Population

[okgo]

The bit that made me laugh the most was the (knackered) bit

[MiniMan64]

Mars said:

grumbledoak said:

Dakkon said:

There is a school of thought that wants humans to consume all of Earth's resources as this is the only way we will invest in star ships properly when we have to find somewhere else to live in the universe.

That is a fairly dumb school, TBH. We are a long, long way from the ability to live on Venus or Mars, and travel to another Solar System is beyond all but our imaginations.

Venus is uninhabitable - too hot. Mars is too cold and has no atmosphere. To colonise anywhere else, we'd need to travel for more time than men have been men, which means we'd need to design and build spaceships which are life-sustaining for many generations, be absolutely certain that the planet we shoot those spaceships at is hospitable, and engineer a way of decelerating our spaceship even though the engines will have not fired for many many many years/centuries with a fuel source which hasn't gone off.

You're right... anywhere else is beyond all but our imagination.

To be honest, I can't imagine going anywhere beyond our system in "normal" spaceships as we know them, the distances (and more importantly times) are just too vast. If we're going to travel to "strange new worlds" there's going to have to be some sort of paradigm shift in Physics that enables us to jump to new places rather than simply fly there.

Within our system Mars is possible but only if they can make use of the polar regions but there's not really a lot there. Long term I would have thought Jupiter, it's moons and the belt would be more likely targets but again, it's a big old step.

Of course all this is completly irrelevant in light of the Professors miniture Dyson Sphere which with the associated MS Paint diagram is simply an amazing context.