What I really need is a reason to go into to space
Posted by erin at October 28, 2003 12:12 AM…but not for me personally, rather, for the story I’m writing.
I need an economically feasible reason why people would travel into space and colonize parts of the solar system.
I wanted to say it’s some super-valuable alternative fuel source that solves Earth’s energy problems, or fresh water that can be shipped cheaply or something. But this is proving to be rather difficult.
Can someone please give me a reason to go into space?
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October 28, 2003 12:02 PM, Maggie said:
Ehm...
1. Earth's so polluted/crime-ridden/religious, we need alternate worlds to live on.
2. Human beings made contact with some alien race that trades us their technology for our walnuts or something (also could be used to make your space travel cheaper).
3. Do you need to just go on one quest into space or travel back and forth? 'cause quests are cool (christianize the aliens! woo, space crusades!)
4. The traveling to obtain some super-valuable fuel source is a clever ploy by the mob to launder money. (Godfather in space!)
5. Giant robots invaded Earth and we need to abandon our sweet home planet to find a new one, which supposedly has already been created for us (I'm sure there's been an anime like this already).This is just off the top of my head at 9am. It's space, Erin! Why do you need reasons? "I needed more space!" Ha! Watch Futurama, it may give you inspiration, no? (Also, watch Home Movies afterward - the Halloween episode was excellent!).
October 28, 2003 12:31 PM, John said:
Reason to go into space:
Earth is fucked.
That works.
October 28, 2003 01:04 PM, Erin said:
OK - Earth can't be a total wasteland, I guess what I should have said was "I need a reason for some people to go into space, but not everyone."
In my story, out solar system has been colonized, more or less, and some colonies were established in a nearby solar system - but these not-our-system colonies have since been abandoned, as they became too expensive to maintain after Earth's economy fell into a depression.
But I need a reason why our solar system was colonized in the first place.
I'm think a combination of something like, fusion is only possible in space, and there was a cold war with China. Or something.
October 28, 2003 04:31 PM, Travis said:
Space the final frontier, these are the voyages of space restaurant dumpinsize, its five year mission to seek out new creatures and new vegatables to boldy create food to terrible to eat.
But really here is good reason for mankind to go into space. It all starts with government oppression since 9/11 people are more and more willing to trade their freedom for security. As the years go by and the world increasingly becomes one goverment, cultures are completely domesticated and sold on walmart shelves. Soon new ideas about religion start to take root, these ideas reject the usual christian fundementalism, they also reject the arabic fundementalists, suddenly they realize that they are only a few people and that they will only get killed or imprisioned for their beliefs on government, hence just like the first colonists to this country. Its about starting a new life, a new culture, and a new way of thinking. And also any space economy would have to become its own seperate entity, not dependant on earths economy, so says the big book of science.
October 28, 2003 08:55 PM, Jay said:
Nanotechnology. It solves everything.
October 28, 2003 09:10 PM, Dan said:
Governments want colonies because they bring in natural resources, which means more money. The problem with making a colony profitable is manpower. Historically, there's usually been a native population to pressure or enslave into doing the labor. A space colony would not anything like this. So a colony in space could have tons of precious metals, gases for fuels, whatever, but no one to do the work of putting them in a transportable form and hauling them back to the home land. So how does a government solve a manpower problems?
1 Propaganda: Mars is a great place to live! Red skies are pretty!
2 Economic Incentives: Free transport to Mars. Tax breaks when you get their, incredibly high pay when you get there.
3 Using Military Personnel: Depending on the type of government in question, conscript the appropriate generation of some ethnic group you don't like and ship them off.
4 Using exiling prisoners (The Australia model)People might go for a number of reasons,
Economic:
Young people reaching professional age, or families finding themselves out of work, cant' find jobs in their native areas, and at the same time their governments are offering economic incentives for these people to make the big move.Fleeing Political and/or Religious persecution
The Pilgrim, or Mormon models.A good historical source that might be able to give you some inspiration would be to study Scottish and Irish emigration to the rest of the British empire in the 18th and 19th centuries.
