It is cheaper to develop robots within a simulation environment featuring real time and precision physics engines as it is cheaper. The algorithms that work in this environment will work well in the real world. The environment also provides one with the mechanical designs for producing the real robot in real life. If the instruction manual for a production facility were fed into this environment it could manufacture and program the robots. We have to give a thumbs up to all game developers that develop within such environments. Just imagine what would happen if you released alpha go in a physical body (forget the fake cheap robot bodys having two joints being featured around) into the general population, it would quickly learn how to optimize its existence
think of the things you would do if you were 21 for 1000 years
A few years later technology allowed this far far away civilization to extend life by 1000 years, they conquered disease and finally one could choose the age they wanted to be, it got so good that life became eternal. There were a few side effects however.
THE HOTEL
On a galaxy far far away from ours the civilization is advancing very fast, they began building robots awhile back its taken them 50 years to get where they are. The robots are self repairing and also make other robots when a need arises. The robots grow crops, clean house, teach, drive, cook, iron, treat and assemble great sounding amplifiers and speakers. As a result everything is free, there is no money, no banks, no loans, no taxation,no jobs,no handouts,no retirement fund,no rich, no poor, no money laundering or tax evasion etc in essence there are no money crimes or artificial problems created by money. No one owns anything. Ok before it got this cosy, there was a great war as property and land were reclaimed for the common good. All housing was redone by the robots of course to accommodate a projected growing population that had dwindled during the reformation wars.
A few years later technology allowed this far far away civilization to extend life by 1000 years, they conquered disease and finally one could choose the age they wanted to be, it got so good that life became eternal. There were a few side effects however.
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This one made me grin. And the one about not being so open minded that your brain falls out. Sound advice that.
To travel these great distances that have been untried.
nasa all they do is waste money on probes on mars than maybe more than they could have cared to use if they where landing dozens on the moon all the time but only few so called claimed man landings?
I mean why isn't there a youtube nasa live stream on the moon surface near to all the so called LEM's that landed there?
I used to believe but gotten fed up with it all. But can still talk about it.
As for "us" i'm afraid to say it. But we are stuck here and sooner you all get a grasp of that the better. What you think any joe is going into space? I don't see manned spaceflight as common as cars or planes like its mud on the ground.
To get from A ..... to ...... B planet we need to get there safely and fast as possible. I mean we all moan how long the car, train plane flight is, don't we now. I rest my case.
To start building on new planets if one is found within the hundreds to thousands or maybe million years? By which time this thread/forum won't exist anymore. You see my point. I'm not cynical about this its the FACTS that say we are stuck here. Here until our own suns fuel runs out and takes out the whole solar system.
If we are serious about finding a new planet then now is the Time as the clock is ticking and the sun isn't gonna give us a time extension.
nasa all they do is waste money on probes on mars than maybe more than they could have cared to use if they where landing dozens on the moon all the time but only few so called claimed man landings?
I mean why isn't there a youtube nasa live stream on the moon surface near to all the so called LEM's that landed there?
I used to believe but gotten fed up with it all. But can still talk about it.
As for "us" i'm afraid to say it. But we are stuck here and sooner you all get a grasp of that the better. What you think any joe is going into space? I don't see manned spaceflight as common as cars or planes like its mud on the ground.
To get from A ..... to ...... B planet we need to get there safely and fast as possible. I mean we all moan how long the car, train plane flight is, don't we now. I rest my case.
To start building on new planets if one is found within the hundreds to thousands or maybe million years? By which time this thread/forum won't exist anymore. You see my point. I'm not cynical about this its the FACTS that say we are stuck here. Here until our own suns fuel runs out and takes out the whole solar system.
If we are serious about finding a new planet then now is the Time as the clock is ticking and the sun isn't gonna give us a time extension.
Unfortuneately the Earth’s rotation does not yet follow 1°/per day — it is slowing down and will get close for a while sometime in the future.
