Author's note: at 13:30 we've got an 'oops'. On-screen it shows Helium-3, but with one proton and 2 neutrons on the image, that would be hydrogen-3 or Tritium, He-3 would be two protons and a neutron. I'm gonna blame that one on being busy getting ready for the ISDC, though the slide is from an older episode so that's more of 'failed to catch the error again' :)
REALLY HATE your use of A.I. “art” in your header it’s absolutely 2000% garbage on fire. Can you NOT use real human artwork instead? ARTISTS AGAINST A.I.
@@donhillsmanii5906 this is a channel about futurism and the future of humanity... I think the AI art fits perfectly and makes perfect sense next to the human art
@@donhillsmanii5906 The slides are just eye candy anyway, aside from a few important charts or graphs. If you are not ADD-riddled like me, you can always just do something else while listening to Isaac.
When I read "author's note", in my mind I was reading it with voice, but because it was in your voice my brain interpreted it as Arthur's note even though I read author's note
Great example is the Expanse. Huge agricultural domes powered by orbital mirrors, and underground living facilities. In that universe, its the safest place to birth and raise children off-earth, though still not better than earth!
Taken to it's logical conclusion, orbitals would be overall safer and healthier than any moon or planet, including earth. Just need a ton of orbital industry to get it going (note I didn't say tech, because most of the tech we'd absolutely need we already have, just not the engineering yet)
Amusing story, my best friend decided he wanted to try his hand at making mead so swung by to get some honey (my wife keeps bees) , 'Ganymead' was one of the names we kicked around for the label.
Cool. This reminds me of an old short story "Christmas on Ganymede". In that story Ganymede had an indigenous population that funnily enough was described as "they can speak English but when they do that you wish that the couldn't". Yes the story was meant as comedy. I just checked on Wikipedia. Apparently written by Isaac Asimov. The article says written 1940 and published 1942.
For us old timer nukes, that 0.08 Sieverts figure for radiation on the surface of Ganymede is equivalent to 8 Rem per day. While not lethal short term, that's a pretty strong dose. For comparison, after working in nuclear for decades I've only had a total recorded cumulative dose of maybe half that. I could get my lifetime occupational dose on the surface of Ganymede in half a day probably. It won't kill you but do that enough times and you likely have cancer in your future. Heavily shielded or underground habs would be a must for colonization.
That figure got a smile from me! It reminded me of when I used to teach radiological protection, and would bombard my students with the units and ask for convertions. 😂
Would be interesting to discuss colonizing Callisto for comparison, as it has slightly lower size and gravity but is less irradiated thanks to being completely outside of Jupiter's radiation belt, while Ganymede is not, and as mentioned here has lower escape velocity.
I have sort of a soft spot for Ganymede. Ever since an obscure scifi story from the early 80s mentioned Ganymede as being colonized by my ethnic group. I was so happy! We made it! We have a world to ourselves! Someone recognized us as worthy of that! It's an irradiated rock 2.4 times smaller than the Earth, but I'm not asking for much! Just enough space to build our dome cities or arcologies and grow our numbers! Come to Ganymede and stay awhile! The restaurant and bakeries are awesome!😋
What is the obscure sci fi story from the 80s where Ganymede is colonized by an ethnic group? I must be trying all the wrong searches because I can’t find it… but my search did remind me to read Ken MacLeod’s series.
I wonder why Callisto wouldn't be picked instead, as a "crown jewel" of Jupiter. Also rich in water and various resources, far enough from Jupiter that radiation is even lower (even taking Ganymede's magnetic field into account), and its outer orbit might be a bit easier for ship transit purposes. While also making a good base to exploit the rest of Jupiter from.
Because Ganymede has its own magnetosphere and receives more luminosity compared to Callisto, the fact that Ganymede is geologically active is an advantage. And building artificial magnetic shields isn't that complex
Heinlein's Farmer in the Sky and Benford's Against Infinity are my favorite novels set on Ganymede. I haven't read Poul Anderson's Snows of Ganymede but I'd like to.
Bro, I read it as "I would go out with Callisto, because her father works for ratiation belt". I'm like... is he making his own nuclear powerplant, or is he popping WW3.
I might be wrong because I read it very long time ago, but I think in the Mars Trilogy there was mentioned a similar concept of a habitat, but it was an underground one, and it had one side dug out to let light in through mirrors.
Honestly, since getting a decent idea on how much more efficient habitats are versus planetary colonization, I have lost a lot of interest in the specifics of colonizing specific planets or moons. Other than geology research and the like I don't think we would ever bother colonizing instead of building habitat stations of whatever configuration we decide is most practical.
@@puresowns215 I tend to feel the same way… maybe each of these moons will have max 10,000 people living on them at any one time to get the extraction systems set up and then back to space they go to live in comfort and assemble more habitats. And thinking about how those 10,000 people would live while they work isn’t that interesting to me… I tend to go straight to ‘why can’t they just manage the robots from a comfortable habitat in orbit instead of going down to the surface?’ … Maybe they wouldn’t be extraction colonies but temporary tourist/geologist/historian outposts erected while the moon is still standing.
