The future of British Society.

[Susiejb]

Well you could just keep the nice ones here

 

[ladylola]

Hope that includes us then

 

[Space cat]

Yes of course, I fully agree .....what right do we have to go and park ourselves and all our problems on another planet.

We don't. That's the Prime Directive. Speaking of which, if there are any 'little green men' in our vicinity they'll have watched every episode of Star Trek so they'll take great care not to be spotted.

 

[Susiejb]

Well you're a space cat so you will be OK.....
I'm relying on Buzz Lightyear....."to infinty and beyond" and Woody of course

 

[Space cat]

Logistic is much like exponential growth until the population nears the maximum size local resources can sustain. Then growth slows down.

Who was it who said that a population expands to the limits of its food supply? I thought that was Malthus.

If real estate is measured in area, the asteroids have many thousands of times as much real estate available at the rocky planets or big moons.

True, but gravity - or rather the lack of it - would be a problem. It's odd but true that the time taken for a close orbit around any sphere of Earth-like density is about 90 minutes. This means that if you go for a stroll on the surface of a one mile diameter rock, you're likely to walk right off into space. As with the Moon, you would want to tunnel into an asteroid. You might then think about setting the whole thing spinning so as to create virtual gravity on the inside but beware because rock does not have great tensile strength. The deciding factor though would surely be the presence or absence of water.

Then there's the question of who would be sent to this new planet. Would we send our best and leave the uneducated masses on earth to continue breeding unchecked or send the "excess " populations away.

This is not a trivial question. The intuitive answer is to send 'the best' but, by doing that, you risk leaving out some part of the gene pool that 'the best' don't have. By the time you find out you'll be many generations down the line - and just as many light years from home - and it'll be too late to go back for a token idiot.

Whenever I have had this discussion before I have always argued that life on another planet would in no way evolve as we have, I imagine they would indeed look like aliens.....surely no other planet would follow the same evolutionary pattern as our own ie dinosaurs ....etc.

No, but chemistry works the same everywhere. If it's a planet with liquid water and an oxygen atmosphere, we can expect to find life not entirely different to what we have here. The life forms might look different but the biochemistry will be familiar. In fact life as we know it is pretty much a prerequisite for an oxygen atmosphere (NOT the other way around). Although there's a lot of oxygen sloshing around the universe, it's all firmly bound up to other elements. It needs photosynthesis to break it free.

On the other hand, take a planet with a hot, dense atmosphere then add an ocean full of fluorides and the rules change completely.

 

[WestmidsChippy]

Planet/ships? lightspeed travel? the only known man/woman to have ever lived on earth to actually produce fact on how gravity works

I read somewhere that z moon is much like earth of its planet structure. ok no life no atmosphere maybe but would it really be mission impossible to even begin thinking on how we could perhaps manipulate the moons actual being?
All through human "evolution" on such things as inventions, was i bet a always, suck and see type of a moment.
Yea if it is even plausable or even possible it would be a big suck and see type of a moment but i also read that there were fears when they turned on The large hadron collider, the partical smasher near geniva . I bet the top dog on that one even had a moment. IF yow doesn't then you are of the older generation of homo sapien known as the eastendersapien. carry on as you were

spacecat your still a tosskettle

 

[spacecat]

spacecat your still a tosskettle

And your still OFF YOUR MEDS!