motivation for your n'th generation descendants -- who may resemble you, culturally and emotionally, as much as you resemble an Aztec high priest -- to persist with the same grand project. (I'll add this as a rider: interstellar colonization is profoundly counter-utilitarian, to such a degree that I'm astonished that libertarians or free-market capitalists will give it the time of day. You need to learn to live with the expectation of zero return on investment, if you want to give it your best shot.)

c. All national myths are soluble in deep historical time. So basing such a philosophy on a national myth of frontier expansion is ... silly and short-sighted. Time to grow up, stop looking for the Wild West, and realize that any successful interplanetary or interstellar enterprise is going to be a gigantic collective endeavour, not the domain of mavericks.

(Are we gagging yet?)

Now for some minor implementation details.

2. Fixing humans to live in a new environment is easier than changing the environment to support humans -- at least, when the environment is as hostile to biological life as the rest of the solar system. So: pursue biological engineering. Pursue tissue engineering. Pursue medical nanotech. Pursue endosymbionts and artificial organism research. Accept that Homo Sapiens Sapiens will probably never go to the stars, but beings recognizable as our children might be able to. (NB: I'm not ruling out those vacations on the moon -- just saying that long-term colonization, especially at long distances, will require adaptations so radical we may effectively end up with another species.)

3. Tech that isn't ruled out and that might make the whole interstellar colonization shtick practical is on the horizon: mind uploading, AI, starwisps, tools for fabricating replicas of human bodies and downloading neural network maps into them. But this stuff is not guaranteed, and some or all of it may never show up. Learn to be pragmatic, and work with what's available.

... How's that for a start?

Josh @127: I'd like to believe that the reason EADS just announced they were sinking €1Bn into developing a sub-orbital puddle jumper is because long term they're thinking about ballistic sub-orbital liners, for exactly that reason. On the other hand, I'd like you to take a moment to ponder the political (read: anti-terrorist, not to mention anti-covert-nuclear-strike with ICBM disguised as sub-orbital bizjet) implementation headaches surrounding such a development. Betcha the super-rich and the heads of state get their sub-orbital spaceplanes while we're still slogging along in A380s ...

Posted by: Charlie Stross | June 17, 2007 7:07 PM

134:

It's likely there'll be a sufficient (for someone) ideological payoff for a Mars colony: "Quick let's get there before the Chinese". But after the payoff loses its lustre, I imagine a rather unkempt small slum of too depressed to be terrified young post-docs to whom the Gobi will look pretty good. After the first televised die-off, however, we'll "bring the boys back home," too discouraged to give it another go until the magic wand shows up. Write me one, will you Charlie? My magic wand faith needs a boost.

Posted by: mark | June 17, 2007 7:11 PM

135:

Where have you been hiding these ninja stories, Charlie? Are they part of your Clan Corporate series?*

As for this post, aside from the obvious troll-baiting, it looks like a necessary bit of foundation-digging for some new stories. Given this, that, and the other thing, what magic wands will you need to have in your stories to make them work?

* :)

Posted by: NelC | June 17, 2007 7:23 PM

136:

It occurs to me that Accelerando has the same theme as this article - an explanation for the Fermi paradox. The argument is also the same - we are already very comfortable at home, there is no reason for traveling into an inhospitable environment.

Yet in the same novel we have refugees fleeing the singularity to another star system.

With inevitable improvements in robotics (see Asmino, Darpa grand challenge) I really dont see why our robotic emissaries cant precede us and prepare an environment suitable for us.

Sometimes the whole point of leaving home comforts is not being at home anymore.

Posted by: Surur | June 17, 2007 7:27 PM

137:

NelC: it's a spin-off of the foundation digging for my current novel-in-progress ... a space opera.

(Yes, I'm a masochist.)

Posted by: Charlie Stross | June 17, 2007 7:27 PM

138:

It's just a liar working for George W. Bush, ehem, private personal chief of Bush?.

Many attempts recoinnanssing the Mars and Moon for future colonization. Not the colonization of today.

Posted by: CyberTaco | June 17, 2007 7:31 PM

139:

INCOMING!

I, for one, welcome our new, Slashdot-wielding masters ...

("Second slashdotting in 34 days? The server cannae handle it, cap'n!")

Posted by: Charlie Stross | June 17, 2007 7:31 PM

140:

"If you want it, you've got to accept that grabbing hold of the universe is going to be a background task for countless millennia to come."
-133

How is this a problem? It seems to me it is just a extension of what humans have been doing all along. In that respect, we have been at it for millenia already.

On point 2., I agree humans will be modified before we attempt interstellar travel. You forgot immortality on your list.
.

Posted by: redratio1 | June 17, 2007 7:34 PM

141:

The robotic emissaries thing ends up, though, with Stephen Baxter's Sheena - they decide to keep going, and forget about us. There is, however, an escape hatch - Sheena the talking squid and all her kids' artificially instilled English. If nothing else, our language is going to the stars.

In a sense this is very much a post-WW2 British vision - we may have lost the empire, but we've gained some damn good books!

Posted by: Alex | June 17, 2007 7:37 PM

142:

" Bill @106: I suspect the "spirit and dreams" to which you allude are the product of extensive political indoctrination. Please start to consider your starting assumptions? It hurts at first, but at least once you've done it you'll know where you stand. "

Well, if I were a right-winger that may hold true. But I am Thom Hartmann's (the guy who took Al Franken's place on Air America and author of many VERY liberal bestsellers) moderator at www.mythical.net. I saw how the race for space bolstered the economy, just like a war does, only without the death and destruction.

The spirit I speak of is real and although the right has hijacked it in the past as something of their own design, it really has nothing to do with ideology. I think it's just an inner drive to satisfy an insatiable curiosity and a need to alway be expanding our horizons.

Posted by: bill king | June 17, 2007 7:46 PM

143:

Charles : There IS a way to solve this energy problem. It's pathetically easy, and requires no magic wands. I am surprised you haven't considered the approach.

Idea One : The biggest problem is that the standard "rocket equation" has some logarithms in it. That means when you scale up to the energy requirements for an interstellar jaunt, you end up with all sorts of nasty requirements for the Isp of the engine. If you have to carry all your fuel with you, and your reaction mass, you aren't going to get there in time.

So, you don't carry it, and you don't use a laser, because a laser beam's intensity diminishes with the square of the distance. You use a beam of 'smart pebbles', launched from a big accelerator. The pebbles have iron in them, and the starship is a very long and skinny stack of superconducting magnet rings, with some type of energy storage accumulators. Momentum transfer. To slow down, you throw half the spaceship away. (am summarizing because I want you to read this)

Idea Two : How do you get the industry to support it? Well, as I see it, there are just 2 parts. The solar array with the surface area of the earth, to supply energy, and a relativistic accelerator thousands of kilometers long. Oh, and the plant that makes the pebbles atom by atom, as they are packed with molecular scale circuitry and thrusters.

Well, that's easy. Really. After all, you have already posited that the explorers have the "military industrial complex in a can". And, when I wrote this up a while back, I had the payload mass of the spaceship at 100 metric tons, and the total mass including engine at 1000-2000 metric tons. (there is a LOT of spare mass, to make up for deterioration from particle impacts)

So, you land one of these "military industrial complexes" on the moon. It might weigh 100,000 tons, who cares. It's a factory large enough to both replicate all of the parts in itself, as well as make segments for the solar arrays and launch accelerator. It sends out mining machines that scrape off lunar regolith, it does a ton of processing on the raw materials to make them into parts, and it receives power beamed down from space. It packs the products into capsules that get loaded onto a magnetic accelerator.

Realistically, the factory is as automated as human software can make it, and the slack taken up by teleoperators working for cheap.

The spacecraft goes to 0.9c, no wimpy 0.1c.

But no, I don't realistically think a human being will ever be stuffed into a vehicle like this, or that human attainable industry will ever have enough resources.

Posted by: Gerald | June 17, 2007 7:47 PM

144:

I think if there must be a space exploration/settlement than it should not be in our solar system because i see the only reason the leave earth in the estimated burnout/growth of the sun in a few billion years, well maybe thats a litte far away to think about ;-)

Posted by: Dag | June 17, 2007 7:47 PM

145:

What is strange to me here:
O'Neill is mentioned, but the implications of the kinds of space settlement he proposes aren't really discussed. If you have a settlement of the asteroid belt like O'Neil proposed, at the end of the process humanity will be much larger and much more diverse.

Settlement of other start systems is a long term project. However, I find it conceivable that if the asteroid belt were settled, some of those folks might be inclined to take on a long term project.

Would it be worth a few thousands of dollars for someone to send a sperm or ova sample on a robotic ship knowing that it might attempt to create an outpost of humanity 500-1000 years in the future?

Posted by: Randall Bufns | June 17, 2007 7:49 PM

146:

Just a couple of random thoughts -

1) How much energy could we pick up en-route using slingshot type techniques?

2) No current Earth government would supply funds for a self sufficient colony that it could by definition not have any control over (unless it resorted to serious mind bending on the colonists)

Posted by: RT | June 17, 2007 7:53 PM

147:

130: No, Columbus didn't face those kinds of arguments. The benefits of trade with Asia were known. A short, ocean route to Asia would have been a great coup for Spain. It would eliminate the middlemen and cut transportation costs. Isabella calculated that the benefits of success outweighed the risk of failure. The fact that it turned out several orders of magnitude better for Spain than could have been predicted doesn't mean that the original business proposition didn't have merit on its own. (It's worth noting, too, that within fairly short order, Spain established the transpacific Manila-Acapulco trade route. They never forgot their original goal.)

Columbus was seeking a shorter route to trade with people that he already knew existed. He wasn't sailing into the unknown; he was sailing to a known place with a bad map. He made a serendipitous mistake at a propitious time for Europe.

Is it possible for humans to wander off into deep space with no clear hope for success and then stumble onto something that makes it all worthwhile? Sure, but you can't plan for it. It's like charging off into a land war in Asia in the hopes that a miracle will occur.

I really think that the discovery of intelligent life in outer space is a necessary precondition for any hope of humans moving into space. I'll say it again: Humans don't colonize places that don't already have people living in them.

Posted by: HP | June 17, 2007 7:58 PM

148:

122: Well, we didn't go to the moon in a big cannon either. That's the problem with extrapolation: it doesn't work. It can produce interesting comments on the present (and IHMO this is a large part of the purpose of good SF), but it will not predict the future. Granted, it is damned hard to predict the future, because new basic technologies will appear, and some problems will prove harder to solve than we think (the common cold). Maybe space travel is in the latter category, but I wouldn't bet on it.

I think the biggest obstruction to space travel is in political will. Look at what was accomplished between 1958 and 1968 and what has been accomplished between 1969 and 2007. Depressing. Now, if somebody figured out that the sun would nova in 50 years, the situation would be very different...

Posted by: Karl | June 17, 2007 8:00 PM

149:

This article overlooks the likely path for future colonization because it takes a very sentimental view of what it is to be human. The definition of human is always changing even in our present compared to years ago (remember when dark skinned people were not considered human?). When we merge with our technology to achieve a hybrid highly evolved society the barriers described become much less problematic. Travel to an actual other star will not be necessary if I can beam the information that comprises myself across the galaxy using quantum communication systems. Cyborg entities are the likely future followed by a fusion of DNA and silicon though there will be splits between those who want to remain "pure" (organic human) and those who follow the above path. Hopefully that diversity won't lead to outright war.

Posted by: GS | June 17, 2007 8:01 PM

150:

I am surprised that my ecological remarks haven't drawn more attention from anyone except, I think, our host. But I think it's a key point and one that people with mainstream engineering orientations tend to miss (happy exception: Robert Heinlein): Earth seems to be the ecological powerhouse of the solar system (unless life turns up on one of the moons of the gas giants, or on one of the gas giants themselves) and so I think Earth is going to be very important to any future human expansion into space.

Barry, #123: the reality is, if we don't preserve the earth's ecosystems, we won't make it through the first centuries in space. So we have to do both.

Josh, #128: nanotech is going to look like biotech, not 19th or 20th century engineering. (You heard it here, first.) It follows that cultural and economic models intended to exploit industrial technology are not appropriate to nanotech--it may be that the agrarian hippies win this one. (Awful, isn't it?) AI is unlikely to succeed until we discover a magic wand. It's very clear at this point that we are missing some key insight or technology; we don't seem to be making any better a job of it than the old-time magicians.

Posted by: Randolph Fritz | June 17, 2007 8:09 PM

151:

"AI is unlikely to succeed until we discover a magic wand."

Ummm, what? How much do you know about AI research?
.

Posted by: redratio1 | June 17, 2007 8:12 PM

152:

Uhh...for the most part, we aren't DOING very much AI researcher.

REAL AI would have to work just like our brains. We would first need to map out the 'rules' subsections of neurons use to wire themselves up. This will take a lot more research than has already been done, but there are tons of analytical techniques that will work.

Second, we would have to build equivalent hardware using our electronic parts. That means programming a bunch of FPGAs to act like a brain, or using ASICs. As I recall, there are about 100 billion neurons, and each one may have as many as 10,000 synapses. So the memory requirements are only reached by large supercomputer today, and those machines don't have their circuits arranged in the right way for implementing a neural net.

There's maybe 1000 people on the planet actually working on the above approach. Probably a lot less. (I am throwing in grad students and basically "everyone" who might be involved)

Posted by: Gerald | June 17, 2007 8:21 PM

153:

If microbes had the same attitude as you, life on Earth would not exist. You think a couple of decades is a problem? Try 4 billion years. You think a couple miles to us is a problem... and we are 6 feet tall? How about being a couple dozen nanometers wide, and then trying to colonize a spherical object that is 510 million square kilometers.

The point of colonization might be to benefit the 'mother nation', but as we have seen in history, colonies tend to take on a life of their own, regardless of mother's fate. And in the end, it is not the mother nation that spreads, it is life itself.

As we have also seen, you basically cannot stop exploration and spreading of life. That's just what life does. It's like trying to stop the energy coming out of the sun.

Posted by: don anonymous | June 17, 2007 8:27 PM

154:

Karl: to take you literally for a moment, if the sun was going to go nova in 50 years (it can't, and won't), basically we'd be a footnote. Some reading up on the amount of energy released in a nova would be useful: read this paper, then bear in mind that even at the orbital radius of Neptune, the neutrino flux alone would be enough to give you a cumulative radiation dose of >10 Greys -- and neutrinos are so penetrating that even hiding behind that gas giant wouldn't measurably reduce your dose. Bluntly, the only way to survive a supernova is to be several light years -- minimum -- away from it when it happens. (Remember that scale factor analogy of mine? Supernovae are naked-eye visible at a million light years. That is to say, on that scale of mine where the sun and earth are one centimetre apart, and Proxima Centauri is 2.3 kilometres away, a supernova has roughly the destructive radius of a half-megaton ICBM warhead.)

I agree that political will is an important factor, and right now it's lacking. But let's not forget the fundamental physics, shall we?

GS @149: I was deliberately ignoring discussion of that topic because, ahem, I wrote a novel about it a couple of years ago (title is Accelerando, it got shortlisted for a Hugo award, and there's a Creative Commons download of it at the far end of that URL).

Redratio @151: ""The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than the question of whether a submarine can swim" -- Edsger Dijkstra.

Don Anonymous @152: you anthropomorphize microbes? It's no wonder you seem to think it's our manifest destiny to emulate a yeast culture on a galactic scale.