In some ancient cultures they did keep time this one. They then had a big party for the extra 5-6 days.
dave
Wow. I am not sure I dare dip my toe in this jam-filled donut of a discussion. Serious sack-a-mole topix underway.
Anyway - 360 degrees, 365 days: the Phoenicians came up with the 360 thing. Closest number to the known 365 day year, and also essentially the closest "rich factor" number.
360 prime factors ( 2 2 2 3 3 5 );
multiplicative factors ( 1 2 3 4 5 6 8 9 10 12 15 18 20 24 30 36 40 45 60 72 90 120 180 360 )
No other number from 1 to 1000 like it, actually. One might argue (2⋅2⋅2⋅2⋅3⋅3⋅3 = 432) but its not close to 365. And yes, 365's almost "godly" closeness to 360 then made 360 = 60 × 60 = 45 × 8 = 30 × 12 = 90 × 4 quite the thing for the Phoenicians.
As pointed out, noticing that there are essentially 4 distinct seasons, each roughly 90 days long, well … 360 is good for that. Noting that other things like circles can be divided into quadrants to useful calculation end… 360 is good for that. Each of the Olde Cultures had their math-magic, which got shared fairly broadly as universal. We really can thank the Phoenicians for the 360 degree circle. But not the 24 hour day!
That - the 24 hour day - was quite the revision of the older Roman hour system. They decided on 10 hours in the day, and 4 quarters at night. 14 all told. Not the same length. With the widespread use of sundials (I mean, a stick and a circle - how simple can you get?) sundials were "good enough" timekeepers. Just so long as everyone agreed to use the shortest day of the year as the hour marker. That way even in mid-Summer, the 10 hours would still be the same length. And everyone could commute to work more or less on time.
We today have vestiges of this yet in play. Navy mariners are familiar with the four quarters of the night watch system. Except for those people living above the Roman latitude (which is to say most of Europe and a fair fraction of America), everyone down near Rome had sufficiently long Winter days to still have 'em long enough to NOT have to commute to work in the dark. The 10 winter hours are fabulously (in Rome) almost exactly ¹⁰/₂₄ of the whole day-of-hours. Thus… it still worked. Roman hours were almost exactly present-day hours.
So, with modernity came the need for working in the dark. It wasn't enough to have 5 bells at night: official 10th hour bell, second quarter bell, midnight, predawn bell and first hour bell in the morning. Oh, it was, but people actually working didn't like the DAY hours being quite constant and the night bells shifting all over the place with seasons.
Standarization on 24 hours came rather easily - especially the more North you were in Europe. Your daylight hours in Winter DIDN'T correspond to the Romans 10 hour days, so you needed to do night-time hour-counting anyway. 24 hours (which just happened to fit - a pure coincidence) seemed good. Moreover, 24 was yet-another of the factor-rich little numbers 24 = 2⋅2⋅2⋅3. Divisible by 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 8, 12 and 24.
Just about every society given to keeping track of calendars and schedules (I mean: when are you supposed to plant, Mr. Lunk? Seriously… are you keeping track? Let's go talk to the priests. Actually, no need: they've got some pretty spiffy virgins to sacrifice next weekend. Pure spectacle.)
And so on. The revolution to keeping track of time-of-day by reference to midnight was something of an astronomical leap. People tended not to argue much with the night-time keepers of time as to when "midnight" was. Likewise, not much argument about "Noon". Sun-dials took care of that. But how to number them? Well, no on much liked the Roman system ("first hour, second hour, … tenth hour") tho it worked for daylight hours. With the 24 hour day, cutting it into 2 halves seemed reasonable; mid day was an ideal cut over.
Heck, they had no computers, so arcane (but practical) numbering schemes for daylight hours seemed just fine. 8 AM to about 6 PM were the 10 guaranteed (in Rome) daylight hours in Winter. You got more before noon, and more after noon in a nice symmetry. All's well that rises (and sets) well.
There you are.
The short history of modern time.
