No one is doing serious optical astronomy from ground based stations. The distortion from the atmosphere alone is far worse for astronomy than starlink

It's a question of how capable the tech is I suppose. Can robotics easily reproduce people?

Other than scientific inquiry or barring some specific mineral wealth, I agree. Everything we need can be found floating in space except for a gravity well to live in. If we're capable of living in space, why deal with an atmosphere that does nothing but add to the energy cost of leaving it?

The future entirely depends on just what we discover about human adaptation to microgravity, likely from experimentation on the Moon. If we can remain healthy and especially reproduce in fractional gravity, other planets have much less appeal than the moons and asteroids that don't require a huge energy expenditure to reach.

This is a common problem. Many a porn star has had to scrub due to an ignition fluid issue.

With the bolos they tethered modules together and made them do somersaults to create gravity. I don’t remember if they used existing modules or not. But you are correct. There were two tori connected to the ISS that had gravity. The ISS as a whole didn’t have artificial gravity.

I know, that's why I make a big deal of it. Can people actually live - with families, with lives above and beyond whatever job they are out there for....

Least disturbed by man. No plowing or building to disturb the ground.

Why the moon at all?

Does that necessarily imply colonization, though? We might just send robots to mine things. Sure, there's minutes of delay because those pesky little photons can't be whipped into going any faster, but we can automate a lot of it and it's not like the task involves particularly quick reaction times, seeing as the mineral isn't going anywhere.

And with an remote-controlled miner, you don't have to worry about all the extra dead weight of the hairless monkeys and their habitat and food and water and needing to bring them back before their bones rot from too little gravity.

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I was standing in the park and was wondering why the frisbee was getting bigger and bigger… and then it hit me. Let’s hope Jupiter doesn’t come this close..

Yes, looks beautiful, but like you, i'm never sure. ;)

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People boarded the Mayflower, and every other colony ship to the New World, without even the guarantee of a return trip or survival at all.

I agree. I would love to read some short stories about the other survivors.

You cannot even buy a toy scope for $30. To get a decent scope that won't drive you insane with its garbage mount and awful optics multiply your budget by ten. That's the minimum.

Definitely.

The moon will probably be our orbital industry hub or downtime location long term; we just don't know enough about the interaction with lower gravity yet.

If we can survive on a more or less permanent basis at lunar gravity, it's easier to base there for orbital work: shallower gravity well with no atmospheric drag and closer geostationary orbit for less control lag. Remote work and even shift crews from the moon to lunar orbit make much more sense than from the bottom of Earth's gravity well.

If lunar gravity isn't sufficient for the human body over the long term, it'll still extend our ability to stay in space. We'll just need more crews and more energy to turn them over faster.

And in either case, lunar water and metals will probably be the first source of significant orbital construction material we tap.

The last part is definitely a totally different story. I ended up really liking it though. It does get really technical about explaining some of the technology. But I thought it was really interesting the way he played with social and cultural evolution.

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People can’t just persist there. Survival alone requires technological feats never-before seen in human history. You need to raise the temperature hundreds of degrees, you need oxygen, and you need to account for psychological factors like a lack of sunlight or knowing certain death is a certainty outside the human created environment in which you live.

You can’t just drop people off and say “see you in three years!”.

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Elon, you need to be running twitter.

Ask astronomers. Starlink is destroying ground-based astronomy.