Colonizing the Kuiper Belt

[@ManiusCuriusDenatus]

You're killing me Isaac...About to start teaching my first period class in a few minutes and you post. Delayed gratification is important, but man you're killing me...

[@arglebargle42]

You have no idea how thrilled I am to know teachers are subbed here too.

[@andrewbogard2411]

Just curious what kind of class do you teach

[@ManiusCuriusDenatus]

​@@andrewbogard2411 Middle school U.S. History for the past 11 years. Next year 8th grade World Geography. Needed a change.

[@andrewbogard2411]

@@ManiusCuriusDenatus cool, I love history. I am currently a freshman in college. Hope you have a good day teaching your class

[@SpecialEDy]

​@@ManiusCuriusDenatus Thank you for all that you do, inspiring and forging the next generation of minds that will tend to the Earth and perhaps reach for the stars. You will move minds, and one day they will move worlds. Have an excellent Arthursday!

[@sevensins3584]

It disturbes me how big the solar system is.. hope you are recovering alright from your surgery!

[@gnaskar]

What disturbs me is that the solar system is so big, and there are so many other solar systems, all of which are on the same scale!

[@edstoutenburg3990]

Idk- for m self I think the scale of the Sol system-(what small amount humanity has 'probed'- litterally-so far)- is awe inspiring and yet very grounding vs size of Earth. The two Voyager probes launched in the mid /late 1970s have -Only- recently passed out of the Suns heliosphere. Probably...(The pioneer probe was shut down due to cost before that) The New Horizons probe is still moving thru ort cloud, but it was only this year that JPL has realeased the last (?) Of data it sent back from Pluto/charon mini system. Amazing once you get your head around it imho.

[@stevenpilling5318]

What interests me the most about the Kuiper Belt is the availability of water, carbon and (above all) nitrogen. That's what's needed in our development of the inner solar system.

[@commiedeer]

I find it reassuring. It means there's space to find or build countless wonders

[@sevex9]

@@edstoutenburg3990 Amazing indeed. How many generations has it been since discoveries by ship & sail were considered monumental? Now we have nuclear powered satellites on the frontier of discovery. What a time to be alive. Rock on brother and or sister.

[@scottthomas6202]

My guess is a Kuiper belt colony would use multiple power systems...if you're going to be that far out, you definitely want backups...

[@AFMR0420]

Back ups or redundancy? Also, steam vacuum drives seem perfect without arming all the miners with radioactive reactors (aka don’t give your slaves nukes).

[@floridaray3380]

Clean, safe nuclear is the wat to go

[@DreadX10]

That far out, your back-ups would want to have back-ups.....

[@HrHaakon]

with all that water, we could just run hydro power! (I'm joking, I'm joking)

[@jimflask1164]

It's just entertainment. Reality is much more simple. He is limited to only using technology he understands to make these videos. He will have to scrap all of it when he learns portal technology is very ancient and also we are billions of years behind in technological development in our solar system. We have people that never left. The advanced people from our past that left evidence we can only dream of reproducing. They are still here, leaving us in isolation for 12,000 years. Waiting for us to reach level 1 in our development. Pluto already has an installation on it and they even left the lights on for us. But NASA painted it out. Soon the truth will be as plain as day.

[@bbartky]

25:21 You gave me a bit of nostalgia there. 😀 I remember when I read Gerald O’Neil’s “The High Frontier” where he talked about using parabolic mirrors to build space colonies far beyond Pluto’s orbit.

[@swedichboy1000]

I do believe that it is in mankinds best interest to move towards a post-scarcity civilization. Most of the exploration and mining comes down to the notion of it being too expensive to implement, even though it would provide humanity with abundant resources and further our colonization of the solar system.

[@allhopeabandon7831]

So people should work for free and companies should give away their property for free as well? I don't understand your comment...it makes no sense. All of our technology was created in the pursuit of profit. There is a reason why so many break throughs come from America and not N. Korea, where your type of utopia is forced upon it's populace. Maybe you should defect there.

[@java4653]

Delusion

[@robomonkey1018]

Ive never understood why most folks think that after we claw our way out of our gravity well we should go sit at the bottom of another one. Planets just aren't that useful to us without a huge leap in tech.

