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Could Humanity Really Build 'Elysium'?
Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes "Miriam Kramer writes at Space.com that in the new movie Elysium, Earth is beyond repair, and the rich and powerful have decided to leave it behind to live in a large, rotating space station stocked with mansions, grass, trees, water and gravity. 'The premise is totally believable to me. I spent 28 years working on NASA's International Space Station and retired last summer as the director of ISS at NASA Headquarters. When I took a look at the Elysium space station, I thought to myself, that's certainly achievable in this millennium,' says Mark Uhran, former director of the International Space Station Division in NASA's Office of Human Exploration and Operations. 'It's clear that the number-one challenge is chemical propulsion.' Nuclear propulsion could be a viable possibility eventually, but the idea isn't ready for prime time yet. 'We learned an incredible amount with [the International Space Station] and we demonstrated that we have the technology to assemble large structures in space.' The bottom line: 'If you threw everything you had at it, could you reach a space station of the scale of Elysium in 150 years?' says Uhran. 'That's a pretty tall order.'"
I'm invoking Betteridge's law of headlines and saying "no."
In SOVIET RUSSIA... erm...NSA AMERICA, the Internet logs onto YOU!
Look back at how things have changed since 1863 and you can't begin to comprehend where we could be in even 100 more years.
Is it just me, or is this movie being promoted through tons of tech sites/blogs?
-Malakai
A Dragon Lives in my Garage
I'd think the #1 issue would be air. Between leaks, meteor punctures, the necessarily less than 100% efficient airlocks (they can't get ALL the air out, so some puffs away when you open the outer door), and outgassing, you need a 'top-up' every so often. See, for instance, the book 'Fallen Angels'- the main characters are from an orbital station, on a 'scoop' mission to gather air from the upper atmosphere of Earth at the start of the book.
when the earth has everything?
Miriam Kramer writes at Space.com that in the new movie Elysium, Earth is beyond repair, and the rich and powerful have decided to leave it behind to live in a large, rotating space station stocked with mansions, grass, trees, water and gravity.
So, Wall-E?
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face
This sounds familiar
Some people die at 25 and aren't buried until 75. -Benjamin Franklin
IF the people who live in the "bad" part of town actually wanted to make their part of town the nice part of town they could.
It is called beating their children to the point where they are pushed to succeed more than the previous generation.
Instead the mentality is "The 'hood was good enough for me, it is good enough for my son/daughter"
They wallow in their own failure as parents and thus their children are locking in a cycle of mediocrity. If a recent immigrant from Africa can come and within 10 years of hard work own a house and have well educated children, then what the hell is the problem with the people born here that are given every sort of assistance as a form of "birthright" , but repeatedly fail miserably?
We are no longer in an era where people of different races are discriminated against is becomming less and less each years and is almost non-existant, the only discrimination is self imposed where people in their own minds think that because they are white they are better and end up as white trash or because they are brown and the supposed "man is keepin' them down" they end up as brown trash. Trash = Trash no matter the color, it isn't genetics it is a crapped out culture(s) that is to blame for any race who fails and then uses the color of their own skin as an excuse or justification for their own failures as human beings.
I love space and tech, and this is certainly a nice thought experiment, but while we are dreaming allow me to go slightly OT for a different bottom line: If we threw everything we had at fixing what's wrong here - where we live - could we make Earth a better place to live for more people in 150 years? Be that through finding safer and more sustainable energy resources, better and more accessible health care, decent living conditions, sane working hours that allow people to spend precious time with family and friends and therefore be productive members of society, solid education regardless of wealth or social status, and, why not, voting a political class that actually represents the people (a problem that is by no means limited to a single nation).
Which if you currently live in the USA right now, are finding that LAW applies to the average person, LAWLESSNES applies to the government and its crony bankers.
You go to jail, they do not.
Since 2007, the monied elite have stolen whole countries to continue their lifestyles unabated. The amounts of money are staggering to imagine, some 17 trillion by FOIA that was accidentally leaked, which probably is many times that amount was actually stolen from countries world wide entangled in the Western Banking System.
I have no doubt, that if we took that money back and instead of allowing the wars and the fancy mansions these bankers continue to create and build today with it we could have easily cured cancer, develop far more creative solutions to Nuclear power. (i.e. Fukishima is rapidly turning from a catastrophe to an Apocalypse.)
With that money we could hace solved very interesting issues in material sciences for example to make a space station work.
We can do anything we can imagine. The problem is there seems to be something wrong with the human spirit.
We have had so many opportunities in our history to achieve these things, but war and psychopaths which amount to a very few people, end up destroying the entire civilization others have built.
Then we go back to mud huts.
We are on that same path AGAIN, which isn't surprising. What is surprising is the almost lack of interest anyone has in stopping it.
-Hack
Got Geometrodynamics? Awe, too hard to figure out? Too bad.
The truth is the US is a country with low upwards mobility, and is totally in denial about it. When you adjust wages for inflation and stop describing healthcare as "benefits" maybe the bottom hundred million Americans will be in a better shape to "succeed".
1.Build a huge, opulent space city, and populate it with the obscenely rich and the world's political leaders.
2 Blow it up.
3.Start over.
Scruting the inscrutable for over 50 years.
Can you rebel when you have handguns and they have hellfire missiles?
Yes.
The people with the guns can still kill and destroy at will. They will strike at the vulnerable parts of the civilization. They will also be likely to give up their lives for the cause.
The people with the hellfire missiles, however, will be hamstrung by the sheer destructiveness of those weapons. A Hellfire missile is of no use if the target is in the very location you are striving to protect. Yes, you /could/ kill the insurgent, but the collateral damage would vastly outweigh the gains you would achieve with such a "victory".
Given the history of the last seventy years, it's surprising this is even a question anymore. Those super weapons are great for destroying (other) civilizations, but not so awesome for protecting or maintaining your own. For that you use psychology and propoganda; that way it doesn't even /occur/ to your own people to rebel. It's the old "bread and circuses", a maxim that's been known and in use for over 2000 years.
Just wondering: are 150 years projects viable at all? Is there any example of such an enterprise? What's the incentive for human beings to take part in thigs they won't see the results of?
I don't have a sig.
How is this a new and interesting idea to people?
What a silly question. You might as well ask why well-understood science is still interesting to newcomers who have never seen it before. It's because they've never seen it, that's why!
Not everyone has read Neuromancer (in fact, shame on me, I haven't), but it, like everything else, is simply recombining ideas in new ways. Looking at it from the outside, I could easily see how someone who hadn't read it could dismiss it quite easily with a question like yours. After all, Blade Runner predated it with its cyberpunk themes (and Blade Runner was hardly the first, not to mention that the ideas that were combined to create cyberpunk existed prior to it for far longer), and the idea of the wealthy living in a place that's inaccessible to everyone else has been a staple of literature for centuries, if not millennia. We could go down the list of ideas that make up the world of Neuromancer and find other works that used them before it, but what made Neuromancer great was that it was well-written and combined those elements in a novel way to create something that was greater than the sum of its parts.
Dismissing a work out-of-hand because it happens to borrow a single idea that has been done before is folly. Dismiss it because it's superficial in its treatment of the subject matter, does nothing new with the ideas it uses, or relies too heavily on an idea (I haven't seen the film or read anything about it, so I'm merely using these as examples), but don't dismiss it because it uses an idea that's been used before, since that argument applies to everything.
Mandatory link (and a really good series of videos to watch): Everything is a Remix
Weightless sex.
Like intermodal, I'll go with "No", but add a bit more.
First the basic premise that we "wreck/destroy/damage" the earth to the point where rich folk want to get off is pretty far fetched. I agree with the concept of climate change and I feel that humans have a nasty habit of pooping in their own house, but the Earth is a pretty large house. Given the resources to build a space station the size of Elysium it would be less expensive to carve out an area of land on earth and make it more habitable. Building a dome(s) over large areas of land is more plausible then Elysium.
If the earth is so wrecked/damaged/destroyed (and I have not seen nor will I see this movie), how are all those people still living on earth. From the trailer's I see damaged buildings, but breathable atmosphere. I see over turned cars, but sunlight and the few quick shots from orbit I see clouds and clear areas so that means rain. If the planet is toxic then the population would eventually die. If not then the population would die off to a level that allows for survival, then growth, then ultimately revenge. How does Elysium get supplied? If from Earth then it would not be that difficult to shut down launch facilities (lots of people still live on Earth I presume) thus eventually requiring the Orbitors to need to negotiate with those on the planet. if those in orbit don't need Eath then why not just commit genocide for any group put under the whip will eventually rise up angry.
Who builds this thing? It is not small so construction would take a large amount of human resources and the rich folk would (1) have to pay them (2) make up a story about how everyone working on the place will get to stay (3) be so united that not one hint of deception would get out. If it did, I figure construction would quickly stop. Rich people may be good at massaging money, but I doubt they have the requisite skills to perform orbital construction or the other countless jobs it takes to build Elysium. Along with that idea, once built, who maintains the place. Rich folk? Hardly for they still need waste/garbage disposal. They need life support crews to ensure air and water keep flowing and they need cleaning crews for all those mansions and quaffed grounds. It is not hard to imagine that at some point the "lower class" on the station will not like what they see going on on Earth and do something to make a change. On Earth, control the resources is hard but doable, on a station is is much easier to commit sabotage and compromise delicate systems.
If the rich folk have that much money, power, and high tech capability to create Elysium, why wait for the crash of Earth, but sue their skills to repair, then take over Earth. Keep your friends close, and your enemies closer. By isolating themselves on Elysium they actually make themselves more vulnerable then by being spread out on earth, manipulating and using the population to their own ends (kind of like today). Even better, keep the masses fat and happy and you would either not have need for an escape station, or you'll get long lines of people wanting to build the station, but stay on Earth.
tl;dr The premise is quite unbelievable, I dare say it is not really science fiction, more like the current trend of Hollywood to create action adventure in space, so they throw in CGI and space to make it seem different from the large number of films that have underdeveloped plots, weak characters, and forgettable eye candy.
Could we build it? Sure, but I'd rather hold out for a Ring World.
Life is a great ride, the vehicle doesn't matter
The truth is the US is a country with low upwards mobility, and is totally in denial about it.
Part of the reason for this is that in just about every society across recorded history, the degree of upwards mobility was much worse. We tend not to see this because it's much easier to compare our situation to other modern societies (i.e. European welfare states) or hypothetical utopias than to a past we never experienced. I don't want to idealize the American system, because it does have warts, but even the poor in America have vastly more opportunities (and wealth, and freedom, and political rights) than most people who have ever lived. That doesn't mean that we can't do better, just that a sense of perspective is helpful.
Just not in space.
This is already how the 0.1% live.
They live in gated communities with private police/security and second and third homes at ski, golf, coastal resorts.
They fly in private jets, or cruise in private yachts.
They have private rooms in private hospitals with access to the latest advances in health care. They get sick less frequently because they live healthier lifestyles with more leisure time, access to better food, and less stress.
They contribute to PAC's and politicians to make sure that legislation gets passed to allow them to keep more of their wealth and contribute less proportionately to the rest of society than at any time in the last 150 years.
Meanwhile, the 99% are increasingly disenfranchised, increasingly less likely to have job or retirement security, less able to purchase a first home, and with decreasing access to increasingly expensive and less effective health care. ... just not in space.
NOTE: I don't know anything about Elysium except that which I've gleaned from trailers/Internet chatter. That being said...
I could see an Elysium-like situation occurring. Not "everyone else is poor and downtrodden and the rich escape into space", but "the rich make an orbiting resort for them to enjoy zero-g vacations." I can imagine that the rich and famous would LOVE such a place. Being able to brag to your friends that you just vacationed on Club $pace would make you the envy of your friends. To say nothing of being literally out of reach of paparazzi. (Let's see those zoom lenses not only see all the way to space, but view through station walls.)
After awhile, the rich pave the way for the cost to drop and others can afford to take part. Especially when space business opportunities emerge. (e.g. Mining asteroids.) Eventually, everyone can go into space for a nominal cost.
It's not a guarantee (the rich could also hoard the technology so that only they are allowed in space), but it is a path where a permanent space presence similar to Elysium could be constructed and still benefit all of mankind.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
Its easy to compare the upward mobility now to the last 100 or so years of American history, which is pretty well recorded. Upward mobility in the US has been on a decline recently (last couple of decades or so) compared to US mobility rates in the previous fifty years. Wages have been tanking hard vs inflation, and while we're better off than serfs or slaves, that doesn't mean we have to be content about it. We can strive for better than "slightly improved over pre-enlightment Europe"
This made me laugh, and I almost gave you a Funny mod. But... grammar. s/b:
Man, even the quality of the trolls has gone way downhill.
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
Right now America couldn't build dogshit if it backed a dump truck full of scrambled eggs into a kennel.
Back when NASA was more ambitious and had better political support: http://www.islandone.org/MMSG/aasm/
"What follows is a portion of the final report of
a NASA summer study, conducted in 1980 by request of newly-elected President Jimmy Carter at a cost of 11.7 million dollars. The result of the study was a realistic proposal for a self-replicating automated lunar factory system, capable of exponentially increasing productive capacity and, in the long run, exploration of the entire galaxy within a reasonable timeframe. Unfortunately, the proposal was quietly declined with barely a ripple in the press.
