Sailing Asteroids through Space - The Astrolithic Age

[Dilandu]

My point was that we'd be wise to clean up the mess we've made on earth before we try harder--and demonstrably less roomy--fixes like orbiting 100,000-man cylinders or hollowed out asteroids. Earth has more room, a reliable and fully automated climate control (when we aren't screwing it up), plenty of water, built-in radiation protection, and excellent scenery. A space habitat may be a big box, but it is still a box.

To put it simply - no.

The whole ideas that "nature would fix itself, just don't mess with it" are based on gross underestimation how dumb & inefficient Nature actually is. There is no "climate control" in Earth system more than "not allow temperature to rise past the water boiling or fell to equator freezing". Earth climate is unstable. And "horrors" of man-made global warming aren't exactly much bad than horrors of pretty natural ice age.

If you want comfortable Earth, you need to put in under human control. Control climate actively, not just passively "hope not to mess up".

 

[mangiumicro]

My point was that we'd be wise to clean up the mess we've made on earth before we try harder--and demonstrably less roomy--fixes like orbiting 100,000-man cylinders or hollowed out asteroids. Earth has more room, a reliable and fully automated climate control (when we aren't screwing it up), plenty of water, built-in radiation protection, and excellent scenery. A space habitat may be a big box, but it is still a box.

To put it simply - no.

The whole ideas that "nature would fix itself, just don't mess with it" are based on gross underestimation how dumb & inefficient Nature actually is. There is no "climate control" in Earth system more than "not allow temperature to rise past the water boiling or fell to equator freezing". Earth climate is unstable. And "horrors" of man-made global warming aren't exactly much bad than horrors of pretty natural ice age.

If you want comfortable Earth, you need to put in under human control. Control climate actively, not just passively "hope not to mess up".

...and by the way, asteroid material can be processed to create graphene, which in very large and thin sheets placed in the proper orbits can be controlled like louvers to partially attenuate Sunlight and reduce Earth warming at pleasure... apparently an idea proposed first by A.C.Clarke.