Do that and I demand that the name is kept. So it will be something like "Ganymede station". At least for the first one if there is enough material for several O'Neil cylinders.
@@michaelpettersson4919 Ganymede should provide enough material for several hundred thousand O’Neil cylinders… but likely the material from Ganymede would be combined with material taken from other moons and even gas giants of the Sol system to make the maximum amount of optimally configured O’Neil Cylinders… doubtless thousands would have names derived from Ganymede in some way.
Agreed, but timeframe matters. The machinery and mining needed to recycle something this size into a few million (or billion) habitats is probably on the order of eons. There’s going to be a colony on the surface in there somewhere.
Callisto would be better. Specialized RTG craft could assist in diverting other carefully selected small moons around Jupiter to add to the mass of Calisto, as there's lots to choose from. Mass drivers on other moons could send select materials to Callisto. More mass, more ability to hold an atmosphere, protect from radiation and protect from micro meteorites, and make it easier for human and other organism health.
The definition of "colonised" seem to be... The term seem to vary with the person using it. Our host Isaac Arthur here do not seem to have any compulsion against colonising the Sun...
Very good book, first I read by Clarke too, though I'd already seen 2001, had to backtrack to read the toher sequels after. Funny coincidence, I was doing a panel with Larry Niven sunday morning an 3001 came up, though more on the space elevator discussion
This is a true story. Way back in high school one day we all gathered together on campus near a tree and decided to make Maddie, our strange classmate, that we were far in the future and living on Ganymede having sparked fusion on Jupiter and migrated humanity out there. We were celebrating our 50 year class reunion, that's how we all came to be together in a perfect replica of our old high school back on Earth. Maddie fell for it and was disoriented the whole rest of the day being completely unable to remember his class schedule. Sometimes Maddie ingested certain molecules that he, and anyone, probably shouldn't. Bear in mind that the aforementioned 50 year class reunion will be next year and we knew very little about Ganymede since the Voyager spacecraft had not yet arrived at the Jupiter system, and would not for several more years. Yes, I'm pretty old by now but avoided ingesting dangerous molecules for the most part and still have a functional brain. Mostly.
Isaac, I’d love to hear your thoughts on atomic printing. Especially if that leads into the ability to deconstruct existing materials down to fundamental particles and rebuild them with different atomic weights. This would essentially simplify many of the challenges in this episode as you’d be able to print medicines and volatile materials as necessary. Even if it was painfully slow, you could print more printers to speed the manufacturing process up.
How beefy do the domes need to be to survive meteorites and asteroidites since there is no atmosphere to burn up them up? What is the current strike frequency on moons around Jupiter?
Ganymede is the true test for whether or not humanity can reach for the stars. If we can make it there, then we can make it on a lot of different worlds.
Jupiters moons, Callisto and all the ones further out, are going to be a massive empire one day. I can see Ganymede, Europa and Io being used for resources and production….i just think they’ll be more automated due to all the radiation. I mean, up until there are underground Silo style compounds reaching down into the sun surface oceans…… Man, someone make a KSP style colony game with real physics and all the known Jovian moons with a accurate radiation belt already lol Thank you so much for another Jupiter system colony episode!!!!!
Also I think they’d mainly be mined for volatiles. I could be way off but I think the smaller moons are where the rocks and minerals are at. Though of course, it could be worthwhile to mine the seafloor of Europa…
If you put a conducting coil around Ganymede even at the poles for smaller equipment requirements Jupiter will induce enormous amounts of power in it. The other moons could be used as well and the power transmitted as laser light about the jovian system.
Ganymede is my favorite [place] in our solar system. I had a fundraiser to raise the 87 million trillion dollars to terraform it. We are only 87 million trillion dollars from reaching our goal. That's why this is my favorite non-megastructure related episode. Thank you very much.
Interestingly in Babylon 5 the earthgov was trying to liberate a shadow vessel from the surface of Ganymede and of course when the thing went crazy it destroyed the surface domes. Thank goodness Sheridan already there waiting for it
Would you consider doing a similar show for Europa and, Io(you covered Callisto in detail already)? I'm sure there would by striking differences in the approach to colonizing each one. I absolutely love your work. Thank you for sharing!
So far from the Sun, even if we could generate an Earth-type, thick, nitrogen/oxygen atmosphere, it would still be permanently sub-freezing cold. While some outlying areas of Antarctica can rise above 32F in the summer, most of the time the temp is 32F and far, far below freezing, and nobody wants to live permanently in Antarctica.
Maybe you can do all 4 in this series. For example, Io would be fun but has a heavy potential for resources that could be utilized despite the extreme volcanism, which could be more tamed and used as power, like how cryovolcanoes could be used for power.