GoatGuy
Anyway - 360 degrees, 365 days: the Phoenicians came up with the 360 thing. Closest number to the known 365 day year, and also essentially the closest "rich factor" number.
360 prime factors ( 2 2 2 3 3 5 );
multiplicative factors ( 1 2 3 4 5 6 8 9 10 12 15 18 20 24 30 36 40 45 60 72 90 120 180 360 )
No other number from 1 to 1000 like it, actually. One might argue (2⋅2⋅2⋅2⋅3⋅3⋅3 = 432) but its not close to 365. And yes, 365's almost "godly" closeness to 360 then made 360 = 60 × 60 = 45 × 8 = 30 × 12 = 90 × 4 quite the thing for the Phoenicians.
As pointed out, noticing that there are essentially 4 distinct seasons, each roughly 90 days long, well … 360 is good for that. Noting that other things like circles can be divided into quadrants to useful calculation end… 360 is good for that. Each of the Olde Cultures had their math-magic, which got shared fairly broadly as universal. We really can thank the Phoenicians for the 360 degree circle. But not the 24 hour day!
That - the 24 hour day - was quite the revision of the older Roman hour system. They decided on 10 hours in the day, and 4 quarters at night. 14 all told. Not the same length. With the widespread use of sundials (I mean, a stick and a circle - how simple can you get?) sundials were "good enough" timekeepers. Just so long as everyone agreed to use the shortest day of the year as the hour marker. That way even in mid-Summer, the 10 hours would still be the same length. And everyone could commute to work more or less on time.
We today have vestiges of this yet in play. Navy mariners are familiar with the four quarters of the night watch system. Except for those people living above the Roman latitude (which is to say most of Europe and a fair fraction of America), everyone down near Rome had sufficiently long Winter days to still have 'em long enough to NOT have to commute to work in the dark. The 10 winter hours are fabulously (in Rome) almost exactly ¹⁰/₂₄ of the whole day-of-hours. Thus… it still worked. Roman hours were almost exactly present-day hours.
So, with modernity came the need for working in the dark. It wasn't enough to have 5 bells at night: official 10th hour bell, second quarter bell, midnight, predawn bell and first hour bell in the morning. Oh, it was, but people actually working didn't like the DAY hours being quite constant and the night bells shifting all over the place with seasons.
Standarization on 24 hours came rather easily - especially the more North you were in Europe. Your daylight hours in Winter DIDN'T correspond to the Romans 10 hour days, so you needed to do night-time hour-counting anyway. 24 hours (which just happened to fit - a pure coincidence) seemed good. Moreover, 24 was yet-another of the factor-rich little numbers 24 = 2⋅2⋅2⋅3. Divisible by 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 8, 12 and 24.
Just about every society given to keeping track of calendars and schedules (I mean: when are you supposed to plant, Mr. Lunk? Seriously… are you keeping track? Let's go talk to the priests. Actually, no need: they've got some pretty spiffy virgins to sacrifice next weekend. Pure spectacle.)
And so on. The revolution to keeping track of time-of-day by reference to midnight was something of an astronomical leap. People tended not to argue much with the night-time keepers of time as to when "midnight" was. Likewise, not much argument about "Noon". Sun-dials took care of that. But how to number them? Well, no on much liked the Roman system ("first hour, second hour, … tenth hour") tho it worked for daylight hours. With the 24 hour day, cutting it into 2 halves seemed reasonable; mid day was an ideal cut over.
Heck, they had no computers, so arcane (but practical) numbering schemes for daylight hours seemed just fine. 8 AM to about 6 PM were the 10 guaranteed (in Rome) daylight hours in Winter. You got more before noon, and more after noon in a nice symmetry. All's well that rises (and sets) well.
There you are.
The short history of modern time.
GoatGuy
Let's see.
What's beyond Earth?
That was the original topic, no?
Most everyone who at least is marginally interested in Astronomy and Space and "where we are" does or should know that we've just about completely discovered who-all our nearest neighbors are, planet-wise.
MERCURY: There is the dwarf planet Mercury, which is hotter'n hêll on one side, and as cold as space itself on the other. Only recently was it discovered that it actually rotates at a rate slightly different than its year, so the same face doesn't always point at the Sun. It takes 2 'years' of Mercury's orbit for there to be 1 "solar day". Cute, eh? It serves to remember that Mercury's hot side is not hospitable in any way, shape or form. Its orbit is only 0.4 of Earths distance average, so it gets ¹/₀.4² or 6.25× as much solar heating per m². We get about 1,362 W/m² at the edge of space (about 1,000 W/m² down here on Dirt). Mercury gets 4.6× to 10.2× as much, or 6,270 to 14,000 watts per square meter.
VENUS: is our dear “sister planet”. Almost the same size and mass as Earth. only 0.72 of Earth's distance, having 1.9× the sunlight at some 2,600 W/m² at its cloud tops. Lots of sunlight. But it also has a really, really thick (93× Earth's) atmosphere composed almost entirey of CO₂ and some nitrogen. And big, bright yellow-white clouds of SO₃ (sulfur trioxide) particles, constantly being broken down by sunlight and reformed by cosmic rays. The surface is - rather similar to Mercury - ridiculously inhospitable. 462° C, or about as hot as a wood-fired pizza oven. (850° F)
Habitation of Venus possibility: Its thought that "aerostat" balloons could be levitated in Venus's atmosphere at an air pressure of about 1.2 to 1.5 Earth atmospheres indefinitely. Filled just with nitrogen (or with hydrogen, since it isn't flammable in Venus's atmosphere), essentially active pumping of the balloons (with copious solar energy, yay!!!) could keep quite habitable floating cities aloft indefinitely. The protective envelope of the atmosphere ABOVE the floating city would keep it from being endlessly perforated by meteorites. They, like on Earth, flare off as "shooting stars" in the way-upper atmosphere. Moreover, the temperature at 1.2 atmospheres is about 30° C. Good human temperature.
EARTH 'nuf said.
NEOs - Near Earth Objects - well, here's one that's less well known. It turns out that there are without exaggeration literally tens of thousands of smallish-to-middling space rocks that continually orbit in "Earth Crossing" orbits. They are - stability wise - pretty stable, and in what are called "resonances". A resonance is like the harmonics on a guitar string: integer ratios of the main period (earth's Solar orbit). There are 3:2 and 2:3 and 3:4 and 3:5 NEOs. They remain in these orbits 'cuz the orbits are virtually guaranteed to keep the objects AWAY from Earth whilst they're crossing Earth's path. Cute! (The ones that weren't? They already crashed Into us. Yes, the poor dinosaurs might've realized their demise from one, 65,000,000 years ago.)
Colonization and Economics - since they're small "found objects", they are diverse. The surface gravity of even the larger of them tho' isn't much: escape velocities of a few hundred meters per second (one could hit a golf ball with a 9 iron and send it away forever). No atmospheres. ¹/₁₀₀ of force of gravity. Thought to be nearly impossible to walk on bipedally. But some, a few, are CHOCK FULL of quite-valuable minerals. Metals galore. Precious ones too. Carbon compounds aplenty. Stuff like cement. Precious little water. That need come from the burned out comet cores.
EARTH TROJANS occupy yet another of the weird orbits: they're IN Earth's orbital path! And they circle the Sun every year, as dutifully as lap dogs. They do so by being at the Lagrange points of our orbit: 60° ahead of us (relative to the sun) or 60° behind. Or 180° opposite. In any case, these are also where astronomers want to put instrumentation satellites, being relatively stable orbital positions. Colonization? Same as the NEOs. Depends on what nature of space-junk has collected.
EARTH:MARS asteroids "AMORS" - these are a rare group that exist between Mars and Earth, that cross neither Earth's orbit nor Mars'. Most are locked in complicated resonance orbits which very frequently "exchange positions" with other more simple orbits. 433 Eros is perhaps the most famous, being the first asteroid we landed upon by NEAR Shoemaker orbiter. We've "been there done that!". Colonization? Some argue that these are PERFECT spots to start colonizing if we really are going to set up shop on Mars in the near future. Good places to figure out how to tunnel into and build stuff on the inside of. To protect from deep space radiation. Also to go a'mining. Very little gravity. No water. Still… like "a refinery", a good spot to hold lots and lots of fuel, water and other basic supplies.
MARS and its Moons - those Moons, Deimos and Phobos, are thought to most probably be "captured AMOR rocks". Just goes to show how active the AMOR bunch are in changing orbits (and becoming subject to capture). Phobos and Deimos would be absolutely perfect (and indeed, are known to be critical) as the space-based orbiting waystations for Mars landers and Mars takeoff shuttles. Being fairly small, surface gravity is weak. But still enough to bunny-hop on. And a good spot to store fuels, water, oxygen and so on for the Conestoga Wagons of the Mars Emmigrant Parties.
The Asteroids - well before we discovered all these other ones (above), it was surmised that essentially all the little points-of-light that appeared to be kind of like tiny planets were in the ASteroid Belt. The region between Big Ol Jupiter at 5 AU and Mars at 1.5 AU. There's a LOT of space 'tween the two. Enough for LOTS of resonant stable orbits of space-rocks to build up over the aeons. These too are excellent opportunities - especially for the Mars Freight Train era of Human colonization. Potentially numbering in the tens of millions, certainly 1% or more of them may well be "frozen sponges" of water or ammonia. Captured comets that haven't quite boiled off. VERY useful for converting to fuel, oxygen, water and fertilizers.
BEYOND MARS - you've got the Jovians. Jup, Saturn, Neptune, and Uranus. Each is huge. Dwarfing Earth. None of them have surfaces that could even slightly conceivably be landed on. But no matter! They all have PLENTY of moons, all quite land-able. Very exotic, too. IO, with its fountains of liquid sulfur. Ganymede with its giant ocean, covered in water ice. Calisto, looking like it got hit by a paintball gun. And so on. If we're ever going to go significantly into the "space orb mining and manufacturing" part of our future endeavors, these Jovian satellites will be crucial to provide a nearly limitless supply of raw materials. Most of them not needed much in the way of refining before use.
THE KUIPER BELT - Extending out from inside Pluto's orbit (30 AU) to about 50 AU, there is a now-well-known belt of hundreds-of-millions of asteroid (and smaller) sized rocks, blobs, accretions and so on that never comes into the Inner Solar system. Well, not "never", but dâhmned seldom. This is the home of Haley's comet. Other so-called “short period comets”. Short … 'cuz like Haley at 76 years orbital time … short because they're not long like the similarly named “millenial comets”, those known to have 1000+ year orbital ephemera. This lovely belt has some of the largest competitors to Pluto's status as an almost-planet. Actually one that may be larger: Makemake. (Most say it is ⅔ Pluto's size tho' the jury is still out)
HABITABILITY of KBOs KBO = Kuiper Belt Objects. Well … they're really, really out there. If we get around to active and industrious mining of the Trojan Moons, the KBOs would be perfect for Robotic exploration and exploitation. There are a LOT of them out there; we just can't find them at present unless they're fairly big. It is kind of amazing how dim sunlight gets (less than 1 watt/m² compared to Earth's 1,363 W/m²) at Pluto's orbit. Pluto was quite difficult to find, and it has a 2,600 km diameter. Imagine finding things only 100 to 200 km in diamter! They'd be 600× to 300× dimmer than Pluto! And things smaller than that? Wow. The KBO belt is thought to have tens of millions of cometary-class blobs drifting about. It is REALLY huge and not constrained to the Plane of the Ecliptic (the plane of Earth's as well as the Inner planets orbits.)
