@spaceguy
Sit in awe as I tear your analysis apart. Despite what any futurist tells you this or that isn't really around the corner. If they were always right we would have flying cars, lunar colonies, and have built undersea utopias by this point. None of it has happened, because futurists aren't really problem solvers. They are dreamers with lofty goals, and their sales pitch is always a over simplification of the inherent problems. They make incredibly fucking hard, sometimes nearly impossible things sound like it is so easy that a child could pull it off.
Colonizing space is a colossal challenge, and don't let anyone fool you into thinking otherwise. We know the effects that being weightless has on the human body. It is pretty catastrophic to be honest, and that is on supremely healthy adults. So what if there is a similar problem with living in low gravity environments say a sixth or a third of the standard gravity on the surface of the Earth. Lower gravities may be a physical limit that we are physiologically incapable of overcoming.
You could argue for genetic manipulation, and setting aside how difficult that is to do right now. You are talking about a plain massive investment in drudgery. A lot of trial and error would be called for, because nature wouldn't offer us up any shortcuts in the matter. There aren't a bunch of low gravity genomes for us to test out. We would need to create the genes from scratch, and have to test them out through trial and error. Technically speaking we are infants as far as genetic manipulation is concerned.
Then you have the real problem with the proposed colonization sites such as Luna and Mars. Yes our moon actually has a name. They are bathed in massive amounts of radiation. Which would be positively lethal to human beings. It isn't even a question of manageable doses. Short excursions to these places are one thing, but actually living there could give us so many wonderful things like pandemic cancer, sterility, and a host of diseases that come to those that have a weakened immune system.
I will give you the benefit of the doubt, and assume you knew that lunar colonies would have to be subterranean in nature, but Mars would pretty much be the same thing. Even if we could thicken up the atmosphere, and liberate the planets reserves of water. The planet has no real magnetic field to speak of, and that is not only why the planets atmosphere is probably so thin. It also means that you would get massive doses of radiation every time you took a trip outside of the bunker.
There have been no reasonable plans presented to deal with this problem. Nobody has any idea how to rekindle the nuclear furnace that fuels a planets magnetic field, and without that we don't have much of a chance of populating the planet with life. Any plants or animals we would seed on the surface would die in short order even if it was warm enough, and water was plentiful. Not to mention we have no idea what that kind of tampering would cause. We know that putting more carbon up into our atmosphere heats our planet up, but what happens if you put a lot of carbon into a atmosphere bathed in that kind of a radiological environment.
Okay I bet you probably want to turn to Venus now. Don't even bother thinking about it, because the planet makes Mars, or even the Moon look like a cake walk. Even if you could thin out the atmosphere. Make it breathable, and transplant a just plain absurd amount of water to the planet. You still don't have a magnetic field, you get a even heavier dose of radiation, and the planet rotates backwards at a snails pace. One side of the planet would still get rather hot. While the other side of the planet would get incredibly cold.
That could result in the atmosphere freezing out on the dark side, or it could cause the planet to have hypersonic winds. It might be a huge blessing for wind farmers, but not for anything you might want to seed on the surface. Further more the planets geology is somewhat suspect. It doesn't follow a plate tectonic model like the Earth. So introducing liquid water into the equation could result in a hellish chain reaction. Like putting your finger over the lip of a soda bottle and violently shaking the contents. Some models even postulate that the planet goes through periodic full surface repaving. Which is may be one reason why the planets surface seems to be so much younger then the planet itself.
Like I said a lot of futurists and scientists typically overstate their case in a attempt to popularize their ideas, or to acquire a source of funding. It goes beyond just that though. If print or television gave you the whole story about how incredibly hard it would be to do these things. They wouldn't have much of a audience. Talking about making says Mars habitable for human beings is far more sexy. Then basically saying don't hold your breath it is going to take hundreds or even thousands of years for us to pull it off.
If none of that has put you off then this most assuredly should. Rocketry is the least efficient means to move a object from one location to the other. Your average car is millions of times more efficient, but as of now it is the only technology we have to get into orbit, and there is absolutely no replacement even in the theoretical stages, and for the love of common sense don't throw Ion propulsion at me. Even the strongest Ion engine couldn't blow a piece of paper off of a table. You ain't getting off this planet with that tech. From high Earth orbit to the nearest star maybe.
Frankly I think you owe me an apology. I probably know more about the science involved in both the field of space exploration, and the fields of medical research then you yourself know. I could continue to tear apart your argument further, and I could probably do so in book form, but I think you have probably had enough. Seriously never just assume that someone else is just plain ignorant. That is a quick way to get yourself shamed.
