What can we make? (no Earth)

[evilchumlee]

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?

 

[Asbo Zaprudder]

It depends where you set up your colony. The basic requirements are shelter, protection against ionising radiation, breathable regulated atmosphere, liveable temperature, food, water, waste processing, and electrical power. There's no real need for fossil fuels if solar/stellar power is plentiful or if there is little available oxygen. If there is only poor insolation available, one would need to rely on nuclear fission or fusion (assuming you have the latter), geothermal, hydrothermal or similar power source as available - assuming you don't want to repeat the mistakes of your home planet. However, dumping greenhouse gases into the atmosphere might be desirable to raise the temperature. There are hydrocarbons on Titan, but it's so far from the Sun that you'd need to tackle the extreme cold. You could crack the water there for hydrogen and oxygen. A variety of exploitable metals and other elements and compounds would be key for manufacturing using 3D printers and robotic devices, which could be used to replicate more of themselves. The main bottleneck might be creating a suitable facility for manufacturing cables, electric motors, electric generators, transformers, pumps, fans, basic electronic components and sophisticated electronics such as integrated circuits. As long as you have the knowledge and a supply of suitable elements, there's no reason why your colony should not be self-sustaining. How far you go with the terraforming depends on you. Personally, I'd send machines to do the hard work first.

 

[evilchumlee]

Awesome.

So lets say we have all the basics down. We can survive.

What could we make or what would we not be able to?

Can we produce plastics? Pharmaceuticals? I'm trying to think of things that we could lose without any possibility of resupply from Earth, with the caveat that we can bring essentially anything off world to get started.

In this scenario, we aren't limited by a single location... the colony or colonies can span the entire solar system, there can be as many as could feasibly exist, and as much population on them as could feasibly be relocated from Earth, and assuming there is an international, unified effort to do so.

I've read some theories about potentially being able to have a sort of platform suspended in Venus' atmosphere which could grow plants in open air

 

[Asbo Zaprudder]

Venus's atmosphere is non-breathable, even at altitudes where the temperature and pressure might be survivable. Plants also require oxygen for respiration as they, like animals, are eukaryotes, only with the addition of chloroplasts. More "primitive" organisms - archaea and bacteria - could be possibly be bioengineered to survive. There have been suggestions from the detected chemical signature of phosphine that Venus's atmosphere might already harbour microbes.

‘Curious and unexplained.' Gas spotted in Venus's atmosphere is also spewed by microbes on Earth | Science | AAAS

As long as there is a sufficiently large knowledgebase and the means and materials to construct mechanisms, there is no limit apart from human ingenuity and what is allowed by the laws of physics.

 

[evilchumlee]

As long as there is a sufficiently large knowledgebase and the means and materials to construct mechanisms, there is no limit apart from human ingenuity and what is allowed by the laws of physics.

On this part, are there materials that we wouldn't be able to get without supply from Earth?

EDIT -

I'm doing better research than i've done before sparked by this.

It looks like the short answer is... no, not really? Fossil fuels are an obvious one, but apparently they could be synthesized with available materials if we needed them.

Plastics can be made from silicates, which are plenty.

We would obviously need to brings seeds and the like, but once we got farming operations up and running, that should be good to go.

Kind of answering my own questions but please keep ideas flowing.

 

[Asbo Zaprudder]

There are hydrocarbons on Titan. Synthesising plastics wouldn't be a problem. The ten most abundant elements in the universe after hydrogen and helium are oxygen, carbon, nitrogen, neon, silicon, magnesium, iron and sulfur. Obviously, neon isn't very useful.

https://sciencenotes.org/composition-of-the-universe-element-abundance

But, yes, we'd need to take along seeds and animals from Earth. There is a large body of literature dealing with strategies for colonising space, terraforming, space habitats and so forth, but I admit I've not read much about the subject.

The expert guide to space colonies - BBC Future
Space colonization - Wikipedia

Isaac Arthur makes some interesting videos on such topics, if you can get past his vocalisation.

To view this content we will need your consent to set third party cookies.
For more detailed information, see our cookies page.

Accept third party cookies

To view this content we will need your consent to set third party cookies.
For more detailed information, see our cookies page.

Accept third party cookies

 

[Shawnster]

In Ben Nova's novel "Mars" astronauts "stranded" on Mars make glass out of Martian soil to build a greenhouse.

Using regolith to create something like cement seems to be a regular theme in sci-fi.