BEYOND KUIPER - then there's the very famous "OORT CLOUD" … extending from "the cliff" (the fall-off of KBO belt objects at 50 AU) to about 10,000 AU or so. There are, conservatively, billions of Oört Objects out there, some of them potentially huge. Indeed: just recently orbital calculations have indicated a HUGE planet waiting to be discovered in the Oört cloud. Or there could be 3 of them. With 2,500 year periods, and so far from the Earth that tho' they are big, we just haven't gotten lucky finding any of them yet.
From OORT come the aperiodic comets. The fly-by comets which we find, see, and never see again. Most are "disturbed" in the Oört cloud by close-encounters with other Oört Cloud objects. Or maybe with the 10th planet. The disturbances in their orbits are almost ridiculously small - a few hundred meters per second, or 5% of their nominal drift rate. But that change is enough to sometimes "vector" them into the solar system, where after thousands of years (from the time of being disturbed) they come close enough to Sol to start boiling off their vaporous load. Instead of points, they become fuzzy blobs in telescopes. Then getting closer, they develop real tails. Then they whiz around the sun - a few percent actually hitting Ol Sol - then zing off again in another direction, never to be seen again.
HABITABILITY - is essentially "zero". But this is not to say that the nearer ones, or the ones found with deep, deep space surveys in the future might not be yet-another source of fuels, water, oxygen, organics, metals, and so forth.
We just cannot think of they as "wayposts" on their own: one would never want to slow down a space ship enough to rendezvous with an OCO (Oört Cloud Object) What'd be the point? Once you get the speed to be jetting about, you simply don't want to stop to have tea at the Last Teashop in the Universe. Just saying.
Well there you are.
A short synopsis of "what's out there".
That we CAN get to.
Without a completely significant breakthrough in reactionless propulsion.
GoatGuy
What's beyond Earth?
That was the original topic, no?
Most everyone who at least is marginally interested in Astronomy and Space and "where we are" does or should know that we've just about completely discovered who-all our nearest neighbors are, planet-wise.
MERCURY: There is the dwarf planet Mercury, which is hotter'n hêll on one side, and as cold as space itself on the other. Only recently was it discovered that it actually rotates at a rate slightly different than its year, so the same face doesn't always point at the Sun. It takes 2 'years' of Mercury's orbit for there to be 1 "solar day". Cute, eh? It serves to remember that Mercury's hot side is not hospitable in any way, shape or form. Its orbit is only 0.4 of Earths distance average, so it gets ¹/₀.4² or 6.25× as much solar heating per m². We get about 1,362 W/m² at the edge of space (about 1,000 W/m² down here on Dirt). Mercury gets 4.6× to 10.2× as much, or 6,270 to 14,000 watts per square meter.
VENUS: is our dear “sister planet”. Almost the same size and mass as Earth. only 0.72 of Earth's distance, having 1.9× the sunlight at some 2,600 W/m² at its cloud tops. Lots of sunlight. But it also has a really, really thick (93× Earth's) atmosphere composed almost entirey of CO₂ and some nitrogen. And big, bright yellow-white clouds of SO₃ (sulfur trioxide) particles, constantly being broken down by sunlight and reformed by cosmic rays. The surface is - rather similar to Mercury - ridiculously inhospitable. 462° C, or about as hot as a wood-fired pizza oven. (850° F)
Habitation of Venus possibility: Its thought that "aerostat" balloons could be levitated in Venus's atmosphere at an air pressure of about 1.2 to 1.5 Earth atmospheres indefinitely. Filled just with nitrogen (or with hydrogen, since it isn't flammable in Venus's atmosphere), essentially active pumping of the balloons (with copious solar energy, yay!!!) could keep quite habitable floating cities aloft indefinitely. The protective envelope of the atmosphere ABOVE the floating city would keep it from being endlessly perforated by meteorites. They, like on Earth, flare off as "shooting stars" in the way-upper atmosphere. Moreover, the temperature at 1.2 atmospheres is about 30° C. Good human temperature.