What was once concievable with 1980's technology is now even more practical today. Even if you're just skimming through this document, the potential of this proposed system is undeniable. Please enjoy."
As I said elsewhere:
http://slashdot.org/topic/cloud/the-science-behind-elysium/
"The cheapest way forward may be to create an open source plan for an automated seed that could be sent to an asteroid where it would begin to grow into a space habitat. Then the habitat could duplicate itself by making more seeds. The habitats could create transport spacecraft to land on Earth and solar space satellites to power them on the ground for launching back into space with people on board. So, all it takes is crowd-sourcing and the cost of the first seed and the first launch. Well, of course the first might fail, but by the tenth try it might work. So, it might be doable for only a few billion dollars in real money for materials and the first launches. Testing could be mostly done via simulation."
Related projects I've participated in:
http://www.pdfernhout.net/princeton-graduate-school-plans.html
http://www.kurtz-fernhout.com/oscomak/
http://openvirgle.net/
It may be easier to figure out how humans can live in zero-G by bio-engineering though, compared to spinning big heavy things.
http://tmp2.wikia.com/wiki/Asgard
I also suggest living in liquid with probably "liquid breathing" as an option to prevent muscle wasting and bone loss (since whales do OK by resistance from water):
http://www.oscomak.net/wiki/Liquid_breathing_to_resist_bone_loss
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
http://lmgtfy.com/?q=social+mobility
If you're born poor in the US, your chances of making it to the middle class are lower than those of a poor person in quite a few other industrialized countries. It's shameful is what it is.
What doesn't kill you only delays the inevitable
Just wondering: are 150 years projects viable at all? Is there any example of such an enterprise?
The biggest european cathedral have been build over very long period of time, some spanning a few centuries
(to the point that some have mixed architectural styles, because styles has changed as the centuries passed by during the building of different sections).
But I personally don't think that the building of the station itself is going to span that much time. Don't think of it as a space cathedral. (Where building it starts immediately now, and takes 150 year until you've brought all the needed parts into orbit and assembled them).
Think of it more with what hapened with genetics, and for human genomes.
- Quite some time has passed between the discovery of the chemistry of DNA and the sequencing of the human genome.
- Yet the sequencing it self only took a decade.
- Most of the time was spent developing technologie, and scaling up in speed and volume, only the last 10 years where spent sequencing genes.
- And same again, nowadays we have "personnal genomes". It took quite a few year for the technology to scale from the human genome to now, but the personalised genome itself only takes a few hours.
Very probably the same with a huge station:
- the first decade will be spent developing the space industry and scaling up capability. (Having Space-X and such grow, and be able to put more ships into orbit, for example).
- the station it self will probably get built over the last decade or two.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Part of the reason for this is that in just about every society across recorded history, the degree of upwards mobility was much worse.
Yeah, and compared to a corpse, I'm in excellent health.
Hard facts: The essential American myth is that of unlimited upward mobility. The hard truth is that the upward mobility is a lot higher in most of Europe. Especially in those loathsome socialist, scandinavian countries.
The US is rapidly approaching the social structure of central- and south america when they were dictatorships while being in complete denial about it. Not that I care, it's fun to watch from a safe distance.
TCAP-Abort
Physics and sociology would be the major factors with such a space outpost. I think the physics say 'yes' while social factors say 'definite Maybe'.
The wealthy habitually promote the idea of the Earth being endlessly exploitable without fear of enviromental repercussions. They even tell us that pollution = good. So...... how do such people learn to live in a space vessel where limits are glaringly obvious and all waste must be dealt with or else risk their environment quickly becoming nonviable?
Their exploitation mindset may set them up to fail at life in space. Or, they may grow more ecologically conscious before their separatist project becomes set in stone. Or they might internalize some combination of values that allow them to become complete Space Nazis.
Trolling are an art.
Extra medication for all!