Posted by: Charlie Stross | June 17, 2007 8:28 PM

155:

Dumb article: I think there is a world market for maybe five computers

The only analogy to this article is a caveman saying how it is impossible to travel from Africa to USA. The article is primarily an exercise in math based on current scientific knowledge.

Humans may or may not colonize space - but to deduce either based on current knowledge is the equivalent of Thomas Watson saying "I think there is a world market for maybe five computers".

Posted by: Vivek | June 17, 2007 8:32 PM

156:

Which is only to say that it's a falsifiable prediction. After all, Watson said that in, what, 1943? And how many computers were knocking about then?

Posted by: Alex | June 17, 2007 8:35 PM

157:

Charlie, I said a nova, not a supernova. The difference is quite substantial. Clarke's "Songs of Distant Earth" was based on this premise. I'm sure that there are several things that can happen to a star which are less destructive than a supernova, but destructive enough to take out the inner solar system (very aggressive flares, unstability, who knows). I do read a lot of stellar astronomy BTW, but I think that we need to be careful in thinking that we know exactly how the Sun will evolve.

Vivek: This is what I am trying to say. It is supremely arrogant to think that we at this point in time have managed to expand our knowledge to the point that no fundamental new things can be discovered. There was one guy a couple of years ago that predicted "The end of Science". The same argument has been made endlessly over the ages, it is second only to predictions of Armageddon. Both are always wrong. We have just started our journey. Just like the solar system is a speck of dust compared to the cosmos, our current scientific knowledge is a grain of sand on a vast beach compared to all scientific knowledge that can be discovered.

Posted by: Karl | June 17, 2007 8:44 PM

158:

redratio1, #151: I majored in "computer science" as an undergrad, so I know AI as a related field. AI has been a serious research topic in modern computing for decades, and we're not any closer to cracking the big problems of AI than we were at the beginning of the project, despite vastly improved hardware. The failures have been enormously valuable; the greats of the field have worked on the problem and we've gotten a lot of useful technology from the effort. But--natural language recognition? personality? anything like human understanding? Not even close. So I think we're missing some crucial insight or technology.

Charlie, #154: on the other hand, airplanes can fly. So I think that Dijkstra quote "sounds nice, but doesn't tie you down to meaning anything."

Posted by: Randolph Fritz | June 17, 2007 8:47 PM

159:

I think this lacks imagination and underestimates humans. You put some facts on the table that are undisputed. But you miss the real incentive to colonize: we have run out of room here. Suppose we took a century to build a ship that could carry 5 billion people. Maybe it is a ring a thousand miles in diameter and perhaps a hundred miles wide. Then, instead of taking 450 years to reach a destination, they take much longer. But the destination is not really the point. I am not sure what the limit to gravitational momentum transfer is, but if you are patient enough, you can steal quite a bit of speed from the planets. (but I am sure that you can NOT get anywhere near 1% of c).

There are four requirements for building these kinds of space habitats: 1) Technology, 2) energy, 3)material and 4) wealth.

Who can say that the technology won't be developed? That is the easiest part to believe in. 2) Energy to power the thing is more speculative. But if we don't solve that particular problem, we won't be around in a thousand years in any great numbers even here on mother earth. 3) Clearly, the moon is the best source for materials. Perhaps we can raid the asteroid belt with some future technology. 4)wealth. We have to be a lot richer than we are now.

Personally, I think it will take 10k years or so, but simply off loading billions of people from earth will be reason enough. Space exploration is simply a way to get the hell out of Dodge. Mankind is dangerous in large numbers. Suppose we produce one of these ships every 500 years or so. That makes earth sustainable and it colonizes space. In a million years, every sun in the Milky Way would have thousands of ring ships. So we not only colonize space, we fill up the galaxy in the blink of an eye.

But, this is also an argument for the Fermi paradox. Which is why I don't think there is intelligent life out there. If we do figure out how to colonize, then the Milky Way will fill up fast. Then we will set off for other galaxies.

Posted by: George Burt | June 17, 2007 8:48 PM

160:

So your saying there'll need to be a breakthrough in technology (due to a breakthrough in our understanding of physics) to make this possible.

Your basically assuming that our understanding of physics will never progress to a point where the distances have to be travelled. not to sound too rude but that is short sighted for an SF writer.

Posted by: David Taylor | June 17, 2007 8:48 PM

161:

Unimaginative minds are doomed to be unimaginative.

This argument is easily dismissed, IMHO. First off a number of premises must be made. And a number of associations taken for granted.

I. That travel by sea to continents which took months as compared to travel in space taking years is drastically different.

This is not necessarily the case due to the increase in knowledge. See those few month voyages were much more difficult than a longer voyage would be today due to our knowledge of medicine, diseases, health, etc. Much of the loss and death at sea was due to health and not travelling.

That said, a 20 yr journey would be quite hard and difficult and require immense planning and good equipment. But let's look at the journey to Australia in 1600 versus 1800 versus 1950 versus modern day.

In the 1600's it was nigh impossible with the technology available. In the 1800's it was difficult but possible. Took quite some time. In the 1950's it was relatively easy and safe. Still took time but nothing like before. Now in present day you can be in Australia safely in one day's travel. WHY?

"Technological Advancement"

The other premise the author relies upon is the inability to travel at or even faster than light. Now this may be accepted understanding than many. And though it may not be possible to travel faster than light in a normal real-time/space environment. I am one who believes such likely to be possible via other means. Be it dimensional hyperspace, or quantum entanglement molecular reconstruction. Who knows....

But most of what we do every day in travel and leisure would have been considered impossible 500 yrs ago. And was, due to lack of knowledge.

I always find it arrogant of scientists to believe they "know it all" and to exclaim impossibility for the future merely because of their lack of knowledge and understanding.

So what if habitable planets are 100 yrs away. Given time, man will find a way. We always have....

Posted by: Jason The Saj | June 17, 2007 8:52 PM

162:

To quote the immortal words of Douglas Adams:

The simple truth is that interstellar distances will not fit into the human imagination.
-The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

Posted by: SatanicBunny | June 17, 2007 8:53 PM

163:

Rolls eyes

David Taylor, Jason the Saj, George Burt et al, I'm talking to you, among others:

Would the new arrivals PLEASE TAKE THE TIME TO FAMILIARIZE THEMSELVES WITH EARLIER COMMENTS AND THE ANSWERS THERETO before reinventing the wheel?

KTHX

The Mgmt.

PS: for those who don't know who I am, you might want to google my name in the context of "singularity". Note also that these days I get book blurbs from Vernor Vinge, and vice versa.

PPS: Alex @164, we have just been slashdotted and comments are rolling in so fast and I have gained so much momentum in responding to them that I am now violating causality, traveling backwards in time, and responding to your comments before you make them. Thus, we have gone outside the light cone! FTL must be possible, after all!

Posted by: Charlie Stross | June 17, 2007 8:57 PM

164:

Come on, this is all backing off into non-falsifiable handwaving. If you think we're going to do, when, where, and how?

Posted by: Alex | June 17, 2007 8:57 PM

165:

Rather than merely throwing one's hands up in the air and saying "it's too expensive, so it won't happen", which I think we all knew, isn't it more interesting to ask when it will no longer be too expensive? What was the cost of producing 2e18 joules in 1000 AD? 1900 AD? 2000 AD? Restricting ourselves to the post-Edison era, from 1882 to date, I observe that one man-year of US per-capita GDP will buy an exponentially increasing amount of energy:

yearMWh/man-year
1882 1
1900 2
1932 8
1941 26
1960 114
1970 231
2005 442

Thus, it requires 1.25 million man-years of economic output to
send your capsule load to the stars today. But in 100 years, it may take 3000 or less, and in 500 years it should be easily within the entertainment budget of a single household.

Of course past history is no guarantee of future performance!

Posted by: Aminorex | June 17, 2007 9:00 PM

166:

While there certainly are obvious limitations in today's technology and hindrances imposed by petty politics, it's foolish to declare something impossible when the event itself is not something that you will be able to witness in your lifetime, or even in the lifetimes of your descendants. Who's to say that humanity won't develop the necessary technology for colonisation a thousand years for now? Or that we won't wipe outselves off the face of the planet before then?

I think you should leave the business of predicting the future to prophets and madmen. There's no point in being browbeat over a subject that you have no means of proving or disproving.

Posted by: Bob Smith | June 17, 2007 9:03 PM

167:

Aminorex, I have observed that the mean temperature in southern England has risen steadily since January, as the days have become longer. Should current trends continue, I predict that the area will be uninhabitable and in constant daylight by this time next year. Clearly, we must immediately set about the evacuation of London.

Posted by: Alex | June 17, 2007 9:04 PM

168:

Aminorex @165: I'd love to see you extrapolate that curve until we get to see one man-year buy us a supernova's worth of energy -- never mind the galaxy, we're going to light up the entire cosmos!

Posted by: Charlie Stross | June 17, 2007 9:07 PM

169:

Great essay! Well, there really is no need to despair of ever visiting the star systems of the Milky Way and even the galaxies beyond in your lifetimes, just because they are too far away. If those lazy-minded physicists of ours would only get their heads out of their asses, they would have figured out by now that space (distance) is an illusion of perception. In the not too distant future, we will have long distance jump technologies that will allow us to move from anywhere to anywhere almost instantly. Too far-fetched, you say? Well, evidence for the feasibility of long distance jumps has already been observed. It's called quantum tunneling. Why is distance an illusion, you ask? It's all explained at the link below:

Nasty Little Truth About Space

Enjoy.

Posted by: Mobe | June 17, 2007 9:07 PM

170:

I think Robert A. Heinlein already answered this question. I think it was in "Expanded Universe" he explained the situation. The current methods we use to move spacecraft amount to the equivalent of floating a raft downstream using the force of the river. Given some changes in how we move craft - and he gives some not very difficult methods - and we can get year 1600s level transport speeds to colonies, e.g. 9 month trips to nearby planets. Which was the general time range involved in the plymouth colony, and potentially a few others. And the investors got rich on the trips.

Current technology does not provide for a fully reusable "savable" rocket system. The Space Shuttle, in terms of reusability is a joke. Basically, the estimates are that a private organization could develop the technology to provide a savable reusable off-earth transport system, whether it's rockets or what not, for what was then $200,000,000 in the 1970s.

Basically, a private organization could have created some form of reusable rocket for escape-velocity transport for about what it cost to create Biosphere in Arizona. (I presume, too many government regulations and politics to be able to do it by a government organization.)

The microprocessor was a direct result of space-technology spinoffs. And many others; some of the developments will have real-world uses beyond the original design.

And whether people like to admit it, we have to eventually migrate off this earth because it won't support continued breeding forever. It's also for the same reason that people in general, or families in particular, have to reproduce. While you might say, what's the point in caring about what happens after you're gone? Well, extinction in two hundred years is the same as extinction in twenty million.

Unless we want to claim that human existence has no purpose or meaning, if we don't reproduce or we fail to meet the challenges of the Universe and we become extinct, then all we are, all we have and all we will ever do are as nothing.

So many of the problems we have - mostly resource shortages - can be solved by the development of space technology. If you are like the average consumer, I would guess that 1/3 to 1/2 of everything in your house is products that did not exist before 1970, and almost all of them are based in whole or part on a direct spinoff of space technology.

Actually, it might be arguable that the idea of working on the Gobi Desert or places of extreme cold may have uses for space exploration or vice versa. But because there are processes and capacities which are only possible in hard vacuum and no gravity, there are ways to get rich from developments in space - developments that cannot be done on earth - which means that the work in outer space could easily result in huge payoffs. But only if we have the courage to think long term.

Posted by: Paul Robinson | June 17, 2007 9:09 PM

171:

Charlie @ 133:
Get dug in for the long slog

IOW, take "the Space Age" seriously -- as in Iron or Stone, rather than as a modestly stretched version of the year of the LAN :) As you know perfectly well, this alienates most of the 15-to-35-year old core demographic for space enthusiasts, because it chills their fond expectation that the milestones will again start coming at that thrilling 1957-1972 pace -- whether by renewed Will and Purpose, by zoomy tech, or by entrepreneurial mojo.

Here's my snarky taxonomy of the attitudes that need ditching:

http://www.space-travel.com/reports/Which_X_Treme_Spacer_Are_You_999.html

Fixing humans to live in a new environment is easier than changing the environment to support humans

You can see this working itself in the evolution of Freeman Dyson's thinking. We've talked a lot over the years about the reception of Orion NPP. He's acidly funny about how many space enthusiasts enshrine it as "that great high-Isp propulsion scheme that never got a chance," while forgetting that he and Taylor came up with it precisely because they couldn't persuade themselves that chemical or even nuclear-thermal would become cheap enough to get us into space on an interesting scale or timetable. It's not happenstance that he has gradually turned to some combination of IT and engineered organisms to go in our stead.

take a moment to ponder the political (read: anti-terrorist, not to mention anti-covert-nuclear-strike with ICBM disguised as sub-orbital bizjet) implementation headaches surrounding such a development

Oh, you can be cruel. Every time I raise this point to the High Frontiersmen, it produces grimaces, a pained silence, and a flurry of hand-waving about how we'll have commensurate defensive systems by the time it could become an issue.

You're absolutely right, of course: the space age was born with rapid delivery systems for small thermonuclear payloads, and they're still joined at the hip as ultima ratio regum. It takes chronic tunnel vision to believe that neither governments nor public opinion will notice this potential downside to affordable, off-the-shelf, proliferating suborbital technology.

Posted by: Monte Davis | June 17, 2007 9:18 PM

172:

The only fault I can find is your assumption the humans do not care about the collective survival of the species. Some do not, even the majority, but in my opinion they should be the masters of their fate just as we must be. Political entities should also not determine mankind's eventual fate. These are the most selfish of all of us, and have a 4 year half-life. The shorter the attention span, the less likely they are to so something that requires several lifetimes to achieve. Again, let them be the masters of their fate, but beware of the power they wield.

All of your excellent mathematical proofs and analogies are based on commonly accepted scientific knowledge right now. The magic wand you speak of will probably not be "warp drive" or similar SF plot device, but rather a way of generating kinetic energy at efficiencies not possible today. Bear in mind that today's breakthrough was yesterday's impossibility. If you could go back to Intel around 1985, what would they say about a 3GHz multithreaded, multiple CPU on a chip processor? Impossible? We can buy them at CompUSA, 20-25 years later, for around $500.00, and that price will likely drop below $100.00 in five years when we do something else that was "impossible".

The "eggs in one basket" argument is a bit overplayed by folks who do not understand the implications. Given todays knowledge of the asteroids with a potential to strike the earth, What are the odds of getting hit on any calendar year? Pardon the pun, astronomically low. Recalculate those for a million years, and the odds begin to become worrisome. This is not fear-mongering, it is simple statistics, and I am not a betting man.

My point? Worrying about yourself to the exclusion of all others has fettered the human from taking the next step in his evolution. We must expand to prevent the eventual extinction of our species. Before we do so, we must grow to have a long view, one which surpasses our own lifespan, and certainly surpasses a 4-8 year term to a political office that will likely not be remembered a thousand years hence.

Just my 2 cents worth. Hope you feel better soon and kick the cold.

Regards,

Ulf Joronen

Posted by: I M Patient | June 17, 2007 9:19 PM

173:

Lessee, he can't spel wurth a dam, he can't add two plus two and even get five, and he has also admitted he has no faith in mankind's ability to overcome pretty much any obstacle it puts its mind and shoulders to.

So why is he wasting his time writing science fiction? Seems to me he'd be more at home writing depressing songs for goth groups!

Posted by: Paul Maxson | June 17, 2007 9:19 PM

174:

To my mind, the primary problem is not physics, but politics.

