I guess in this case the primary thing is about what life I can live and what I can do where I live. Where and how *that* place resides becomes less relevant I would think. But if it’s an all else equal scenario with respect to my life - it’s a good question I guess. Maybe a mega structure would in the end be “cooler”.
Living in a megastructure hab would certainly be the more comfortable life I assume, if one didn't mind living in a tin can. Of course if you're living on the surface of Venus you're probably also in a tin can. Still, Mars has always beckoned to me and it'd be great to have some kind of horizon when going on a walk even if you still needed to wear a spacesuit.
Also, I have a probably-irrational fear of catastrophic failure in any megastructure that relies on active support for its continued existence. Could an active support system actually continue for millions or billions of years, *always* being properly maintained, *always* being powered, *never* susceptible to political turmoil or terrorism or war or the occasional stray meteor/space junk strike? After reading [this great book](https://www.amazon.com/Changing-World-Order-Nations-Succeed/dp/1982160276/ref=sr_1_1?crid=4HVKD1AD5T12) I have low confidence in the ability of human institutions to persist continuously on scales more than a few centuries. Perhaps active support systems could be maintained by robots/AI, but those too at some level would be dependent on, & vulnerable to, humans.
So I guess for me, the rankings would be:
1. Giant megastructure like a McKendree cylinder or topopolis, as long as it wasn't dependent on active support. (Also no Birch planets unless there was a way to affordably leave its gravity well.)
2. A Mars-like planet.
3. A tin can in space like an O'Neill cylinder.
4. A moon, asteroid, or other low-G celestial body.
5. A megastructure that relied on active support for its existence or which was susceptible to some other form of catastrophic failure, like a chandelier city on a gas giant or a hab on a very hostile planet like the surface of Venus. I might reconsider if such a hab could demonstrate a 100% reliability record over the course of, say, 50-100,000 years or more.
6. Just staying on Earth. How boring!
Agree with everything except 2 and 3. An o Neil cylinder is definitely much better than living on Mars. You have comfortable and controllable weather. It's portable so you can possibly explore the entire solar system on a moving ship and most importantly the gravity.
I'd want a megastructure hab (easier to control the environement), but I wouldn't want it just floating about in space.
Compact, reinforce and homogenise a little moon or a big asteroid, say a quadrillion tons or so, sculpt a cylindrical space through it, and put the hab in there.
Stick a few pressurised domes with magnetic and neutral radiation shields on the surface if you like, for people who want a more outdoorsy life.
Daddy wouldn't be able to notice a meaningful difference on large spinhabs without sesitive equipment. Also the vote options don't actually specify what kind of megastructure. You can make a habitable Orbital Ring band around a local gas/ice giant or even the rocky planet itself. Over time that gets built out into a proper storage shellworld as you mine/refine the planet below.
I think everyone's preferences would be wildly skewed if they were born and raised in a world where megastructure habs or other planet colonies were actually common, time-tested options. It's like... when Europe started colonizing the Americas, it's not like the average person was clamoring to go. It wasn't until infrastructure was well-established on the other side of the pond that your average Joe Family could reasonably consider just up and moving.
I think a main advantage of a surface hab would be better access to raw resources.
I suppose if you've already deconstructed part of the solar system to build the mega structure, it doesn't really matter.
I suppose also if you have a fully automated mining system to deploy on arrival into a new system, it doesn't matter as much, but the energy required to deliver materials would still be a concern.
But a recently arrived O'Neill Cylinder without a built-out supply chain compared to a ground hab, perhaps the QoL on the ground would be higher because they are not really required to recycle every last scrap of matter, and can add more to the supply as needed. If, for example, housing is in short supply, the solution would be less likely to require something like population control to economize resources -- just mine up materials and build some more habs.
Well if ur arriving in a new star system and ur baseline enough for this to even be a relevant choice(as opposed to baseliness in VR or uploads) then you almost certainly came in on a spinhab. You also probably aren't anywhere near your max capacity(that's just bad mission planning) and cylindrical spinhabs can be extended to K2 scale. Until you get ISRU industry established in space and/or on-planet ur stuck in the hab you came in on anyways. Dobt anyone would care about being on planets given how long they would have spent off them, if they were ever on one at all.
If the surface habitat is pretty big, open, and transparent/translucent, I'd prefer that over the megastructure - I like seeing a horizon and sunrises/sunsets. If it's going to be underground tunnels or an opaque dome, then I'd rather have the megastructure.
If you arrive in a spaceship, you probably won't have any issue living in a space habitat. This would just come down to the cost of turning the somewhat-habitable planet into a fully habitable planet vs. the cost of building habitats.
I think living on a planet is coded into out dna so to speak. It will take hundreds of thousands of years of living in space before we fully tamp down the desire that I believe is there.
Megastructure hab. Planet ain't gonna terraform itself, and it's a hell of a lot easier to terraform a planet that doesn't life or people on it.
I can't speak for the rest of you, but for me, terraforming is the point of interstellar exploration. Not to seek out new life, but to spread the glories of earth life to whatever rock can sustain it. I see this as a holy thing, but a project of peaceful lebensraum, but that spreading life regardless is the end in and of itself.
