Galactic humanity may prefer life in vacuum habitats to going down the well
The Terhumene has at least as many "belter" and "stationer" populations as colonization of planets, and periods of widespread terraforming are a thing of the past, or the future in some other part of the galaxy: inhabitable planets sure are nice, but may be uncommon, always expensive to manufacture, and if there is a native biology, the interaction of alien biochemistries seems to me to be an insufficiently addressed problem in science fiction; and if there is not life, why is there free oxygen in the atmosphere?
The history of life in space stations and spinning hollow asteroids, or dome cities or cavern ecologies on otherwise uninhabitable planets, is as ancient and familiar in the Diaspora as agriculture and cities seem to us, and as reliable.
Colonizing a blue hypergiant, or a cluster of A stars with lots of dust and delicious star light but not any, as who should say, PLANETS, seems very natural for a civilization that thinks as little about the dangers of life in space as we think about the dangers of life on a planet (you have to think about it carefully when you build something, make sure it's up to code, maintained, etc., but that's professional and culturally transmitted thought, and I for one never worry about suddenly asphyxiating from bad air in my house).
[Edit: I live in Florida, I DO think about hurricanes, rising sea levels, protecting my eyes with sunglasses, sunburn, and sinkholes; but none of that stopped me from moving to America's Wang.]
This assumes the existence infrastructure and traditions that make life off-planet less than fantastically fragile and insanely dangerous, as well as smelly, cold, gross, and tending toward the isolation and problems of authority that historically have lead to so many ship captains, officers, and isolated colonists going insane...
[that is a lot of IFs, isn't it, technologically, legally, sociologically, economically...]
Bruce Sterling's SCHISMATRIX is one of my major influences. There is the idea that life in space is unnatural, and it takes unnatural ways of living to thrive there; in the case of the solar system, space colonization only happened because the richest and most successful people abandoned Earth: the scale of the climate catastrophe and the ensuing wars and chaos were what it took for those who could to put their resources into space migration (the cost of which & loss of innovators and skills hastened Earth's Collapse).
Anyway, once you've got a society living outside of planetary gravity wells, with the resources and construction techniques to keep living in asteroids and space stations, there may not be much incentive to climb back down the well, and even cultural reinforcement against doing so. Toward the end of SCHISMATRIX, and in some of the associated short stories, terraforming Mars is not an economically rational proposition: it is done for ideological and aesthetic reasons, and investing the resources required for terraforming, and later choosing to continue it rather than pursue FTL, involves major political maneuvering and moral choices.
Some habitats are designed with the collapse of civilization in mind and now inhabited by stone or iron age cultures. Redundant robust life support with minimally accessible components; care-taker AIs now worshipped as gods are a hoary and venerable trope; interior ecologies featuring plants and livestock that grow materials useful for tools are a plus; use every part of the buffalo, obviously; madness, xenophobia, ugly customs to keep populations stable, and superstition are all prevalent. It is feasible to base some habitats on fantasy cultures like gnomes, dwarves, and drow.
The history of life in space stations and spinning hollow asteroids, or dome cities or cavern ecologies on otherwise uninhabitable planets, is as ancient and familiar in the Diaspora as agriculture and cities seem to us, and as reliable.
Colonizing a blue hypergiant, or a cluster of A stars with lots of dust and delicious star light but not any, as who should say, PLANETS, seems very natural for a civilization that thinks as little about the dangers of life in space as we think about the dangers of life on a planet (you have to think about it carefully when you build something, make sure it's up to code, maintained, etc., but that's professional and culturally transmitted thought, and I for one never worry about suddenly asphyxiating from bad air in my house).
[Edit: I live in Florida, I DO think about hurricanes, rising sea levels, protecting my eyes with sunglasses, sunburn, and sinkholes; but none of that stopped me from moving to America's Wang.]
This assumes the existence infrastructure and traditions that make life off-planet less than fantastically fragile and insanely dangerous, as well as smelly, cold, gross, and tending toward the isolation and problems of authority that historically have lead to so many ship captains, officers, and isolated colonists going insane...
[that is a lot of IFs, isn't it, technologically, legally, sociologically, economically...]
Bruce Sterling's SCHISMATRIX is one of my major influences. There is the idea that life in space is unnatural, and it takes unnatural ways of living to thrive there; in the case of the solar system, space colonization only happened because the richest and most successful people abandoned Earth: the scale of the climate catastrophe and the ensuing wars and chaos were what it took for those who could to put their resources into space migration (the cost of which & loss of innovators and skills hastened Earth's Collapse).
Anyway, once you've got a society living outside of planetary gravity wells, with the resources and construction techniques to keep living in asteroids and space stations, there may not be much incentive to climb back down the well, and even cultural reinforcement against doing so. Toward the end of SCHISMATRIX, and in some of the associated short stories, terraforming Mars is not an economically rational proposition: it is done for ideological and aesthetic reasons, and investing the resources required for terraforming, and later choosing to continue it rather than pursue FTL, involves major political maneuvering and moral choices.
Some habitats are designed with the collapse of civilization in mind and now inhabited by stone or iron age cultures. Redundant robust life support with minimally accessible components; care-taker AIs now worshipped as gods are a hoary and venerable trope; interior ecologies featuring plants and livestock that grow materials useful for tools are a plus; use every part of the buffalo, obviously; madness, xenophobia, ugly customs to keep populations stable, and superstition are all prevalent. It is feasible to base some habitats on fantasy cultures like gnomes, dwarves, and drow.
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