Of particular interest to you would be the section that claims:
In recent years several large studies have found that vertical inter-generational mobility is lower in the United States than in most developed countries.[11] A 1996 paper by Daniel P. McMurrer, Isabel V. Sawhill found "mobility rates seem to be quite similar across countries."[12] However a more recent paper (2007) found a person's parents is a great deal more predictive of their own income in the United States than other countries.[5] The United States had about 1/3 the ratio of mobility of Denmark and less than half that of Canada, Finland and Norway.[1] France, Germany, Sweden, also had higher mobility, with only the United Kingdom being less mobile.[1] Economic mobility in developing nations (such as those in Africa) is thought to be limited by both historical and global economic factors.[13] Economic mobility is everywere correlated with income and wealth inequality.[14][15]
Don't worry, this small blurb is peppered with no fewer than five citations. We're anxiously awaiting your "lots of examples", as long as they're not anecdotes like "my cousin Jeb won the lottery."
Chuuch. Preach. Tabernacle.
I moved to the hood. My neighbors are drug dealers. There's broken sidewalks, abandoned houses, ill-maintained streets, cats everywhere, and shopping malls where 40% of the stores are closed. Trash rolls through the street, it's archived in the topsoil if you start digging.
I planted a tree in my yard. It produces fruit.
I've been tearing out the topsoil. Going to plant new grass, level the yard. It's a 170sqft yard but I have a big cutter mattock and I'll get stronger the more I work at it. The existing soil is good topsoil, but too high; I want to mix in fresh topsoil and manure, have someone come take this stuff for topsoil... mix a little manure in and it'll be good topsoil, I probably should have turned it and stripped less instead of getting new soil.
The city won't clean up the abandoned houses. I've been cutting the weeds down to get rid of the lice and vermin. Patched some of the cement sidewalks too. Hopefully they raze the unfixable houses...maybe I'll buy the next lot and grow pomegranate bushes and cherry trees.
The neighbors, some of them, have started to turn over their yards, maintain them nicer. Some have begun to maintain the city-owned lots. Others are walking the streets picking up trash and recyclables and binning them properly. It's slow. The drug dealers are still sitting on their porch laughing at everyone for being stupid.
This is what one man can do.
Support my political activism on Patreon.
If you're black, sometimes someone moves the food tray away, and you have to wait for WIC to move it back.
That's basically it. People have this idea that being black means you're permanently glued to welfare, because the poor cities run by broken administrations where poor people migrate are often full of black people. Poor white people somehow don't look poor; we call them "rednecks", and they blow their $6.50/hr pizza delivery boy salaries on turbochargers for their Nissan sports cars.
The reality is all these people are comfortable. Rednecks have redneck pool parties and sports cars, so they stay in redneckville. City blacks have welfare and food stamps and so they stay in the city living in broken down houses in ghettos. I see some of these folks stand up and walk right the hell out of that as a matter of course, just like growing up--by the time they're 20 they're exactly where I was when I was 20 or better off, and before they're 25 they've moved up to the upper-middle-class. City blacks on a school system that can't teach you to read by the time you're out of high school. You can't read your own diploma. And these people just go, "Nope, fuck that," and walk right out of it and become middle class.
People become what they believe in. We tell people blacks are trampled, downtrodden, and have no opportunities--and they live that way in a welfare state. Rednecks grow up in redneckville and they live almost exactly the same way. The middle class doesn't become rich; everything's so expensive, but they keep buying it while complaining about how poor they are, when they really aren't and never will be.
There is no center for opportunity. There aren't enough opportunities for people in this country. Fortunately most people are universally too lazy to move up or down, and the ones that aren't and are looking will easily find a string of opportunities and no one putting out the effort to move toward them.
Support my political activism on Patreon.
I don't think that the 1% upper class is racist on a global scale. That might by the case in the US, but I doubt that in other countries and continents the situation is the same. However, they are classists which is the same with just a different distinction method.
Fine, then feel free to present your evidence. Oh wait, you don't have any.
Just for fun, here are some other reports
from 2012: http://milescorak.files.wordpress.com/2012/01/inequality-from-generation-to-generation-the-united-states-in-comparison-v3.pdf
from 2010: http://colorlines.com/archives/2010/02/moving_on_up_and_hitting_a_wall_social_mobility_in_the_us_and_europe.html
from 2009: http://search.oecd.org/officialdocuments/displaydocumentpdf/?doclanguage=en&cote=eco/wkp(2009)48
from 2008: http://www.brookings.edu/~/media/research/files/reports/2008/2/economic%20mobility%20sawhill/02_economic_mobility_sawhill_ch3.pdf
Or some historical numbers:
http://www.chicagofed.org/digital_assets/publications/working_papers/2005/wp2005_12.pdf
That last study finds that "mobility increased from 1950 to 1980 but has declined sharply since 1980". I guess the economy must have entered a sharp decline since 1980.
Oh wait....it didn't.