#94 had it right, bringing back Orion would be a great start towards space colonization.

Systems like Orion do not suffer from the high-ISP-but-thrust-measured-in-mouse-farts problems typically encountered in electrical propulsion. This is because, basically, spacecraft like Orion just detonate nuclear bombs and ride the shock wave. A system like Orion is technically achievable now, it's just bloody expensive.

I'd also like to make a point about the thrust/efficiency trade off mentioned in the essay. Nuclear fusion propulsion, particularly pulse detonation models like Orion, are capable of interstellar travel within 'reasonable' amounts of time.

My degrees are in astronautical engineering, and one of my graduate research projects involved doing a constant thrust trajectory analysis from the earth to jupiter using a nuclear fusion propulsion system. The trip took two weeks assuming 50% higher thrust (higher than that and the solution wouldn't converge, and I didn't have time to write a stiff equation solver).

Antimatter has been produced for at least a decade, that may also open up new doors for us.

Furthermore, I expect major breakthroughs in physics in our lifetime. No one can explain how gravity works or why objects have inertia now: as we learn more about how they work our fundamental assumptions about physical limitations may change as well.

Everyone "knew" that it was impossible to exceed the speed of *sound* at one point in time because mathematical models demonstrated that one's drag became infinite as objects passed through Mach 1. The equation uses the same form as the Lorentz equation that mathematically 'proves' that FTL is impossible.

Mathematical models are just that: models. They can be flawed, particularly around singularities.

Posted by: Daniel Pasco | June 17, 2007 9:21 PM

175:

I've just lost all faith in Boing Boing. Never thought I'd ever see them promoting an obvious troll as if they were speaking rationally. Cory, Xeni and the rest really must have a talk with their drug dealers, because their happy pill supply obviously got tainted somehow.

Posted by: Andy Travers | June 17, 2007 9:23 PM

176:

The author is demonstrating a typical close-mindedness, and refusing to learn from history. Think about the prospect of going to the moon in 1890. The energy source doesn't exist, the average person uses a horse for transportation, and the biology, physics and materials science is not sufficient to put a man 1 mile up in the atmosphere let along getting him to the moon and back. In fact, an overwhelming majority of Americans beleived God created the world in 6 days (well, some things haven't changed).
Within the span of one human life-time, and NO failed attempts, several men walked on the moon, computer controlled spacecraft are in the process of exploring the solar system, and world-wide communication is instantaneous and commonplace. I think that constitues several "magic wands." The next 30 years have been even more amazing.
Since the rate of technological advancement has accelerated incredibly since then, history shows that things we can't even imagine now will be commonplace before today's college students retire.
-Chris

Posted by: Chris | June 17, 2007 9:23 PM

177:

I'm in the electronics industry, where Moore's law has been upheld much longer than anybody (including Moore himself) has thought would be possible. Seems that we finally are starting to see the slowing down of the process, but look at what has been achieved: billions of transistors on a chip that costs a few dollars. Don't tell me that semiconductors is the only field that such progress is possible.

BTW, the electronics revolution is as much a revolution of economics as anything else. The increasing transistor density would mean nothing if the manufacturing processes didn't keep improving making the final product cheaper and cheaper.

The lesson? Exponential growth cannot be kept up infintely (of course), but it can last much longer than you think possible, and the results will then be amazing.

Posted by: Karl | June 17, 2007 9:27 PM

178:

I believe I mostly agree with you --- certainly at our present state of technology, manned space flight is a non-starter. It's just too expensive to lift something out of our gravity well.

That said, I think that the following is a weakness in your argument:
"And I don't want to spend much time talking about the unspoken ideological underpinnings of the urge to space colonization, other than to point out that they're there, that the case for space colonization isn't usually presented as an economic enterprise so much as a quasi-religious one. 'We can't afford to keep all our eggs in one basket' isn't so much a justification as an appeal to sentimentality, for in the hypothetical case of a planet-trashing catastrophe, we (who currently inhabit the surface of the Earth) are dead anyway. The future extinction of the human species cannot affect you if you are already dead: strictly speaking, it should be of no personal concern."

It seems to me that if an interest in the continuation of the species, society, etc. or, indeed, anything beyond one's immediate lifespan, is ruled out, than there's a lot of baby that's going to go out in the bathwater besides simply spaceflight.

I believe that preventing global warming, easing disease and poverty in Africa, making a lasting work of art, etc., etc., all would fall to this same argument.

Posted by: Robert Goldman | June 17, 2007 9:30 PM

179:

I enjoyed reading the article, well said and well thought out.

But I don't believe in it.

If we were to believe interstellar colonization or interplanetary colonization wasn't possible we would never actually take the time to find out it was :)

Posted by: Greg | June 17, 2007 9:34 PM

180:

Monte Davis @171: no reply needed because you are, of course, Right.

Ulf @172: the "eggs in one basket" calculation is not an argument for colonizing the galaxy, but for properly funding Spaceguard and having some asteroid-nudging contingency plans ready to dust off at 12 months' notice. The rest of your comments I find somewhat hard to comprehend.

Paul @173: I come from Leeds, home of the Sisters of Mercy, cradle of Goth back in the late 70s/early 80s. Are you surprised?

Daniel Pasco @174: the "everyone knew" model you cite for the speed of sound was clearly bogus even at that time because supersonic phenomena were observable -- propagation of lightning bolts, the crack from the head of a whip, even rifle bullets. In contrast, I don't see much evidence of non-zero-mass particles exceeding the speed of light in vacuo around us. If you know something that I don't on this subject, please speak up -- I'd love to know!

Antimatter has indeed been produced for over a decade. Have they managed to up their production rate at CERN to more than two billion years per gram of neutral anti-hydrogen yet? I think we probably need to measure production in kilograms per year before it's going to be much use for interstellar propulsion (although for interplanetary noodling around, or mad bombers, it'd be great).

Robert @178: I stuck in the paragraph you homed in on specifically because so many of the loudest space colonization enthusiasts appear to be American libertarians and conservatives. Yet it's an enterprise that would appear to be profoundly incompatible with their ideology. There's an interesting nexus here between American nation-building mythology and politics that I think a lot of these folks are very loath to examine.

Oh, and finally: THE UNIVERSE DOES NOT OWE US A LIVING. There have been an estimated billion species on Earth before us. None of them have made it off the planet. 90% of them are extinct. There is NO GUARANTEE that we'll make it off the planet, or avoid extinction, either. Even if SOME humans make it off the planet or avoid extinction, we personally may not be among them. Any belief that we will or must do so is essentially teleological in nature -- it's a religious creed, not one based on evidence-based reasoning.

Posted by: Charlie Stross | June 17, 2007 9:35 PM

181:

We're already travelling through space, did that already occur to anybody? We just have no idea of our destination ....

Posted by: Mike Peter Reed | June 17, 2007 9:47 PM

182:

But if you want to go for a ride out of our solar system, why not use a whole moon as your spaceship?

Europa is probably too cold and too near Jupiter, but what about titania or any other of Uranus moons? There's plenty of H2O and He3 there you can use as fuel for the whole trip.

A fussion device that uses H2O and He3 as fuel can be useful there to provide some light (to grow veggies and chicken) and useful as well to move the moon out of its orbit into outer space. You can probably gain some gravitational impulse from Uranus.

And then, for the whole trip, just eatch chicken, drink water and, say, play baseball.

Finally: do you have colds often? (Thanks for this entry!).

Posted by: Antonio | June 17, 2007 9:50 PM

183:

Charlie,

I'd like to play devil's advocate to your sobering analysis:

a) Your comparison of the energy requirements of the spaceship to the total current energy output of humanity neglects to consider the historical exponential growth pattern of the latter. Your numbers may not look so bad in a 1000 years.

b) If we consider speeds in the neighborhood 0.99c, relativistic time dilation becomes significant. At these speeds the traveler hardly ages while getting to his/her destination. In the meantime, most of the people travelers leave behind will be long dead.

c) I say "most of the people", because it is conceivable that travelers on other 0.99c-capable spaceships can arrange to meet again at future space-time rendezvous points wherein they have each experienced roughly the same amount of time passage.

d) And the social structures necessary to support a network of space-time-rendezvous-ing travelers may make for an interesting setting for an SF story. (For example, they would have to catch up technologically with non-traveling societies for which time has elapsed faster.)

e) Looking further out, say 10,000 years from now, all bets are off. Our understanding of physics, our understanding of its constraints and limits, will likely be entirely different than it is today. We don't really understand QM, and we don't really understand some of old and new spooky action-at-a-distance experiments involving paired quantum particles, suggesting it might be possible to setup a telegraph line that transmits information instantly. (See, for example, http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/qm-action-distance/)

f) All said, I'm not nearly as gloomy about space travel in the distant future (say 1000 years), as you are. But I do agree with you that there is little point in setting up colonies anywhere in space in the near future.

Posted by: Babak Farhang | June 17, 2007 9:50 PM

184:

Charlie, a wonderful essay, even though I thought it was missing some salient points, such as the fact that a good part of the reaction mass that you need to carry to Centauri will be gone after accelerating, i.e deceleration from 10%c towards Centauri will need less fuel than the acceleration. Or the fact that the obvious way to generate goods, structure, food, air, water etc in space would be to manufacture it there, either from asteroids and jovian moons if one wants to avoid large gravity wells, or on the surface of Mars which has all that is needed.

As for the why, and discounting the eggs in one basket case, I would think that low gravity jogging on Mars, looking over the cliffs of the Vallis Marineris or down from Olympus Mons, owning your own asteroid, or flying in some future craft over the deep blue seas of Neptune or Uranus would be quite a powerful pull if it was fairly painless to get there and didn't cost to much.

Added to that, I'm pretty sure that people will adapt with technology over the years to being better ablae to live in zero gravity, hard vacums and extremes of cold and heat. We might look a bit different though.

Posted by: Theo | June 17, 2007 9:50 PM

185:

Your comment about interstellar space exploration being an afterthought of post humans makes me think this might be true in general. For any species to be able to afford interstellar space exploration they would already need to be at a level of economic abundance to not need to do it. In that case the only people doing it would be thrill junkies specifically teenagers. Maybe that explains why all the aliens who seem to visit Earth in remote locations instead of contacting our governments are more interested in kidnapping people and anal probing them. Probably these are the alien equivalents of high schoolers driving around and mooning people in other cars.

Posted by: Ghoul | June 17, 2007 9:52 PM

186:

The first British colonies in Australia were penal colonies. The people who were sent out here (both the prisoners *and* their naval guards) were effectively put into exile, and told "don't come back". They *were* sent to a land completely alien to them - right down to the hostile biosphere, and the completely weird biological patterning (Tim Flannery has all the details in "The Future Eaters", but to cut a long story short, the Australian biosphere is a remnant of a very, very old ecosystem, and has survived mainly by being internally stable on a hair-thin balancing point). Yes, free settlers started coming out very shortly afterwards, but even in the supposedly "free" colonies (Fremantle/Swan River, Melbourne) convicts were imported to build most of the infrastructure. The Swan River group of colonies was importing convicts at a time when most of the Eastern colonies had stopped.

It appears to have been a successful method of colonisation for an otherwise "inhospitable" (well, culturally inhospitable to the Europeans - Aboriginal Australians managed to cope with it for about 40,000 years or more) area - put people there you don't much care about, and let them make the best of it. Once they've shown people *can* survive there, then you let the poor and indigent head out as fast as they can. Australia is largely a nation of exiles.

However, I'd point out that even here, the population is sparse (compared to our near neighbours) and very unevenly spread - it's concentrated in the few areas which are suitable for European-style agriculture and city development, and there are vast chunks of the country which aren't touched at all (if only because nobody has found any minerals under them yet - or possibly an economically viable way of removing any minerals which are there). It may be the case that the Australian model of exploration and settlement (a few highly concentrated areas, a slightly wider are with occasional settlement, and vast areas of nothing at all) would be one which is better suited to considerations of interplanetary exploration and settlement.

I'm not a scientist or a physicist. If I have a background in anything, it's history and social theory. I would say that colonies elsewhere in our solar system are a likelihood, if only because humans are curious creatures, and they can put up with any amount of hardship so long as someone else is suffering it. The political and economic leaders who make the decisions about interplanetary and interstellar exploration won't be planning on joining the exodus themselves. They'll just make decisions about which other types of people should do it. After all, the US is starting to have the same problems with its prison systems now that the UK was having back in the late 1700s. I'd give it maybe another century or so, but if there hasn't been a massive alteration in either the US penal code, or the US legal system, there probably will be colony ships sent out with the contents of a couple of high security prisons.

Either way, the point has to be made that any form of colonisation (and you can check this in history) has generally involved a certain amount of coerced, involuntary labour. In the US, it was slaves. In Australia, it was convicts. In most other countries, it was the native inhabitants (and both the US and Australian colonies had their share of enslaved natives as well) either through straight enslavement or through taking them as prisoners of war. The Vikings had thralls. The Romans used prisoners of war, as did the Alexandrian Greeks. I suspect that the involuntary labour of the interplanetary colonies is likely to be convicts, or debt-stricken bondslaves, or both.

Posted by: Meg Thornton | June 17, 2007 9:54 PM

187:

How about hauling an asteroid from the area between Mars and Jupiter on an Earth-orbit and processing it to raw materials?

Theoretically, isn't directing an object closer to Sun a bit like pushing a stone downhill? Initial energy to budge the thing is big, but once rolling, the gravity will do the job.

The aiming, of course would have to be pretty good. You wouldn't want that couple of km-diamater thing hitting earth...

Posted by: Andy | June 17, 2007 9:54 PM

188:

Your analysis is much appreciated and appears valid to my layman level math, but your conclusions are a stretch to me. I'd like to point out an applicable truism, What can be done, will be done.
What seems impossible at this time, will be everyday in the future. We already know that nanotech based seed ships are a valid "magic wand" because we have the wildly successful biological analogues here on earth blowing in the wind, riding in guts and waiting in dirt every moment of every day.
As Drexler pointed out long ago, nanotech assemblers require no "magic wand" breakthroughs, only standard engineering progress. AI is also necessary and clearly it's not the slam dunk they expected 40 years ago. However it doesn't matter whether true AI is invented, as long as it can be simulated in software by sufficiently powerful hardware, that will be good enough.
I don't disagree with any of your facts, but after the invention and commercialization of AI and full nanotech assemblers, seed ships will be a trivial expense for rich individuals and governments. Seed ships with nanotech shouldn't care about centuries.
I'm much more concerned about whether we can survive the development of full DNA designs or early nanotech assembler releases. After all, Madam Curie didn't die from old age.

Posted by: Marcus Irvin | June 17, 2007 9:56 PM

189:

"Ah... wrong. They very much could touch us. Or have you forgotten the premise for the success of the Loonies' revolt in Heinlein's _The Moon is a Harsh Mistress_?"

Damn shame Heinlein never actually did the math in that one. Given the numbers he provides, the wave that hits London at one point is around 7 cm and it should have taken about thousands of hits to excavate Cheyenne Mountain the way that they do in the book.

http://groups.google.ca/group/rec.arts.sf.fandom/msg/01c85eeb57a88ff2?

Note that this had an error: I estimate the number of 2 kt hits that it would take to destroy Cheyenne at 125, when I later realized that the correct number is closer to 200,000.

Posted by: James Nicoll | June 17, 2007 9:58 PM

190:

I wish I didn't agree with Charlie. I'd dearly love to see the USS Enterprise, Serenity, TARDIS etc. flying for real. But the brutal fact is that most of the suggestions for getting to the stars pretty much amount to "if we burn all of the solar system for fuel we might just get there eventually" and/or "with one bound or hero was free."