[@TheVoiceOfReason93]

I remember reading an article which calculated that colonising the Kuiper Belt as well as the rest of the Solar System could yield enough resources to support up to 4,000 trillion humans.

[@greggweber9967]

9:30 Low gravity means that if you are trying to accumulate things, it will be easier for them to bounce off and away.

[@mannylugz5872]

And so the Beltalowdas begin!

[@sangeetanarendrasingh5416]

Can't believe this wasn't covered yet!

[@arglebargle42]

Space is vast and mysterious, most people don't even talk about the Kuiper belt but it really is humanity's best stepping stone to true interstellar travel. So much free material and energy just waiting to be turned into generation ships.

[@jaikumar848]

Hi Isaac arthur ! Which one will come first in human history ? Mining from asteroid or mining from deep earth ( mental or core of earth )

[@isaacarthurSFIA]

Id say asteroids but a lot depends on which technologies arrive first

[@tturi2]

which would be easier 🤔

[@hyrumhanson3390]

Currently, asteroids however tec for deep mining is likely to be a upcoming by product of the nation's investing in large geothermal power plants.

[@brettcrawford8878]

A good chance Kuiper belt would be a good area to build an interstellar space dock for Alien craft to port themselves. If it was ever built in the past its purpose would have been to get to planet with best chance of supporting life in solar system which could help to guess its location possibly. More advanced space telescopes might help in process of looking for such things in the future. There is the possibility such facilities if allready built could be abandoned for millions of years just needing viable powerplants and supplies to be made operational. Distances involved would mean substandard propulsion systems would not make it worthwhile to send a person there to investigate as they could easily die of old age before getting back to planet of origin.

[@dennisdahl3]

For trade and colonization direct access of the Kuiper Belt according to GPT4 the total travel time experienced by the traveler at 1g acceleration using the flip-and-burn method to cover one light-year is approximately 1.384 years. Keep in mind that this is the time experienced by the traveller, not the time that would pass on Earth due to time dilation effects. The time that would pass on Earth for a traveller accelerating at 1g using the flip-and-burn method to cover one light-year is approximately 2.188 years. Also we could have fleets colony ship sized trade space stations that travel the planetary highway to and from over centuries.

[@isaacarthurSFIA]

The Kuiper belt is around a light day wide, not a light year.

[@dennisdahl3]

@@isaacarthurSFIA oops.

[@KaiserSoze212]

Best book I ever read hard sci fi was Dragons Egg. And the sequel was perfect. Truly magical and inspiring. Those kooky little 🐌

[@DivineMisterAdVentures]

YES!! Great stufffffff.

[@isaacarthurSFIA]

Glad you enjoyed it!

[@learning7979]

Hey Isaac I wanted to ask if you would incorporate more equation into your vedios because a mathematical relation rrally helps me grasp why are we doing things a particular way and with your narrating abilities i think you can make it interesting.

[@TraditionalAnglican]

Most of us couldn’t understand the kind of math needed to explain the concepts…

[@SCh1m3ra]

That would likely require a supercompilation involving the math. He's dove into portions scattered among the videos, but it would take a minute to genuinely go over the concepts and falls a bit outside of his usual production.

[@martinwashington3152]

I've always wanted to use rings which allow for a tunnel of light to be directed through and collected from the exterior of the ring from lumens/thermals from sol creating a light pipe with further rings in much the same fashion as an optical repeater.

[@thiagom8478]

One question crossed my mind around 22:12. If we ever decided that human first priority is to increase our numbers, having the space and the resources to shelter, feed and educate as many people as we can produce. How fast could we double our population? In principle we must deal with biological limits, but if we could escape that by having artificial uterus, then what would be the next limiting factor?

[@nekomakhea9440]

"5 GW maser array with around the energy intensity of the sun" "Reasonably safe" Just don't look into the beam with your good eye!

[@ChinchillaBONK]

We need a concrete global coordinated plan to take intermittent steps in exploring the final frontier. Space stations installed gradually further and further out should be the first logical steps. One or 2 more in Earth's orbit, Moon station, Asteroid belt for farming and so on. Instead of a mad man wanting to straight away colonize Mars.

