Traveller's Thoughts (Real ones)

On the train today i was listening to a track close to my heart. It's a 45 minute long IDM mix that evokes a sensation the of cold, distant digital communication of satellites venturing into the dark unknown. I first listened to it on a night i spent the whole evening reading about early space exploration, which is probably why, but still i cannot imagine it making sense with anything else. I may load it up and add it on here, if any of you are actually interested in listening to a 56mb track anyway.

This is really only a few thoughts (fleshed out since with links and videos) about the prospect of human life on other planets. Like most people space exploration really interests me. At least thinking about it does. Imagine the awesomely surreal things we might find, and imagine personally being amongst the first to see it- how far you would be from old human civillisation at that point, both in body and mind.
Inevitably though, any practical colonisation destroys that very beauty of those worlds. Any planet that we settle on will have to be similar to earth for us to exist comfortably on it, and if it isn't, we will have to make it so. On Earth, gravity is 1G, days take 24 hours, water covers 71% of the planet, humans are at the top of the food chain. Our civillisation- and the technology that sustains it- rely on these kinds of fundamental facts and profound changes will have to happen in any culture that settles where it is different. Colonising other worlds are not events that will happen overnight, they may take generations to happen.

Take Mars for example. Mars is actually pretty similar to us in some fundamental ways- the days are only slightly longer than ours, and its tilt (which defines variations in daylight hours) is only 2° more extreme than ours. However.. it's gravity is only 0.38G, air pressure a fraction of ours- and much, much thinner than humans can handle without suits. Mean temperature is -63°C, meaning even if you managed to raise the temperature by 60 degrees, water still freezes. Also, the years (and seasons) are twice as long, though that's probably more a novelty than a problem. Maybe taller buildings could be built on Mars, on account of lower gravity, but fuel would be in higher demand because of the lower average surface temperature.

More fundamental though is the impact on our biology. If astronauts struggle to stand or sit up when they return from only a week in space, I wonder if children born on Mars could ever visit Earth, with the dramatic increase in gravity that they have never been exposed to? Perhaps after a few generations the ability to gain enough muscle would have been lost? And what about height, would martian children grow taller? If the weight of the head on the shoulders is a limiting factor to its size, would martian offspring be able to develop bigger brains?


Then there is interplanetary communication. Empires must be well connected to stay strong. Radio messages, sent at the speed of light, take between 3 minutes (when mars is next to earth) and 22 minutes (when it's on the other side of the sun) to transfer. Double that time if you're waiting for a reply (maybe more if they're crap at getting back back to you right away). That really renders everyday communications like telephone conversations, internet connections, live broadcasts etc between planets impractical, though it's still enough time for more general information to transfer and stay relevant. If we are fortunate enough to find a habitable planet around Alpha Centauri, the next closest star (a binary system in fact), a one-way radio transmission takes 4 over years- a goverments' turn in office could be completed in that time. That planet would pretty much be on it's own.. 8 years is too long a lag for any kind of interplanetary consultation, let alone to call for back up in a crisis. And that is the next closest star to us. Our methods of travelling and sending information through space seriously needs to be reformed if we're going to make any realistic stab at this. Maybe even to involve portals and wormholes.


Anyway back to Mars. As this rocket scientist explains, the toughest part of Martian (and any space) colonisation is actually getting stuff there, especially living things.
Aside from travel to Mars taking months, the actual landing of heavy equipment is a problem, as descent parachutes wouldn't do enough in such a thin atmosphere. But don't panic.. A solution to this is the very sexy space elevator:



So what to do with Mars if we do get there? It's cold, dry, the atmosphere is thin and unbreathable. Apparently, you can terraform it. The process will take several generations, so it's quite a selfless futuristic investment. Some ideas on how this insane process might work is discussed here, on this otherwise awful documentary:



(Really? I mean "humanity in 7 billion years time"? Really? Isn't the earth only supposed to be 3-4 billion years old? We're talking a timescale twice as long as life could have even existed for.. If there is any single species that can in someway be identifiable as 'humans' in 7 billion years time, something has gone horridly wrong)

Other planets like Venus have also been discussed. Given Venus has an atmosphere 90 times denser than ours, full of sulphur and carbon dioxide and gets as hot as 500°C, you can see how laughable that suggestion is.. though, only by our current capabilities. The easy answer is 'terraform it!' to get this result:


..you kinda see how every planet in our wake is just going to be turned into another earth. I think thats a bit sad, yknow? 'Colonisation of alien worlds' my arse, it's just turn any bit of rock into an earth look alike.

Well, some nutter called Geoffrey Landis came up with a solution to both problems: instead of trying to live where it's 500°C and 90 Atmospheres down on the surface, just live where it's 1 Atmospheres and 0-50°C instead: in the Venusian cloud tops. Breathable air (for humans) is bouyant on venus, like how helium is on earth. If our cities were enclosed, they would float with the clouds, above the acidic ocean. We could sail about and drop an anchor, like a ship in the sea, only without any land i guess. but still that's cool, amirite?

Even so, the year and days are very different on venus. Years are 8 months long, and a Venusian year has.. wait for it.. less than two days a year. Thats over two months of daylight, followed by over two months of night. Sunset and sunrise probably last a whole earth day or something.. and given its coloured, hazey atmosphere, theyre probably very ambient and pretty.

Something i often wonder about is how our sense of time will be changed on other planets. Our current units of days, months and years are based on Earth cycles. What will we do on other planets? carry on counting out minutes as if nothing had changed, or start working to new systems? Remember there's some real weird ones out there. Uranus spins on its side, like a wheel, so while the day/night cycle is rapid at the equator, at the poles it is the same as a year, and by that we're talking 84 years. What will these new timescales to our heads? I'm not aware of any experiments that reveal how well humans adapt to longer (or shorter) sleep/ wake periods, though having said that, i seem to end up doing it to a certain extent quite naturally.

I get this feeling it's time to shut the fuck up now. At this point i wanted a picture of Spider Jeruselum on Mars talking about the terraforming program to finish off the post, but i'm lending that book out to a friend at the moment so i can't scan it right now. As a substitute, i tried finding a picture of Invader Zim on Mars, but google images was fruitless on this. So instead, have summa this: