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Last Exit: Space is a new documentary on Discovery+ that explores the possibility of humans colonizing planets beyond Earth. Since it is produced and narrated by Werner Herzog (director of Grizzly Man, guest star on The Mandalorian) and written and directed by his son Rudolph, however, it goes in a different direction than your average space documentary. It's weird, beautiful, skeptical, and even a bit funny.
In light of the film's recent streaming launch, father and son Herzog spoke with Ars Technica from their respective homes about the film's otherworldly hopes, pessimistic conclusions, and that one part about space colonists having to drink their own urine.
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Why Werner Herzog Thinks Human Space Colonization “Will Inevitably Fail”
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You have an unusual understanding of the problems of human relationships.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Wednesday March 16 2022, @08:28AM (7 children)
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 1) by shrewdsheep on Wednesday March 16 2022, @12:10PM (6 children)
Reading posts in this thread, I find plausible points in all of them. Why not give the less informed/intelligent - like myself - today's uplift by spelling out some of the arguments?
(Score: 3, Informative) by FatPhil on Wednesday March 16 2022, @02:17PM (5 children)
He responds "just create new tech that permits X, and put it in place".
That's not how engineering works. You can't just wish things into existence.
Anyway, just pin yourself to your telly or your favourite fact-filled fanboy youtube streamers - Musk will have his first manned settlement on Mars in, >checks calendar<, 6 months! Unless the fantastic futuristic fairy stories that have been repeated dozens of time have actually been bogus bullshit.
For reference, there was a proposed mission to do what khallow suggests, where they never even worked out how sample return would be performed, and it would have taken hundreds of thousands of kilos of fuel just to get the 100kg mothership and 20kg lander that would collect (and through unknown mechanism, return) mere tens of grams of ore that would contain just grams of the intersting metals. However, that got 2nd place in the final vote, so they decided against it. Anyway, just ponder over "hundreds of thousands of kilos of fuel" to get "grams" of metal. That's why I keep saying people are many orders of magnitude removed from reality with their fantasies. And yes, this was specifically a *solar sail-powered mission*, as khallow suggested, so the time-scales would have been horrific too. You do realise that solar sails get thrusts measured in millinewtons, I trust, compared to rockets' meganewtons?
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday March 16 2022, @03:08PM (4 children)
That's standard in space development actually. Both Apollo and the development of the Falcon/Starship systems pulled it off quite nicely. You don't try to fully develop your entire technology tree before starting something. Instead, incremental technology development with work on new technologies, manufacturing techniques, and infrastructure started a bit before they're needed.
And really, the science behind this technology development has already been done. There won't be magic problems that will make space mining or electric/solar sail propulsion physically impossible.
Sample return has a return far in excess of the market value of the grams of potential ore that would be returned. There's two things going on that you miss here. First, it would be a technology demonstration of most of the transportation process from start to finish. Second, it would return valuable information on the potential ore body to the best location in the Solar System for testing such: Earth. No point to mining an asteroid (and investing billions of dollars) when you don't know what's there, right?
(Score: 2) by PiMuNu on Wednesday March 16 2022, @03:35PM (3 children)
To be quantitative:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delta-v_budget#/media/File:Delta-Vs_for_inner_Solar_System.svg [wikipedia.org]
delta-v for earth to LEO is about 10 km/s
delta-v for LEO to moon is about 6 km/s
If I understand correctly the delta-v to get from moon to LEO is 6 km/s and LEO to earth is "free" due to aerobraking.
So the delta-v is double from earth to LEO to get to the moon and back. Similar to get to one of Mars's moons (not the surface of Mars).
Note that delta-v is not linear in terms of fuel costs.
Nb: I'm not a rocket scientist, but I _have_ played KSP so I guess I am pretty highly qualified (that was a joke).
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday March 16 2022, @05:03PM (2 children)
Second, there are acceleration and thermal loading limits to aerobraking stuff. IIRC, one of the abort modes for Apollo missions had astronauts entering atmosphere somewhere between 12 and 15 km/s. That was considered a survivable situation. Meanwhile, typical meteorites hit Earth's atmosphere at least 25 km/s with most of the meteorite burning up in atmosphere. A lump of gold or platinum group metal encased in a heat shield should be able to survive reentry well below those speeds (especially if you don't mind a small crater when it hits ground).
(Score: 2) by PiMuNu on Wednesday March 16 2022, @05:54PM (1 child)
Just out of interest, what is the energy cost of, say, sifting sea water for trace elements? How does it compare with the energy cost of bringing an asteroid to LEO assuming conventional rockets?
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday March 17 2022, @01:46AM
Depends - where is the source for the propellant for that rocket? If it's coming from Earth, it's not going to be competitive with Earth-side mining (you need a bunch of orders of magnitude of propellant to move one kg of material from any asteroid). For example, I could see three to four orders of magnitude more propellant required to move an asteroid from near Earth orbit to say L4/5 (Lagrange points leading and trailing the Moon in its orbit by 60 degrees). If the propellant is part of the asteroid itself and energy is provided by local solar power (for example, a rail gun or some sort of electric propulsion), then that's a very different proposition.
It also depends on how fast you want to move that asteroid. If you're willing to take your time, you can get a lot of delta-v from gravity assists with Venus, Mars, Earth, and the Moon to get it into the desired position. If you're trying to do it right now (well, within a couple of years), it takes a lot more delta-v and energy.