[@morphtrust]

one thing seriously being ignored is that passive thermal diode material is going to be far more important than any energy source, since thermal energy is literally everywhere there is matter, (otherwise in my mind it lacking thermal energy means it is reclassified as darkmatter or inactive matter) the ability to siphon up this meager amount of thermal energy while not releasing it is key to surviving out in the depths of space, more than anything, and we have the tech now to build some pretty impressive thermal diodes that are damn near passive at 100% efficiency.

[@madguy8485]

I hope Neptune drags out some new Kuiper belt friends for us to meet really soon.

[@vincewilson1]

I believe that current fusion technology is advanced enough that we can't make a practical power-generating plant yet. I believe we can make a fusion plasma pulse drive today! Please have your teams investigate this and then put together an episode or maybe a mini-series to let us know what your people discovered. I suspect we can get between 1 and 2% of light speed possibly more! Imagine using Starship - Space X -, and then docking with a big mothership and going to Mars in 1-2 weeks!

[@pavel9652]

There is no such thing Musk won't promise ;) He was supposed to land on Mars in 2018, if not earlier, and not once, but multiple times ;)

[@vincewilson1]

@@pavel9652 I didn't say Musk was doing it. I said it could be done. Please pay attention to what is being said instead of latching on to something that isn't really there.

[@pavel9652]

@@vincewilson1 I know you didn't say it, I didn't claim you did. Please pay attention ;) I thought it was funny since you mentioned SpaceX. Do you remember how people cheered and clapped when the rocket disintegrated during last test? It was strange.

[@boobah5643]

@@pavel9652 Speaking of paying attention... they were cheering because they didn't expect that test rocket to survive as long as it did. Especially considering how many of the engines malfunctioned, and that it didn't break up despite tumbling until they blew it up.

[@pavel9652]

@@boobah5643 They were cheering because they were clueless spectators and Musk fan base, or they were indicated to cheer. Musk had face as serious like he was just told about terminal cancer. By the way, termination system might have failed as well. Normally rockets terminate as soon as flight parameters get out of flight envelop, not after 30s of tumbling out if control. The flight plan involved getting to the orbit, if I am not mistaken, so I don't buy the cheap excuse intended to sell the failure as a success.

[@stankossovskiy816]

22:30. If lasers are not efficient enough, maybe it is worth to build an accelerator to produce mesons. Mesons will be sent to earth to catalyze thermonuclear reaction.

[@captrodgers4273]

i think the future space settlements will be lots of space stations......particularly oneil cylinders since we can spin them to simulate earth gravity...i think stations close to each other will have connecting cable systems to run transport cars between them to transfer people and goods between them

[@MrFLUIZZLE]

Great thought provoking video. Thanks Issac

[@shaun9156]

Lets colonize a 24/7 bumper car astroid belt. Yea, sounds like a great Idea...

[@Luminious789]

This is Great! Love it! Both yall keep it up!

[@acefire4050]

Of course they found quite a few rocks about 500 of them bigger than Pluto not much bigger but maybe up to double the size or in this case may be the same size as Mercury.

[@211212112]

Pluto is the planet. If Ceres turns out to be cool enough it can be a planet too.

[@aluminiumsloep]

Txs for helping me sleep again..

[@scottslotterbeck3796]

Very futuristic. Sadly, none of us will be alive to see this wonderful marvel. Of course, since we're headed for a new dark age, this will revert back to science fiction

[@davidkleinman5002]

How about something on colonising the planets around Bernards Star? I have had a real interest in the system since reading "On Basilik Station" by David Weber. Being the closest star after the Trisolaran Home worlds it will be in our more near future than most other suns...

[@gab882]

I always wondered why we don't just build space stations near the asteroid belts as mining docking/refinery stations then ship them to earth instead of outlandishly brandishing Mars as the next frontier. Heck, we should create a Moon colony first as well

[@Cuhsynoh]

For Beltalawda!!

[@ulyssesk7325]

true time accelerates at an unknown speed, earth time decelerates, this is why we we live in an event horizon. this is why you can build jump gates, you can only build jump gates if you live in such an singularity.

[@ulyssesk7325]

well it actually also increases in speed, but not in speed compared to the rest, and this is why you can build jump gates.