If you'd like to build some interstellar highway networks from Lunar to Ganymede to save time for next Jupiter meeting, why not? But before you launch Ganymede settlements establishment, preparing to meet your new galactic neighbors at their bases and spaceports on the Ganymede. Good luck bro, Sol system development projects will bringing surprises in this century.
Callisto is my favorite moon, it would be fascinating to see your take as well on that one! I say we colonize all of the four major moons of Jupiter! ❤🚀 🌝
I kinda wonder what sort of damage Terra-forming our moon might have on planet Earth. I would think the differences of Sunlight due to the atmosphere of the moon might come into play in some way. A lot of biology is wired for moonlight. What happens if we toyed with that?
I recently read that some ETs grom another system landd on Gamymede and when the Space Force learned of it they wemt there to welcome these new arrivals. I haven't received any confirmation but I hope it's true.
Issue with terraforming ice moons that's often overlooked is that they're Ice Moons - warm them up and you get a water world with a planetary sea that can be more than a hundred kilometers deep, and with no input of nutrients from continental erosion and little to recirculate that which falls to the sea floor, that's going to be a mostly dead ocean, especially if the sea floor is mostly composed of high-pressure ice. You can bring your own and create local open-water ecologies(tho you'll need to oxygenate more or less the entire ocean with said pocket-ecologies before you can can have animals) but that's far from a thriving planetary ecosystem.
Won't light pressure drive the orbiting mirrors away from a useful locations. Especially, goven they've been proposed as means of propulsion i. e. Solar sails.
I discussed that in the Staties and lagites episode, what ends up happening in short form though is you adjust them to a non-keplerian orbit, and for lagrange points, you usually just put the shade a bit closer to the Sun than L1, and the mirror even closer.
If bigger is better for Fusion, we always still have Fission for small homesteads and facilities. Fission reactors can get extremely small, and if the photos from russian nuclear subs in the 90s are accurate, we already have traditional fission reactors that could fit in the back of a van. The Fallout-universe concept of having a fission reactor under the hood of your car might be closer than we think. We probably don't want to use them for terrestrial cars, but on the surface of an airless moon where you already have to radiation proof everything, well it might be fine then to run your rover on a under-the-hood fission reactor.
Hey Isaac Arthur, because of your space interests and covering all kinds of space related topics, I'd recommend to you checking out both Talk pages that are respectively associated to the Fermi Paradox and the space colonization Wikipedia pages, and in the latter case the very bottom part.
I think a hybrid photo+betavoltaics could significantly raise the efficiency of power sources, especially krypton-85 is something that would be interesting to study more.
That is true of a number of very good channels, in science and various other genres. Might I recommend, in no particular order: The Click Jammidodger DUST Rebecca Watson Beau of the Fifth Column Storied Randy Rainbow The Launch Pad Old Gods of Appalachia Anton Petrov The Professional Left
Hey, an Idea for power storage... So, we know how to produce liquid nitrogen since... A long time now. And since the 90s we have warm super conductors. And Tesla, the man himself, not the company, has long gave up a really effective turbine. So liquid Nitrogen in a well insulated container. The inside layer being a superconductor at liquid nitrogen temp. Have the nitrogen *leak* to a tesla turbine, basically another layer in the same box... It spins, the container as a whole spins, have a coil around it. You now have a very efficient generator. Bonus. Making liquid nitrogen also separates out anything else in the air. Including CO2.
Will solar panels get enough sunlight to supply electricity for the colonist? Agriculture will have to be conducted underground because of the cold temperatures.
It should be pointed out that ice is very easy to tunnel through compared to rock, so there's hardly even any reason to make domes for habitat out of glass. You can just dig down.
Gregory Benford wrote ''Against Infinity'' about humanity's attempts to colonize Ganymede. However an ancient alien (robotic) entity, the Aleph, tries to counter this...
One question though. What would be the incentive for choosing Ganymede over Callisto? Whatever advantages Ganymede has, e.g., abundance of water ice, even subsurface ocean, are present also on Callisto. However, Callisto has several advantages, such as lower ambient radiation, stable geology (Ganymede may have plate tectonics ) and being not as deep inside Jupiter's gravity well as Ganymede. As for mining Jupiter or IO, such works will be done by robots anyway. A little outpost would do. Makes no sense to build a vast colony in a hostile environment just for that. If the goal is to biologically colonize the Jovian system, I don't see much reason for choosing Ganymede over Callisto.
Thermal energy, higher luminosity, and a natural magnetosphere are key factors. Both moons would require additional radiation protection, but Ganymede is a unique case as it possesses its own liquid core.
So as it happens, the length of a Martian sol and a Ganymedean "day" are almost identical: 24 hours, 39.6 minutes versus 24 hours, 31.8 minutes. Perhaps the first permanent colonists on Ganymede will be from Mars, not Earth.