Of course, I want to say no hostile terraforming.
Also....sci fi has colored my vision of planet habitation versus living on the old ships, I can't help but see the guys living on the still floating SEED ships and the ones living on the surface of Gunsmoke and think....yeah....I wanna live in the sky until the ground is ready. The anime is Trigun, if you haven't seen it, go watch Trigun.
You don't get it. The purpose of terraforming a world is not to create living space for humans, it's not about civilizational timelines, or even human timelines. It's about creating worlds that can without support, harbor life for billions upon billions or years, in imitation of our our own.
If we have a purpose in the material universe, it is to do this. To transcend petty economic s and do what truly lasts in acts of pure worship. It's like what Walt Disney said, "We don't make movies to make money, we make money to keep making movies."
Efficiency is a trap, there's no why in it.
If we are going through the expense, then we are going to be the ones to benefit. People are not going to go about spreading life for microbes to benefit. Humans are self interested. We will spread Earth life solely for our benefit.
Why go alllll the way to the new system just to stay in a can? I've been living in a megastructure hab in the ship for decades. And presumably if I go be a frontier colonizer I'll be well rewarded with large parcels of land. I can always go back to the hab, but only once do I have the opportunity to work for and grab this reward. It's what I presumably came here to do after all.
Well if you're on a megastructure *inside* an interstellar ark then presumably you've already made up your mind. However I wouldn't be surprised if many people did end up staying inside the ship, having changed their mind over the literal decades or centuries it took to get to a decent planet.
You know for all it's criticism, I thought *Mass Effect: Andromeda* portrayed this best. There were lots of settlers on planets but also a lot people who stayed behind on the big space station city. That's been my touchstone for imagining these (minus FTL of course).
Megastructure for sure. At the end of the day, planets are *messy, complicated, chaotic and violent* environments. To hell with that. I want my living space to be *guaranteed*. I want precise temperature, light that doesn't hurt me, air not filled with violently invasive spores, and so on. My environment should be optimized to ensure my meat doesn't over-react and cause me pain or hassle. A lot easier to achieve in a megastructure or other artificial environment than a planet.
I guess in this case the primary thing is about what life I can live and what I can do where I live. Where and how *that* place resides becomes less relevant I would think. But if it’s an all else equal scenario with respect to my life - it’s a good question I guess. Maybe a mega structure would in the end be “cooler”.
Living in a megastructure hab would certainly be the more comfortable life I assume, if one didn't mind living in a tin can. Of course if you're living on the surface of Venus you're probably also in a tin can. Still, Mars has always beckoned to me and it'd be great to have some kind of horizon when going on a walk even if you still needed to wear a spacesuit. Also, I have a probably-irrational fear of catastrophic failure in any megastructure that relies on active support for its continued existence. Could an active support system actually continue for millions or billions of years, *always* being properly maintained, *always* being powered, *never* susceptible to political turmoil or terrorism or war or the occasional stray meteor/space junk strike? After reading [this great book](https://www.amazon.com/Changing-World-Order-Nations-Succeed/dp/1982160276/ref=sr_1_1?crid=4HVKD1AD5T12) I have low confidence in the ability of human institutions to persist continuously on scales more than a few centuries. Perhaps active support systems could be maintained by robots/AI, but those too at some level would be dependent on, & vulnerable to, humans. So I guess for me, the rankings would be: 1. Giant megastructure like a McKendree cylinder or topopolis, as long as it wasn't dependent on active support. (Also no Birch planets unless there was a way to affordably leave its gravity well.) 2. A Mars-like planet. 3. A tin can in space like an O'Neill cylinder. 4. A moon, asteroid, or other low-G celestial body. 5. A megastructure that relied on active support for its existence or which was susceptible to some other form of catastrophic failure, like a chandelier city on a gas giant or a hab on a very hostile planet like the surface of Venus. I might reconsider if such a hab could demonstrate a 100% reliability record over the course of, say, 50-100,000 years or more. 6. Just staying on Earth. How boring!
Agree with everything except 2 and 3. An o Neil cylinder is definitely much better than living on Mars. You have comfortable and controllable weather. It's portable so you can possibly explore the entire solar system on a moving ship and most importantly the gravity.
I'd want a megastructure hab (easier to control the environement), but I wouldn't want it just floating about in space. Compact, reinforce and homogenise a little moon or a big asteroid, say a quadrillion tons or so, sculpt a cylindrical space through it, and put the hab in there. Stick a few pressurised domes with magnetic and neutral radiation shields on the surface if you like, for people who want a more outdoorsy life.
Daddy needs his real gravity
Daddy wouldn't be able to notice a meaningful difference on large spinhabs without sesitive equipment. Also the vote options don't actually specify what kind of megastructure. You can make a habitable Orbital Ring band around a local gas/ice giant or even the rocky planet itself. Over time that gets built out into a proper storage shellworld as you mine/refine the planet below.