[@2DC24]

Where does the accent Come from? Australia? Oohrt, Thoort (Earth, Third).. its a bit hard to follow for non native english speakers. Thanks for the subtitles

[@LG-qz8om]

If you look at a star it looks like a point of light just as big as any planet in our solar system. Obviously, with something so far away it can't possibly be so large and it isn't -- most of it is glare. But even when you use a powerful telescope it still looks like a large point in the vast darkness of space. When you start to take a closer look you'll notice that the light spreads out like a bell curve (dim at the edges and intense near the center). Now look a little closer at the center and you'll notice that the bell curve goes up and flattens out. Just where you would expect the peak it drops to black. Why? That blackness is the outer orbit of that star's solar system. Where the planets have swept up all the debris to form planets. And somewhere in the very center is a very sharp point of light that while bright takes less than a pixel on any photo. If you had a flashlight with a very bright bulb it still wouldn't be as visually bright as having a dimmer bulb reflecting off a wider mirror. Even dim stars that have a larger surface area appear brighter than bright but super small stars. The car company Volvo took advantage of this by making very wide headlights using dimmer bulbs. It made the road ahead just as visible as those cars with blinding pinpoint bulbs. It's the surface area that makes the star visible. Our Kuiper Belt (the outer part of this bell curve) might be dim but the number of reflective particles and the large area make up the vast majority of visible light as seen from other star systems, just as it would their kuiper belts to us. That pinpoint of light you see in the night sky, the vast majority of it is reflected light from each star's Kuiper Belt. Somewhere in the center (hidden by the glare) is a dark patch which is that star's solar system. We don't need planets to cross in direct line with their star to prove they exist. The very existance of that dark center of their bell curve reveals it's solar system exists.

[@LG-qz8om]

Or am I talking about the Oort Cloud. Whichever is beyond Neptune.

[@isaacarthurSFIA]

:) The both are, but the Kuiper Belt is the area right outside Neptune, like 30-50 AU, the Oort Cloud is 1000+AU out

[@randomnickify]

Lol, I just imagined lo tech space locomotive where the coal guy is showing the rubble through the doors for the propulsion :)

[@markjohn4203]

Wow. Nice work Isaac. This was quite inspirational ! 🥹

[@archlich4489]

Colonize the Oort Cloud!

[@mayerkorchin-vv9vt]

Well, I think Pluto should be a real planet!

[@logex621]

Greetings Once Again.

[@Zurround]

Your idea of a 10,000 voyage to another star system in the "asteroid ark" is brilliant. Never in SCIENCE FICTION does society collapse during these megageneration like ship journeys. NEVER do the inhabitants go to war against each other with sociological strife and NEVER do they gradually forget what their original mission was. Sending people for a ten thousand years journey inside of an asteroid could never lead to disaster!

[@rommdan2716]

Science fiction isn't real life

[@bclapp2483]

try Heinlien's Orphans of the sky . where they did all of those things !

[@billwhitis9997]

I wish I could be there to see our future. I have my doubts that we will get beyond the present Bullshit Epoch.

[@konekillerking]

Tin foil. You’re so precise in your use of language. Your tin foil references are making me smile. Mr. Reynolds would like a word with you. Lol

[@VolkerGoller]

This is ridiculous at best. The distance between these small objects in the Kuiper Belt are vast. The images imply it’s a dense ring, where you can basically spot other objects in the manifold by naked eyes. It is nothing like that. Same with the inner asteroid belt. It’s not the debris field from your favorite tv show

[@kennethlandert8350]

Can you do a video on the El Ali meteorite?

[@mogatdula]

what are people saying about a speech impediment? isn't this just an accent? great video by the way

[@BologneyT]

WAIT. So you mean that, not only was Pluto not a planet, but since I was born at the beginning of the 80s, for my entire life where Pluto was the 9th planet, IT WAS ACTUALLY THE 8TH?! So EVERYTHING I was taught about Pluto was a lie?! All of it?! Wow. This is like when I found out that "dairy" isn't actually a food group. Conspiracies are everywhere, and although most of them are nonsense, some of them just have to be true. My life is a lie.

[@searchingforlostatoms7191]

Can't wait for the first McDonald's wrapper on Ceres. We must think we're civilized

[@russc788]

Is Earth really “Downhill” in gravity terms? The Sun is “downhill” but I thought it was quite hard to get to due to the need to reduce orbital speed. Have I misunderstood your comment?