Moot point, even if the radiation question were to be answered, you're still stuck in low G. That's bound to have all kinds of bad effects for long term exposure. Until a proper fix is found, telepresence and perhaps an outpost akin to the space station's time frame would be the only feasible Ganymedian effort. Not even the sight would be worth the recuperation that one would have to go through or the meds they'd need for long term habitation on Ganymede. Ultimately, it's about "effort". Is it worth the effort to colonize a moon like that when a space station would be far more appropriate (and easier as human resources go)? I think not. Humans will have to stick to same or close to same gravity as Earth does, because that's how we evolved. And THE biggest reason for that is not just because of the health issues, but also because of what humans are... which is a really vile race that still (in this long) hasn't understood that fighting each other is utterly meaningless and that money, wealth, power... wanting them, are just symptoms of a deranged mind that needs to be placed under medication. Some people tend to want to see the best in humanity, i just see what happens now, with several wars that are happening because some human shaped refuses are wanting for power, while the rest of the human race is struggling under troglodytes with ambitions of grandeur who think that it's "ok" to pollute our planet's sky (without asking anyone, really) with space trash just so they can squeeze MORE money out of people who are clueless to the effects of their actions. Yeah, no. I'd rather ban any space flight in the first place if this eventually leads to settling and therefore, creating, yet another issue. Humanity as a whole needs to cook longer before it can even consider something like this, because we think too fast and feel too slow. And honestly, this feels like it would be a mistake.
It's funny to think that we have no idea at this point whether lava tubes will be the choicest high-end real estate, or the equivalent of trailer parks.
@@arcadiaberger9204The main factor is their proximity to the ice. But who knows, they might have ice in them…. They _have_ been shadowed for billions of years after all…
@@isaacarthurSFIA I tend to think of Titan as especially suitable for mechanic lifeforms (maybe mechanisms instead of organisms) due to its coldness, aridity, and abundance of methane. I'm p sure I got the idea from you, but either way you can expound on it. Maybe a group of isolationist mechanisms claim Titan as their homeworld, potentially focused more on miniaturization and virtual existence. Though ofc it could also become the origin of a militarist mechanic nation or singularity.
@@joelcamilo5436 Dude said Triton, which is Neptune's biggest, rather than Titan, Saturn's big boy. I'm inclined to think Titan is the more interesting of the two.
ok so im totally an arm chair game den physicist, (partial to Callisto because of Xena warrior princess) but there have been discussed on this show, mushrooms that "eat" nuclear radiation. would not Jupiter's radiation be useful to them, and would that not be a viable approach to energy and or food production?
Author's note: at 13:30 we've got an 'oops'. On-screen it shows Helium-3, but with one proton and 2 neutrons on the image, that would be hydrogen-3 or Tritium, He-3 would be two protons and a neutron. I'm gonna blame that one on being busy getting ready for the ISDC, though the slide is from an older episode so that's more of 'failed to catch the error again' :)
REALLY HATE your use of A.I. “art” in your header it’s absolutely 2000% garbage on fire.
Can you NOT use real human artwork instead?
ARTISTS AGAINST A.I.
@@donhillsmanii5906 this is a channel about futurism and the future of humanity... I think the AI art fits perfectly and makes perfect sense next to the human art
@@donhillsmanii5906 The slides are just eye candy anyway, aside from a few important charts or graphs. If you are not ADD-riddled like me, you can always just do something else while listening to Isaac.
When I read "author's note", in my mind I was reading it with voice, but because it was in your voice my brain interpreted it as Arthur's note even though I read author's note
@@fubaralakbar6800 the worst is I KNOW it's stock footage. and the SAME stock footage over and over, but I just sit and watch and listen to Isaac lol.
Great example is the Expanse. Huge agricultural domes powered by orbital mirrors, and underground living facilities. In that universe, its the safest place to birth and raise children off-earth, though still not better than earth!
Taken to it's logical conclusion, orbitals would be overall safer and healthier than any moon or planet, including earth.
Just need a ton of orbital industry to get it going (note I didn't say tech, because most of the tech we'd absolutely need we already have, just not the engineering yet)
@@RiversJ I agree, as in particular the gravity of Earth is something one cannot as easily simulate on Ganymede as on a rotating habitat.
Just look out for the Caliban!
@@SuperibyPRotating habitat with the floor at an angle, mounted on the surface.
@@RiversJ What weird definition of 'technology' includes purely theoretical constructs?
Drinking Ganymead on Ganymede
I prefer Brawndo thanks.
Lol, I read this as "drinking grannies mead on Ganymede"
Amusing story, my best friend decided he wanted to try his hand at making mead so swung by to get some honey (my wife keeps bees) , 'Ganymead' was one of the names we kicked around for the label.
Oh yes! The thirst mutilator! It's got what plants crave, because it's got electrolytes!
I'm good, gonna have me a nice tall glass of Enceladade.
"All these worlds are yours. Except Europa. Attempt no landings there."