 

[Asbo Zaprudder]

Concrete requires fin and coarse aggregate and cement. Hydraulic cement requires water, whereas non-hydraulic cement requires carbon dioxide. Other bonding agents besides the usual calcium silicate, calcium oxide and calcium hydroxide are possible. That's way too simplified. It's a very big subject amongst civil engineers. 3D-print construction of buildings is already a thing on Earth, so as long as there are suitable materials available that might be the way to go. On worlds such as the Moon and Mars, using existing lava tubes has also been cited as the easiest option for creating shelters quickly.

 

[BK613]

Is that concrete/cement going to be reinforced in any way? If yes, then you need infrastructure for that as well. To mine, to refine, to temper, to extrude and cut, and then to deliver.
There is always a little bit more infrastructure behind the infrastructure.

 

[Asbo Zaprudder]

I guess it depends on the size of the structure and the local gravitational acceleration. The reinforcement (usually rebar, but other materials such as carbon fibre are also used) is primarily there to deal with any tensile stresses.

 

[evilchumlee]

I'm curious about things that people might not often think about. This is all the big stuff, and crucially important to... exist.

What about some luxury items? Let's assume these colonies are established, people are surviving just fine, no issues there.

What kind of luxury items could humans without access to Earth make in space, and what might be lost forever? Perhaps things that require say like, bacteria to produce? I'm trying to get the big picture of what would potentially be lost forever without access to Earth... again though on the caveat that we could bring essentially anything with us, we just can't resupply. We can bring enough say, livestock to generate stable populations. We can assume tech like cloning and what not too to help with things like that. We can bring every seed known to grow whatever you can think of.

But what... if anything... would be lost to humans forever without Earth?

 

[Asbo Zaprudder]

Works of art, literature, music, TV shows, movies and similar would be unavailable unless facsimiles or recordings were taken before contact was lost. However, I assume priority would be given to payload storage for engineering, medical and scientific knowledge and equipment, which would be more likely to enhance survival prospects.

 

[evilchumlee]

We're talking more long term here. Take into account the OP, there is a literal worldwide, concerted effort to develop colonies and get as much material off world as possible.

Lets fast forward like, a century. We have colonies established. They're self sustaining, people have no problem surviving. Earth is still an option for resupply at this point.

It won't be... "soon". These colonies can take literally anything from Earth, so we can assume essentially any recording of anything we have has been shot out there.

Yeah obviously like, works of art could be rare if they didn't get shot out.

I'm looking more production type things. We can make more art.

What can't we make?

Like... idk... cheese? Can we make cheese? What about pharmaceuticals? Is there anything we wouldn't be able to get off Earth in order to create drugs?

 

[Asbo Zaprudder]

Drugs, clothing and even food are just chemistry. Genetic engineering would probably allow us to make proteins that we couldn't otherwise synthesise easily from basic chemicals. That's one reason that nanotechnology hasn't really taken off - when you get down to that scale, things don't behave nicely because of random collisions, van der Waals forces and quantum effects. 3-D printing doesn't scale well to using individual atoms. Nature has had a few billion years to solve the problems through evolution by Natural Selection.

 

[Spider]

Give it a few years, and McDonalds' will be 3D printing their hamburgers. Good thing I don't eat at McDonalds.

 

[Asbo Zaprudder]

In a way, all processed food is a kind of 3D printed anyway - just very crudely executed.

 

[evilchumlee]

Give it a few years, and McDonalds' will be 3D printing their hamburgers. Good thing I don't eat at McDonalds.

I'm non-ironically actually pumped for this. I eat meat, i'm not going to stop, but I also hate that animals have to die for it. I want lab-grown meat. 3D print me up burgers. Realistically, they would probably be marginally healthier. We could "design" them to be so.

 

[Asbo Zaprudder]

I'm non-ironically actually pumped for this. I eat meat, i'm not going to stop, but I also hate that animals have to die for it. I want lab-grown meat. 3D print me up burgers. Realistically, they would probably be marginally healthier. We could "design" them to be so.

Reminds me of Chicken Little in The Space Merchants by Frederik Pohl and Cyril M. Kornbluth.

 

[publiusr]

If Planet 9 is a black hole…you could feed it and polar jets transmute anything in their paths up the periodic table.

Current reactors can transmute mercury to gold.

The opposite is easier I am told.

 

[Asbo Zaprudder]

If Planet 9 is a black hole…you could feed it and polar jets transmute anything in their paths up the periodic table.

Current reactors can transmute mercury to gold.

The opposite is easier I am told.

Do you have any references for how transmutation of elements heavier than iron occurs in axial jets? I assume that accelerated nuclei must be involved rather than electrically neutral neutrons, which are responsible for the s- and r-processes of supernovae and neutron star mergers. I also assume that a suitable target must be available.