First habitable planet....

@sonhouse said
Sure but it will be a lot easier to settle Mars than it ever will be to do Venus. We might be able to live in satellites above the surface and benefit from the greater solar energy available there but that is about it. We couldn't very easily get minerals and metals from the surface of Venus, not when you have to endure 1000 degree F and 1500 PSI acidic atmosphere.
The Sovi ...[text shortened]... for the journey.

https://www.space.com/37146-nuclear-fusion-rockets-interstellar-spaceflight.html

As a kid I used to read stories like that all the time. For sure, we would at least have colonies in outer space in my lifetime. It's disappointing that space exploration has sputtered so badly in the last 60 years, while other tech has flourished. Looking at the tech they used in Apollo missions, getting to the moon and back safely but now billions of people all have more computing power in their pockets than that rocket ship. Yet our most 'innovative' space projects involve pointlessly launching electric cars into space.

As the Don would say, it's sad.

@wildgrass said
As a kid I used to read stories like that all the time. For sure, we would at least have colonies in outer space in my lifetime. It's disappointing that space exploration has sputtered so badly in the last 60 years, while other tech has flourished. Looking at the tech they used in Apollo missions, getting to the moon and back safely but now billions of people all have more ...[text shortened]... projects involve pointlessly launching electric cars into space.

As the Don would say, it's sad.

Yes it is. The US government didn't realize what they had a half century ago and just thought, we beat the Soviets to the moon, end of story.

@sonhouse said
Yes it is. The US government didn't realize what they had a half century ago and just thought, we beat the Soviets to the moon, end of story.

I guess its just too expensive. I read somewhere that Apollo was the most expensive non-military government project ever.

Still, Apollo inspired a generation of scientists to think big. It seems like all the current astronomy projects are small and trivial. We should have multiple space stations. We should have a moon colony. We should have a manned mission to Venus.

Instead, just like carbon-free nuclear, the ISS is being decommissioned. Manned space missions are ongoing from China and India, but the plan there is just to recreate exactly like what we already have done.

@wildgrass saidWe should have a manned mission to Venus.

Are you mad?

@humy said
Are you mad?

No?

@wildgrass said
I guess its just too expensive. I read somewhere that Apollo was the most expensive non-military government project ever.

Still, Apollo inspired a generation of scientists to think big. It seems like all the current astronomy projects are small and trivial. We should have multiple space stations. We should have a moon colony. We should have a manned mission to Venus.

...[text shortened]... from China and India, but the plan there is just to recreate exactly like what we already have done.

It's not entirely obvious to me what the point of manned space missions are. GPS satellites have an obvious use, the Hubble Space telescope and its successors are all useful missions. The dangers involved in space travel go beyond the immediate risk to a persons life if there's a fire, sudden depressurization, or problems during fast re-entry; although they've learnt a lot there are issues connected with radiation and so forth. So manned space missions need a lot of justification.

@DeepThought
One justification is getting the hell off this planet to make it possible to survive a non-survivable event like Chicxulub which would definitely ruin your day. That one piled up debris 700 feet deep in BURMUDA for god's sake. Not many humans would be alive after that and we would go extinct.
With independent viable colonies on Mars, as dangerous and expensive as it will no doubt be along with the obvious no magnetic shield and such dooming us to live underground till we can get a real atmosphere and a real magnetic field planet sized but if Earth bites the big one humans can start over and if another big asteroid does hit, a few years later things will settle down and we can go back and start over. As it is......,

@deepthought said
It's not entirely obvious to me what the point of manned space missions are. GPS satellites have an obvious use, the Hubble Space telescope and its successors are all useful missions. The dangers involved in space travel go beyond the immediate risk to a persons life if there's a fire, sudden depressurization, or problems during fast re-entry; although they've learnt a ...[text shortened]... issues connected with radiation and so forth. So manned space missions need a lot of justification.

The point is to establish a viable alternative to Earth for humans and life. A space ark, if you will.

p.s. also there is lots we can do with manned flights to orbit Venus or Mars that we can't do with robots. Possibilities would be greater for discovery.

p.p.s. Great line in "First Man" (not sure if it's a real quote or Hollywood, but..) Neil Armstrong says :".... I don’t know what space exploration will uncover, but I don’t think it’ll be a exploration just for the sake of exploration. I think it’ll be more the fact that it allows us to see things that maybe we should have seen a long time ago, but just haven’t been able to until now."