Alright; Ganymede it is.
I've always wondered why They said that. They must have known that perverse humans would immediately be drawn to Europa out of curiosity.
Nice reference.
I'm afraid I can't do that caejones2792.
“Oh, and also avoid Io. Unless you want to die from a volcano.”
Cool. This reminds me of an old short story "Christmas on Ganymede". In that story Ganymede had an indigenous population that funnily enough was described as "they can speak English but when they do that you wish that the couldn't". Yes the story was meant as comedy.
I just checked on Wikipedia. Apparently written by Isaac Asimov. The article says written 1940 and published 1942.
yep, there's a nice audio version of it by Jim Roberts too
I was thinking totally sounds like an Asmov story.
For us old timer nukes, that 0.08 Sieverts figure for radiation on the surface of Ganymede is equivalent to 8 Rem per day. While not lethal short term, that's a pretty strong dose. For comparison, after working in nuclear for decades I've only had a total recorded cumulative dose of maybe half that. I could get my lifetime occupational dose on the surface of Ganymede in half a day probably. It won't kill you but do that enough times and you likely have cancer in your future. Heavily shielded or underground habs would be a must for colonization.
NASA's limit is 600 mSv per lifetime, or 7.5 days on the surface of Ganymede. So, yes, you are exactly correct.
That figure got a smile from me! It reminded me of when I used to teach radiological protection, and would bombard my students with the units and ask for convertions. 😂
Would be interesting to discuss colonizing Callisto for comparison, as it has slightly lower size and gravity but is less irradiated thanks to being completely outside of Jupiter's radiation belt, while Ganymede is not, and as mentioned here has lower escape velocity.
Love your colonizing episodes. Love your world builder approach. I love a good story. I never get tired of listening one.
Thanks!
I have sort of a soft spot for Ganymede. Ever since an obscure scifi story from the early 80s mentioned Ganymede as being colonized by my ethnic group. I was so happy! We made it! We have a world to ourselves! Someone recognized us as worthy of that! It's an irradiated rock 2.4 times smaller than the Earth, but I'm not asking for much! Just enough space to build our dome cities or arcologies and grow our numbers!
Come to Ganymede and stay awhile! The restaurant and bakeries are awesome!😋
What is the obscure sci fi story from the 80s where Ganymede is colonized by an ethnic group?
I must be trying all the wrong searches because I can’t find it… but my search did remind me to read Ken MacLeod’s series.
@@corbynite2004shot in the dark but maybe “The Ganymede Takeover” by Phillip K. Dick and Ray Nelson??
@@corbynite2004shot in the dark but maybe “The Ganymede Takeover” by Phillip K. Dick and Ray Nelson ??
Cool. And I got absolutely no idea what ethnicity that is.
Belters?
I wonder why Callisto wouldn't be picked instead, as a "crown jewel" of Jupiter. Also rich in water and various resources, far enough from Jupiter that radiation is even lower (even taking Ganymede's magnetic field into account), and its outer orbit might be a bit easier for ship transit purposes. While also making a good base to exploit the rest of Jupiter from.
It probably would be picked first in reality.
Callisto is my pick, favorite moon for sure! 😊
Because Ganymede has its own magnetosphere and receives more luminosity compared to Callisto, the fact that Ganymede is geologically active is an advantage. And building artificial magnetic shields isn't that complex
Heinlein's Farmer in the Sky and Benford's Against Infinity are my favorite novels set on Ganymede. I haven't read Poul Anderson's Snows of Ganymede but I'd like to.
I'd go with Callisto just because it's farther from the radiation belt.
The crust is also a lot more mineral rich, with a higher fraction of rocky material than Ganymede
Love Callisto, it's my favorite moon, so much so I named a cat after it! ❤
Bro, I read it as "I would go out with Callisto, because her father works for ratiation belt".
I'm like... is he making his own nuclear powerplant, or is he popping WW3.
@@janchovanec8624 Nah. Callisto's not my type. I wanna go out with Venus, she's a lot hotter!😀
Callisto is where it’s at for me.
Pleased to ganymeet you!
Hahaha! Come for the Arthur, stay for the puns.
This comment wins🎉🎉🎉
And Uranus too.
That's terrible I wish I thought of it first ❤
Come to the airlock for a moment please.
I love the use of mirrors to avoid lethal radiation. They could be used for Mars exploration and beyond.
I might be wrong because I read it very long time ago, but I think in the Mars Trilogy there was mentioned a similar concept of a habitat, but it was an underground one, and it had one side dug out to let light in through mirrors.
Ganymede seems like a good place to set up some agricultural domes. I'm sure nothing bad could happen.
Farmer in the sky... But on Callisto, where the surface dose is lower, there's plenty of easily accessible ore bodies in the craters, etc.
Best way to colonize Ganymede is to crunch it up and turn it into O’Neil cylinders. Yum.