The idea that antimatter is an answer is typical of this worldview - if make the stuff to use as fuel a lot more energy will go in than comes out. There are no magic antimatter planets anywhere nearby, as far as anyone knows, so we can't mine the stuff. Zero point energy is a laboratory phenomenon that can barely be measured, with no reason to believe it can be scaled up. Total conversion doesn't work, with any foreseeable technology, and if it did would you want it used anywhere near your planet? Wormholes are the size of subatomic particles if they can exist at all. And so forth. There are energy sources out there, just not the concentrated ones that are actually useful, in any sort of package that we can access without the sort of effort that only makes sense if the sun is about to go supernova. Which it isn't.

It's a lovely dream, and that's why SF is fun. But seriously suggesting that it's an inevitable progression for the human race is ludicrous.

Posted by: ffutures | June 17, 2007 10:14 PM

191:

James, I was deliberately ignoring that one on grounds of lack of reading comprehension skills. (He went from an argument about isolation due to extreme distance being undermined by communications -- "hey, mom, my ping packets are getting through, even though the latency is 5600 seconds!" -- into "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress" without even stopping to check the intersection for an oncoming "Neuromancer".

I keep refreshing these comments expecting a chorus of line-dancing space rats to can-can on stage singing TANSTAAFL, but no joy (yet).

I am tired, it is past 10pm, I have just won a Locus award, so I AM GOING TO THE PUB NOW TO KILL SOME BRAIN CELLS. Thank you.

Posted by: Charlie Stross | June 17, 2007 10:16 PM

192:

188: "What can be done, will be done."

Ah, then since it is technically possible to build a railway from South Africa to Chile via the Bering Strait, such a line must exist and since it is possible for one or the other of the American parties to totally dominate Federal politics, both parties must simultaneously enjoy a monopoly on power.

Posted by: James Nicoll | June 17, 2007 10:16 PM

193:

I generally agree with the original posting. Until we discover a solid economic reason (raw materials, food, etc.) for making the trek to the moon, Mars or even the closer star systems, it's just not worth effort and expense to send humans. However, I think that there may well be economic reasons for making the effort, but until we send more (and better equipped) robotic probes we won't know.

Speaking of robotic probes and their technology, I believe that there is a misconception about how current space research advances technology and improves our daily lives. In the heady days of Mercury, Gemini, and eventually Apollo, there was a huge push to meet a political agenda. Meeting this agenda required the development of new technologies and techniques. As spin-offs we ended up with new materials for aerospace, compact electronics, and Tang (among other things). The Apollo project was massive in scope, audacious in its goals, and staggeringly expensive.

Today, however, we don't have the same level of political commitment. The money to push the technological envelope the way that the Apollo program did just isn't there, and we've run up against some brick-wall physical constraints with current technology.

For example, we're flying computer hardware on our satellites and planetary probes that is between 10 and 30 years behind the current state-of-the-art. Why? Because modern processors would die a quick death in the hard radiation environment of space and high-capacity disk drives are useless in a vacuum (they need air to operate--the magnetic head "flies" above the disk on a cushion of air). So we fly stuff that is old, slow and already proven. Granted, there may be some gleanings there from the software used to control these devices, or in novel ways of devising simple mechanisms to perform in harsh and unforgiving environments, but the real payback is mainly the science. Until we can devise hardware that is more tolerant of space we're going to hobbled, and until we push the envelope we won't get the hardware needed to really do the science and exploration I know the scientists and others would like to do. Without the political commitment to provide the necessary resources, it just isn't going to happen any time soon.

Until we can get our technology up to the task, I believe we can forget about flying humans around for anything other than political posturing and limited rock collecting expeditions. So, wanna go to the Moon or Mars? Start writing to your politicians.

Posted by: J. M. Hughes | June 17, 2007 10:21 PM

194:

I think the author has missed a few facts about previous human experience with large "impossible" projects.

First, there was the building of the Pyramids. Gigantic structures that took generations to build, and which were built by people who were barely out of the stone age.

The construction of the pyramids with only copper tools, no wheels, and with a very simplistic understanding of mathematics and engineering, by people who hadn't yet even figured out that they were living on a spherical world, makes the colonization of the moon and mars given 21st century technology look like child's play in comparison.

Second, look at the almost "impossible" nature of the colonization of the Americas. I'm not refering to the European colonization, but to the *first* colonization of the Americas.

People *walked* from Northern Siberia, and into Alaska, with nothing but stone tools, and the sewn animal pelts on their backs.

Anyone who has ever been to Northern Siberia, or who has ever been to Northern Alaska, can tell you how incredibly inhospitable to human life those places are... and yet people were motivated to walk for many hundreds of miles through that area.

And, many tens of generations later, their ancestors were living everywhere from the frozen wastes of Alaska, to the searing burning wastes of Arizona, to the humid jungles of Brazil.

A nicely-equiped generation ship that took 400 years to reach a habitable planet around another star, would be a walk in the park compared to the 1000-year-long journey that the original discoverers of the Americas undertook.

Heck, for that matter, there are the Polynesian peoples... who navigated the entire Pacific Ocean in boats made out of hollowed logs, and settled everywhere from Hawaii, to New Zealand, to Madagascar.

If we (humans) can colonize the far reaches of one planet using hollowed-out logs, we can colonize the others using presurized ships. It might take a thousand years, but we've done it before under much worse conditions, and with much less technology.

Posted by: Kristan Korns | June 17, 2007 10:22 PM

195:

Interseting ruminations.

There is one possibility that would allow humanity to travel at light speed without breaking any physical laws, digitized minds. I'd say that we as a species are a at least century, perhaps more, away from being able to digitize minds but the more we learn of our biology, the more we'll discover just what parts of that biology give rise to "I" and what parts are purely for body maintainence purposes.

When we understand the "I" we can work towards creating suitable non biologic containers to house them (ie robots) From there it would, at least in theory, be possible to send "body factories" off into space and beam minds coded in em signals to fill them. This would provide an additional interesting side effect that a single "mind-copy" (say a highly trained geologist) could be sent to many different targets.

The individual mind copies would each have their own experiences in their host bodies. When their mission on a specific world comes to an end, they could beam their minds (and all the knowlege they acquired on that world) to a network of interstellar "god nodes" which could collect the knowlege and allow the individual copies to merge with each other or or not, as they so choose.

To be sure, this is at least a hundred years in the future and perhaps several hundred (I think we still have a great deal to learn about the components of consciousness and the physical structures required to house house it) but we're taking our first baby steps in that direction. If we don't blow ourselves up in the meantime, we will eventually learn how to do this and then, we can travel between the stars at C encoded in beams of light.

Posted by: Ken Tozier | June 17, 2007 10:26 PM

196:

The solution to interstellar travel, if it does not come from some "miraculous" means such as creating wormholes, teleportation or other similarly magical means, will lilely be accomplished using physics as we largely understand it today. Which isn't to say that's a bad thing, as we do know a lot of very useful things, like how much energy can really be created from matter (or antimatter) interactions.

Even if that is the case though, our only enemy is time, not physics. Any case for travel which requires lots of energy can substitute time instead and if physics doesn't allow the creation of more energy, medical science seems more and more likely to allow the creation of more time. The human 2.0 case thus, to me, seems the most likely enabler of interstellar travel for a person in a single lifetime.

Interestingly, there is nothing about the rate of medical progress today that would lead me to conclude that I will have no chance of living for an indeterminate and long period of time. Our exponential increases in understanding of biology, combined with advances in nanotechnology lead me to be optimistic about the things we will be able to do to ourselves in the reasonably forseeable future. So while it may remain out of reach for us to accelerate a 2000kg mercury-capsule sized object to 0.1c due to the energy requirements, it MAY not be necessary to do so as we overcome the limitations of our biology and buy ourselves time.

The reason I find this particular solution to the problem appealing is that it still has the possibility to apply to those of us who are living right now. Even those who do not subscribe to the altruistic 'my-genes-made-me-do-it' long term planning required to create a generation-ship type craft would be able to live long enough to simply fly the ship themselves.

Thus, we have at least two ways of cracking this nut: "magic" physics or believable advances in biotechnology (accompanied by learning how to cope with our changed biologies.) Space-colonizing Methuselahs, if you will.

I would be interested to see a biotechnology-oriented version of Charlie's post, aimed at suggesting or discounting the idea of interstellar travel as primarily enabled by advances in medicine rather than advances in propulsion.

Posted by: Cliff Hudson | June 17, 2007 10:39 PM

197:

Wish I could believe that humankind will reach another world in my lifetime, logic says it's going to be a long time though. If humankind reaches another system in the next thousand years, we'll be lucky. Our current space program is like trying to explore all of the world's oceans with only a canoe. Colonization on a habitable world in an alien system could be thousands of years away, if ever.

Posted by: PW | June 17, 2007 10:41 PM

198:

the most aberrant thought in the essay is that the Gobi "is ugly".
no wonder you can't see the future. you can't even see the now.

Posted by: bob shade | June 17, 2007 10:42 PM

199:

194: but it took a thousand years to do it, in steps. There are no steps you can do easily in space. Moving along the coast of the Americas, you are fairly certain that where you stop for the night will be a possible home. Above 12,000 feet you have to carry oxygen in your craft.

Posted by: Alex | June 17, 2007 10:46 PM

200:

LOL the humans don't know everything yet. There may yet be one or two discoveries to be made that would have a bearing on this problem.

The humans aren't out of "Eureka!" moments... I wouldn't put anything past the humans... Is there anything they like better than solving problems? :-)

We are a "Magic Wand" making species... bah humbug all you like!

I don't expect to see Space Colonization in my lifetime... but that doesn't mean I believe it can *never* happen... I think we still have plenty to learn about reality. Who knows what we will eventually learn?

Posted by: TsujiBan | June 17, 2007 10:52 PM

201:

[QUOTE] properly funding Spaceguard and having some asteroid-nudging contingency plans ready to dust off at 12 months' notice. [/QUOTE]

That's another worthwhile economy booster!

Any huge government project, that involves space, but doesn't have a military application as its ultimate goal is worthwhile IMHO.

Posted by: bill king | June 17, 2007 10:52 PM

202:

Congratulations on your Locus Award! :-) Thanks for writing the original article, no matter what people feel about space colonization, articles like the original one help keep the discussion grounded in reality. :-) We will not get off the surface by waving our hands dismissively at every problem that arises! :-)

Posted by: TsujiBan | June 17, 2007 10:57 PM

203:

bill @ 201 - I see where you're coming from now (actually, you said so in an earlier comment) -- given that people are going to be going crazy anyway and plunging economies into stupid projects, then the idea would be to divert that away from, say, war in the Middle East, and into, say, space.

I like the way you think.

bob @ 198 - hey, another poster here who hasn't the faintest clue where he is.

Posted by: Michael | June 17, 2007 11:02 PM

204:

As a working biologist and an optimist (wishful thinker?) about space exploration, I agree that it may be more feasible and interesting to adapt humans to their ecosystem, rather than vice versa. That is what humans originally did, before advancing technology allowed us to have air conditioning in the desert.

If anyone is interested in reading about this issue from a biologist's viewpoint, an essay about it appears in six installments in my blog, under the title "Making Aliens". Here is the starting point: Making Aliens 1

Posted by: Athena Andreadis | June 17, 2007 11:04 PM

205:

Re "Sun goes nova" scenarios:

As Charlie pointed out, the sun will not turn into a supernova (it would need to be at least 8 or 10 times more massive than it is now, in which case it would have gone supernova over 4.5 billion years ago).

It will also not produce a nova, since novas (whether we're talking about classical novas, dwarf novas, or any of the other subspecies) require a binary star system with one of the stars being a white dwarf and a very small orbital separation. If there were a white dwarf inside the orbit of Mercury, we'd have noticed it.

At this point, I'm not sure we can categorically rule out something like a nasty flare (as in Larry Niven's classic story "Inconstant Moon"). On the other hand, the Sun has evidently failed to produce biosphere-scouring flares over the past 2 billion years or so, which suggests that it it really isn't prone to suffering such things.

Large rocks and iceballs smacking into the Earth, on the other hand, are a very real possibillity.

Posted by: Peter Erwin | June 17, 2007 11:07 PM

206:

203: It's like Leo Strauss, but for people who aren't fascists! We'll use the Noble Lie to convince the ignorant, feminine masses to sink their cash into a great rationalist, technocratic, chromium project. Hehheeheehhheeh!!

Posted by: Alex | June 17, 2007 11:09 PM

207:

Alex @ 205: Right!

Posted by: Michael | June 17, 2007 11:13 PM

208:

What if superluminar travel is possible?
According to Heim Theory it might be possible to travel to Mars in few hours and to nearest star in few days.

See that article please:
http://www.newscientistspace.com/article/mg18925331.200
Here are papers from Walter Dröscher and Jochem Häuser regarding the Heim Theory:
http://www.hpcc-space.de/publications/documents/aiaa2004-3700-a4.pdf
http://www.hpcc-space.com/publications/documents/AIAA2006-4608LetterExtndVersionRevised.pdf
http://www.hpcc-space.de/publications/documents/LauncherSymPaper2007-0-42JHCorrected22April.pdf

Here is the article about Martin Tajmar experiment with antigravity:
http://www.esa.int/SPECIALS/GSP/SEM0L6OVGJE_0.html
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/03/060325232140.htm

So, if Heim Theory is true, then most likely humankind will reach the stars within our life span.

/Joss

Posted by: Jossarian | June 17, 2007 11:15 PM

209:

http://www.newscientist.com/channel/fundamentals/quantum-world/mg18925331.200-take-a-leap-into-hyperspace.html
Read this about a theory behind developing a hyperdrive engine, it's very hypothetical but all the same moving GREAT distances quickly in the future may be possible.

Posted by: SaFaRiJaCk | June 17, 2007 11:17 PM

210:

Fermi's Paradox not withstanding, I think that humans DO have the potential to colonize the galaxy.. Over thousands or tens of thousands of years.

Bottom line is that unless we destroy ourselves, we will make semi-intellegent machines that will travel slowly to nearby stars. Even at Voyager'esque speeds, we'd be there in tens of thousands of years. Then these machines using local resources replicate themselves and do the same thing.

While not within any human time scale envisioned today, this is a very real possibility that could put intellegent devices arround almost every stable star in our galaxy in relative short order (A million years or so...nothing in the galactic time scale)

Envision the rate of human technical growth over the past 200 years and then scale that out 1000, 10,000 or even 100,000 years. The things we make will be *US*.

Posted by: Andrew Potter | June 17, 2007 11:17 PM

211:

The colossal amounts of energy required for interplanetary and interstellar travel can really only be satisfied by a fuel with an incredibly high energy density; and currently the only technology within reach is nuclear fission.

This is the greatest argument I can think of for not consuming the fissile material we have here on earth to power our earthbound energy needs. The main arguments against nuclear energy are waste disposal and proliferation risk, both of which disappear if we send up a fertile fuel instead of a fissile one and allow them to breed their own Uranium or Plutonium in space. No one cares if you leak radioactive waste in space; maybe it could even be used as a propellant.

Transportation on this planet only exploded once we discovered a compact and efficient fuel and invented the internal combustion engine. We've already discovered the next compact and efficient fuel; transportation between planets will explode once we have an internal fission engine. Assuming that we agree on the importance of attempting space exploration and colonisation, we need to save our nuclear material to use as fuel for these future missions, even though most if not all of them will probably fail.

