Thread Rating:
  • 0 Vote(s) - 0 Average
  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5

Portable Cities

#1
Zinjanthropos Offline
Would living in a mobile city situated in space (or atmosphere) be a safer alternative for an intelligent species than living on a planet/moon surface? I was thinking this after listening to today's morning news regarding the earthquakes, tsunami and volcanic eruptions that occurred overnight around the world. I realize there are dangers in space but if one was to compare planet life with a space existence then which is safer or is deemed easier to deal with potential trouble, flying or stationary surface based cities? 

As an intelligent species gains more intelligence, do you think it more probable that they would eventually cease living on a planet and take to the skies/space? There would be a wealth of raw materials at your door if you could move from place to place throughout a solar system/galaxy/deep space. I suppose, depending on an intelligent species construction skills that the size of a city could reach planet proportions. Makes sense to me to build such sites but if I go to the extreme end, could I just move the planet around. I can't imagine the engineering that would go into that. Thoughts?
Reply
#2
C C Offline
(Jan 23, 2018 05:29 PM)Zinjanthropos Wrote: Would living in a mobile city situated in space (or atmosphere) be a safer alternative for an intelligent species than living on a planet/moon surface? [...] I realize there are dangers in space but if one was to compare planet life with a space existence then which is safer or is deemed easier to deal with potential trouble, flying or stationary surface based cities? 


If our ordinary biont engineering and know-how can't achieve it, then presumably Clarketech and lesser ultratech could make floating or orbiting cities economically feasible, power-efficient, self-repairing, and safe. But there's the question of whether those higher toposophic grade intelligences would be interested in facilitating such for their ancestral creators (i.e., should they help the mice out -- their ironically primitive gods?).

Quote:As an intelligent species gains more intelligence, do you think it more probable that they would eventually cease living on a planet and take to the skies/space? There would be a wealth of raw materials at your door if you could move from place to place throughout a solar system/galaxy/deep space.

Certainly space would be one niche that any nanotech-based "wildlife" would eventually occupy and harvest, what with its migratory habits and ability to simply hibernate its way over vast distances (or just launch its pseudo-biotic spores throughout the solar system). Though less in number, some machine sophonts would surely adapt to a nomadic space lifestyle as well, not traveling in the raw like the "beasts" and grunt-work drones, but utilizing gypsy "house-ships" and visiting those aforementioned orbiting supply and metropolitan platforms.

And infomorphs could even reside in or "piggyback" on the lot of these roving posthuman creatures, passed about like viruses. Since some of the infomorphs might be relic, baseline humans living in a solipsistic virtual environment -- those might be the nearest thing to "us" that is still around and/or indirectly dwelling in space.  

Quote:I suppose, depending on an intelligent species construction skills that the size of a city could reach planet proportions. Makes sense to me to build such sites but if I go to the extreme end, could I just move the planet around. I can't imagine the engineering that would go into that. Thoughts?

In terms of classic brute power, moving planets and terraforming planets would be a job for the feats and constructions of massive grunt-robots and self-replicating molecular machines. Just remains, again, to be seen whether that's economically possible for basic sophonts lie us or instead must enter the domain of posthuman Clarketech and its unknown resources and capacities to manipulate matter and re-shape / re-program a local region of the cosmos.  

- - -
Reply
#3
Zinjanthropos Offline
Just wondering if it makes more sense for a highly developed, technically savvy (genetically modified?), super intelligent race (alien life form) to actually live in space, even if it's only orbiting the home planet? I'm basing this on one getting away from Mother Nature as much as one can, as in avoiding natural calamities. 

Out of curiosity, how long would it take the Earth to return to a semblance of a pristine environment sans humans? I'm imagining living in space while the planet repairs itself.
Reply
#4
Yazata Offline
It seems to me that space is inherently more dangerous than living on the planet on which our species evolved. We can't breathe vacuum so explosive decompression would be a constant threat. Radiation might be a danger. And living our entire lives inside a sealed can might be psychologically problematic.

