Suppose the Earth was dying...?

Question

how would you supply not only fuel but power to your starship until a new home world was found, not to mention food & water & clean air to breathe

Voldemort: the question in your answer is just another part of the equation. You are building the ship so how many people are you taking with you?

personally, I'm only taking as many people as is necessary to repopulate the human race w/o inbreeding or other similar problems. the question is...how many is that?

Answer 1

I have already done this exercise for a book I am writing so I will just share the basics here. I call them Famships and they are based on a quasi military hierarchal social structure that incorporates some elements of the nomadic tribe and some of naval command. There is a critical need to keep things running both technologically and socially for the extended voyage required to even reach the closest star system considering that warp drive is still just an astrophysicist’s wet dream.

The preparations begin with setting aside critical technologies and recruiting people with a variety of critical skills from agricultural science and medicine to astrophysics and nuclear technology. There is a limit to the size of such an operation but there also must be room for onboard expansion as this of necessity is what is called a *Generational Ship* and will likely take more than the lifetime of many critical personnel.

Some technologies that we do not have right now that would be important to try and develop before departure are:

Nanoasssemblers & MEMs (micro engineered machines)
Warp drive of course but still not likely
Computer driven miniaturized fabrication
Vastly improved solar power technology
Longevity tech
Cybernetics and neural interface web tech
Robotic prosthetics
Independently powered reusable single phase shuttle
Independent reaction mass fuel refinement
Atmospheric skim mining for critical gasses
Comet and asteroid capture tech and mining
Cryogenic suspension
Fusion reactors
MHD Plasma Pulse Drive (Magnetohydrodynamic)
Solar sail materials


OK that is really just a few items off the top of the list and aside from warp tech all of them are well within current technological grasp with sufficient commitment despite the overwhelming defeatism of many people.

The size of the on board population also needs to have room for duplication of many if not all critical skills in case of injury that removes them from the active duty roster. Also space travel on this scale is 24/7/365 and requires a minimum watch shift of 3 crews to maintain a standard 8 hour shift.

Now to practicalities, first we launch a strategic and determined effort to capture a NEA (Near Earth Asteroid) there are actually more than a few of these available right now. On board are strategic technologies like a refurbished nuclear submarine power plant off a decommissioned sub to get started with and as adaptable zero gee mining refining equipment we can loft.

Then we undertake a critical terraforming and mining operation to establish the first viable off world habitat. The terraforming is underground as the mining operation develops a hollowed out interior and the gravity is created by using a solar sail system to impart spin stabilization to the rock for both navigational stability and workable centrifugal gravity. Some of the material mined is used to expand operations and development of the ship and some is exchanged with terrestrials for other critical components to be manufactured earthside.

Now during the initial capture phase for the asteroid there will be a period when the rock is well distant from Earth but nonetheless exposed to a better possibility of cometary capture. This phase provides a number of critical supplies that it is ridiculous expensive to launch from the surface, principally water. If the entire comet can be gravitationally linked up (tractor-tethered) with the asteroid all the better but what is more important is that sufficient supplies can be accessed in a timely fashion to continue with critical initial development, there will be time for replenishing reserves later as well.

While earthside development goes forward a Pioneer team initiates the off world operations culminating in Earth (or lunar) capture after the first few years of solar orbits eventually are finally made to coincide. Once in close orbit the final phase of preparation will then go into high gear with all the available resources being brought to bear to outfit and convert the mass of the ship into a completed famship for habitat and travel. This ship would be tested first within the solar system for a shake down and to deliver the seed colony volunteers to Mars and the Jovian moons before making the leap out system. This approach helps develop insurance against extinction and maximizes the utility of a large scale approach such as this that can carry hundreds long term and thousands of passenger’s short term at considerable velocity with sufficient cargo to make their efforts meaningful.

This ship would also launch other copy/cat programs like it as it traveled around the solar system to give other groups a chance at survival too. BTW this ship is named “Aurora.” When approaching a problem of this magnitude, do not think small; remember these immortal words:

"Frontiers of any type, physical or mental, are but a challenge to our breed. Nothing can stop the questing of men, not even Man. If we will it, not only the wonders of space, but the very stars are ours."
Techneer Vidor Chang.
Character in the novel "The Stars are Ours!" by Andre Norton, (Mary Alice Norton)

I have not given all the details by far here but I think this is enough to answer your question and give everyone an idea of where I am going. When the book comes out someday it will be known as the “Age of Relativity”, watch for it and enjoy.

Answer 2

Earth is a spaceship. And it´s a spaceship headed for a crashlanding...

Humans could live on other worlds quite well. We wouldn´t have to go to another starsystem. There are dozens of worlds in this solarsystem alone.

We could go to the moon for instance. NASA have conducted many experiments where they produced food in artificial environments with recycled water and air. The experiments worked very well. All you need is energy and there is an unlimited supply in space. The lunar regolith is a very good material for making solarpanels.

