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Motion: The House Believes That Humans Should Start Space Colonization

Proposition: Zed

Opposition: Wartooth

Judges: Alive, Bonk, Scarecrow

Start Date: 10/04/10

Closes: 17/04/10

EDIT: Let me add that if the proposition doesn't post within two days of the start, I'll allow for the apposing argument to post.

Of course we should start space colonisation. We have the technology available - Richard Branson has started sending average people into space as a holiday so the super-fit-astronaut requirement is not an obstacle - and we know that over-population of the planet is going to be a problem at some point. It makes no sense to wait until there is physically not enough food on the planet and people are starving before starting the colonisation, because to actually begin the process is going to take time and money and when we have an emergency food shortage those things are not available. Not to mention it'll take a year to grow the first batch of crops on our new farmland, and that's assuming we don't need to work on new farming equipment etc. for the new environment.

In short:
- We will have to go out there one day
- We can go now
- If we wait until we are desperate it will be too late

Ok,
We may have the technology to go at this, BUT do we have the finances?
As we are debating here, many countries are suffering in financial crisis. If we cannot afford this, why in God's name should we fund it? It'd cost trillions, adding to the global economic issues.
To many, this is also seen as a plan which would be useful if mass populations on Earth were to die, why would any intelligent taxpayer choose to fund a program that in the long run probably won't even affect him? He'll probably be dead before this could be used to his advantage.
Why must we have to go out there? We surely could find a better way to regulate Earthly resources. Anyways, for the first few thousand years, we'd need to supply our Space Colonies with resources from Earth, as we wouldn't hit any usable resource-filled planet for a few hundred lightyears.
Surely, you can see that this would put a larger dent in our resources than we could ever make in the amount of time it would take to hit any other useful planet.
I say we should wait until better technology exists; till we can actually travel the speed of light.

In Short:
-We don't have enough Financial Aid
-Many "Earthlings" wouldn't even get use of this for many generations
-We would be sucking Earth's Resources dry much faster than if we had just limited them.
-We should wait until we have more efficient technologies.

An economic crisis is just the time to do this. Increasing government spending like this is the most assured way to lift a country out of recession. You see, increased government spending is an injection of finance into an economy - the people who are being paid to build the machine or extract the raw materials will have more money and they will spend it and give other people more money and all of this adds to aggregate demand in the economy which expands production and therefore GDP all over the place. J M Keynes, the revolutionary economist, actually recommended that in a recession, if the government couldn't find anything reasonable to spend money on then they should divide the unemployed into two groups and have one group paid for digging holes while the other group filled them in. This is a much more beneficial thing to spend our money on.

Sure, the earthlings that built it wouldn't be the ones that saw the first colonies being built, but that'll be true of whichever generation starts building.

The resources that we would use wouldn't be the ones that we are overly short of. We have plenty of steel and enough standard materials to make the generation ship that would be needed. What the Earth is short of more than anything else is land for farming. I don't think the spaceship will require too much of that.

As for more efficient technologies, we can always wait for more efficient technologies. There will always be something better around the corner. If we keep on waiting for such a thing, however, by the time we realise that we need the colonies it will be too late.

An economic crisis is just the time to do this. Increasing government spending like this is the most assured way to lift a country out of recession. You see, increased government spending is an injection of finance into an economy - the people who are being paid to build the machine or extract the raw materials will have more money and they will spend it and give other people more money and all of this adds to aggregate demand in the economy which expands production and therefore GDP all over the place. J M Keynes, the revolutionary economist, actually recommended that in a recession, if the government couldn't find anything reasonable to spend money on then they should divide the unemployed into two groups and have one group paid for digging holes while the other group filled them in. This is a much more beneficial thing to spend our money on.

Ok,
This may happen, but how can you say it WILL fix our problems.
Look at The Great Depression. President Hoover created many projects based around government spending ( National Forests, The Hoover Dam, etc.) all of which failed to bring the economy back on its feet. Who can say that this won't do the same?

The resources that we would use wouldn't be the ones that we are overly short of. We have plenty of steel and enough standard materials to make the generation ship that would be needed. What the Earth is short of more than anything else is land for farming. I don't think the spaceship will require too much of that.