@sonhouse said
@DeepThought
One justification is getting the hell off this planet to make it possible to survive a non-survivable event like Chicxulub

The problem with that argument there are far more cost effective ways of dealing with that which will save many more lives.
For example; deflecting the asteroid to prevent it striking the Earth; Difficult but not impossible and I bet a lot cheaper than putting colonies on Mars, which won't save the rest of us left behind here on Earth.
Also, if it really cannot be deflected, I bet it is possible to save much more of the people of Earth and with the same if not less cost by, in preparation in case one day we learn of an impending impact that we cannot stop, building a number of huge underground shelters in mountains etc and over at least two continents and that can sustain many thousands or even millions of people underground for many years until conditions improve and become habitable after the impact.

To date, I have completely failed to hear a single argument for putting people into space that makes any sense to me other than for purely political reasons which, for me, can never justify the cost.

@wildgrass said
p.s. also there is lots we can do with manned flights to orbit Venus or Mars that we can't do with robots.

Like what?
Remember, robots and AI are improving all the time and whatever currently cannot be done with robots/AI that can be done by humans can always be more cost effectively be dealt with by doing research and development into robots/AI specifically for doing that thing rather than send people in space to do it.
Already unmanned probes and robots have done far more for the science discoveries than manned missions and with far far greater cost effectiveness.

@humy

Still, the human urge is to explore and go where it is dangerous. That is the story of humans.

@sonhouse said
@DeepThought
One justification is getting the hell off this planet to make it possible to survive a non-survivable event like Chicxulub which would definitely ruin your day. That one piled up debris 700 feet deep in BURMUDA for god's sake. Not many humans would be alive after that and we would go extinct.
With independent viable colonies on Mars, as dangerous and expensive ...[text shortened]... es hit, a few years later things will settle down and we can go back and start over. As it is......,

Most of the problems you are talking about will not make humans extinct. All out thermonuclear war is not an extinction problem for humans. Even the more dire greenhouse scenarios aren't a species survival problem. SciShow on YouTube did a video on this, I'll dig out the link on request. I'm not arguing against all manned missions, just that they be well justified, and the recognition that we have a billion years to do this in.

@wildgrass
I think the space agencies of the various countries must combine efforts to establish a human base on the moon. That's the closest to earth, and cost won't be too high. Then, if a disaster of some epic proportions strike the earth, that's the place to escape to. After whatever happened simmers down, we can repopulate the earth and start over again.
Except if the occurance also affects the moon...

@humy said
The problem with that argument there are far more cost effective ways of dealing with that which will save many more lives.
For example; deflecting the asteroid to prevent it striking the Earth; Difficult but not impossible and I bet a lot cheaper than putting colonies on Mars, which won't save the rest of us left behind here on Earth.
Also, if it really cannot be deflected, ...[text shortened]... s any sense to me other than for purely political reasons which, for me, can never justify the cost.

The problem, it seems to me, is that any large extinction event rocks coming our way are freakishly hard to detect, and we simply wouldn't have time to "build a number of huge underground shelters in mountains". Doing this way in advance would be smarter, of course, and even perhaps stationing some detectors (think radio-wave "radar detectors" ) in orbit around various moons (or, even better, at Lagrange points) in the solar system to give us even more warning of incoming objects would be better than depending on dumb luck.

@suzianne said
The problem, it seems to me, is that any large extinction event rocks coming our way are freakishly hard to detect, and we simply wouldn't have time to "build a number of huge underground shelters in mountains".

So why not build them well BEFORE we know any extinction event is coming our way? For example, do it within, say, the next ten years (or whatever time period is feasible), and REGARDLESS of whether we come to know an extinction event is coming within that time period?
I am using the same 'logic' here as that used to go to Mars/Moon but building a number of huge underground shelters in mountains will cost many times less for saving many times more people. So, given whatever finite X amount of $ we have to spent on this, building huge underground shelters in mountains will save more lives than sending people to Mars /Moon and we shouldn't send anyone to Mars/Moon; -same logic.