"The Richness of Our Solar System" on Fantastic Worlds

[jordan179]

Most people, including most people who are in favor of human expansion beyond the Earth, don't realize just how rich is the Solar System. They tend to look only at the major terrestrial planets and assume that the only place into which we can expand without interstellar travel is Mars, because there are only three such planets in our Solar System

Comments

[polaris93]

Actually, we could tunnel into any asteroid Phobos' size or larger to make a habitat out of it, and would thereby guarantee protection of the inhabitants from solar tantrums and stray radiation from space. It would also be easier to maintain environmental integrity (i.e., keep air in) with many feet of rock surrounding living and working spaces, with only a few airlocks to let people in and out of the habitat. Surface telemetry could provide images of everything surrounding such a habitat and relay it to "windows" within the living and working spaces, which would reproduce what the telemetry picked up, making it look as if one were really looking out of a normal window into space (when in fact it was just an image reproduced on a screen backed by thick rock). Such a habitat could be spun on an axis to provide any strength of gravity desired -- much better than having to depend on low-gravity fields such as that of Mars, say, because pregnant women and other female creatures in the habitat would do better with a(n apparent) gravitational field close to Earth's, as would the ill and injured. And in the asteroid belt, one could go back and forth among asteroids in a singleship, a la Larry Niven's Belters, engaging in extensive mining operations to acquire everything from water to metals to rare earth elements to whatever other basic materials were needed. In short, we could tailor such habitats to whatever specifications we desired, something that would not be possible with a planet or very large asteroids or moons.

On the other hand, we could certainly settle the larger moons of the solar system, not to mention deep craters at the poles of Mercury and Luna with their rims in eternal sunlight and their floors forever in shade. In the latter cases, by expanding lava tubes near or in those craters into suitable habitats, we'd have thick walls around us to keep air in and protect us from solar and other radiation, the walls of the craters to protect us from the heat of the Sun, and the rims of the craters as places to plant solar collectors for power.

And so on and so forth. Lots of great real estate out there just waiting to be homesteaded or mined. :-D