Honestly, since getting a decent idea on how much more efficient habitats are versus planetary colonization, I have lost a lot of interest in the specifics of colonizing specific planets or moons. Other than geology research and the like I don't think we would ever bother colonizing instead of building habitat stations of whatever configuration we decide is most practical.
@@puresowns215 I tend to feel the same way… maybe each of these moons will have max 10,000 people living on them at any one time to get the extraction systems set up and then back to space they go to live in comfort and assemble more habitats. And thinking about how those 10,000 people would live while they work isn’t that interesting to me… I tend to go straight to ‘why can’t they just manage the robots from a comfortable habitat in orbit instead of going down to the surface?’ … Maybe they wouldn’t be extraction colonies but temporary tourist/geologist/historian outposts erected while the moon is still standing.
Do that and I demand that the name is kept. So it will be something like "Ganymede station". At least for the first one if there is enough material for several O'Neil cylinders.
@@michaelpettersson4919 Ganymede should provide enough material for several hundred thousand O’Neil cylinders… but likely the material from Ganymede would be combined with material taken from other moons and even gas giants of the Sol system to make the maximum amount of optimally configured O’Neil Cylinders… doubtless thousands would have names derived from Ganymede in some way.
Agreed, but timeframe matters. The machinery and mining needed to recycle something this size into a few million (or billion) habitats is probably on the order of eons. There’s going to be a colony on the surface in there somewhere.
Callisto would be better. Specialized RTG craft could assist in diverting other carefully selected small moons around Jupiter to add to the mass of Calisto, as there's lots to choose from. Mass drivers on other moons could send select materials to Callisto. More mass, more ability to hold an atmosphere, protect from radiation and protect from micro meteorites, and make it easier for human and other organism health.
Excellent video and some nice bonus world-building.
Good work, Isaac.
26:27 can you explain the difference in a rotating habitat with a sloped wall vs a rotating vase/bowl shape
In the novel 3001...Ganymede was colonized. Great book.
The definition of "colonised" seem to be... The term seem to vary with the person using it. Our host Isaac Arthur here do not seem to have any compulsion against colonising the Sun...
@@michaelpettersson4919 Indeed, Indeed. Isaac Arthur is the Mad Hatter of space colonization.
Very good book, first I read by Clarke too, though I'd already seen 2001, had to backtrack to read the toher sequels after. Funny coincidence, I was doing a panel with Larry Niven sunday morning an 3001 came up, though more on the space elevator discussion
This is a true story. Way back in high school one day we all gathered together on campus near a tree and decided to make Maddie, our strange classmate, that we were far in the future and living on Ganymede having sparked fusion on Jupiter and migrated humanity out there. We were celebrating our 50 year class reunion, that's how we all came to be together in a perfect replica of our old high school back on Earth. Maddie fell for it and was disoriented the whole rest of the day being completely unable to remember his class schedule. Sometimes Maddie ingested certain molecules that he, and anyone, probably shouldn't.
Bear in mind that the aforementioned 50 year class reunion will be next year and we knew very little about Ganymede since the Voyager spacecraft had not yet arrived at the Jupiter system, and would not for several more years. Yes, I'm pretty old by now but avoided ingesting dangerous molecules for the most part and still have a functional brain. Mostly.
Well… that seems… really fucking mean. In fact, forget the “seems”.
Isaac, I’d love to hear your thoughts on atomic printing. Especially if that leads into the ability to deconstruct existing materials down to fundamental particles and rebuild them with different atomic weights.
This would essentially simplify many of the challenges in this episode as you’d be able to print medicines and volatile materials as necessary.
Even if it was painfully slow, you could print more printers to speed the manufacturing process up.
Yeah. Sure buddy.
I have heard that Callisto is the best option for colony in Jupiter's moons
Really fun, and lovely scenario at the end. Thank you.
I love your content and it's often played while I work on stuff. Your voice reminds me of an old friend.
I also love your colonizing episodes because its like listening to the expanse but more advanced.
It's also equivalent fantasy and fiction.
From Ganymede to Titan, yes sir I've been around 🎵
Loved the video. You always do a excellent job
Another great episode. I've always loved when you put the theoretical into a real human story. I feel like I'm there.
How beefy do the domes need to be to survive meteorites and asteroidites since there is no atmosphere to burn up them up? What is the current strike frequency on moons around Jupiter?
Ganymede is the true test for whether or not humanity can reach for the stars. If we can make it there, then we can make it on a lot of different worlds.
Man, Callisto is beautiful.
Jupiters moons, Callisto and all the ones further out, are going to be a massive empire one day. I can see Ganymede, Europa and Io being used for resources and production….i just think they’ll be more automated due to all the radiation. I mean, up until there are underground Silo style compounds reaching down into the sun surface oceans……
Man, someone make a KSP style colony game with real physics and all the known Jovian moons with a accurate radiation belt already lol
Thank you so much for another Jupiter system colony episode!!!!!
