This may be a set of believable trends, assuming everyone plays ball.
On the other hand it smacks of littering because 'someone else will pick it up eventually'.
We are also going to struggle to recreate complex ecosystems.
Predicting the far future has a terrible track record, I'm still waiting for the free electricity promised in the sixties.
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FeralCatMan Unusual disease collector., Fri 3 Jul 2020, 20:01,
Reply)
Speaking of littering.
We've already fucked space in that regard. And only a few of us bloody live there, so far!
(, Fri 3 Jul 2020, 20:03, Reply)
We have not fucked space.
99.999999% of everything we've chucked up there is in LEO and will drag back down within tens to hundreds of years. There are a few things up there that could last a few millennia before turning to dust, but I don't count that as rubbish or littering. I'm quite proud that there are bags of human shit and piss on the moon, and I'm quite entertained by the idea that those bags will be holy relics one day.
If you think we've fucked space by launching RTGs or nuclear reactors, cosmic rays and solar radiation are the hurricane to our gnat fart in that respect.
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brb natural fistic, Fri 3 Jul 2020, 20:54,
Reply)
By that logic, we shouldn't really worry too much about our current ecological impact on Earth because of earthquakes and volcanoes...
And on the subject of space debris: Is that an issue that's going to become significantly worse or significantly better once the Moon becomes a commercially viable source of consumables?
Assuming anyone survives the massive fucking war that will take place establishing ownership of the single most profitable resource in the solar system...
(, Fri 3 Jul 2020, 21:18, Reply)
No, because we have a measurable effect on our closed(ish) system. Space is effectively infinite, and we have not added to the sum of lethal radiation by sending an RTG powered probe to a gas giant where natural radiation levels are exponentially higher.
There shouldn't be much litter resulting from space launches from the Moon for a few reasons
1: Single Stage To Orbit is the standard launch model from the surface of the moon. This means you don't need to throw away stages, fuel tanks, decouplers, o-rings and whatever.
2: Assuming we are going there to stay, we shan't be throwing bags of piss and shit away any more. That's all getting recycled.
3: Assuming reusability and environmentalism are here to stay, rockets will continue to be less wasteful - e.g. SpaceX's Falcon fairings are becoming increasingly reusable, and SpaceX's ITS/BFR/Starship system could even do away with a lot of the 'littering' that you see in falcon launches because they have cargo bays integrated with the 2nd stage, which will generally speaking return to Earth or stay put on the moon or Mars.
I'm with Zubrin - humans are the most profitable resource in the solar system.
But even if you're purely talking about precious metals, the moon is a barren desert compared to the asteroid belt. And if you only want fuel, the methane lakes of Titan are somewhat more appealing than the wisps of hydrogen found in lunar regolith.
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brb natural fistic, Fri 3 Jul 2020, 21:48,
Reply)
On point 2.
You assume that we won't be throwing bags of piss and shit away. But what about materials that aren't so readily recyclable? If launching rubbish into space was commercially viable, we'd already be doing it and reassuring the people of Earth that it'll all burn up when it hits the Sun. On the Moon, launching our detritus into space might end up being a realistic prospect.
(, Fri 3 Jul 2020, 21:56, Reply)
The moon has no atmosphere for anything to burn up in.
To reach the sun, you'd need to cancel out all of Earth's orbital speed (averaging at 29.78 km/s that's a lot of delta-v), or utilise some clever cosmic billiards to reverse slingshot your velocity down low enough to spend the last of your fuel on the last few hundred m/s needed to deorbit into the sun. Not worth it, even if you could make fusion powered ships.
You could just launch your rubbish into a nice long suborbital ballistic trajectory and let it burn up like that. An incinerator would always be safer, and I expect a lot more efficient than using a Starship as a garbage scow.
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brb natural fistic, Fri 3 Jul 2020, 22:19,
Reply)
You could just send Sockcookers mum up to eat it all
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Fadgebadger Sweaty sumo wanks for everyone!, Sat 4 Jul 2020, 9:27,
Reply)