But yeah, I just naturally like the idea of humanity spreading through the solar system in a network of off-world settlements and eventually out among the stars in giant generation-ship habitats. The more dispersed we become, the less vulnerable we are to threats in any one place.

And as we become more dispersed and find ourselves in new habitats, I can imagine multiple evolutionary (or genetically engineered) variants appearing. Our very distant descendants might bear little resemblance to each other.

In that regard, I'm reminded of Lois McMaster Bujold's 'quaddies', humans genetically engineered for life in zero gravity, with shoulders and arms where our legs are.

https://i.imgur.com/66VDO4a.jpg?fb
Reply
#5
C C Offline
(Jan 25, 2018 04:54 PM)Zinjanthropos Wrote: Just wondering if it makes more sense for a highly developed, technically savvy (genetically modified?), super intelligent race (alien life form) to actually live in space, even if it's only orbiting the home planet? I'm basing this on one getting away from Mother Nature as much as one can, as in avoiding natural calamities.


[Edit: Good topic, BTW]. As Yazata emphasized, when compared to the routine perils of living on Earth, space is far more dangerous for ordinary or non-augmented humans. Especially with the level of technology we have to depend upon today and even the supposedly "futuristic" kind sported in traditional sci-fi. That's why I stressed it as feasible for an era of transhuman / posthuman expertise and manipulation of matter at tiny scales, where artificial enclosures and machines are more like living organisms that autonomously respond to threats and repair themselves.

Space isn't the environment we evolved in -- orbiting habitats with significant populations are not for us but rather our engineered descendants and replacements deliberately designed to cope with the atmosphere-less beyond. With the exception of those abodes becoming so crib-secure that surviving baseline humans could be protected like babies inside them -- and desirously so by any of the new guardians that choose not to be indifferent to their physically and intellectually handicapped forebears.

As much as a TV show such as "The Expanse" is more realistic than "Star Trek", like most space operas it still features ridiculous anachronisms. Humans in exo-Earth realms being non-modified and non-adapted to them (apart from what naturally fell out of gravity differences in conjunction with their compensating medical treatments). Why would any frontier industry of the distant future want the incredibly burdensome task / expense of trying to keep psychologically and physically fragile, ordinary people alive on an asteroid for resource mining, when there's the alternative of using smart machines or also transhumans and posthumans at worst? It would take an authoritarian ideology of immense controlling magnitude to curtail both the creative impetus of market forces and the self-mutilating fads of new generations seeking both genetic restyling and freakish physiological integration of themselves with technology.

Quote:Out of curiosity, how long would it take the Earth to return to a semblance of a pristine environment sans humans? I'm imagining living in space while the planet repairs itself.


For lighter destruction / corruption, as "brief" a period as half a million years is occasionally proposed by some sources. For mega-cataclysms like the extinction event that wiped out the dinosaurs, anywhere from 4 million to 10 million years to restore prior levels of bio-diversity.

I only watched a couple of episodes, but Life After People seemed to have roundaboutly addressed the issue of recovery from "our effects upon Earth" in detail for the increasingly "hate reading", animated-picture oriented culture of today.

- - -
Reply
#6
Zinjanthropos Offline
My thoughts are that if we are technologically advanced enough then we should be able to deal with threats from outer space a lot easier than natural events, ie earthquakes, volcanoes, etc. Advanced computer supported floating cities capable of maneuvering and providing protection from that which arrives via space, should be able to keep us safe from harm as well as genetic engineering and advancements in medicine enables us to survive in a different environment. I don't like comparing the thoughts of a far more intelligent futuristic civilization with today's world, which could be considered ancient by our descendants' standards . IOW's I have no idea of what it may be like. 

If we have technology to float a city or build one in space then I don't think we'd be too worried about staying safe from the perils of space living. Then again we could probably do the same by remaining as earthbound ground dwellers Wink
Reply




Users browsing this thread: 1 Guest(s)