[@isaacarthurSFIA]

Everything in system is downhill from the outer system, braking is problematic :)

[@ryanmeltzer3185]

Beltalowda the real koya

[@FoxtrotYouniform]

Ive always dreamed of reaching past Uranus

[@warrenbeans8495]

Any colonizing beyond mars is unlikely to to be biometric. In other words only AI would likely survive in the outer solar system. If you mean autonomous mining colonies which then 'export' material to earth or maybe mars then that would make more sense.

[@gpsboladao8874]

Just stole the rocinante, who wants a ride to eris?

[@54032Zepol]

I wanna go

[@steadysamurai1172]

Short answer: YES we can do it lol

[@philipmetts8831]

As long as we are building the weapons of space as a priority over building the ships of space we will just bring ourselves down.😢

[@caitgems1]

I need to go get snacks

[@joegonzalez6241]

my capital ship could mine the inner asteroid belt

[@Zurround]

The GOOD news is that none of the astronauts stuck this far from Earth would ever majorly MISS Earth and get DEPRESSED AS HELL from being so far from home (and their families) and NATURE. There are not FORESTS OR GARDENS OR BEACHES OR LAKES ETC. Nope. Nobody will ever get majorly depressed and end up HATING THEIR LIVES out there.

[@Poopshit420]

Hi! I have a topic that could save some lives! Remember I have a budget of $5,000 that can be turned into ksh and she has money too. I have a friend in Kenya who currently suffers from the water crisis. There is a seasonal river, not much money, and a hand pumped well a mile away for her village as well as a road to many other places, unreliable electricity, lots of sunlight, lots of skinny cows, some vehicles, and a low budget to work with. I was wondering if you and your sources of information could help me and her find ways to make the water crisis any better? If we can get to the moon with 1960s technology I’m willing to bet we can find ways to get water on a low budget!

[@Richard-tu9wr]

Send me to leave on the meteor belt

[@PanAfrikkkanism]

Is there people living in the kyper belt? How do you colonize it then if there are no people living there...

[@bradhaaf4749]

So depressing knowing what we're capable of achieving compared to what humanity is currently engaged in..😢

[@harrymills2770]

Yes. We should be mining the asteroid belt and generating electricity in space, by now. But let's waste a bunch of money to go to Mars, instead of building a civilization that can visit Mars at will, by fully exploiting near space, zero g, and free energy.

[@Mahlak_Mriuani_Anatman]

It'll be like that until extinction

[@bobinthewest8559]

The main thing standing in our way is ego

[@theunknown8595]

Good. We shouldn't colonise space or exploit it.

[@smileyface6583]

@@theunknown8595Why not?

[@thentil]

As someone with a speech impediment (stuttering) i have to say how facking impressive it is that you've built a KZbin channel of this size. I cannot count the number of times I've let mine interfere with the things I've wanted to say or do. Your courage and perseverance is humbling.

[@chazsroczynski5666]

I remember at first I found it odd and maybe even a little off-putting, but now I couldn't listen to this vlog without it.

[@jaydub2546]

​@@chazsroczynski5666 I actually understand you there

[@bbbabrock]

​@@chazsroczynski5666 I am so used to it now and/or he has improved it so that on the occasion that I listen to someone else covering similar subject matter, I miss the inflection. I figure this guy can't be all that smart, since he just doesn't sound like Issac Arthur.

[@jimc.goodfellas]

He has improved tremendously over the last few years...got to give him a lot of props

[@ashleydolin4292]

​@@jimc.goodfellas yeah he really has.

[@mailasun]

Now the Belters will have another kind of Belters, possibly the “Kuipers” to look down upon😅

[@thewatcher3561]

Great episode, I've always like the outwards bound series ( colonising Ceres is my favourite, but they are all good!)... Never heard of Albion before, will have to look more into it 😀 Good luck with the surgery.

[@Elara_____]

Albion was until recently known as 1992 QB1, hence the term cubewano to designate one of the Kuiper Belt's group of objects.

[@thewatcher3561]

@@Elara_____ Yes, thanks for the info 😀

[@1003196110031961]

Mr Arthur, I simply can’t get enough of your content. The amount of time you put into your videos is insane. Thank you so much 🙏🏻😀

[@cannonfodder4376]

Yet another fantastic video Isaac. Asteroids remain an underexplored topic in Sci-Fi and in futurism discussions in general. Always love your ability to shine light in such topics.

