In the Fairies Wood (1903) by Thomas Bromley Blacklock

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In the Fairies Wood (1903) by Thomas Bromley Blacklock
Planetary Colonies Don't Make A Lot Of Sense, Really
So, you want to colonize space?
Depending on how launch mass costs, space based industry and the politics of spaceflight all work out, it's not actually inconceivable that, at some point in the future, a non-trivial amount of people will live away from Earth full time.
Contrary to what certain asshole-trillionaires-who-shall-not-be-named believe, however, putting them on a planet doesn't make a whole lot of sense.
We have not yet found a planet suitable for sustaining human life, and the closest we've gotten are pressures and temperatures that wouldn't be immediately lethal. Meaning, a space colony would be a completely self-contained ecosystem, which would need to survive through endless recycling, and shipping or harvesting materials.
And if you're going to do all that, there's no real reason to do it on a planet.
Enter, space colonies.
If you're going to build a self-sustaining artificial ecosystem, there's no real reason to sit inside a gravity well to do it, and several good reasons not to.
Sure, a planet lets you easily utilize whatever resources are available, but it comes at the cost of making shipping to and from it a lot more expensive. Meanwhile, a floating habitat could have earthlike gravity, which Mars will not get you.
Given all this, it probably makes much more sense to park all your people in orbit. Use materials from low gravity bodies and asteroids to build it for relatively cheap in terms of launch mass. Harvest and ship in water from icy bodies. Take advantage of the nearly free power from massive solar arrays: Square footage is not even slightly an issue now.
And so, in the future, maybe, someone might open their door, step out onto their porch and see something like this:
Dawid Figielek, Nokturn II
Sought to be Fought - Submitted by SeesawSiya
#aa2538 #e4322e #eb8b34 #f0e182 #99c24c #3d8730
Eurasian Brown Bear
Michael O'Toole
Patagonian forest path - Torres del Paine National Park, Patagonia, Chile, March 2025
Photo by: nature-hiking
Instagram: nature__hiking
Bo Bartlett, The American, 2016, oil on linen, 82 x 100.
Artwork for 'Queen Of The Demonweb Pits' by Paul Kidd, 2001 (Justin Sweet)
Magister Lashan Artist: Justin Sweet World of Warcraft TCG: March of the Legion (2007) Image cropped from a card scan provided by the WoW TCG scan project
- Justin Sweet -
"Have some baking powder, lest a demon creep up while you sleep."
via Atlas Obscura