I wanna make that kind of game but I ain’t got the skills. But hey, check again in 10 years and maybe that dream won’t be so distant.
Also I think they’d mainly be mined for volatiles. I could be way off but I think the smaller moons are where the rocks and minerals are at. Though of course, it could be worthwhile to mine the seafloor of Europa…
One thing to note about electrical current, amperage has a much greater effect than voltage when it comes to lethality.
If you put a conducting coil around Ganymede even at the poles for smaller equipment requirements Jupiter will induce enormous amounts of power in it. The other moons could be used as well and the power transmitted as laser light about the jovian system.
16:07 gives me "Aww sheeeit... Here we go again." vibes 😂
Your videos are the highlight of my week.
i think low gravity is very unhealthy for us - we need cylinders. it would make a good mining source but not long term living.
We dont know tge gravity threshold needed but suspect ur right
@@SeanSoraghan true but zero g severely reduces bone density and causes other problems. so 14%g is probably not enough long term.
We don't know yet if low gravity would result in the same adverse health effects as microgravity or not.
Ganymede is my favorite [place] in our solar system. I had a fundraiser to raise the 87 million trillion dollars to terraform it. We are only 87 million trillion dollars from reaching our goal.
That's why this is my favorite non-megastructure related episode. Thank you very much.
I don't know. Considering how expensive it is to terraform Jupiter's moons, an Io-you may be in order.
Happy #Arthursday!!!!
When i think about the galilean moons, i think about ship building yards for some reason.
Because of what that comet chasing probe found with the airogell wings, the moons will have organic material to use.
Been hoping for an episode on Ganymede!
We would definitely need some type of artificial gravity. It would probably will just end up being a mining operation for water ice .
I support colonising Ganymede.
Interestingly in Babylon 5 the earthgov was trying to liberate a shadow vessel from the surface of Ganymede and of course when the thing went crazy it destroyed the surface domes. Thank goodness Sheridan already there waiting for it
Would you consider doing a similar show for Europa and, Io(you covered Callisto in detail already)?
I'm sure there would by striking differences in the approach to colonizing each one.
I absolutely love your work. Thank you for sharing!
Enjoy Arthur's fantasies.
Ganymede is probably the only moon we could feasibly classically terraform, as it is the only one with a magnetic field.
So far from the Sun, even if we could generate an Earth-type, thick, nitrogen/oxygen atmosphere, it would still be permanently sub-freezing cold. While some outlying areas of Antarctica can rise above 32F in the summer, most of the time the temp is 32F and far, far below freezing, and nobody wants to live permanently in Antarctica.
And probably not.
Maybe you can do all 4 in this series. For example, Io would be fun but has a heavy potential for resources that could be utilized despite the extreme volcanism, which could be more tamed and used as power, like how cryovolcanoes could be used for power.
Any elemental accounting associated with colonization to me seems a little insufficient without a discussion on phosphate.
I have simple route's of entertainment, i see Isaac Arthur+ colonising and I click like before the video has started.
If you'd like to build some interstellar highway networks from Lunar to Ganymede to save time for next Jupiter meeting, why not?
But before you launch Ganymede settlements establishment, preparing to meet your new galactic neighbors at their bases and spaceports on the Ganymede.
Good luck bro, Sol system development projects will bringing surprises in this century.
Callisto is my favorite moon, it would be fascinating to see your take as well on that one! I say we colonize all of the four major moons of Jupiter! ❤🚀 🌝
Bless the Isaac family
So long as we avoid awakening the shadow vessel
Revolutionary Concepts for Human Outer Planet Exploration (HOPE) from 2003 went on and posited a crewed mission somewhere after 2045.
The first book I ever read in English was Farmer in the Sky, so Ganymede has always had a special place in my imagination
Did I just watch Isaac Arthur shaving? That's great!
I kinda wonder what sort of damage Terra-forming our moon might have on planet Earth. I would think the differences of Sunlight due to the atmosphere of the moon might come into play in some way. A lot of biology is wired for moonlight. What happens if we toyed with that?
WOAH! careful there bucko. The great engine of progress steams forever forward! SCIENCE IS AWESOME... HUZZAH!!!
Great show! very informative as always.🛰
Glad you enjoyed it
I recently read that some ETs grom another system landd on Gamymede and when the Space Force learned of it they wemt there to welcome these new arrivals. I haven't received any confirmation but I hope it's true.
Issue with terraforming ice moons that's often overlooked is that they're Ice Moons - warm them up and you get a water world with a planetary sea that can be more than a hundred kilometers deep, and with no input of nutrients from continental erosion and little to recirculate that which falls to the sea floor, that's going to be a mostly dead ocean, especially if the sea floor is mostly composed of high-pressure ice. You can bring your own and create local open-water ecologies(tho you'll need to oxygenate more or less the entire ocean with said pocket-ecologies before you can can have animals) but that's far from a thriving planetary ecosystem.