[@veramae4098]

Wait 'til more people hear about the gold asteroid.

[@spaceman081447]

Science fiction writers such as Isaac Asimov, Ben Bova, Arthur C. Clarke, and Robert A. Heinlein among many others have been writing about asteroid habitats for decades.

[@arglebargle42]

Sincerely appreciate the travel and coms estimates at 18:30, it really puts the scale of our solar system into perspective. One question: Considering the extra mass bringing an icy rock along with you would add, wouldn't it be more efficient to use EM ramscoops in particle dense areas such as the Kuiper Belt and the Oort Cloud?

[@boobah5643]

As I understand it, when somebody actually did the math (sometime in the early 80s) they discovered that you lose more speed collecting the fuel than you gain from burning it with a ramscoop. That doesn't make one entirely useless, but you can't tour the galaxy, much less beyond, with a ramship the way we once hoped. TANSTAAFL.

[@isaacarthurSFIA]

Maybe but the basic ramscoop option doesn't really work, as Boo Bah mentioned, you could use it to dra win fusion fuel at less than 1% of light speed and get positive thrust out of a hypothetical fusion reactor and some sort of ion drive but the specific bussard ramjet trick probably is only helpful for slowing down - which is still pretty handy.

[@davidbrin1]

Colonization of the Kuiper Belt and Oort Cloud is a core element of HEART OF THE COMET, by Benford & Brin. Based largely on my PhD thesis!

[@patrickmchargue7122]

Onward to the Oort cloud!

[@johnwang9914]

About the resources available in interstellar space as we know there are asteroids, comets, rogue planets and brown dwarves out there. Would there be enough for space habitats to survive? or would they only extend the effective range of generation ships and how would harvesting the resources affect the speed of a generation ship?

[@patrickmchargue7122]

@@johnwang9914 Given what resources are expected to exist in the interstellar medium, it would likely be no. Closer in toward the sun, however, there should be plenty of resources for any number of habitats. Colony ships would have to stock up on the way out, I think.

[@johnwang9914]

@@patrickmchargue7122 Well, something like an O'Neill cylinder would mostly be an entirely enclosed system so resources would really only be needed to manufacture another one and a single asteroid or comet and certainly a rogue planet would be enough resources to sustain such a habitat indefinitely. There may be not enough resources on average in the interstellar medium but just one Oumuamua would be a jackpot in resources and we know Oumuamua exists. It would be more of a lottery finding such resources but not finding one only means not building another habitat or generation ship.

[@patrickmchargue7122]

@@johnwang9914 We agree

[@ts25679]

When you mentioned building colonies into icebergs I just got a vision of the sci-fi Titanic impacting a berg habitat.

[@justanotherfella4585]

You should make that into a movie treatment.

[@LG-qz8om]

And the inhabitants of the berg drown.

[@SpecialEDy]

Happy Arthursday, my fellow thinking and feeling beings! The world is your oyster, your playground, your sandbox, as are the moons, the planets, the kuiper belt, and the stars. I can't wait to see what amazing places and things you will construct, the elegant order and structure you will bring to this beautiful and chaotic oasis we share.

[@sevex9]

Yeah I'm prettty spun rn too breh.

[@Gauldame]

I know I shouldn't but when you got to the asteroid to asteroid ships, and the low escape velocity allowing for just physically shoving off the body I started chuckling. "Engage the YEET drive!" "YEET engaged" Just picturing this pogo stick like system is making me giggle more than it really should.

[@MailleGrace]

We need a yeet drive in a sci-fi show now. Just a technobabble mention in passing would be awesome. A schematic in the background would be glorious!

[@kenwelch198]

Now I can't stop thinking about Yeet drive powered ships 😂

[@lgjm5562]

Developed by Dr Yeet , founder of the Yeet institute.

[@JamesDecker7]

Read Seven Eves for a great hard scifi “YEET Drive”. Orbital mechanics for the win!

[@sallyforth9905]

Postal service in the Kuiper belt; load your package into a trebuchet and yeet it at your neighbour! XD

[@zharyel9890]

+100 Vespene Gas

[@charlesblithfield6182]

I loved that movie Silent Running as a kid. I’m think it affected me deeply with its environmental and corporate control messages. The robots too were amazing, I think the actors in them were amputee Vietnam Vets.

