POLL: Floating Biospheres in space Vs. Terraforming

What do the people at DU think is a smarter option?

Building giant floating, self-sufficient island biospheres in space or attempting to Terra-form planets like Mars?

My own view is Terra-forming another planet (or even just building and maintaining an enclosed base) is just too difficult whereas, a floating biosphere would be much easier for us to control in all aspects.

And there is some advantages to a floating biosphere:

1.) You can move it. It can be used for space travel. You can avoid asteroids. You can reorient its solar panels to collect more of a star's energy. (You can't move a planet)

2.) You don't have to look for a suitable environment as you would in terra-forming. You just build as many biospheres as your resources can support.


Which would you rather see?

than terraforming.

And it's scalable. If you can make one O'Neill colony, you can eventually make a thousand, given enough resources (and realistically, before we can even think of building something like O'Neill colonies, we'll have to develop space-based mining capabilities, and be able to extract resources such as minerals from moons and asteroids.

One of my favorite images (from the National Space Society Bernal Sphere art page):



Another great image:



This was from the inside cover of Dr. O'Neill's book: The High Frontier: Human Colonies in Space

Why keep the options small when both can be viable?

Make them by hollowing out asteroids. They could be used as generation ships to travel to other stars if they have an internal source of power.

Rotation could simulate gravity inside the sphere but only on and near the equator. The rest of the inside of the sphere would be weightless or near weightless (gravity would decrease as you move from the equator towards either of the poles). A wheel were you walk around the inside of the outer rim (like in 2001 a Space Odyssey) would probably be a more efficient use of materials.

The Bernal Sphere, the Stanford Torus, etc. They're all designed to rotate for centrifugal "gravity".

What about bungee cords connected at all times from your feet to your arms? In fact, what about special bungee cord suits that put resistance on all your movements???!!!!!

Otherwise, it's just a matter of time until the colony is toast.

Biospheres more expensive in terms of what you get for materials used. However, they are faster, the 'instant gratification' option between these two. But most importantly, we could use them here in our solar system. No FTL needed. I think they are more likely for that reason alone.

But, in the long term, they are fragile, dependent on the technological prowess of their inhabitants. We've only been what we'd consider a technologically capable species now for, depending on your opinion, a hundred to a few thousand years. Much of the universe operates in cycles, and I think it's likely technological prowess in a species is cyclical also. It's very possible we could build biospheres, then lose the ability to maintain them. Bye bye life support systems.

Terraforming, if you can use it on a suitable subject world, would be a bargain. However, it would take a long time, if you give a rats ass about stabilizing what you have built up. (Easier to build incrementally to what you want over time, vs slamming all the ingredients together in JUST the right quantities.) And the less optimal the subject world, the harder it gets. Mars and Venus are good examples of 'not quite right.' Yes, they could theoretically be terraformed, but it could easily take thousands of years. I don't think humans, as a species, is capable of such long term planning. At least not yet.

Now, if we had FTL travel, and could pick and choose, we could likely find more suitable subject worlds, where terraforming would be easier and faster. Drop the time required below a thousand years and now it's 'more' feasible. And a single terraformed world would provide more value than thousands of biospheres. Further, once established, they are FAR more resilient, should our species lose technological prowess.

So, for short term, biospheres are the way to go. Long term, nothing beats a terraformed world. (Unless you want to go all ring-worldy on this.)

how about large habitats that accelerate at 1g (providing the gravity) where generations can live their lives while travelling through the galaxy looking for "close enough" worlds that could then be terraformed and inhabited.

Better yet, automated probes could find the worlds and begin the terraforming process which could be complete by the time the generation ships arrive.

From what we know of physics, creating anything that can accel at 1g long term (ie: for human generations) is unfeasible. Fuel requirements are too huge.

Now, there are some other limits to that idea. I forget the specifics, but at 1g you can eventually reach speeds at which relativity becomes a major factor. (Within a few years, I think?) Eventually, you can go so fast that, for the occupants of the craft, anyplace in the universe is reachable. Viewed from outside you still can't go faster than light. But from inside, BIP! you are there. Meanwhile, thousands, or millions, or billions of years have passed by on Earth.

However, with our current knowledge, your ship will STILL run out of fuel long before you reach those speeds. Worse, without fuel, you can't slow down at the other end of the trip. Worse/worse, even if you COULD reach those speeds, you'll have to face enormous hurdles regarding collisions with dust and debris. At relativistic speeds, even elementary particles can screw you up royally.

Without FTL, a better option is a ginormous ship, with a large population, traveling at more reasonable speeds, using rotation to simulate gravity, and taking many, many generations to get anywhere. That's better, technologically at least. Sociologically? I wouldn't bet on it. For thousands of years, somewhere on this planet, our species has been continually at war. I find it hard to image that, over even a several hundred year trip, that such a ships occupants wouldn't find even a SINGLE thing worth fighting over.