EARTH 'nuf said.
NEOs - Near Earth Objects - well, here's one that's less well known. It turns out that there are without exaggeration literally tens of thousands of smallish-to-middling space rocks that continually orbit in "Earth Crossing" orbits. They are - stability wise - pretty stable, and in what are called "resonances". A resonance is like the harmonics on a guitar string: integer ratios of the main period (earth's Solar orbit). There are 3:2 and 2:3 and 3:4 and 3:5 NEOs. They remain in these orbits 'cuz the orbits are virtually guaranteed to keep the objects AWAY from Earth whilst they're crossing Earth's path. Cute! (The ones that weren't? They already crashed Into us. Yes, the poor dinosaurs might've realized their demise from one, 65,000,000 years ago.)
Colonization and Economics - since they're small "found objects", they are diverse. The surface gravity of even the larger of them tho' isn't much: escape velocities of a few hundred meters per second (one could hit a golf ball with a 9 iron and send it away forever). No atmospheres. ¹/₁₀₀ of force of gravity. Thought to be nearly impossible to walk on bipedally. But some, a few, are CHOCK FULL of quite-valuable minerals. Metals galore. Precious ones too. Carbon compounds aplenty. Stuff like cement. Precious little water. That need come from the burned out comet cores.
EARTH TROJANS occupy yet another of the weird orbits: they're IN Earth's orbital path! And they circle the Sun every year, as dutifully as lap dogs. They do so by being at the Lagrange points of our orbit: 60° ahead of us (relative to the sun) or 60° behind. Or 180° opposite. In any case, these are also where astronomers want to put instrumentation satellites, being relatively stable orbital positions. Colonization? Same as the NEOs. Depends on what nature of space-junk has collected.
EARTH:MARS asteroids "AMORS" - these are a rare group that exist between Mars and Earth, that cross neither Earth's orbit nor Mars'. Most are locked in complicated resonance orbits which very frequently "exchange positions" with other more simple orbits. 433 Eros is perhaps the most famous, being the first asteroid we landed upon by NEAR Shoemaker orbiter. We've "been there done that!". Colonization? Some argue that these are PERFECT spots to start colonizing if we really are going to set up shop on Mars in the near future. Good places to figure out how to tunnel into and build stuff on the inside of. To protect from deep space radiation. Also to go a'mining. Very little gravity. No water. Still… like "a refinery", a good spot to hold lots and lots of fuel, water and other basic supplies.
MARS and its Moons - those Moons, Deimos and Phobos, are thought to most probably be "captured AMOR rocks". Just goes to show how active the AMOR bunch are in changing orbits (and becoming subject to capture). Phobos and Deimos would be absolutely perfect (and indeed, are known to be critical) as the space-based orbiting waystations for Mars landers and Mars takeoff shuttles. Being fairly small, surface gravity is weak. But still enough to bunny-hop on. And a good spot to store fuels, water, oxygen and so on for the Conestoga Wagons of the Mars Emmigrant Parties.
The Asteroids - well before we discovered all these other ones (above), it was surmised that essentially all the little points-of-light that appeared to be kind of like tiny planets were in the ASteroid Belt. The region between Big Ol Jupiter at 5 AU and Mars at 1.5 AU. There's a LOT of space 'tween the two. Enough for LOTS of resonant stable orbits of space-rocks to build up over the aeons. These too are excellent opportunities - especially for the Mars Freight Train era of Human colonization. Potentially numbering in the tens of millions, certainly 1% or more of them may well be "frozen sponges" of water or ammonia. Captured comets that haven't quite boiled off. VERY useful for converting to fuel, oxygen, water and fertilizers.
