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Why Werner Herzog Thinks Human Space Colonization “Will Inevitably Fail”

posted by janrinok on Tuesday March 15 2022, @11:42AM   
from the doomed-from-the-start? dept.

Freeman writes:

https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2022/03/ars-talks-to-werner-herzog-about-space-colonization-its-poetry/

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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Original Submission

• Re:one thing is for sureRe:one thing is for sure (Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday March 16 2022, @05:03PM (2 children)

  by khallow (3766) on Wednesday March 16 2022, @05:03PM (#1229705) Journal

  Aerobraking can be used for orbiting spacecraft too. Several Mars orbiters have used aerobraking to shed enough velocity to enter Mars orbit or to gradually circularize the orbit. Glancing at Wikipedia, a couple of the earliest uses of aerobraking for that purpose were Magellan spacecraft at Venus and Mars Global Surveyor at Mars. You might even be able to get a little plane changing in, on your first pass (by initially hitting the atmosphere in a more desirable orbital plane).
  
  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).

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• Re:one thing is for sureRe:one thing is for sure (Score: 2) by PiMuNu on Wednesday March 16 2022, @05:54PM (1 child)

  by PiMuNu (3823) on Wednesday March 16 2022, @05:54PM (#1229718)

  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?

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  • Re:one thing is for sure(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday March 17 2022, @01:46AM

    by khallow (3766) on Thursday March 17 2022, @01:46AM (#1229826) Journal

    How does it compare with the energy cost of bringing an asteroid to LEO assuming conventional rockets?

    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.

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