Sell the SLS/Artemis/Orion program to me

[Tyndmyr]

Before SpaceX, we heavily used Russian launch vehicles to get into space. Soyuz rockets still work fine if we need.

While specific discussions of the difficulties of those are probably outside the scope of this forum, I think it is safe to say that they are not an accessible option at this time. In the future...who knows? Lots of stuff needs to shake out, but I don't think we can rely on their consistent availability for a good while at least.

What I was and am saying is that there shouldn't be measuring contests in space. Space colonisation is about humans in space, and eventually it should be about all humans in space being their own nation to start with, if they have any national allegiance at all, which they probably shouldn't and wouldn't have.

Oh, sure. Colonies often end up eventually becoming their own country. I wouldn't be surprised if we eventually get to some sort of Expanse like scenario with different factions, effectively nations and nation-like groups with substantial independence. A lot of that is just distance. If you're a several month trip away, you end up having to make decisions locally.

That's some distance away, though. Right now, most spaceflight is, in practice, satellites, almost all of which are orbiting earth and serving needs for people here. Thus, spaceflight remains very earth-centric. I'd love for us to get to that sci-fi world, but we have a lot to do before we make that leap.

Have you ever heard of spin gravity? Designs for this type of station have existed for a long time, and are still being proposed. Once you get much beyond the ISS level of space station, you can generate artificial gravity via spin, so there's no split between "people who live in gravity" and "people who don't." There's differences, clearly, but not some sort of fundamental bar to immigration from one to the other.

I do hope we build such a station. It's possible to do it even within the limits of Starship-sized fairing spaces by attaching a counterweight to a station by a cable and spinning it up. This is mechanically more complex than a non-orbiting station, and it makes docking, etc more challenging, but I think it's something we probably need to start working on.

That's one of those big barriers to orbital colonization. So long as folks have the muscle atrophy issue even with fairly routine workouts, it's a big obstacle to living there.

That all being said, I still put zero stock in what science fiction authors might think about interplanetary politics, despite their impressive credentials in.....? Interesting stories are great. I love reading and watching sci-fi. I don't for a second think anyone involved will have even the slightest idea of what to expect if and when we actually get a moonar or martian colony.

I don't think anyone's arguing that Dune or the like is specifically predictive, merely that conflict is fairly likely. It's existed in all contexts, predicting the end of it is the sort of prediction that has happened a great many times and has always disappointed. It'd be great if it happened, but it is a very unlikely prediction, and expecting humans to keep being, well, human, is a pretty likely bet.

I have no doubt that one gets a sense of scale and the fragility of humanity by such a perspective, but a similar sensation can be experienced by looking out over the vastness of the ocean, and ocean-goers are not inherently peaceful. Even if one argues that the scale is greater, the mechanism by which this would be achieved seems unclear.