Years ago, when cars still had steel bumpers instead of plastic and foam crap things, Bumper Stickers were very popular, and for those who had small children, one that said “Baby On Board” became a common sight on rear bumpers, to get people to keep a safe distance.
Soon we began seeing boards with baby dolls nailed to them, in rear windows. The inventive human mind is never one to pass up an opportunity, which naturally brings us to the subject of off-planet colonies.
Also years ago, the math was worked out for Lagrange Points. A Lagrange Point is simply the point of gravitational equilibrium between a planetary body and any other object that orbits it where the orbital speed pulling it away from the body equals the gravitational pull of that body. Centrifugal force versus gravitational pull, in other words.
I bring this matter up because an argument has begun over where our first off-planet colony should be, with some saying that neither the Moon nor Mars are good choices because they have little to no atmosphere or any magnetic field to protect us from deadly cosmic radiation and we’d have to live deep underground all the time.
But Saturn’s largest moon Titan, however, is touted as the best choice because it has an atmosphere that only lacks oxygen to be breathable, (if you don’t mind 5% methane) at a pressure similar to ours, so it’s much more suitable. So they say. Of course, the temperature on Titan runs about -300 F, and it rains methane, the Sun is a dot in the sky, you would still have to live in massively protective shelters and to get oxygen from water you’d need jackhammers if you could find any because the water would be frozen harder than concrete. What fun, eh? I can see it now, a Disney theme park, McDonald’s Golden Arches, hordes of college kids for Spring Vacation. No? Oh.
Then there’s Lagrange Points. There’s an asteroid belt surrounding Earth that’s loaded with chunks of a planet that never formed, so while compounds may be scarce except for water, elements are abundant and the belt would provide almost limitless building and survival supplies for a colony a short distance away. Aluminum, and hydrogen-rich materials like water and some plastics, work well for space radiation shielding.
Being much closer to Earth than Mars is, mining the Belt from a Lagrange Point colony could be very profitable. How else would you get your supply of escargot and truffled eggs? Over time, the colony can become steadily larger until it resembles a small moon, it’s easy (for me, anyway) to envision “bubbles” of all sizes attached to the main body, air locks in between, surrounding it in layers, as it grows and grows, and each layer adds more protection for the ones inside it.
Moon colonies could provide the raw materials and launching points for Lagrange colonies, and possibly also for Mars, so they might come first.
Elon Musk currently has ten children and wants more, and encourages everyone to keep having lots of children while our planetary population surges to over a monstrous 8 billion people. He’s also the one intent on creating a Mars colony. So, how do you get people willing to go live on Mars? Easy. By making Earth so overpopulated it’s nearly uninhabitable. Oh Elon, you sneaky devil. He’s right, though, people will always migrate away from the less tolerable to the more tolerable. The grass is always greener…
And when lots of those Starships of his begin heading to Mars, no doubt at least a few will have a baby on board.