Crygenics? Freezing corpsicles and thawing them out at the far end? More likely to reach the other end of the trip, IF it can be done. But there are vast hurdles there too. Human bodies don't like staying still very long, so merely cool storage isn't enough. Yet cellular structures don't take well to freezing solid. Sure we've frozen and thawed a few cells. But that's far different than, say, a human brain.

More likely, I think, is DNA storage, and a big, automated, literal Mother Ship. When it reaches the destination it vats a ton of clones, raises them from infancy to adulthood, teaching them what they will need to know, timed so that they will be ready when they reach the trips end. But, who plans that education? How can a robot nurture an infant? How functional can such a 'shake and bake' society be?

And what is at the end of the trip? I love the idea of automated probes that seek out potential worlds and, when one is found, they send back a message and then start terraforming. But there are some pitfalls. How can such a probe handle what will likely be a vast array of differing factors that determine 'suitability?' Larry Nivens 'Known Space' stories did a great job providing a few examples of less than suitable worlds that a probe might trigger on. Further, I think it's highly likely that any world we find which meets suitability criteria will already have life on it. Do we terraform THAT? If we do, we may change conditions such that existing life forms can't survive. What if some of those were intelligent life? We just committed genocide by proxy. Just imagine if such a probe had arrived in our solar system, say, around 1000 BC?

Everywhere we look, there are enormous hurdles, some technological, some sociological, some even moral. None of it, really, is within our ability right now. An orbital biosphere is the first-most-likely, in my opinion. The ISS is the closest we have to that, and it is, figuratively, just a rat warren of tunnels drifting in space. Yet even that is imperiled by budgetary and political concerns here on Earth. It's damn fragile thing, in universal terms. So we've a long, LONG way to go.

But, what is exciting to me, is that there IS somewhere to go. That it IS challenging. I can think of nothing more depressing than a universe where we know everything and have been everywhere. Thankfully, we are even further from that point then we are from biospheres and terraforming and generation ships and the dreamy possibilities of FTL. There's a lot of 'there' out there for us.

that moving FTL (directly or indirectly like say through a wormhole) is likely not possible.

I do think we've established that it would require a lot more advanced technology then we can currently imagine.

... when you can create a resilient synthetic intelligence that's at home in space? I think if we do "colonize" space that's how it will happen.

Those who wish to continue living as biological humans will exist as a sparse population of traditional farmer-hunter-gatherers on an earth that is essentially a wilderness preserve. Those who want to travel among the planets and stars will trade in their meat suits for something more comfortable in a non-earth environment.

There's no need to terraform a place like Mars if you've got a body designed and equipped for the natural Martian environment. There's no need for orbiting biospheres or generation ships if you've got a body designed for interplanetary or interstellar space.

I think if ordinary biological humans ever become common visitors to outer space it will be courtesy of the beings who already live there.

one can transfer human consciousness, a daunting task. If you can, sure maybe we trade in meatsuits for something more durable. If not, then it's going to have to be frail human biology or nothing. I suspect it will be easier to create biospheres and terraform then it will be to transfer human minds, but I'd love to be wrong, nothing cheats death like removing the mind's need for a frail human body.

they need power for creating heat, possibly oxygen, water, shielding for cosmic rays, etc.

It's too easy in oh so many ways to sabotage by accident or on purpose.

A lot harder than a terraformed planet. I also think it isn't as difficult to terraform as you assert. I think we it's doable. Drop a few ice comets on Mars and you've introduced a bit of water and heated up the planet enough to possibly create a tentative atmosphere. I guess my point is that we can already speculate how to do it, once you can figure out how to do something, it usually ends up being done sooner or later.

because there is no magnetic field.

but it takes quite awhile for the solar wind to wear down a thick enough atmosphere. I'd guess you could get quite a few lifetimes of atmosphere out of it and you'd merely need to replenish what is lost through the solar wind.

That's one of the factors that Gerry O'Neill considered 43 years ago. Even in the outer system, you can use solar energy with large concentrating mirrors.

On a planetary surface, you'll have interruptions more than half the time.

to various systems, and I'm pretty sure solar power works even with a few clouds.

If I create a livable planetary environment then cutting a few wires or sabotaging a few machines does not likely mean death for all. If I am on a biosphere in space, I can sabotage power conduits, create an explosion that destroys the space/environment boundary, etc.

... which of course we KNOW must be the 'goldilocks zone' or have to be maintained in such a way for Human Biology to thrive.

Are we Not Borg?

Not saying the cybernetics doesn't have it's own downside... but then so does 'terra-forming' and 'biospheres'.

Can human conciousness be adatable to less biological contrivances? <smile>