Comic Strips

You're including a great list of things we have or do have to look into to solve before space is trivial. You're omitting a lot of the problems of underwater, or even above water colonies. I do agree that colonization of space comes only if we can make it self-sufficient, as getting all the resources from a gravity well makes it ridiculously costly and limited. I disagree on how any of the problems have no solutions though, as they've been discussed even before I was born, and I'm old. 🫤

Will humans change by necessity and by exposure? Of course they will. The Expanse did a good job of suggesting early changes to those living in low gravity conditions (which is probably the biggest thing to solve, not radiation or material sources). And after even longer they will change even more, making the different places become subsets of the species as we diverge.

Thanks for the link, I could not remember where that site was from so long ago, but it's a great collection of lore and speculative ideas.

We just disagree on what can be done. I can't imagine the scifi visions of underwater places that ignore how a small crack leads to instant crushing, or the constant corrosion that has to be fought against. On the Moon and Mars we've got the dust that is still a questionable thing on how to handle (electrostatic charges were the last I saw that seemed like they may help some). If you don't have to rely on Earth for most supplies and you find ways to counter radiation (a few meters of slag works, not practical for a ship due to the mass, but a station isn't a problem). Rotation may solve a lot of the problems with zero G, but we need to do more research on site before we can just accept it's unsolvable.

It may not matter and we may not be around that long for it to be a factor anyway, but assuming we are, we have to move on from the Earth, as the window of habitability is not that long. Huge for us at human scales, but cosmically we're way past the halfway point.