Thread: First Planet in Habitable Zone Confirmed

Originally Posted by Sornaensis

What?

On a generation ship, everything would be built to be recycled. Meaning you aren't sitting on a million tons of rations that will be depleted. The ship simply becomes a miniature earth for a few hundred years.

AH, you meant for the ship itself. (I also suspect people wouldn't be mindless consumers aboard a generation ship, too. That would defeat the ship's ability to sustain life for that long.)

But still, fuel for a power source would be required, I'd assume nuclear power, but then again you need all of the resources to BUILD a ship with such an expanse and GET the pieces into outer space (that would take countless launches before assembly.) It's such a massive project we may not have sufficient resources on earth to accomplish it!

Originally Posted by ThePreserver

AH, you meant for the ship itself. (I also suspect people wouldn't be mindless consumers aboard a generation ship, too. That would defeat the ship's ability to sustain life for that long.)

But still, fuel for a power source would be required, I'd assume nuclear power, but then again you need all of the resources to BUILD a ship with such an expanse and GET the pieces into outer space (that would take countless launches before assembly.) It's such a massive project we may not have sufficient resources on earth to accomplish it!

It's theoretically possible we could first mine resources from other planets in our solar system. If they have any useful ones.

Originally Posted by khh

It's theoretically possible we could first mine resources from other planets in our solar system. If they have any useful ones.

This is true, but then we need to use resources and launch fuel to get mining equipment on a large enough scale to build such a ship! And then you have to launch THOSE resources off of other planets somehow...

Originally Posted by ThePreserver

This is true, but then we need to use resources and launch fuel to get mining equipment on a large enough scale to build such a ship! And then you have to launch THOSE resources off of other planets somehow...

The asteroids have extremely shallow gravity wells and lots and lots and lots of rocket fuel.

Originally Posted by cmind

The asteroids have extremely shallow gravity wells and lots and lots and lots of rocket fuel.

But do they have any other valuable resources? Metals that can withstand the impact of micro-meteoroids over and over and over as it travels for hundreds of years through space? You need a hell of a lot of resources... you can't build a ship out of pure fuel... OR CAN YOU?! :O

Originally Posted by ThePreserver

But do they have any other valuable resources? Metals that can withstand the impact of micro-meteoroids over and over and over as it travels for hundreds of years through space? You need a hell of a lot of resources... you can't build a ship out of pure fuel... OR CAN YOU?! :O

Asteroids, as a whole, basically have all the same elements as Earth's crust. Did you really not know this?

Originally Posted by cmind

Asteroids, as a whole, basically have all the same elements as Earth's crust. Did you really not know this?

Once you get the metals/Oxygen out of the asteroids, how do we turn that into usable ship parts? Would we have a refinery floating in space, or do we have to bring it back down to earth? (In either case, where do we get the fuel to either 1) get the refinery INTO space, or 2) get the elements down to earth and back up to space?)

I'm confused by the logistics (or lack thereof) proposed for this project... Even if they have the base for fuels and metals... what do you do with the raw materials?

None of these projects sound feasible in ANY way; we need the initial resources to BUILD all of these "things" which only serve to go out and find more materials... but then we have to have a way to build the ship parts out of that, we need energy sources for all of these "things", which require more resources... It just seems a bit larger in scale than we can handle at any point even remotely within the next couple centuries (physics permitting) to build a generation ship.