I've been interested for awhile in what could we produce in space, on a planet, whatever without resupply from Earth and what would we need to "seed" all of it?
Let's assume a couple of things...
-After an initial period of supply, all contact with Earth will be cutoff and no more supply is possible.
-We aren't super limited in what we can get off Earth, however. Imagine a unified, worldwide effort to supply our theoretical colony(s). We can send up whatever we feasibly could, with the caveat of no huge stores of raw materials (you can send up like, unlimited drums of fossil fuels). You can take as much population from Earth as is feasibly possible to sustain off world.
-Tech can be speculative, broaching into sci-fi. If something may be possible but we just don't have the tech yet, totally cool.
-The solar system is our playground, just no Earth (for... reasons?). You can put a colony or several where you want. Spacecraft have sci-fi drives that can traverse the system in say, two weeks or so.
So... what can we make? What can we not make? Can this theoretical space colony be completely self sufficient with the entire worlds effort the supply it initially and get it up and running? What kinds of things would it not have?
Let's assume a couple of things...
-After an initial period of supply, all contact with Earth will be cutoff and no more supply is possible.
-We aren't super limited in what we can get off Earth, however. Imagine a unified, worldwide effort to supply our theoretical colony(s). We can send up whatever we feasibly could, with the caveat of no huge stores of raw materials (you can send up like, unlimited drums of fossil fuels). You can take as much population from Earth as is feasibly possible to sustain off world.
-Tech can be speculative, broaching into sci-fi. If something may be possible but we just don't have the tech yet, totally cool.
-The solar system is our playground, just no Earth (for... reasons?). You can put a colony or several where you want. Spacecraft have sci-fi drives that can traverse the system in say, two weeks or so.
So... what can we make? What can we not make? Can this theoretical space colony be completely self sufficient with the entire worlds effort the supply it initially and get it up and running? What kinds of things would it not have?