[@justanotherfella4585]

Top movie.

[@isaacarthurSFIA]

Yeah there was a pretty good article on the amputee actors in it that someone sent me the last time I lampooned the film in an episode, at the time I had just assumed they had used robots or muppets or some other special effect without really thinking '1971 tech'. The movie definitely effected me when I first watched it as a kid too, but was one of those that left me with headscratching and dissonance when I rewatched it some years back. It still has its god points though. cyberneticzoo.com/not-quite-robots/1971-silent-running-drones-doug-trumbull-don-trumbull-paul-kraus-james-dow-american/

[@charlesblithfield6182]

@@isaacarthurSFIA thanks for the cyberneticzoo link. It’s interesting Turnbull implied the environmental message was secondary, it’s a movie more about man machine relationships. BTW your content always impresses me, very well written, and I always learn a lot so thanks very much for that too.

[@joeblough4605]

Loved those robots, wanted one when I was young, still do!

[@thoreau283]

Best futuristic show on KZbin, hands down! Never change Isaac!

[@bradleyadams4496]

Hawking probes throughout the Orion spiral arm and it's a great way to advance radio satellites and it allows future generations to know more about the system they may have the technology to visit. Just because you have the technology to visit, doesn't mean you should first thing, it may be that a richer system, further away from Alpha Sentaurii is more advantageous for first colony, and it ultimately accelerates two or more colonies.

[@harbl99]

"No, thank you. We don't want any more visitors, well-wishers, or distant relations." -- motto of the Distributed Misanthropic Republic of the Kuiper Belt, 28th century

[@nunofoo8620]

Trillions of people? Imagine that.. Imagine writing a poem, putting it in a search engine, and finding out several people had already wrote the exact same thing.. What a dystopian world.

[@Vjx-d7c]

Happy Arthursday I already have my drink and snack ready and I was waiting for it😅

[@SeminarChauffeur]

Early gang yoo! Also, when objects beyond Neptune gets discussed, I always imagine using one of those far-flung objects, like that proto-planet Sedna, as my personal cryo-storage locker, for everything from frozen food, to data media, and other stuff I want preserved for many thousands for years and are okay with being stored near absolute zero. 😂

[@claytonjones932]

Best episode in a while. Thanks for the great content!

[@philbristow9972]

Thank you !!!! Another amazing topic, don’t ever stop. Love it !

[@greggweber9967]

7:27 Problem with them is the cost of changing the orbital inclination to meet up without just whizzing by at an odd angle.

[@peasant8246]

@accelerationquanta5816 Indeed. "Children of the Dead Earth" taught me that.

[@jasonburbank2047]

Whenever Isaac mentions a habitat wanting its "elbow room" I take that to mean they are doing something repulsive enough that neighbors would band together to stop them if it weren't for the distance.

[@isaacarthurSFIA]

That is often what I'm thinking too, or that they find their main civilization repulsive.

[@mm650]