BEYOND MARS - you've got the Jovians. Jup, Saturn, Neptune, and Uranus. Each is huge. Dwarfing Earth. None of them have surfaces that could even slightly conceivably be landed on. But no matter! They all have PLENTY of moons, all quite land-able. Very exotic, too. IO, with its fountains of liquid sulfur. Ganymede with its giant ocean, covered in water ice. Calisto, looking like it got hit by a paintball gun. And so on. If we're ever going to go significantly into the "space orb mining and manufacturing" part of our future endeavors, these Jovian satellites will be crucial to provide a nearly limitless supply of raw materials. Most of them not needed much in the way of refining before use.
THE KUIPER BELT - Extending out from inside Pluto's orbit (30 AU) to about 50 AU, there is a now-well-known belt of hundreds-of-millions of asteroid (and smaller) sized rocks, blobs, accretions and so on that never comes into the Inner Solar system. Well, not "never", but dâhmned seldom. This is the home of Haley's comet. Other so-called “short period comets”. Short … 'cuz like Haley at 76 years orbital time … short because they're not long like the similarly named “millenial comets”, those known to have 1000+ year orbital ephemera. This lovely belt has some of the largest competitors to Pluto's status as an almost-planet. Actually one that may be larger: Makemake. (Most say it is ⅔ Pluto's size tho' the jury is still out)
HABITABILITY of KBOs KBO = Kuiper Belt Objects. Well … they're really, really out there. If we get around to active and industrious mining of the Trojan Moons, the KBOs would be perfect for Robotic exploration and exploitation. There are a LOT of them out there; we just can't find them at present unless they're fairly big. It is kind of amazing how dim sunlight gets (less than 1 watt/m² compared to Earth's 1,363 W/m²) at Pluto's orbit. Pluto was quite difficult to find, and it has a 2,600 km diameter. Imagine finding things only 100 to 200 km in diamter! They'd be 600× to 300× dimmer than Pluto! And things smaller than that? Wow. The KBO belt is thought to have tens of millions of cometary-class blobs drifting about. It is REALLY huge and not constrained to the Plane of the Ecliptic (the plane of Earth's as well as the Inner planets orbits.)
BEYOND KUIPER - then there's the very famous "OORT CLOUD" … extending from "the cliff" (the fall-off of KBO belt objects at 50 AU) to about 10,000 AU or so. There are, conservatively, billions of Oört Objects out there, some of them potentially huge. Indeed: just recently orbital calculations have indicated a HUGE planet waiting to be discovered in the Oört cloud. Or there could be 3 of them. With 2,500 year periods, and so far from the Earth that tho' they are big, we just haven't gotten lucky finding any of them yet.
From OORT come the aperiodic comets. The fly-by comets which we find, see, and never see again. Most are "disturbed" in the Oört cloud by close-encounters with other Oört Cloud objects. Or maybe with the 10th planet. The disturbances in their orbits are almost ridiculously small - a few hundred meters per second, or 5% of their nominal drift rate. But that change is enough to sometimes "vector" them into the solar system, where after thousands of years (from the time of being disturbed) they come close enough to Sol to start boiling off their vaporous load. Instead of points, they become fuzzy blobs in telescopes. Then getting closer, they develop real tails. Then they whiz around the sun - a few percent actually hitting Ol Sol - then zing off again in another direction, never to be seen again.
HABITABILITY - is essentially "zero". But this is not to say that the nearer ones, or the ones found with deep, deep space surveys in the future might not be yet-another source of fuels, water, oxygen, organics, metals, and so forth.
We just cannot think of they as "wayposts" on their own: one would never want to slow down a space ship enough to rendezvous with an OCO (Oört Cloud Object) What'd be the point? Once you get the speed to be jetting about, you simply don't want to stop to have tea at the Last Teashop in the Universe. Just saying.
Well there you are.
A short synopsis of "what's out there".
That we CAN get to.
Without a completely significant breakthrough in reactionless propulsion.
GoatGuy
every process is created using the word
Our environment also has infinite bit width as such it can load any program of any length as it were a single word
Our environment also has infinite bit width as such it can load any program of any length as it were a single word
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