I'm sure we can figure out stuff, but I guess my point is, why would we do that at all?
How fucked up Earth needs to be than living on a floating oil platform above Venus is better? The point is already hard to make for the Moon or Mars.
I'm sure we can figure out stuff, but I guess my point is, why would we do that at all?
How fucked up Earth needs to be than living on a floating oil platform above Venus is better? The point is already hard to make for the Moon or Mars.
Because it's cheaper to live on a f-ed up half-built construction site of a planet than it is to fight with entrenched interests on earth.
Same reason North America got colonized by religious extremists and weirdos.
The free, abundant land choke full of natural resources was probably more important.
There was plenty of death and danger involved in colonizing a foreign land you've never been to with 16th-18th century era technology.
Only free if you discount the costs involved in carrying out genocide against the existing inhabitants. But your point stands, that cost was frequently born by the government, so from the perspective of individual settlers it was often free.
> But your point stands, that cost was frequently born by the government,
Who paid this government?
It's less about the earth being uninhabitable and more about redundancy of species.
Living on a ship at sea, or underground / underwater, should give enough protection against whatever post-apocalyptic situation exists on Earth, it's pretty much always going to be more survivable than Mars or outer space. You might need a protective suit, air filters etc. Still 100x easier than having no atmosphere at all.
What if the threat is not environmental collapse but hostile government?
If they can reach your submarine, they can reach your space colony.
Surprise Dodgeball reference. But I don't think the ocean is as far away as deep space. I also think due to its proximity, it could be entangled in political paradigms that lead to entanglements in international conflicts and the independence from those political paradigms affords a form of insulation.
Aye, this! Redundancy of species...
As in sending a part of species to a hostile place where all living is confined into a one big life support machine, without fresh air (which is very different from freshly uncanned or chemically generated air), without fresh and varied food (which is very different from artificially grown), without open sky and Sun above, without seas, rivers, forests, mountains, without anywhere to wander to find inner peace, in a setting for a psychologic horror where one deranged member of expedition is enough to bring it down.
That is going to contribute so greatly to the redundancy of our species.
I'd much rather be on a cruise ship than a lifeboat, but that doesn't mean cruise ships shouldn't have lifeboats.
No serious advocate of settling Mars, Venus or anywhere else in space seriously believes it will be easier than remaining on Earth, nor are they suggesting that it means we can abandon the Earth entirely, or care less about protecting its biosphere. They simply understand that, no matter much of a relative paradise the Earth is, so long as 100% of humanity exists there then we are placing all our species' eggs at the bottom of a single basket's gravity-well. It will do us absolutely no good if we solve climate change, war, poverty, disease, etc. only to get wiped out by the next comet or mega-asteroid that smashes into us. And, statistically, eventually one will.
>As in sending a part of species to a hostile place where all living is confined into a one big life support machine
At first, I thought you were describing the settling of Australia
Got a better alternative?
This puts the cart before the horse. At least one important question to answer before. Does something absolutely needs to be done? Then we start looking into the best alternative.
What's the concrete threat scenario you avoid by moving to the Venusian clouds? Global warming? Fix it on Earth and if you can't convince people to agree on a solution here, how will you convince them that a Venusian balloon is the best way forward? Nuclear annihilation? Probably digging deep underground is better. Total planetary annihilation? Maybe stations in Earth orbit, or Moon's poles, or L point, etc.
Are we looking for options for which we have the technology and capabilities today, or a few centuries from now? That changes your options from "balloon on Venus" to "terraforming Venus".
The engineering and other practical considerations needed to get such a "station" a realistic chance at long term survival are about as sci-fi for us today as the starship Enterprise. We aren't even at the point where we can sustain an isolated Earth based colony indefinitely in an inhospitable environment. They all need constant maintenance and resupply from the the hospitable environment just a stone's throw away.
It would be one of the worst places. So, you are living over a floating habitat that the only way to get resources it's from out planet. Because, on the surface, the conditions are so hard that even remote mining is impossible.
It would be better the moon, Mars or even moving habits on Mercury. At least you have access to mineral resources, and water (ice).
People don't scale mount everest because there is an macguffin to be found there. They scale it to scale it. Because you can. For the adventure. To assert dominance over the universe.
We can talk about economical benefits or the survival of the species and those do matter. But it's also because colonizing another planet would be fucking epic and go down in history.
With the decline in religion we do need some kind of higher purpose and meaning to rally behind, and going off planet could fit that bill. In a time of increasing divisions it could foster brotherhood.
I understand this became a hot take in recent years, because you can always just "Colonize Earth". I do think there is an independent strategic value in terms of existential threats. It shouldn't be a rationale for abandoning environmental preservation and conservation on Earth.
One thing I see, all too often in Internet comment sections is things that could be complimentary are turned against each other and juxtaposed as if one interferes with the other. I don't know if there's a name for that but it happens often enough that it should have a name.
pretty fucked up if it runs into an asteroid or a comet!
> why would we do that at all?
This question is one of a whole genre of "why" questions that come from supposed pragmatists, but I can't help but think the existence of the question misses the entire point.
Luckily, one of the older questions of this genre was about why anyone would bother to climb Mount Everest, and ol' Mallory had such a good answer that I'll just paste the whole thing here:
> People ask me, 'What is the use of climbing Mount Everest?' and my answer must at once be, 'It is of no use.' There is not the slightest prospect of any gain whatsoever. Oh, we may learn a little about the behavior of the human body at high altitudes, and possibly medical men may turn our observation to some account for the purposes of aviation. But otherwise nothing will come of it. We shall not bring back a single bit of gold or silver, not a gem, nor any coal or iron.
> If you cannot understand that there is something in man which responds to the challenge of this mountain and goes out to meet it, that the struggle is the struggle of life itself upward and forever upward, then you won't see why we go. What we get from this adventure is just sheer joy. And joy is, after all, the end of life. We do not live to eat and make money. We eat and make money to be able to live. That is what life means and what life is for.
Of course, with Venus, there's the joy of exploration and also tons of profits and learning to be had. For example, we could cover the entire planet in giant ads. Think of the CPMs you'd get as people looked out the window on their way to Mercury!
On some level I agree with the spirit. But I also think it implicitly concedes that there's not good reasons otherwise, which sells it too short. Existential threats to humanity seem like a pretty good reason, to the point that if reasons mean anything at all it should count as one.