Posted by: Saul Pwanson | June 17, 2007 11:18 PM

212:

Well, while the outlook seems to be quite gloomy, I'd like to introduce another metaphor. Let's just suppose, we had no planes and no ships/boats. If we wanted to go to from Europe to the USA, we would have to swim a very large distance, like thousands of kilometers. This would also seem very impossible to us ;)

Posted by: escitalopram | June 17, 2007 11:19 PM

213:

That link I posted is the same as 207's reference to new scientist. Got the idea at the same time :D.

Posted by: SaFaRiJaCk | June 17, 2007 11:25 PM

214:

Another thing I suggest is that we learn how to colonize the very deep sea trenches, since they support the same life.

I'd rather see money put into exploring the life we know is out there, than looking for life anywhere else.

Posted by: Eric | June 17, 2007 11:25 PM

215:

Speed of sound varies with temperature and atmospheric composition. Mars is much colder and its atmosphere is primarily carbon dioxide. So I thought your mach 0.5 dust storms might be a bit overdramatic.

Using your mach 0.5 number and:
http://www.aerospaceweb.org/question/atmosphere/q0249.shtml

suggests martian dust storm winds of 439.2 km/h
Mach 0.5 at Earth temperatures is 617 km/h.
A difference of 178 km/h seems significant, but given a "very strong" hurricane can have 248 km/h winds, I think your point is still valid.

(I got hurricane wind speeds from this page:
http://hypertextbook.com/facts/StephanieStern.shtml )

Posted by: Matt | June 17, 2007 11:31 PM

216:

210: I was just thinking of that. It's actually a really good argument against nuclear power.

Posted by: Alex | June 17, 2007 11:36 PM

217:

EXCELLENT article.

My suspicion is that you know much more than this than I do, but your article was focused on why, scientifically, space colonization is not a way to circumvent the finiteness of earth's ecology as a place that can support humans.

My own experience with people wanting to colonize space, and more specifically the Mars Society, is that all the "Why Mars?" talk is not bad science...

...It's bad religion.

As a theology student with a first master's in math, I am quite fond of Mary Midgley's Science as Salvation: A Modern Myth and Its Meaning. The book is highly accessible, inviting, and beautifully iconoclastic.

You might like to refer to it in explaining why people think mass colonozation of space is a good way to circumvent the difficult limitations of living on earth...

Posted by: Jonathan Hayward | June 17, 2007 11:49 PM

218:

200 comments in, it's fascinating to see how many people aren't pitching in beyond 'you just don't understand'. Or are just ignoring the maths and going with the gung-ho: yes, a few of us did go to the moon, but the whole base metals into gold thing is still proving intractable, I notice...

My worry now is that even if a deus ex machina shows up, if the responses here remotely reflect what we'll become, any interstellar travel will be doomed to tragedy, as people stop to look at the pretty rings, confident that A Way Will Be Found to make up for lost time and energy.

Posted by: James Henderson | June 17, 2007 11:57 PM

219:

Charlie,
Actually there have been a lot of strange observations involving the speed of light, but no smoking guns to my knowledge.

I have always liked the speed of sound example because it illustrates the danger of blind faith in mathematical models. Also, bullets are faster than the speed of sound, but whips are not; the crack is caused by a series of compression waves and not from the tip going super sonic.

I'm do NOT expect to see commercial production of antimatter any time soon. Honestly, I was so astounded when it was first produced that I like to just point it out: 'hey, people have figured out how to MAKE antimatter.' It's a long way from a space propulsion system, but ENIAC was a long way from the Mac Book Pro I'm typing this comment on, too.

Given that no one can adequately explain gravitation or inertia yet, I think it is too soon to close the book on space travel. I wouldn't believe in the ability to fold space, but I also would have a really hard time believing in gravity if I didn't live with it every day; it's one of the most improbable things I've ever heard of.

Bottom line: what we know and can do changes over time, and that gives me a lot of hope. I personally think it's going to take a profound change in our picture of how the universe works to develop practical interstellar travel.

Posted by: Daniel Pasco | June 18, 2007 12:01 AM

220:

Charlie (not sure who wrote this, since it's my first visit here through /.)
You are absolutely right, and utterly wrong.
I will not discuss any of the techical aspects of your article (I understand most of them, but just barely), because you seem to be pretty much right.
However...
I do understand History and Mankind. I don't quite recall the quote, but it goes something like "We don't know how the future is going to be, but it will be completely different from what we expect.".
You are applying 21st century calculations to future problems.
That's like a scientist in the middle ages (that's an odd bird!) trying to do the math for moon travel.
You know, before Galileo, Newton, Einstein, Von Braun.

So, either this article applies only to the near future (1-5 centuries), or you are way out of your league (no disrespect).
You can't just say that things are impossible on the light of your culture. You might be an enlightened person for the 21st century, but you don't have a clue of what's possible in the 5th millenium. Just as Archimedes had no clue of what were atoms, friction, black holes, quasars, HTML, spandex, liposuctions, AK47s, cell phones, TNT, jets, internal combustion engines, gravity, Pluto (not the God, he knew that one), dinossaurs, brazilian waxes (he didn't know whole continents, let alone some form of hair removal named after an unknown country) LCD screens, helicopters, Casio watches, and so on. Aren't all these Magic Wands in Archimedes eyes?
He was a complete ignorant, albeit being one of the greatest geniuses of all time.
So, an ignorant as he was, he had no idea of how to go about communicating his ideas to other people on the other side of the world. I can do more than he ever could. I can post this to you, on other continents. I can phone a scientist thousands of miles away. I can fly. I can calculate the rate of descent of a falling object, and it's speed at any time during the fall. I can say how fast and hard it hits the ground, before it is ever launched.
I can roughly imagine what must be needed for a travel to Mars. In a realistic way. With sound scientifical evidence and calculations backing me up.
I am no genius, but I am oh so much cultered than he ever was. I am capable of foreseeing so much more things.

And I am capable of foreseeing that Mankind will learn more than what it knows now.
There will be more Magic Wands. Sure, we will never get some things. Some will be impossible. I mean defineletly and universaly impossible. But we don't know which.
Maybe there will be FTL. Maybe there will be an EVENT. Maybe there will be "something" that will blow our great-grandsons' minds when they are old.
And their grandsons will say "Come on, granpa, hop on, it's perfectly safe!".
How can we say otherwise?
How many times must we be proved wrong on the "impossibles" of life?

Posted by: Vasco Martinho | June 18, 2007 12:09 AM

221:

Sorry for my bad english.

Once one guy made a question to Galileu, after looking the moon in the telescope, if the man will ever reach the moon one day.
Galileu saids, of course not.

Ok, but in 1969 one man put's feet in the moon.

Why galileu thougth that? Maybe because he didn't know engines, and others things that was discovered after him.

So i say, for us the distances and forces looks so big that must be impossible. But like Galileu whe don't know the nexts discoverys of the man.

And maybe one of thouses will solve the problems in a way that we cannot understand now.

Posted by: Joaquim Ferreira | June 18, 2007 12:10 AM

222:

I shall enter a few threads I haven't seen touched on yet.

To the "We've done amazing things before, therefore anything is possibe" crowd, that reminds me of the different traps involved in discussing "shades of very large". The quantity of integers is large. The quantity of real numbers is much larger.

The point about the difference between vacation and colony is a good one. When people put themselves into "vacation-mindset", they expect to spend a proportionally large amount of resources on some experience in some attempt to garner an intangible emotional benefit that "will get them through the next three years of the grind at work". We did that with the Moon, and we will do it again on Mars. The trouble with colonies is that they require *continuous incentive* to continue to bother.

Forgetting even the Deserts, I find it extremely prophetic that we can't even maintain economic critical mass in certain States of the US because it's "just not worth it". I can't fathom the costs of an *unfinished* attempt that could bankrupt the planet in the effort.

Also, no one seems to be addressing the social side. Concurrent with all this "look how wonderful progress is" theme, is an increase in Communication Transactions Per Person Per Day. I think social stability is linked to quantities of communications. I am not sure we will even last 500 more years as a species, which is too short a time to even begin to properly do more than log a few vacations.

Posted by: TaoPhoenix | June 18, 2007 12:25 AM

223:

You know you live in interesting times when you can no longer tell the difference between UFO cultists and real science.

New Scientist article @ 207
"[Heim]claimed it is possible to convert electromagnetic energy into gravitational and back again, and speculated that a rotating magnetic field could reduce the influence of gravity on a spacecraft enough for it to take off."

Posted by: noen | June 18, 2007 12:25 AM

224:

@133: "(Are we gagging yet?)"

Not in the slightest. Meanwhile, same post: I suspect a covert reason for the delay in non-ballistic-missile-based space access was to arrest and surpress the Cold War space arms race.

@136: "I really dont see why our robotic emissaries cant precede us and prepare an environment suitable for us."

That's pretty much what I expect.

Next note: I'm actually glad it will take centuries and multiple intermediate steps to build up to the power levels needed for interstellar flight. I don't want those power levels within a million miles of the Earth, thanks.

Finally: whether most people are utilitarian or not; whether they are ideologically consistent or not; whether most people care or not -- long term plans, if not fatally flawed or mutated, outlive short term plans. Call it temporal memetic Darwinism. Eventually successful long term plans will be developed; they will succeed, end of story.

Posted by: Catfish N. Cod | June 18, 2007 12:34 AM

225:

Anyone who keeps up on these issues is fully aware of everything said here, more or less. However, it would be more productive to ask "how can we do it" than to expound upon why we cannot. The last estimate I read for a space elevator was $15 billion. Research into inflatable space habitation modules is in its advanced stages. A recent scramjet flew 330 miles up (low-earth orbit). Ion propulsion moves cheaply at 63,000mph. Mars has plenty of water and caves to build human dwellings. Mars is rich in iron, brighter sunlight than earth, and has only 38% of earth's gravity. I would suggest a settlement to harvest the iron and light-water into materials and products to send into space... that is, to build large space craft... solar system cruisers.

If I were president, I would have purchased the Mir, tied it to the shuttle with a large space-chain and drug that the moon or Mars. Our highly advanced monkey brains are designed to solve problems, not just identify them.

Matthew

Posted by: Matthew C. Tedder | June 18, 2007 12:36 AM

226:

Charlie, #29. "...exchange of cultural data..." What about ecological and biological data? As a friend keeps reminding me, more data can be transmitted by a physical object than any transmission technology we now have, and physical media keeps outstripping telecomm. Which means that, perhaps, information is an economic basis for interstellar trade and John Campbell (by way of James Blish) got there first. Interesting how Blish keeps coming back to me in this discussion. Other authors who keep coming to mind of are Tiptree, Pamela Sargent, and one of Damon Knight's stories.

Posted by: Randolph Fritz | June 18, 2007 12:38 AM

227:

[Back from pub]

If Heim pans out as actually having anything worth following up (hint: "lone gun working in isolation" isn't usually how progress is made in theoretical physics these days) then indeed, things are going to take an interesting turn. Ditto if we come up with a model for how gravity and inertia work that allows us to do cool stuff like generate [anti-]gravity using EM sources.

... But again, this is magic wand territory. If you change the constraints, the results of the experiment will of course change. I'm trying to do strict extrapolation from what we currently know, here, and I'm just not seeing the love.

(And I'd caution against taking anything you read in New Scientist too seriously. They've got a weekly production schedule to meet, and they can't afford to be too fussy about where they get their inputs from -- although this thread is giving me a lot of sympathy for their letters editor!)

Incidentally, social issues are precisely why I picked 200 passengers as a sensible load for a generation ship; it's roughly the standard size of a primate troupe in the wild, or a human extended family plus friends. TaoPhoenix hit something interesting with that comment about communication transactions -- remember, a starship is going to be a long way from the neighbours, too far away for any semblance of real time interaction. So you need to take your society with you.

As an aside, I'm kind of amused to see recent visitors here lecturing me about mind uploading, virtual realities, and the Fermi paradox. I'm way ahead of you guys: consider this a cold reality check on my own more optimistic projections in, for example, Accelerando.

Posted by: Charlie Stross | June 18, 2007 12:45 AM

228:

I admit I haven't yet read all of the comments as yet, but I haven't noted anyone discussing the huge difficulties of building a space elevetor. Geosynchronous orbit is 35,786 km (according to http://liftoff.msfc.nasa.gov/academy/rocket_sci/satellites/geo-high.html). This means that you would probably have to either build a building this tall (bear in mind this is approximately 5.5 times the radius of the earth) or start at this point and build in both directions. Most likely both would need to be done.
So, not only would you need to build a cable over 35,000 kms long that could hold it's own weight (no current material could even get close), but you would then have to arrange for a counter weight on the other end to hold the whole thing up. Under the assumption that you are using the estimate of $2000/kg to get material into space and the fact that you will need an enormous counter weight as well as the weight of the device itself, the calculation doesn't look good. Certainly, I doubt this could be done for a number that didn't run into the hundreds of billions of dollars, even if we had a material that could hold it's own weight under these circumstances.
On a personal note: I grew up read SciFi and I am still a believer, but a wise man chooses battles he can win. There are huge numbers involved in these calculations, but science has conquered huge mountains before. All that this essay shows is the true value of pure research. Due to the path it has chosen to tread, if humanity is going to survive it needs to go forward: science is the only vehicle that can take it there.

Posted by: Adam R | June 18, 2007 12:46 AM

229:

Charlie,
Just want to say I have thoroughly enjoyed everything you have written (still looking for that Ninja story-just joking!).

I think a lot of us agree interstellar colonization is way beyond current technology and in this stellar system the best real estate seems to be Mars (Luna just doesn't seem to have much in the way of useful resources, unless there really is polar ice, tritium 3 etc.). And I agree the sensible thing is to do what we can with unmanned exploration. But I want to point out NASA hasn't done a life detection experiment in over 30 years, on Mars or elsewhere. In fact, we haven't even been able to get them to fly an automated microscope of more than 4X mag(great for geologists, not so much for biologists). Things are turning around now due to discovery of great amounts of water ice, atmospheric methane etc. on Mars. Still, a human biologist would probably have a much better chance of success in collecting soil samples from the relatively UV-protected environs we really want to examine (deep in Valles Marineris, caldera of Mons Olympus, even deep sub-surface soil). Culturing the soil samples, seeing if you can grow any bugs etc. is best done on Mars due to Planetary Protection concerns here. Sample return missions continue to be controversial for that reason.

What I'm saying is that there is an incredibly strong reason for humans to visit Mars (not colonize it!). It is simply that discovery of an extraterrestrial example of biology would be the biggest advance in the life sciences since the work of Watson and Crick! And I'm dubious that we will be able to do this with remote instrumentation. The history of the Viking experiments attests to the problems of interpretation of remotely-gathered data.

So I'm saying curiosity may in the end be the best justification for sending humans to Mars (not necessarily keeping them there!). And human observers still trump the best remotely operated instrumentation we have, at least in difficult environments. Myself, I'd sign up in a New York minute if they were taking aging myopic biologists for a Mars expedition at this point in time!

Posted by: Joe Miller | June 18, 2007 12:56 AM

230:

The naive hubris of those who say "We can and will" is only exceeded, in my opinion, by the hubris of those highly intelligent folks explaining why "We can't and won't".

The singularity is coming! cya :)

Posted by: gern blanston | June 18, 2007 1:05 AM

231:

Its odd that you put so much emphasis on traveling in the human lifetime, and future technology, but don't mention cryogenics. You talk about the difficulties in multi-generational ships and maintaining human groups over centuries, and I agree that would be bad.