What about food and water? Where do you think that for the thousands of years we'll be up there looking for inhabitable space that we'll get all our water and food. We'll have to continually send ships back and forth with supplies from earth,
and what about fossil fuels used to get to the destination?
Surely we'll run out of them before we can even make it anywhere.
We are already running short,
which brings me to my next point...

As for more efficient technologies, we can always wait for more efficient technologies. There will always be something better around the corner. If we keep on waiting for such a thing, however, by the time we realise that we need the colonies it will be too late.

...We need better technologies, like solar, wind power, and the ability to go the speed of light on these powers.
If we're in space we can assume some how we could get energy from the sun, obviously.
And we don't have sufficient technologies or testing of these technologies to even THINK about colonizing using these.
I don't want to always wait,
I want the human race to be able to achieve the speed of light using the technologies mentioned.
If we focused on an importance like this, we could achieve the Speed and technological goal I have provided in no time, but there isn't a large amount of funding to this sort of program, thus we won't reach this goal anytime soon, so we must wait.

Quote from Wartooth

Ok,
This may happen, but how can you say it WILL fix our problems.
Look at The Great Depression. President Hoover created many projects based around government spending ( National Forests, The Hoover Dam, etc.) all of which failed to bring the economy back on its feet. Who can say that this won't do the same?

Arguably the depression would have been worse had he not enacted those programmes, and it's entirely possible that, had they been bigger, they would have worked.

What about food and water? Where do you think that for the thousands of years we'll be up there looking for inhabitable space that we'll get all our water and food. We'll have to continually send ships back and forth with supplies from earth,
and what about fossil fuels used to get to the destination?
Surely we'll run out of them before we can even make it anywhere.
We are already running short,
which brings me to my next point...

A generation ship can contain an entire ecosystem. You would have fields on board to feed people. All waste would be recycled (including dead people). The only things you'd need would be a small stockpile of stuff like steel for repairs and things.

Even if that didn't work and we had to go with the constant re-supply (which seems largely impossible seeing as the resupply ships would need resupplying once the mother ship got far enough from Earth) there would still be the problem of using up resources like that later when there were none to spare. If there is going to be a global food shortage as looks likely then I'd prefer that we didn't have to keep sending a load of food off to a space ship too.

As for fuel, solar sales as are used on probes already will do just fine.

...We need better technologies, like solar, wind power, and the ability to go the speed of light on these powers.
If we're in space we can assume some how we could get energy from the sun, obviously.
And we don't have sufficient technologies or testing of these technologies to even THINK about colonizing using these.
I don't want to always wait,
I want the human race to be able to achieve the speed of light using the technologies mentioned.
If we focused on an importance like this, we could achieve the Speed and technological goal I have provided in no time, but there isn't a large amount of funding to this sort of program, thus we won't reach this goal anytime soon, so we must wait.

Superluminar travel is an idea of science fiction only. It's been shown that you need the total energy of many, many stars to actually do it (I can't remember how it's done exactly. It's something like opening a small wormhole and throwing the other end of it away as far as possible so that instead of moving mass (which Einstein showed to be impossible) you move empty space).

Arguably the depression would have been worse had he not enacted those programmes, and it's entirely possible that, had they been bigger, they would have worked

That may be true, but the value of these programs( $50,000,000,000 Estimated off of Harvard's website) to today's dollar roughly comes out to 1,000,000,000,000; as one U.S. dollar in 1900 was worth somewhere around 20 dollars today.
Our space program may somewhere come out to be somewhere around this amount, possibly more,
still who's to say it will work?

A generation ship can contain an entire ecosystem. You would have fields on board to feed people. All waste would be recycled (including dead people). The only things you'd need would be a small stockpile of stuff like steel for repairs and things.

Even if that didn't work and we had to go with the constant re-supply (which seems largely impossible seeing as the resupply ships would need resupplying once the mother ship got far enough from Earth) there would still be the problem of using up resources like that later when there were none to spare. If there is going to be a global food shortage as looks likely then I'd prefer that we didn't have to keep sending a load of food off to a space ship too.

As for fuel, solar sales as are used on probes already will do just fine.