Biosphere 2 failed because the structure filtered out too much sunlight. As a result the plants didn´t produce enough oxygen. Had they supplmented the plants with additional artificial light the experiment would have worked.

The biggest problem is the lack of volatiles. Substances like carbon, hydrogen and nitrogen. There can be no big settlements without those. Every human would have to bring along all they need to survive and absolutely everything would have to be perfectly recycled. Even dead humans... There is practically no nitrogen on Mars which is why humans could never colonize that planet.

Venus is our best hope as it has everythng we need. If we focused all our efforts to cool it down by building a huge sunblocker in the L1 point betwen Venus and the sun Venus would eventually become a second earth. The days would be very strange at first but that is what you get for destroying your homeplanet!

Answer 3

What do you imply by way of saving? Any manner someday you're going to die is good recognized reality. Do you believe has any one ever been stored in the best way you imply it? All folks who're born have got to die someday. God won't difference this rule for anyone. In the case of an earth quake or tsunami or something individuals die considering they occurred to be there at that second at that situation. who was once accountable for that? Only that character no longer God. That is referred to as karma that's ones possess karma (on the whole gift janma) as a result of which that character was once on that fallacious spot. God best gave you the birt therefore of your prarabda karma. Rest what adopted on your lifestyles was once as a result of your possess unfastened will.(your possess making) Actually by way of earthquake no person can die. Since you decide upon to are living in a concrete apartment you're inclined. If you are living in a common living there's no risk of having killed. Tsunami may not kill individuals until you input the ocean or are living dangerously near. It is your mistake to are living closeby. That is your karma. This international is fraught with risks from either side. We all recognise approximately it inspite of our typical feel. But we forget about and pay the fee and worse nonetheless we blame God. Even animals perish in much less numbers as a result of the common failures.

Answer 4

Well you can generate power to the ship by nuclear fusion right now or figure a way to control the vest amount of power that is being released by smashing atoms and the ability to store for later use.

To create oxygen you would need something other than tanks to produce or release it. I'd figure having enough plants to suck in CO2 and expel oxygen.

Heck if you can figure a ship that has the ability to generate power and is able to maintain life and if we humans don't kill each other then it can be done.

Other than that we're doomed and we all die anyways sometime in life. We all be dead before the earth is sucked up by the sun.

Answer 5

Well, we've tried that experiment, and had no luck at all. Look up the story of Biosphere 2, which was an enclosed environment that was supposed to support people for years at a time. It didn't fly, but was instead located in Arizona. Didn't work worth a hoot, for all of its marvelous engineering. Have a look at it, and think of how it could have been a design for a spacecraft.

We're really stuck here, so we'd better keep care of this particular planet.

Answer 6

Dude, first of all, where would a starship big enough to hold millions of people would come from?
About the food, NASA would provide you with the paste that the astronauts eat. Water is not a problem, you could always drink your pee if you run out. For the oxygen, you need plants, lots and lots of plants.

Answer 7

The earth is dying. I think the most likely scenario is for the earth to cleanse itself really. It will wipe out nearly everything and start anew. If we did need to move it would most likely be to Mars. Everything else is simply to far away. To give you an idea of how big the universe is my astro prof provided this example to put it into comprehensible size.
Let's say we are in California. If we shrunk the sun down to the size of an orange, the earth would be about the size of a grain of sand, about ten feet away from the orange. Now the star CLOSEST to us...that next orange, would be located in Colorado.
That's the closest one, traveling from our little grain of sand, imagine how much farther we would need to go to find a star similar to ours, that also has some sort of sustainable planet.

Answer 8

With the technology we have (or dream about) today, we don't have a chance at finding a habitable planet. The closest thing we have to a habitable planet is Mars and it will never hold a substantial atmosphere (not enough mass).

Even with ion propulsion, (cheapest most efficient engines) we can't get anywhere near the speed of light (as mass increases with speed and at the speed of light, mass is infinite) and if we could reach the speed of light, the nearest star is about 4 years away. We couldn't reach it in 4000 years at our speeds and when we got there, the likelihood of finding a habitable planet is close to zero.

We are here and we had better hope God saves us.

Just remember, "If you've seen one Earth, you've seen them all"

Answer 9

desperate times calls for desperate measures.

humans already dead can be a fertilizer for plants grown in the ship.
plants then would be eaten.
then cycle goes on.
also, with this age, scientists must have developed already food capsules.
on their way, they might also find another suitable planet.
electricity can be genrated via solar panels.
but in the end. everyone would die in that ship if they wouldn't find resources.

this phenomena would really happen to earth. as the sun continiously gets bigger and as our ozone and resources gets depleted.

but that would be million years from now. by that time, we can all live in moon or saturn or other galaxies.

Answer 10

Kenny B -- Please explain how nuclear fuel is going to propel us. Nuclear Reactors are basically thermal plants and provide energy but no propulsion.

I don't think our planet should die too quickly because we have no interstellar propulsion system yet. One theory is that we could use a big net, possibly hundreds of miles in diameter to catch light which would push us along.