But whats so wrong with freezing 1000 people for 1000 years and getting them somewhere. Not to mention giving them say, a 10,000 humanoid robot workforce to build a colony when we get somewhere?

You seem to think this is impossible because its "hard" or "expensive." Thinking like that certainly didn't get us to the moon, and it won't get us to Mars.

Posted by: Clayton | June 18, 2007 1:09 AM

232:

Charlie,

We will colonize the Galaxy by sending all the information required to reconstruct human consciousness to the candidate planet. All our current efforts are bent on the single task of replicating that which make us self aware; A.I

Posted by: Peter | June 18, 2007 1:17 AM

233:

Ok, folks, follow me on this one.

Earth has been here about 5 billion years. We have been here (H. Sapiens) about 30,000 years. If colonizing space were even remotely possible, and intelligent life were even extremely rare in the galaxy, then someone would have happened upon our little blue marble WELL before we came along. Do you suppose they would have allowed, purposely or by accident, for our eventual evolution to progress? Not likely. Since we exist, either interstellar space colonization is impossible, and/or alien intelligence does not exist anywhere else in the galaxy, and probably not anywhere in the universe.

In short, we are it bub. If interstellar colonization is somehow possible, then I expect there is one big, empty universe waiting for us.

Pass me the magic wand...

Posted by: Joseph Kelch | June 18, 2007 1:40 AM

234:

Charlie,

You're forgetting one thing that answers all those problems: the dreamers. Think that's a crappy statement, something vague, impractical, and kind of unfair for me to just posit as an answer? Let's think big, afterall, that's what dreamers do . . . . I would say one of the most consistent phenomenons in history is someone not being able to imagine of something being possible, or imagining of it at all, or a large group of people thinking it actually impossible, and yet then having someone go and do it. I would probably label most every breakthrough as one of those. To uncharitably rephrase your above essay, it seems in a way you're predicting that breakthroughs are going to stop happening . . . .

One of the few things that show no sign of abating in humans anytime soon is our ability to both conceive of limits in ourselves that don't exist, and to break ones outside of us that do.

Good luck with your writing.

Sam

Posted by: Sam | June 18, 2007 1:47 AM

235:

I just finished reading accellerando - which was simply the best, most mind blowing book I've read since Snow Crash. You got so many details right... (it's a shame I never met you at SCO)...

... 'cept one niggling detail, and you missed it in this essay, too. There are stepping stones to the solar system, better than mars, better than than the moon - the near earth asteroids.

Delta-V to many NEAs is less than Mars, (well over 500 as of this writing - see http://echo.jpl.nasa.gov/~lance/), landing is a piece of cake, and returning requires much, much less delta-v than mars. As these orbits are elliptical (sometimes in the extreme!), many, many other opportunities exist for alternate destinations.

Probably the most coherent thing I've written on this topic is at:

http://the-edge.blogspot.com/2003_08_17_the-edge_archive.html#106122950219499819

Once you get there... (see the hera and quixote missions as examples) raw materials and radiation shielding are to be had to bootstrap the rest of solar exploration.

but, yes, overall I agree with you that only posthuman devices will be exploring these worlds, or severely modified humans. What good are legs on an asteroid? They will be amputated at birth, as a dangerous appendage, like a veriform appendix.

Posted by: Michael Taht | June 18, 2007 1:50 AM

236:

Well, I watch a lot of Stargate SG-1, so my mindset has been forever corrupted in terms of reality, but here's my two cents.

It is, in my opinion, inevitable that science will progress further on. As we go, we'll find out that many "truths" of this age are actually false. (reminds me of an episode of SG-1, where the comment is presented that quantum physics is taught in "fallacies of primitive physics" on other planets)

For example, going WAY back to the start of this comment festival, you mentioned the relativistic travel restrictions in terms of energy requirements and so forth. Now, I know this holds true for the current day, but to me, it is entirely probable (in fact, almost guaranteed) that one day, some form of technology will come by that will completely erase this restriction.

I'm far, far too much of a hopeless romantic to be of any use in a scientific debate, but I like to think that technology will advance exponentially, and that certain key advances will be made that will allow for such previously unthinkable things.

As I see it, as close as 100 years ago, we were still confined to this planet. Space travel was entirely unheard of, as were computers, personal cars, and many other luxuries we now have today. Showing my romantic streak, I like to think that in another hundred years (I hope I'll be alive to see it, although I kind of doubt it) we'll be doing things that we currently believe impossible - such as colonizing space, faster-than-light travel, and even world peace. (had to stick that one in there for my hippie slant)

By the way, I'm probably terrible at any scientific aspect of this comment - I can say with certainty that the youth of today are far too uneducated in terms of physics. Firsthand experience. Although, your posts have started to make me consider astrophysics as a major in college again...(it's probably a black hole for job placement, though)

Love your posts, keep up the work. I'll be reading. Probably not posting (takes too much effort), but reading nonetheless.

Posted by: Joe McCormick | June 18, 2007 2:08 AM

237:

For those just joining, here is a summary of many of the previous comments. Be careful! What you're about to say might have been said already.

"I don't know who you are, Mr. So-called Science Fiction writer, but you are a pessimist! You of all people should be pushing fantasy, not poo-poo headedness!"

"I did not read your article, but you are wrong!"

"How can you not understand that humanity will inevitably invent magic ponies, which will carry us to the stars on their backs?!"

"Why are you so narrow-minded, Mister Physics and Numbers?! Leave the equations out of space travel: they don't belong there!"

Thank you, and good night.

Posted by: Justin | June 18, 2007 2:16 AM

238:

Q: Would a space elevator be something you could set up from space?

ie, could we carry the makings of a space elevator with us to Mars, or the moon, and set one up from orbit?

That'd certainly make it a lot easier to get back up into space.

Posted by: Jon Hendry | June 18, 2007 2:17 AM

239:

Charlie writes: "The species survival utility you mention is an interesting one, but as I've noted, it's not a clear economic benefit to us, here on Earth, to know that humans on another planet or space colony will survive even if we're clobbered by a wandering comet. "

Seems like it's just a form of estate planning.

Posted by: Jon Hendry | June 18, 2007 2:25 AM

240:

Charlie, I appreciate the article and you bring home some important points very... pointedly. I do have three critiques:

1. I think you give lip service to past innovations yet maintain an attitude similar to past nay-sayers. You accuse others of having too much faith in future science. Well, I accuse you of having too much faith in current science. In 100 years most of today's scientific theories will have been falsified, or reduced, or eliminated or whatever progression theory you subscribe to.

2. You seem to lack motivation to preserve the species beyond your own person. That doesn't bother me, but as a result you seem willing to deny that such a motivation exists in other people, no matter how many people tell you otherwise. You don't have to understand it, but know that you are wrong.

3. Libertarians come in as many flavors as there are libertarians. Like many people, you appear to write them all off as a bunch of selfish oafs always in search of an impossible utopia. Here's an alternative way to look at them: they are simply different than you, they are vastly outnumbered, and your way of life precludes theirs. Like many persecuted groups in the past, they are intrigued by the possibility of having somewhere to go. Space is a hardship, but it is also a long way away from their oppressors. Just like America a few hundred years ago. Incidentally, the closest thing to a common denominator among deontological libertarians is the Zero Aggression Principle. The key to understanding these libertarians is understanding that they are not consequentialists, and understanding what that means. Their first concern is not that they have enough food to eat, or that their children can read, or that they have health insurance, but that no one is assaulting or defrauding anyone else. Once that is accepted as a policy, they say, then certainly let's get together and try to make the world a better place. They are in a bit of a pickle, since every modern state begins the task of "making the world a better place" by threatening force against its minorities in the name of its majorities. Or worse, some still do it vice versa.

Posted by: John | June 18, 2007 2:51 AM

241:

Wow. Lots of pissed off handwavers in this crowd. Charlie laid out a concise, well presented argument based on solid science. It's amazing to see how few of the offended have managed to string together a remotely rational, fact-based argument in response. This more than anything else tells me we aren't colonizing the solar system, let alone the planets, anytime soon. Wishing upon a star ain't gonna get you there.

I think the Fermi Paradox puts a great big nail in the coffin of interstellar civilization. Given the age of the Milky Way, we should have been visited and colonized by the representatives of at least one alien civilization by now. The fact we haven't tells us that either:

1) Interstellar colonization is technically impractical or impossible, regardless of your advancement
2) Interstellar colonization is possible and perhaps even practical, but nobody with the ability to do it bothers because there are better ways to spend your time and energy once you have technology that advanced
3) Civilizations never acquire the ability to colonize the stars because they're wiped out by their advanced technology, via wars, accidents, runaway AI or other processes

There are other possibilities as well (like interstellar exterminators, who go around snuffing out technological civilizations to prevent them from spreading), but they all seem far less likely.

I'm betting on option 2, but 1 and 3 wouldn't surprise me.

Posted by: sunspot | June 18, 2007 2:55 AM

242:

Catfish N. Cod @ 224: ("Eventually successful long term plans will be developed; they will succeed, end of story.")

Funny, I just got back from Baghdad and that was the official line there, too.

Posted by: Jasper Carrot | June 18, 2007 3:13 AM

243:

Charlie,

Thanks for a thought-provoking article! I won't argue the math. You're right, it's a Big Problem. I still find myself hopeful, though, because I suspect it's also an Essential Problem to the long term survivability of our species.

But you mentioned some sociological issues. I will point out that I myself spent ~13 years living in tiny villages of Kaktovik and Atqasuk in Alaska. Note the populations, the latitudes, the weather. During my time there, I was once asked to sit as a panelist at a science fiction convention. The topic was basically 'life in space' and I'd been asked because I lived in such an isolated community. Of course I couldn't actually justify the trip - transporation costs were exorbitant.

Residents of these and other Arctic villages don't rotate in and out - they make their homes there. Yes it's an anomaly, yes there are some unique economic factors propping up these villages, and yes, the isolation factor is at least an order of magnitude lower than you'd have on an interstellar voyage. We did (usually!) get weekly plane-loads of goods from the Rest of The World.

But small communities can survive in pretty deep isolation. During my first few years there, we had no television linkup to the RoTW, and one phone in the center of town. Newspapers were rare and basically irrelevant.

So, I'll posit that this really is an energy problem, and a closed-loop ecosphere problem. I think the sociological problem you suggested is much immediately approachable than you seemed to suggest.

Posted by: quux | June 18, 2007 3:29 AM

244:

I've loved SF all my life but I have no problem acknowledging that Charlie is entirely correct here.

No matter how many things that would once have fit the description of 'magic wand' have become common place, there is no assurance that a desired technology will appear. Ever. Just because you want it badly doesn't make it doable. Nor does the ability of SF writer to envision the miracle tech in everyday use bring it any closer to reality. Otherwise we'd have already have colonized a few hundred world with super-intelligent robot dogs protecting us from the local bitey/clawy things.

The past is not a predictor of the future. Yes, we went from Kitty Hawk to Apollo within a human lifetime but speaking as someone who was born around the time of the first humans reaching orbits for a few scant minutes, we've progressed very damned little in my 43 years. This isn't just lack of political will. The objectives simply aren't demonstrably worth the cost for anyone who isn't an enthusiast and we're very much in the minority.

Enthusiasm isn't enough. The Kitty Hawk to Apollo pace of advancement may seem remarkable but we've had enough time to gain some perspective and realize that doing those things were easy. It was only towards the end that it became an enterprise requiring the resource of the planet's wealthiest nation. The in-atmosphere stuff got some boost from wartime R&D push but most of it was accomplished by tinkerers and private enterprise was a clear cut business potential. Much as we'd prefer otherwise, manned space access doesn't have a clear market beyond the ultra wealthy. Commercial air flight became accessible to the middle almost immediately upon its commencement.

As Charlie detailed, it's a matter of scale. Columbus wasn't doing anything that extraordinary by the measure of commercial shipping industry of his day. It wasn't a matter of if but rather when. Ships didn't need all that much improvement to make voyages between Europe and the New World a thriving business, once it was known there was a place worth spending all that time at sea to reach. If Columbus needed a century or more to report back his findings, how interested would any potential investor have been in backing his venture?

Seriously, this stuff is really hard and there is no guarantee that a mitigating technology will come along. That doesn't mean we should stop hoping and dreaming but it does mean any Hard SF writer worth reading has to understand these issues. But remember the physics and math needed to get to the Moon were well understood a lifetime before Apollo. The same can be said of the math and physics needed to plan interstellar travel but we are scarcely any closer to actually doing than we were in July of 1969.

Several peopele commenting seem to believe the space program is some cornucopia of new technologies benefitting humanity. Bollocks. Very little attributed to the space program actually originated there or needed NASA's prompting to be developed. Wars, including the Cold War have contributed far, far more to the development of technologies that found civilian applications. Tang, for instance, was not developed for NASA. It was developed at the behest of the Pentagon during WWII but not delivered in time to be used. It was used by the military thereafter but got a big ad campaign after NASA's use retroactively made it a Space Age product that could be pitched to the unsuspecting public.

Nor can NASA be credited with stimulating semiconductor technology. The money helped but there was far more money coming from the need to miniaturize guidance systems for missiles, and this started well before NASA was created. Plus there were far more nuclear missiles to equip than space launches. Before the creation of the integrated circuit RCA had mad great strides in packing components into a brick-like modular unit that was pretty nifty for the era. Further, the market potential for electronic calculator for business was vastly more than sufficient to drive the development of the microprocessor. Remember, the original Intel 4004 was developed for a electronic calculator and repurposed as the basis of programmable computers only after Intel failed to win the bid. The desires of CPAs drove the development of the microprocessor much more than the desires of astrophysicists.

Posted by: epobirs | June 18, 2007 3:35 AM

245:

Ah, New Scientist. I don't know what I loved more, the conservation of momentum violating space drive:

http://golem.ph.utexas.edu/category/2006/09/a_plea_to_save_new_scientist.html

or the puddles on Mars that are on the face of a cliff:

http://www.planetary.org/blog/article/00001001/

The hermitlike German physicist whose theories Will! Give! Man! And the Cuter Women! The! Stars! is just part of their sensationalist tendencies. The National Enquirer is about as trustworthy.

One of the things I love about Heim theory is how its so complex, even its fans don't understand it. This led to a situation where they were terribly impressed by how Heim Theory predicted the masses of the elementary particles:

http://groups.google.ca/group/rec.arts.sf.science/msg/ae221568e39a3ba2?

Heim theory is fun to play what if with but it also has all the earmarks of crackpot science.

Posted by: James Nicoll | June 18, 2007 3:36 AM

246:

"So Proxima Centauri, at 267,000 AU, is just under two and a third kilometres, or two miles (in old money) away from us."

Hell. I can walk that.

What?

Posted by: Leigh Mortensen | June 18, 2007 3:42 AM

247:

Re 111:

Because at present there is no compelling reason to send people into space save for research purposes, the reasons people come up with for going into space reflect whatever they are most worried about. For Cole and COx (writing after the Cuban Missile Crisis) it was the need to increase the human range so that nuclear war wasn't a species ending calamity. For O'Neill, a Catholic writing after the Club of Rome crap, it was a place where bottlenecks on population could be eased. For some people now, space is where Ay-rabs and Liberals can be avoided.

Posted by: James Nicoll | June 18, 2007 3:47 AM

248:

OK, I'll grant you all your caveats regarding the ability of individual humans to travel interstellar distances. But that's not the only way to skin this cat.