Ok, fair enough,
we'd still be risking a lot doing this, and when I say a lot, I mean A LOT.
How many human lives could be lost if we had a shortage or didn't have enough materials to repair a huge problem?
And where would we get this ecosystem?
You yourself stated that we don't have enough farm land, what are we going to do when building this ship during the beginning? Take farmland off of the Earth and stick it up in a ship?

Solar Sails are fairly new technology for space travel. If we were going to use them we should probably develop the technology farther than it is.
Solar Sails still haven't been used successfully in space as a propulsion system, so this isn't a liable option yet.
What would we do when we hit an area where there is no sun?

Superluminar travel is an idea of science fiction only. It's been shown that you need the total energy of many, many stars to actually do it (I can't remember how it's done exactly. It's something like opening a small wormhole and throwing the other end of it away as far as possible so that instead of moving mass (which Einstein showed to be impossible) you move empty space).

Ok, fair, but we could still create recyclable batteries and make energy plants on every planet we hit(assuming they are close enough to the sun).
We'd need more research still, and we don't have the technology now to efficiently do this,
I stand my case.

Quote from Wartooth

That may be true, but the value of these programs( $50,000,000,000 Estimated off of Harvard's website) to today's dollar roughly comes out to 1,000,000,000,000; as one U.S. dollar in 1900 was worth somewhere around 20 dollars today.
Our space program may somewhere come out to be somewhere around this amount, possibly more,
still who's to say it will work?

Well, all current economic models say that it should, and there's no logical reason why it shouldn't at least help. Anyway, doing it for the economic benefit isn't my main argument. Hopefully I've at least shown that it isn't economically infeasible.

Ok, fair enough,
we'd still be risking a lot doing this, and when I say a lot, I mean A LOT.
How many human lives could be lost if we had a shortage or didn't have enough materials to repair a huge problem?

Potentially a lot, but no where near as many as could be lost from starvation on an overpopulated planet. Besides, that's a risk whenever we go. There are few major disasters in space today which need extra materials brought up from Earth, and that's when we're not having to carry contingency materials for an emergency.

And where would we get this ecosystem?
You yourself stated that we don't have enough farm land, what are we going to do when building this ship during the beginning? Take farmland off of the Earth and stick it up in a ship?

Basically, yeah. Britain has fertile soil for a good couple of metres down, but few crops need more than 50cm. Just skim a load of soil off each field in Britain and voila. Earth's problem is surface area, not volume.

Solar Sails are fairly new technology for space travel. If we were going to use them we should probably develop the technology farther than it is.
Solar Sails still haven't been used successfully in space as a propulsion system, so this isn't a liable option yet.
What would we do when we hit an area where there is no sun?

Some big rechargeable batteries would be good so that there's still heat and light for a significant amount of time after leaving the solar system. Propulsion isn't an issue because once you're moving in space you don't slow down, although you might want a bit of spare energy in case of asteroids. Solar panels combined with solar sails would provide a constant and reliable method of propulsion and energy. Yes, the technology could improve a bit further, and it may well do so while we're building the rest of the ship. Add the sails on last to get the most advanced technology available, but like I say: we can't afford to sit around forever waiting for the engineers.

Ok, fair, but we could still create recyclable batteries and make energy plants on every planet we hit(assuming they are close enough to the sun).
We'd need more research still, and we don't have the technology now to efficiently do this,
I stand my case.

We have technology to do it inefficiently. Inefficiently is better than nothing. When we need our colonies we want there to be at least something there, even if that something is not perfect.

Potentially a lot, but no where near as many as could be lost from starvation on an overpopulated planet. Besides, that's a risk whenever we go. There are few major disasters in space today which need extra materials brought up from Earth, and that's when we're not having to carry contingency materials for an emergency.

Still,
Why risk what we could now when we could wait another 60-160 years and see technological change occur that would benefit us and reduce the risks.

Basically, yeah. Britain has fertile soil for a good couple of metres down, but few crops need more than 50cm. Just skim a load of soil off each field in Britain and voila. Earth's problem is surface area, not volume.