October 29, 2003 12:33 AM, Agnieszka said:
So I'm assuming that this is the future. A classic one is asteroid mining. Let's say the earth's natural resources have been mostly used up, and so we go into space to get metals of various sorts. You can even have asteroid/planet prospecting, where some people go out and find particularly valuable mining sites and then stake them out, and on the basis of their stakes get loans to start mining companies. And stuff like that. You could research the California Gold Rush and also the Alaska Gold Rush to get a feeling for what it's like.
October 29, 2003 12:36 AM, Agnieszka said:
Also: earth is overpopulated. Then it doesn't have to be a wasteland, just too crowded, and then the people who need more space go out into...space.
October 29, 2003 03:19 AM, Maggie said:
Also: Manifest Destiny!
October 29, 2003 10:47 AM, thecomicman said:
listen to Dan. he stole that right out of my own mouth.
October 29, 2003 01:16 PM, Dan said:
Oh, that's why they were all sticky.
October 29, 2003 07:12 PM, Sam said:
Dan, I'm not sure what you're trying to say about Adan's mouth, but... Eww.
October 29, 2003 11:22 PM, Halifax said:
Space vixens.
October 30, 2003 01:33 AM, Dan said:
Aw crap. I wasn't trying to make a dirty joke, really.
Upon further reflection, I agree with Hal, the hardcore sci-fi/historical parrellel angle has been done before. Wouldn't this be a great beginning to a story:
"In the Year 2430 Space Vixens lured all of mankind into outer space, leaving all of womenkind in pocession of the planet earth and a little bit jealous."
Ha, "The Female Man" take that!
October 30, 2003 02:51 PM, thecomicman said:
...stupid, stupid Female Man
October 31, 2003 01:34 AM, Dan said:
Company towns might also be a way in which poeple move into space colonies. This is kind of a spin off of Agnieszka's idea. Starting a colony in any hostile environment would be outragously expensive, (with most technology levels and or devlopment paths) Corporations, aside from Countries, might also be willing to front the cost, and set up their own colony, a company town, to exploit the natural resources of astorids and moons and such.
This could also fit into Agnieszka prospecting idea because many mining companies came in a bought up (or forced out) single or small groups of private prospectors after the California gold rush had started to peter out a little. (These companies then made a mint.)
These companies would naturally be very selective about how they brought up to their space colonies, giving you the author a large amount easily crediable control over who left earth and who stayed.
This would also let you control the political climate in your setting (if it's not too far in the future) as if private corporations turned into political states, then started fighting each other, virtually anything could arise from the chaos.
You should probably tell me to stop, because I'll just keep going with this kind of stuff.
October 31, 2003 09:01 AM, Erin said:
Oh ho, I already had worked a lot of asteroid mining into the story, but I couldn't convince N. that asteroids (or apparently anything in the solar system) could contain a mineral or ore valuable enough to warrent expensive space travel.
So I probably have enough reasons to go into space now, I just need to work out a space propulsion system that's not a warp-drive-copyright-infringement.
October 31, 2003 11:39 AM, anthony said:
Well, there are ion drives and solar sails:
http://www.grc.nasa.gov/WWW/PAO/PAIS/fs08grc.htm
http://solarsails.jpl.nasa.gov/The hard and expensive part of space travel, though, is escaping Earth's gravity well. One of the most popular ideas along those lines is the space elevator:
http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2000/ast07sep_1.htm
The main reason for asteroid mining could be finding relatively rare minerals that are only found in trace amounts on Earth, or just ones that are hard to mine effectively here, be it due to geographic or political pressures. Outer planets/moons could be sources of rare-ish gases that are useful (namely Xenon or other ones for use in ion drives).
NASA has tons of neat and useful information regarding their research. You could also the Mars trilogy by Kim Stanley Robinson (Red Mars, Green Mars, Blue Mars), although the author's anarcho-socialist politics may turn off some people.
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