We will, more than likely, survive as a technological species long enough to develop transportation technology sufficient to deliver payloads to other star systems with human lifetimes not being a limiting factor. Human beings won't be involved at all beyond the launching of such robotic star-farers.

We will, more than likely, develop robotic technologies and AI's of sufficient capabilities to be able to code up from stored DNA patterns, human beings and an ecosystem suitable to support human existence. Even to be able to raise infants to adulthood, educating them in whatever culture and societal norms were deemed useful.

That seems to me to make it entirely possible for human beings to spread throughout the galaxy -- in the fullness of time, even while the stock they originally came from goes extinct. And it may even be possible (I'm out of my depth here) to use coupled quantum interactions to provide instantaneous communication between scattered outposts of humanity.

The only really difficult part is for technological humanity to survive the growing capabilities of the species while retaining most of our behaviors and instincts from our primitive past -- once every bunch of thugs on the planet has nuclear weapons (or worse), it's going to be extremely difficult for technological humanity to survive. THAT is the real challenge ahead of us.

Posted by: Constantnormal | June 18, 2007 3:54 AM

249:

Antimatter catalyzed nuclear pulse propulsion
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antimatter_catalyzed_nuclear_pulse_propulsion

Posted by: bobby | June 18, 2007 4:02 AM

250:

Interesting post, Charlie. I sometimes wonder what my ancestors were thinking when they left the temperate shores of England for Manitoba, Canada. Ye gods! Winters lasting 6 months with bouts of -50C, snowbanks above doors, and in the summer, +40C, flash floods, tornadoes, boggy wetlands with killer mosquitoes and blackflies. Many of the first settlers died of starvation and exposure, not having figured out how to live in such an inhospitable climate. I agree that given current technology, it doesn't yet make sense to colonize Mars or the Moon or go anywhere of any appreciable distance, but it might make sense to people in the future with different technology and different views of themselves and the universe. I hold out hope because the number of mass extinctions on Earth in the past does not bode well for our long-term survival as a species unless we do spread out.

Posted by: Sue | June 18, 2007 4:02 AM

251:

Justin @ 237:

Beautiful!

Posted by: adam | June 18, 2007 4:06 AM

252:

It's all a matter of when, not if or how. Why? Because of Einstein's favourite phenomenon: compound interest, converted in this case to exponentially falling unit costs.

Estimate a present day cost of doing interstellar travel. Estimate a long run rate of productivity growth (the inverse of unit cost decrease) say 1% p.a. Then use the rule of 72 to estimate a cost halving time (in this case 72 yrs). Keep on halving the costs until they come down to something reasonable. Count the number of halvings and multiply by the halving time and you have your answer.

It is likely to be a conservative one. There is no shortage of matter or energy in the universe which nobody else seems to be using. Kurzweil makes a reasonable case that productivity growth rates will accelerate in future. The only physical constraint likely to cause a diminishing returns effect is if the speed of light proves to be unbreachable.

This otimistic economics of space flight mkes the Fermi Paradox- why isn't someone else here?- even more puzzling. But then somebody has to be first.

Posted by: Paul Mason | June 18, 2007 4:07 AM

253:

"Lack of imagination is often mistaken for impossibility. A fool will claim he can tell them apart, proclaiming he neither has a smart answer, yet that nobody can possibly be smarter than him. A wise man will always assume the former."
-- Me

What you basically did was try to force todays paradigms on a bigger problem. Kind of saying nobody will ever have petabytes on a PC because harddrives are only 1TB big. Which is not far from proclaiming 640KB is enough for everybody, simply because your imagination doesn't extend as far as the applications.

Energy sources available to us are VAST and can easily provide for the requirements you've mentioned. If we started tapping thorium as a nuclear fuel, we'd have enough to sustain the current level of humanity's power consumption for over 1000 years. Producing it would simply require some specialized high-capacity reactors that run for .. umm.. a tad more than several days .

To pull of a jump like that the bigger problem would be STORING the energy rather than producing it. That too can in theory be done using antimatter, albeit at a prohibitive cost using today's technology (somewhere in the trillions USD per gram produced) and let's not mention efficiency.

Another thought trap you seem to be falling into is that dictated by existing paradigms that have to do with space access. If we were to ship something the size of (or 100 times the size of) the Queen Elizabeth II to the nearest inhabitable solar system, that would allow you to lose a few of those magic wands you comissioned for self-replicating stuff.

This may yet happen well within in our lifetime, if CNT's get developed to a point strong enough, weavable enough and cheap enough to allow us to build space elevators. If that happens, there's absolutely nothing that prevents you from reasonably getting as much tonnage into space as you like with some very wide margins for "reasonable"

Another hidden assumption you're making is that human lifespan (more importantly, the *healthspan*, no use getting disabled and deteriorated old people who can't controll their bladder to another system) will remain as it is.
Another paradigm-shift may be awayting us around the corner in that field as well. check out www.sens.org (they're not selling anything, other than scientific roadmaps). A human 100 years old in a body wear-and-tear-wise equivalent to a 30-year-old today can change some key parameters in your equation. And it may very well happen sooner than later. In fact, using your magic wand numbers, he may have already completed a two-way trip.

Your article basically comes down to "The impossibility of going to other solar systems TODAY". Way to go, Sherlock. All I see you can do is recite 50-year-old sci-fi paradigms, not apply imagination to what different direction things may start developing tomorrow.

Posted by: Miki | June 18, 2007 4:11 AM

254:

What about terra-forming Mars or the moon to make it hospitable?

I think you forgot that one =P

Posted by: John | June 18, 2007 4:17 AM

255:

238: Yes. An elevator can be spooled down from space. That is how you deoploy the initial seed cable when you build the first one, and that is how you deploy a full SE if you have the means to raise it up to space (using, say, another elevator, or when you come to deploy one on Mars). This makes for what is a very intriguing hypothesis, that whoever builds the first SE will own space, simply because the exponential rate with which he can replicate his elevators will keep him owning much more than the competition.

In fact, since SE's would provide more than just a way to leave the atmosphere, providing also a means to slingshot yourself between planets, the FIRST thing that would be reasonable to set up on a mars colony is a SE that can slingshot things back to Earth.

And unlike for Earth, the materials required to build a martian one already exist.

Posted by: Miki | June 18, 2007 4:19 AM

256:

Magic wands are a dime a dozen!

Seriously, its pretty easy to think of 100 things _today_ that would seem like a magic wand to people only a 100 or even 50 years ago. Why are you so pessimistic about future technology, you have absolutely no idea what will be invented in the next 100 or even 20 years.

Of course colonizing the galaxy with todays technology is absolutely absurd, its like calculating how much steam engine energy it would take for you to get to the moon, theres no way you can build a locomotive big enough to get us there! and it weighs too much made out of iron!

I believe we will have advanced AI go to mars and beyond way before humans will, humans will make it to mars about the same time child like AI is coming out (10-20 years) I would think, who knows, no one does, but it will happen eventually, and yes even space colonization, its innevitable, 100 centuries from now, 1 million, who knows, how can it not happen?

People will go because of curiosity and adventure, the same reason they climb everest.

It was an awesome article, it got me thinking and I like that, thanks :)

Posted by: James | June 18, 2007 4:26 AM

257:

Carrot @244: "Funny, I just got back from Baghdad and that was the official line there, too."

It's true, too. It doesn't mean it won't hurt, or be unpleasant, and it doesn't mean that the people who start will be the people who succeed.

Iraq will not in chaos forever, and we will not be stuck on Earth forever. It also won't happen on ideologues' timetables, or look like their initial dreams. Which is Charles' point.

My point, on the other hand, is that his vision is self-limited to his own projected lifetime; the picture changes as you look further in time.

Posted by: Catfish N. Cod | June 18, 2007 4:29 AM

258:

Re 256:

As I recall, Martin Fogg got a timescale to terraform Mars of a few thousand years. Humans suck at deliberate programs of that length.

You'd have to import a crapload of volatiles to terraform the moon, since it is bone dry. It's probably easier to work out some way to melt Ceres and commit ecopoesis on its world-sea (You'll need a plastic sack to keep the air from escaping).

I reserve the right to feast on the tasty brainz of the first person to propose terraforming Venus with a handful of algae or who thinks moving Ceres would be easy because it's not in a gravity well.

257:

Kelvar is good enough for a lunar beanstalk.

Posted by: James Nicoll | June 18, 2007 4:33 AM

259:

At our current level of our technology, this blog holds true. Space travel in this point in our evolution is absurd.

You are forgetting though that there may be other forms of travel through the universe besides basic point to point explosive sub light speed propulsion. Physics that is still on the drawing board in the next Stephen Hawkins basement may be the basis for it. Its just too bad that many of us may not be around to see it.

Posted by: Mike G | June 18, 2007 4:42 AM

260:

Its just too bad that many of us may not be around to see it.

You are in turn forgetting that FTL drives are also time machines. They could come back and show it to us. Ooo looky, dark energy beams are collimated out here, well spank me with a kipper.

Posted by: Adrian Smith | June 18, 2007 5:39 AM

261:

Charles,
I liked your article it was a good reminder of just how vast the scale of distance is between the stars not to mention inside our solar system. My opinion on interplanetary colonization is that it may be possible out to a few AU within my lifetime, but economic and political possibility are another matter entirely. Regarding interstellar colonization unless our understanding of the universe changes dramatically it doesn't look to likely to occur in my lifetime. That's not too say never though. It is possible someone will actually figure out how one of those hyper drives is supposed to work. Maybe they won't. Is the rest of the galaxy going to be happy with our view of manifest destiny? Who knows. That said I wouldn't mind seeing a unmanned interstellar probe to another star. They could turn a small moon into a mass driver similar to what took place in red mars trilogy. It doesn't even have to stop, it can just eject micro satellites with solar sails to slow down. We could use one of Mars moons they are close and its not ours :)
Anyway thanks for the article.

Posted by: Ed | June 18, 2007 5:52 AM

262:

I say screw deceleration until we're dealing with the actual seed ship. Just make the robots and their cargo really durable and assume they'll stop when they smack into their destination. That also saves a lot of "slowing down at a reasonable rate" time that we'd otherwise be wasting.

I know it's going to do a lot of damage to the planet that way but hell, that's what the robots are for, right?

Posted by: Jason Ditz | June 18, 2007 6:09 AM

263:

Interesting article. I completely agree with all of your points except for the propulsion bit (which I mostly agree with). The thing that you didn't take into account is the possibility of using what is essentially a big gun to give spacecraft a high initial velocity. Think about something along the lines of a particle accelerator but scaled to accelerate something large. By that I mean an electromagnetic gun that forms a ring.

The craft may spend days, weeks, or months getting up to speed before it is let go and flies off tangentially.

Another thing that I think could actually let people colonize space (even if it is only local space) is creating a ship similar to the one in Rendezvous with Rama, but built from wire produced from Iron-Nickel asteroids that is wrapped circumferentially (the end caps are built first). If one of the end caps can move outwards as more wire is wrapped on, then the ship could be grown as long as the supply of building material will allow.

Posted by: Crenshaw | June 18, 2007 6:20 AM

264:

Funny article. I hope you get over your cold soon, so you can start thinking straight again. Funny comments too. Interesting how so many of them fall into the "who is to say what 10.000 years of scientific progress will bring" category :-)

It seems somewhat arbitrary, using the term "magic wand" for anything not currently available at Walmart. How about technology that requires no real scientific breakthrough, only engineering progress? Such as nanotechnology.

Ahh, nanotechnology. Taking out the cost of labor, and reducing the cost of engineering project to that of the initial design and of the materials and energy consumed. In space, where materials and energy are there for the taking, this reduces the cost of any project to the design cost. Regardless of scope.

Imagine launching a small package to a tiny asteroid, landing machinery for gobbling it up and spitting out a small solar panel. That will be a huge design effort. Launching a similar package to a larger asteroid, gobbling it up and spitting out an array of solar panels with a combined surface area rivalling that of the earth, will be a slightly larger design effort - the material and energy costs will be the same. Uncanny resemblance to magic though.

Or taking a number of asteroids apart, to build an array of electromagnetic rings, forming a solar-powered mass launcher that stretches across the solar system. Maybe 30AU. Maybe 100. The design effort involved in building one ring will certainly be immense. The effort involved in building an array of them, slightly larger. I can't be bothered to run the numbers, but one of those would be able to accelerate a decent sized payload to 90 or 99 or 99.9c, depending on how much energy you want to pump into it. A solar sail would then be used to brake a few years later, at the target star. Without invoking any new science even, just the the maturation of the engineering consequences of current science.

Such a system would not have a magic 100% efficienty, although it could be damn close. But, as someone pointed out nearly 20 years ago, we can do better. We can send mass back and forth across interstellar distances, using next to no energy, and no magic. With a mass launcher at the destination, the same system can be used for braking the incoming mass, capturing back the energy pumped into it, minus slight losses, and used for the next outgoing acceleration. That is so close to magic, it might be called a free lunch. Or launch. Whatever :)

Posted by: Birgitte | June 18, 2007 6:23 AM

265:

Would we really send 200 living human beings which need many tons of stuff each?

I think it's much more likely we'd send a bunch of DNA tubes, a cloning machine and a some robot "mothers".

The reduces the weight/complexity of the ship by orders of magnitude - no life support, no food requirements, no medical/recreation facilities, etc., etc.

DNA tubes also support big accelerations better and won't fight over the females or start rewiring the ship out of sheer boredom.

Posted by: Joce | June 18, 2007 6:41 AM

266:

220: i enjoyed reading your comment.

@ charlie: Some of your thoughts are very profound. However, I think these thoughts are way too modern.

Keep in mind the definition of modern refers to 'current' (not recent OR remote)

Posted by: outlawtorn | June 18, 2007 6:43 AM

267:

The most amusng comments of the above are the ones lecturing Charlie fucking Stross on AI, nanotech and The Singularity. Seriously, even if Google and Wikipedia are too much effort, the very site you're reading this on has his bibliography for chrissake.

Posted by: Chinedum Richard Ofoegbu | June 18, 2007 6:47 AM

268:

Heres for all of you statistics peeps out there:

Are you telling me that in your analysis about how big the universe is and how probable (or inprobable) intelligent life is, you couldnt consider the following:

With the 5 billion people on this planet, and then figuring the billions that existed before us and the trillions that will exist after us that not one person is going to come up with an idea that we can follow to penetrate these problems of interstellar colonization?

Sounds more like... maybe an 'earth' in a bunch of trillions of trillions of planets in the universe to me. (needle in a haystack, but oh wait the earth actually exists)

Posted by: forgotenthought | June 18, 2007 6:53 AM

269:

"isn't so much a justification as an appeal to sentimentality, for in the hypothetical case of a planet-trashing catastrophe, we (who currently inhabit the surface of the Earth) are dead anyway. The future extinction of the human species cannot affect you if you are already dead: strictly speaking, it should be of no personal concern."

-- ah... Charlie... a concern for one's descendants, and for the human race in general, is scarcely "sentimentality".

I'm extremely concerned with the future of humanity, and even more concerned with smaller groups of increasing relationship to myself within that, and most concerned of all with the future of my nieces and nephews and grand-nieces and grand-nephews and _their_ children.

I'll gladly sacrifice a great deal of blood and treasure for _them_.

Concern for 'generations yet to come' is one of the basic responsibilities of human life.

Posted by: S.M. Stirling | June 18, 2007 7:02 AM

270:

Charlie: As for the $25,000 ticket, I could afford that tomorrow.

"What will the neighbors be like"?