Ok Ok fair,
But,
as you said, we'd recycle, correct?
Would the recycling process work fast enough as to it even being effective in the time that it would need to be?
I somewhat doubt that,
it's a natural process that can take a long time.

Some big rechargeable batteries would be good so that there's still heat and light for a significant amount of time after leaving the solar system. Propulsion isn't an issue because once you're moving in space you don't slow down, although you might want a bit of spare energy in case of asteroids. Solar panels combined with solar sails would provide a constant and reliable method of propulsion and energy. Yes, the technology could improve a bit further, and it may well do so while we're building the rest of the ship. Add the sails on last to get the most advanced technology available, but like I say: we can't afford to sit around forever waiting for the engineers.

I think I forgot to mention that we haven't had much research in solar sails,
I'd ask for another 20-50 years of research of solar sails OUTSIDE our solar system before we risk putting them on a ship carrying human beings.

We have technology to do it inefficiently. Inefficiently is better than nothing. When we need our colonies we want there to be at least something there, even if that something is not perfect.

That's a bit asinine if you ask me.
We are risking human lives to technology that is known to be flawed doing simple tasks such as getting into space.
I say we take another 50-150 years of research into this,
we as human beings don't have a clue.
Hell, we haven't even stepped onto mars!
Trying to push space colonization would be idiotic at the least.

We need more time to study.
Again, I stand my case.

EDIT: also, where in gods name would we get our air?
Air doesn't just come from nowhere, we'd need a constant restalk every few years or so.
Even if we had an ecosystem, it wouldn't last forever.

Quote from Wartooth

Still,
Why risk what we could now when we could wait another 60-160 years and see technological change occur that would benefit us and reduce the risks.

It's a balance. Twenty years ago I would have agreed with you. I believe that the risk has come down enough now, however, to balance/outweigh the risks of leaving it any longer.

Ok Ok fair,
But,
as you said, we'd recycle, correct?
Would the recycling process work fast enough as to it even being effective in the time that it would need to be?
I somewhat doubt that,
it's a natural process that can take a long time.

Experiments in Biosphere 2 have gone on for years with no significant issues. In that link waste wasn't even considered important enough to mention. Oxygen was the main issue, and that was controllable with a CO2 scrubber and was later shown to be a result of the concrete having not set properly yet anyway - not an issue in space.

I think I forgot to mention that we haven't had much research in solar sails,
I'd ask for another 20-50 years of research of solar sails OUTSIDE our solar system before we risk putting them on a ship carrying human beings.

Solar sails aren't the only things we could put on there. Stick a couple of ion thrusters on as reserve engines in case of emergency and maybe some standard rockets too and you have a perfectly workable system. All the propulsion system needs to do is just enough to avoid crashing into something big. Once you start moving in space you don't stop.

That's a bit asinine if you ask me.
We are risking human lives to technology that is known to be flawed doing simple tasks such as getting into space.
I say we take another 50-150 years of research into this,
we as human beings don't have a clue.
Hell, we haven't even stepped onto mars!
Trying to push space colonization would be idiotic at the least.

My understanding was that colonising Mars would count as space colonisation.

We need more time to study.
Again, I stand my case.

EDIT: also, where in gods name would we get our air?
Air doesn't just come from nowhere, we'd need a constant restalk every few years or so.
Even if we had an ecosystem, it wouldn't last forever.

Oxygen can be produced quite happily by large numbers of plants on board, and they would double up as a food supply. We would get our air in the same way as we get it now - just on a smaller scale (see Biosphere 2 again).

It's a balance. Twenty years ago I would have agreed with you. I believe that the risk has come down enough now, however, to balance/outweigh the risks of leaving it any longer.

What about the problems that space poses on the human body? As we cannot make our own gravity to my knowledge...
Here's some details:
http://library.thinkquest.org/03oct/02144/text/travel/body.htm

Can you say that we've put people in space for 20 years to see if it affects the body?
Nope,
we've only spent a year,
we really have NO IDEA how this will affect us.

Experiments in Biosphere 2 have gone on for years with no significant issues. In that link waste wasn't even considered important enough to mention. Oxygen was the main issue, and that was controllable with a CO2 scrubber and was later shown to be a result of the concrete having not set properly yet anyway - not an issue in space.