First I am REALLY pleased to see Kuiper settlement being discussed seriously on KZbin! I do however, think that you needlessly focus upon large objects both in the asteroid belt and in the Kuiper belt. As a consequence of focusing upon such large objects you also focus needlessly upon the settlement of of their surfaces in the classical domes city concept. I urge you to consider a MUCH MUCH easier and more dynamic settlement paradigm: SMALL objects. And I mean REALLY SMALL... 5 meters, 10 meters, maybe as large as 50 meters. How can you colonize something smaller than a house, even smaller than you? The answer is simple: You use more than one. Here's why that can work: Big objects have three major interconnected downsides: They are (1) few in number. (2) Inevitably in orbits and trajectories that are less than ideal for the economic, social, and military needs of any human colonists. (3) Too big to maneuver easily or often. Small objects have their own downsides: namely that they don't contain much material, but that's not as big a downside as it sounds, and it can be engineered around much more easily than the downsides of large bodies. Because of the power law of sizes, there are a functionally infinite number of small bodies (that is,t you'll never run out). What this means is that you can, start with an orbital trajectory that is convenient and useful, say Near Earth Orbit where it is easy to construct things and you are partially shielded from radiation, and the communication lag to Earth is manageable, and then start gathering building materials selected from only the small asteroid bodies that are already on trajectories that are convenient to redirect to your construction grounds. (If you don't like NEO it doesn't matter, this basic principle works for anywhere that has a large background population of small bodies). Redirecting these objects is easy because (1) they are small, and (2) you can detect them while they are still vast distances from your construction grounds and thus require extremely tiny nudges to alter their trajectory to the one you need. I've run the numbers, and as an example, there ought to be a 5 meter wide asteroid passing within the orbital distance of the Moon to Earth at a velocity that, if it passed at the lowest altitude of LEO would allow for it to at least transiently be captured as a mini-moon of Earth about once a day.... Such an asteroid would not need to be slowed down or sped up, only it's angle of approach would need to be changed. It's spin would also probably have to be rectified. Now, combine that fact with the fact that propellant less thrust options like Zubrin's Dipole Drive, and Solar Sails, exist and you can imagine a fleet unmanned probes that detect candidate Near-Earth-Object asteroids long before that reach Earth, interrogate them remotely with lasers and emission spectroscopy, and radar, to determine composition density, size, mass, spin, and velocity, and then send redirect probes to alter the trajectory of only the small fraction with the most convenient properties to eventually be captured and delivered to your construction grounds. Then, once you have them, they get ground to fine powder and used as raw materials to build space habitat. These habitats are BETTER PLACES TO LIVE IN EVERY WAY!!!!! (1) Unlike a surface colony on a large body such a habitat provides full gravity and is thus much more healthy a place to live. This can be partially imitated with gravity trains on large objects, but it is a distinctly easier solution when the habitat is free-floating. (2)The space habitat is really a low-performance spaceship, and can thus be moved by default. If the colonists no longer want to be in close proximity to Earth they can LEAVE. (3)Unlike a subterranean colony on a large body, the walls of the habitat are made to specification in a factory. There is no chance that they will contain inclusions, or imperfections, or fissures, or unknown materials. Such a fully artificial construction represents a PROFOUNDLY less failure prone system! (4)Perhaps most important of all, this small body paradigm doesn't run out of opportunities to continue human expansion. There are only a small number of large bodies in the solar system... and once they are colonized... that's it. No more. The small body solution is functionally infinite. We touched on one aspect of that early: that one can afford to be hyper-selective of which bodies one harvests, but in the long run, this paradigm inevitably dominates simply because it exists in a field of never ending opportunity for expansion. In essence, this approach recognizes that a Dyson swarm is optimal from the beginning even at very low technology levels... planets and big bodies are a dead-end that we can simply skip. PS. Also, in discussion of fission based kuiper/interstellar thrust solutions, don't forget fission fragment rockets and Dipole Drives.

[@rarabbb]

Would just like to say thrusday is my favourite day of the week because two of my favourite shows airs and yours is one ❤

[@protorhinocerator142]

Kuiper Belt only makes sense if we have super-fast transport. At least a Solomon Epstein drive, but preferably warp drive. It's just too far away. The asteroid belt is right at the limits of what we can do with current or projected technology. Let's use that up first.

[@pazitor]

I say, Transneptunians in the outer belt might as well belong to another star. Hard to even tell them apart. Asteroid belters, otoh, are the only _true_ belters. See you at the _Ceres Lounge._

[@relativityboy]

Estimated mass of the Kuiper belt? 6% that of Earth, in a volume larger than the entire inner solar system. A place to go when you've used up all the rest.

[@bobdole8830]

As a non native speaker of English, it took me quite a while to understand the accent - worth it though

[@kocherfamily1257]

Thank you for the video!

[@algorithmgeneratedanimegir1286]

Gotta love futurists just ignoring peoperty rights as if they can just come in and dismantle my home. 😒

[@owenkeller2748]

Pluto is a planet. We can’t let “clearing the neighborhood” be a condition for being a planet.

[@peterl708]

Great documentary … but the narrator’s speaking style and accent need some work … not fun to listen

[@thelegion_within]

surprised this isnt an "outward bound" titled video - it's the same sort of thing (along with the Oort cloud)

[@isaacarthurSFIA]

It is listed on on the playlist, I just didn't think adding it to the main title served much point. :)