Hell, my grandmother didn't have the slightest idea what the neighbors in Boston would be like; she'd never been more than 15 miles from the Wiltshire dairy-farming district where her family had lived for (literally) a thousand years. All she knew was that there were jobs available.

And she didn't even _get_ to Boston. Her ship hit an iceberg in the Gulf of St. Lawrence and she ended up in St. John's, Newfoundland, after the survivors were rescued. That's where she met my father's father.

Virtually everyone who emigrated to early Virginia died. The average life expectancy in the first two generations was about 18 months. It took _one hundred years_ before a self-sustaining population of English settlers was established there -- as late as 1707, well over half the adults were English-born.

Posted by: S.M. Stirling | June 18, 2007 7:14 AM

271:

The conservatives only care/cared about space as a way to dominate the current world (space race to star wars e.g.)

Not sure how the libertarians feel. Seems they would be fine with it so long as it's not the government paying for it? What am I missing here?

Of course I agree 100% with your analysis, even though I've seen it presented many times before. The ultimate problem is the distance in reference to our lifespans and our inability to get along with one another over time. There's also a huge leap of faith being made in our ability to be confined to such a small space over what amounts to a lifetime. The physics limitations are no doubt the straw that breaks the camel's back, but the biological and mental challenges are extreme to the point of being ludicris.

I still want to try to colonize Mars (that's as "doable" as it'll ever get). Right after we figure out how to pay for universal health care and then after we figure out how to create and spread enough wealth around that everybody is full, fat and happy. And when there's too much urban blight in Gobi City. Then we shoot for the stars.

Enjoy.

Posted by: Tim Fuller | June 18, 2007 7:20 AM

272:

I talked myself out of this line of thought, but I should write it down.

Living things do all kinds of stupid things all the time. From a future observer's perspective it doesn't really matter whether it is locally rational for a polity to blow 10% of GDP on some project. What matters is finding out that some god-forsaken island in the middle of the Pacific you can't really farm has a bunch of humans on it. So all we need is a future environment where energy is so cheap that a bunch of lunatics can afford to waste huge amounts of compactly-stored energy on an ideologically-driven irrational project as a side-show.

Of course, at that point I realized those conditions also implied that the largest remaining city in the US was now Des Moines, and the Temple/Dome Of The Rock and the Kaaba had become research projects in nuclear salting.

One half-singularity that might be worth thinking about is one where bugs derail IT, but access to dumb energy hits the sigmoid. Very _Missile Gap_; we don't need remotes much smarter than what we have to reduce the sun to near infrared. Perhaps another sysadmins-with-guns world.

Posted by: Jay Carlson | June 18, 2007 7:23 AM

273:

The idea that a human, because we will die, doesn't have a personal feeling for the survival of the human race is absurd. Not only did I have many wonderful philosophical discussions with my grandmother about the concept of extended family, mortality, and seeing history through relatives, I see in my sons' lives their future and I care about it EVEN THOUGH I WILL DIE. To think anything else would be to... discredit the will to create something of permanence, like great art, that will outlive the artist.

Posted by: DCer | June 18, 2007 7:25 AM

274:

"A large chunk of the problem I have with space colonization at current tech levels is that in terms of direct human experience there's no "there" there; just a succession of cramped metal rooms, some of which have windows with a view onto a place that will kill you stone dead in seconds if you ever break the glass."

Why should they be small metal rooms? I'd think the way to build a space city is to start with a large, rocky asteroid and hollow it out--lots of solar energy to melt and bubble rock, or run rock crushers. If you can find a good source of the elements necessary to support life, the next thing I'd be doing is making dirt and planting fast-growing trees. (Shades of Heinlein.) Provided you had a reasonable connection with earth to stabilize the artificial ecosystem, I think you could probably get to a livable environment in about 10 years, and a comfortable one in about 100.

Posted by: Randolph Fritz | June 18, 2007 7:29 AM

275:

Thank you for this excellent essay, which considers the problem in the correct way, in my opinion. Especially on this: "the conclusion I draw as a science fiction writer is that if interstellar colonization ever happens, it will not follow the pattern of historical colonization drives that are followed by mass emigration and trade between the colonies and the old home soil."

The travel duration requires an enormous amount of energy if one wants to flirt with relativity to reduce the duration. In fact, with v=0.1c one still remains in “Newtonian�? orders of magnitude and the energy requirements remains very big. And if this shall be spent for a single astronaut, then indeed, there is nothing to obtain from such a project.

On the other hand, we have a “human�? resource: time. Man must manufacture a vessel which cancels time :). I do not mean about a strange SF device but simply about a Nation. The nation is a place of life for which time does not count anymore. Men live within the Nation by working towards their own ends, of which a part contributes to the construction of the Nation itself. Centuries may pass, but the Nation continues its own way.

Charlie, you evoke a generation ship of 200 people. You concluded from it that it is not easily bearable and that such project is doomed to failure. But what is impossible to 200 is possible to 10 000. One should not conclude only since it is difficult to 200, it is inevitably impossible by increasing manpower. For example, it is certainly more conceivable to 200 than to 1 alone, like is said at the beginning of the article. So let's continue on this way, and we will see.

It is necessary to start from a small Nation and not from a tribe. A tribe is diluted in one century, and needs the contribution of neighbor tribes, that of which is obviously lacking in outer space. It is necessary to gain at least a factor 10 on travel timescale. It is number which stabilizes a society, its order, laws and institutions.

At least starting from a "critical mass". One wants the smallest possible nation but which is a true nation. It is simply necessary to ask which is the smallest possible nation which is viable on a long historical term, of over one millenium, say. I think that the size of a antique cities gives us a reasonable order of magnitude : between 10 000 and 100 000. Let us negotiate it to 50 000 :) but it is the order of magnitude which counts (10^4 to 10^5). If one wants a better reasoned order of magnitude, one could start from Metcalfe's law which says that the usefulness of a network is proportional to the square of the number of users. A society is a kind of network, and its usefulness is the whole of the capacity of action and thinking which it offers to its members to satisfy their happiness.

If the usefulness is not sufficient, the network must have another resource (women of another clan, for example…) if not, it ends. One can well conceive a threshold of individual happiness reached for a specific society size, at least for a certain duration. The "characteristic time" of a tribe of N=100 being 100 years, a state of manpower N=100 ² should bring us to 1000 years. It is what we need to reach a nearby system at the speed of ~0,01c.

To shelter such a nation in total autonomy in respect to Earth requires certainly a vessel of dimension never considered before. But one should not get stop by that. At least, one can try to see what it would be possible to build while changing concept, because we can. Build a very large vessel requires energy and some mechanism able to build resistant structures starting from this energy. We have solar energy in abundance and a terrestrial biological inheritance able to build, thanks to this energy, strong structures like woody plants. If the action of the man simply consists in feeding a vegetable structure with molecules like H2O, CO2, NH3, P, S… resulting from the small bodies of the solar system, one has with photosynthesis an extraordinary lever to build a living organism in space, sufficiently solid and perennial to shelter a small humanity, without investing exaggeratedly in term of anthropic energy production. That would nevertheless constitute obviously a colossal project.

In order of magnitude, it is necessary to imagine something like 10 km in diameter. It is an interesting order of magnitude because it meets two requirements. A cylinder of 10x10 km (diameter, length) has a surface of 314 km2, that is to say, for 50 000 inhabitants, a density of 160 inhab./km2, which is completely reasonable. Considered from the point of view of the numbers, one has the necessary place. Considered from the point of view of the individual, one is in a structure whose dimensions are of about size of the horizon available to the glance on the terrestrial sphere. In other words, the sight is similar to the one we have on Earth. Sure it is a closed environment. But at the scale of the individual, it is big enough.

In a certain way, one can say that the minimal size of a Nation holds in what the glance may embrace, when calculating it well.

From an architectural point of view, we could imagine double hollow vegetable fiber walls fed from the interior (in water, minerals, light) and forming a tight structure in rotation on itself to create gravity, an ocean of 25-30 m in depth floating on top of "continental plates" supported by ballast. The vessel mass would reach about 25 gigatons. To maintain such a structure, with enough luminous energy necessary to its maintenance (~1000 times larger than anthropic energy necessary to industry or the households) one needs to burn about 1 gram of deuterium a second (or of Helium3, but it is less available). Over one millenium, that represents about 30 000 tons. It is reasonable. It is not even too much.

To move this structure towards a nearby system in a millenium requires a much larger energy. And there, I acknowledge that I am a little less optimistis. Some rather realistic innovations should nevertheless appear in the future. With chemical fuels, the impulse available is about 450s. With thermonuclear fusion we can reach 1 million seconds. It is reasonable to base the order of magnitude of our ambition on this value, at the same time for the propulsion, the fusible matter extraction and for the production of energy necessary to the ecosystem.

But the essential is to conquer the "time factor": to build a nation which has "all its time", compared to the Earth. Without immediately speaking to move towards a stellar system, there is a first thing to consider to decide whether the project is perennial: if man manages to devote his efforts to transform 1 to 10 small bodies of the solar system (asteroids or comets) into a living structure, an Ark, then he has established definitively in space. He is already there for eternity, and that is not nothing, so long we ensure to obtain 30 tons per annum of fusible isotopes (or the equivalent in solar energy, as long as one did not leave the solar system). He then disposes of an arbitrarily long time to accumulate the fuel mass needed to join the first interesting stellar system, which does not need to include a viable planet "naked head": to colonize space, it is not inevitable to live on another planet. What is needed, is simply being able to live in space without time limits.

Admittedly, to initiate such a project would represent a really colossal effort on the basis of our current socio-political situation. But I think that one can as of today considering and think about the "critical path" which would lead us to this goal.

It would be a Nation which would undertake this goal for itself, and not a nation, or a coalition of nations which would undertake it for a tiny fraction of its members. It is very different. An organization like NASA financed by taxpayers can send a few tens of guys per annum in space. But here, the project constitutes the essential of a new Nation. Also, in addition to financing the NASA, the federal state or the states finance also infrastructures, school, justice, a lot of thing which constitute the life of the whole nation. There is a switch from 1 to 1000 at the level of resources. And not only the states are able to act: private individual can build houses, a society builds factories and all this contributes to the construction of the Nation. Within the framework of the Space Nation, it is not the legal status of the project which counts, but the fact that everything is devoted to the same structure, in the same structure. Therefore it can be only a nation.

The critical path on the basis of the current state towards an autonomous Space Nation simply consists in letting a thousand people starting to work on such project, until they provide enough to their own needs to start building the Ark without claiming further resources from Earth.

Gilgamesh
"Interstellar Ark", http://strangepaths.com/interstellar-ark/2007/02/14/en/

Posted by: Gilgamesh | June 18, 2007 7:30 AM

276:

Charlie, you are my personal hero and I will now buy all of your books in triplicate. :)

Justin @237: nice summary.

Posted by: Michael Booth | June 18, 2007 7:30 AM

277:

Before actually colonizing other planets, wouldn't it be just a grand idea to get our act together on this planet?
Quite a number of challenges, right? No need to get into details, I hope...

Space travel for the masses seems like a really stupid thing... An utter waste of precious resources!!! And, please, don't start yelling that not exploring space inhibits progress.

However, apart from from my difficulty with how we take care of this planet, I love SF.

Posted by: Waldemar | June 18, 2007 7:30 AM

278:

The thesis of space colonisation being a non-starter is a reasonable one, for the short term, and given our current technology and societial norms. However I have no doubts that in the longer term (say 500 years) we will get there.

Eventually greater longevity will alter our view on the feasibility of a 40-100 year trip. In a population of billions you will always be able to find volunteers, and in any thousand year period there will be people or groups affluent and crazy enough to fund it. Most probably for religion (ironically evolution seems to be currently selecting for religious fervour, the most fecund people in our hedonistic society are zealots)

There is almost no chance that humans will be wiped out. Nuclear war won't do it, climate change won't have any noticeable effect on our population, disease will never kill off more than maybe a third to a half of our population even in a worst case scenario (deadly diseases make for poor propegators). We, or our children, meat or machine, are going to be here for the very very long term.

Energy will not be a limiting factor even in the short term. A massive change is happening even now as we are almost without a doubt only maybe 20 years away from vast cheap utility scale solar (unless something even better comes along). Fission reactors are an easy and viable alternative with fuel available for millenia and we can already build fusion reactors should we need to. (the only problem is scale and cost, and that becomes easier in space with no gravity on the structure and no hugely loaded vacuum vessels to create). The levitated dipole reactor at MIT would be a doddle to adapt for space use, and would also make an excellent Bussard type brake at destination. Pulsed fusion/fission ala Orion (or Medusa for hydrogen bombs) concepts has fantastic performance for interstellar travel, with I believe Isp's approaching a million seconds possible. Fuel is so abundant it is ridiculous.

If humans are going along for the ride then the ships will be enormous, this is also dictated by the physics and engineering of the propulsion systems we are currently capable of creating, and the need for biological shielding. This being the case we do not really even need planets habitable or otherwise at the destination star once we are happy living in interplanetary space. We can build what we want when we get there out of the scraps orbiting the star.

There are also a lot of magic wands even now being hinted at:
-Possible hints at gravity control (gravitomagnetic london moment measured in spinning superconducting disks in the last year).
-Quantum nuclearites (weird epilineal earthquakes possibly produced by ultradense blobs of matter passing through the earth at 100's of km/s), what could we do with one of htose blobs if we caught it?
-Robert Bussards/EMC2 possible breakthrough in creation of small clean fusion reactors, ideal for cheaper launch systems.

I am less sanguine about antimatter. Far too difficult to store.

By far the biggest factor that needs to be accounted for has got to be the coming of AI. Surely just a matter of time (20-100 years). It will alter our society so profoundly we can not even begin to imagine what we might be able to achieve as a result when a single person (in space) can potentially command or have at their disposal the economic equivalent output of a town or city or even country.

I am not holding out any hope that intersteller colonisation will start in the next 300 years. But I would think it almost a certainty in the next 10000. Given enough people with the capability, and sufficient time it is bound to happen regardless of how uneconomic, stupid, boring or unappealing it might seem to us. Think monkeys and typewriters.

Within 20-100 million years the galaxy will be fully populated by our progeny (whatever they may be).

Posted by: Robert L | June 18, 2007 7:32 AM

279:

I agree completely that trade with colonies in other solar systems is unlikely to ever occur. But your comment essentially that "anything that happens after we die should be of no concern to us" is very much against what most people think. Most people try to leave an inheritance for their children, and educate them well, not for the immediate benefits, but for the thought that they are leaving something good behind. The purpose of galactic colonization is NOT trade, commerce. It is the dream that our children may remain once we die. Our sun will burn out, everyone believes this. If we want our descendants to survive, colonization is the only way.

A slow generation ship could require a much more stable mini society and even perhaps a different human nature than is common today. Perhaps our only "children" will be robots. But, our culture is very different from the cavemen of the past. Someday, a culture that can send descendents to space may exist.

Posted by: EddieB | June 18, 2007 7:39 AM

280:

Mankind has overcome many obstacles in the process of colonizing the earth. The biggest driving force to do that was either to conquer others, or to flee from the conquest. The problem with space colonization is there for also the existing problem of mankind - tribal diversity.
Do you send a homogeneous group (same race, religion, language etc) to ensure harmony or do you send the best of the best of the best and risk exporting war and self destruction. Can you trust the colonists not to enslave some of their fellow travelers, or even to kill them to keep their tribe "pure"? Do you even try to preserve the cultures of earth? We may be able to overcome the science, but can we overcome the primal urge to kill what we do not understand or those who disagree with us, or even those we just do not like.
Should space colonization be a human (