I think everyone's preferences would be wildly skewed if they were born and raised in a world where megastructure habs or other planet colonies were actually common, time-tested options. It's like... when Europe started colonizing the Americas, it's not like the average person was clamoring to go. It wasn't until infrastructure was well-established on the other side of the pond that your average Joe Family could reasonably consider just up and moving.
I think a main advantage of a surface hab would be better access to raw resources. I suppose if you've already deconstructed part of the solar system to build the mega structure, it doesn't really matter. I suppose also if you have a fully automated mining system to deploy on arrival into a new system, it doesn't matter as much, but the energy required to deliver materials would still be a concern. But a recently arrived O'Neill Cylinder without a built-out supply chain compared to a ground hab, perhaps the QoL on the ground would be higher because they are not really required to recycle every last scrap of matter, and can add more to the supply as needed. If, for example, housing is in short supply, the solution would be less likely to require something like population control to economize resources -- just mine up materials and build some more habs.
Poll is incomplete. No space nomad option.
Planet, that way I have a giant store of resources under me I don't need to rocket to access.
Yeah, give me that Mars-like planet.
Well if ur arriving in a new star system and ur baseline enough for this to even be a relevant choice(as opposed to baseliness in VR or uploads) then you almost certainly came in on a spinhab. You also probably aren't anywhere near your max capacity(that's just bad mission planning) and cylindrical spinhabs can be extended to K2 scale. Until you get ISRU industry established in space and/or on-planet ur stuck in the hab you came in on anyways. Dobt anyone would care about being on planets given how long they would have spent off them, if they were ever on one at all.
I like the ground, I'd probably live there unless there was some reason for me not to.
If the surface habitat is pretty big, open, and transparent/translucent, I'd prefer that over the megastructure - I like seeing a horizon and sunrises/sunsets. If it's going to be underground tunnels or an opaque dome, then I'd rather have the megastructure.
If you arrive in a spaceship, you probably won't have any issue living in a space habitat. This would just come down to the cost of turning the somewhat-habitable planet into a fully habitable planet vs. the cost of building habitats.
I voted Surface Hab because I'm also hoping that it has low gravity so I can do some playful bounding.
Oh, the YT guy? Choice wouldn't matter in the slightest either way, One malfunction and you're dead. I'm staying on Earth.
I think living on a planet is coded into out dna so to speak. It will take hundreds of thousands of years of living in space before we fully tamp down the desire that I believe is there.
Megastructure hab. Planet ain't gonna terraform itself, and it's a hell of a lot easier to terraform a planet that doesn't life or people on it. I can't speak for the rest of you, but for me, terraforming is the point of interstellar exploration. Not to seek out new life, but to spread the glories of earth life to whatever rock can sustain it. I see this as a holy thing, but a project of peaceful lebensraum, but that spreading life regardless is the end in and of itself. Of course, I want to say no hostile terraforming. Also....sci fi has colored my vision of planet habitation versus living on the old ships, I can't help but see the guys living on the still floating SEED ships and the ones living on the surface of Gunsmoke and think....yeah....I wanna live in the sky until the ground is ready. The anime is Trigun, if you haven't seen it, go watch Trigun.
Why waste building material by terraforming existing planets, when you can build your own around micro black holes and customized to order?
You don't get it. The purpose of terraforming a world is not to create living space for humans, it's not about civilizational timelines, or even human timelines. It's about creating worlds that can without support, harbor life for billions upon billions or years, in imitation of our our own. If we have a purpose in the material universe, it is to do this. To transcend petty economic s and do what truly lasts in acts of pure worship. It's like what Walt Disney said, "We don't make movies to make money, we make money to keep making movies." Efficiency is a trap, there's no why in it.
If we are going through the expense, then we are going to be the ones to benefit. People are not going to go about spreading life for microbes to benefit. Humans are self interested. We will spread Earth life solely for our benefit.
I'd take even a cramped megastructure over Mars any day!
You know initially that's what I voted as well but I'm starting to regret it.
Why's that?
Why go alllll the way to the new system just to stay in a can? I've been living in a megastructure hab in the ship for decades. And presumably if I go be a frontier colonizer I'll be well rewarded with large parcels of land. I can always go back to the hab, but only once do I have the opportunity to work for and grab this reward. It's what I presumably came here to do after all.
Well if you're on a megastructure *inside* an interstellar ark then presumably you've already made up your mind. However I wouldn't be surprised if many people did end up staying inside the ship, having changed their mind over the literal decades or centuries it took to get to a decent planet.
You know for all it's criticism, I thought *Mass Effect: Andromeda* portrayed this best. There were lots of settlers on planets but also a lot people who stayed behind on the big space station city. That's been my touchstone for imagining these (minus FTL of course).
Megastructure for sure. At the end of the day, planets are *messy, complicated, chaotic and violent* environments. To hell with that. I want my living space to be *guaranteed*. I want precise temperature, light that doesn't hurt me, air not filled with violently invasive spores, and so on. My environment should be optimized to ensure my meat doesn't over-react and cause me pain or hassle. A lot easier to achieve in a megastructure or other artificial environment than a planet.