How will we step in this system without pushing the soil into an endless movement? nonetheless Grabbing said items.
This system WOULD NOT work correctly.

Solar sails aren't the only things we could put on there. Stick a couple of ion thrusters on as reserve engines in case of emergency and maybe some standard rockets too and you have a perfectly workable system. All the propulsion system needs to do is just enough to avoid crashing into something big. Once you start moving in space you don't stop.

What happens when those said items run out of energy? we go and refuel?
and how would we maintain contact to know when to refuel?

My understanding was that colonising Mars would count as space colonisation.

It does, but how do you colonize something you haven't set foot on.
RESEARCH the damn place before you plan buildings and such.

Oxygen can be produced quite happily by large numbers of plants on board, and they would double up as a food supply. We would get our air in the same way as we get it now - just on a smaller scale (see Biosphere 2 again).

But plants don't create oxygen, they just recycle it and make it usable.
We'd need some form of oxygen given to them...

Again, I stand my case...
WE NEED RESEARCH FIRST!
We don't have a clue, not one bit.

Time's up, make your concluding statements.

The Earth's resources are limited. There is only so much planet, and with population expanding like it is there will not always be enough to go around. Therefore we are going to have to colonise space at some point.

Cost is not an issue in this. Government spending stimulates the economy, as noted on page one of this debate.

Experiments such as Biosphere 2 have shown that humanity is capable of building a self-sustaining ecosystem on a small enough scale that it could be built into a generation ship. Space colonisation over any distance is possible. Wartooth seems to have missed this when deciding whether or not colonisation is possible, claiming that we wouldn't have enough oxygen. He forgets that Biosphere 2 was airtight. A generation ship works in exactly the same way as the Earth but on a smaller scale. Does the Earth get regular shipments of oxygen delivered?

He has also pointed out that we do not know how badly people may be affected by 20 years in a zero gravity environment. Hence why it would make sense for the spaceship to constantly rotate so that the centrifugal force simulates gravity and keeps the environment natural. This is workable with either a central compartment which is rotated relative to the rest of the ship providing constant reaction, or with a couple of rockets at an angle on the outside to rotate it once and let the momentum keep going.

We have technology available which can be used as thrust, and this is not such a big issue as Wartooth is making it out to be. In space there is no resistance. You don't need huge amounts of thrust to go places because once you start to move you keep on moving. Solar sails are adequate, as are ion thrusters and basic solid fuel rockets. You don't need to worry about fuel because these things will only be used in emergencies (eg. steering around a planet) in the first place and will barely need to do anything to be adequate.

Wartooth says we should wait for the better technology to become available, but I disagree on two levels. The first level is that we have good enough technology. We will always have a more efficient rocket under development but that doesn't mean that we should always wait because if we do then we'll still be sitting around waiting when we suddenly realise that we need colonies now.

The second level is that space colonisation does not mean setting out on a voyage tomorrow. It is a process which includes researching the best way to go about it. Developing 100% reliable solar sails and fitting them to a generation ship is part of space colonisation. This isn't something that you can wait for before starting because in order for it to happen you have to make a start. We shouldn't be sitting back and waiting for someone else to make this technology for us to use. We should be making it ourselves, or it is never going to get made. The point is, saying we're not ready to colonise space because we haven't got the technology yet is like saying we shouldn't be thinking about going on holiday this year because we haven't even got a flight booked.

Space colonisation is not only possible; it is necessary.

Well,
I'm going to keep mine short and disagree withZed.

Right now, we don't have the technology to do well in space colinisation. We have insufficient knowings of what kind of harm this could do to the human body.
We also haven't even made our own gravitational pull, so Zed's idea of just spinning isn't very reliable as we haven't tested it in space.
We haven't run enough tests, we overall haven't even done enough to say that it would be safe. We as a human race don't have much of a grasp beyond our own planet, so why should we go out into space before a little exploration. It's like playing with fire.

Space colonisation must stay in hiatus until we gather enough factual evidence that what we are doing WILL in fact work and be beneficial.

guys is it still only you 2 who can post because i have an intresting albeit different opinion from you both