Won't light pressure drive the orbiting mirrors away from a useful locations. Especially, goven they've been proposed as means of propulsion i. e. Solar sails.
I discussed that in the Staties and lagites episode, what ends up happening in short form though is you adjust them to a non-keplerian orbit, and for lagrange points, you usually just put the shade a bit closer to the Sun than L1, and the mirror even closer.
If bigger is better for Fusion, we always still have Fission for small homesteads and facilities. Fission reactors can get extremely small, and if the photos from russian nuclear subs in the 90s are accurate, we already have traditional fission reactors that could fit in the back of a van. The Fallout-universe concept of having a fission reactor under the hood of your car might be closer than we think. We probably don't want to use them for terrestrial cars, but on the surface of an airless moon where you already have to radiation proof everything, well it might be fine then to run your rover on a under-the-hood fission reactor.
If there is a discussion about floating platforms in the Venus atmosphere, why can the same concept not be used in Jupiter and Saturn?
ThankQ Issac Another Imagination Teasing Episode 😋
Very cool episode thanks 🙃
Hey Isaac Arthur, because of your space interests and covering all kinds of space related topics, I'd recommend to you checking out both Talk pages that are respectively associated to the Fermi Paradox and the space colonization Wikipedia pages, and in the latter case the very bottom part.
Not sure if I'm missing smth, but doesn't this [13:29] show two tritium atoms fusing?
Yes, it does, damn, I wonder how I screwed that up. It should be two protons and aneutron for He3 of course.
I think a hybrid photo+betavoltaics could significantly raise the efficiency of power sources, especially krypton-85 is something that would be interesting to study more.
Yhm, let'se see, yes yes, another great Isaac Arthur content.
This channel is still inexplicably under subscribed.
That is true of a number of very good channels, in science and various other genres.
Might I recommend, in no particular order:
The Click
Jammidodger
DUST
Rebecca Watson
Beau of the Fifth Column
Storied
Randy Rainbow
The Launch Pad
Old Gods of Appalachia
Anton Petrov
The Professional Left
His speech impediment will hold him back
@@Raine247 It hardly seems to.
@@Raine247it didn’t six years ago, and it’s significantly better now. Now new people just think he has an odd accent.
Hey, an Idea for power storage...
So, we know how to produce liquid nitrogen since... A long time now.
And since the 90s we have warm super conductors.
And Tesla, the man himself, not the company, has long gave up a really effective turbine.
So liquid Nitrogen in a well insulated container. The inside layer being a superconductor at liquid nitrogen temp.
Have the nitrogen *leak* to a tesla turbine, basically another layer in the same box...
It spins, the container as a whole spins, have a coil around it.
You now have a very efficient generator.
Bonus. Making liquid nitrogen also separates out anything else in the air. Including CO2.
25:00 How does Ganymede have clouds here?
Could you do a video on starship and what possibilities it's going to open? :)
Will solar panels get enough sunlight to supply electricity for the colonist? Agriculture will have to be conducted underground because of the cold temperatures.
I doubt it’s all that much warmer underground
@@oberonpanopticon it depends on far down colorists are able to drill down to hit warm areas.
22:26 I think there was meant year 2156, not 2056, right? Another more mention of 2056 after this as well.
And who the hell knows what year anyway for this or that?
It should be pointed out that ice is very easy to tunnel through compared to rock, so there's hardly even any reason to make domes for habitat out of glass. You can just dig down.
Gregory Benford wrote ''Against Infinity'' about humanity's attempts to colonize Ganymede. However an ancient alien (robotic) entity, the Aleph, tries to counter this...
One question though. What would be the incentive for choosing Ganymede over Callisto?
Whatever advantages Ganymede has, e.g., abundance of water ice, even subsurface ocean, are present also on Callisto.
However, Callisto has several advantages, such as lower ambient radiation, stable geology (Ganymede may have plate tectonics ) and being not as deep inside Jupiter's gravity well as Ganymede.
As for mining Jupiter or IO, such works will be done by robots anyway. A little outpost would do. Makes no sense to build a vast colony in a hostile environment just for that.
If the goal is to biologically colonize the Jovian system, I don't see much reason for choosing Ganymede over Callisto.
Thermal energy, higher luminosity, and a natural magnetosphere are key factors. Both moons would require additional radiation protection, but Ganymede is a unique case as it possesses its own liquid core.
A video about nuclear pulse propulsion would be cool!
17:10 is basically a survival game called Space Engineers
My favorite Moon ❤
how about the gravity though?
So as it happens, the length of a Martian sol and a Ganymedean "day" are almost identical: 24 hours, 39.6 minutes versus 24 hours, 31.8 minutes. Perhaps the first permanent colonists on Ganymede will be from Mars, not Earth.
Good stuff as usual.
Moot point, even if the radiation question were to be answered, you're still stuck in low G. That's bound to have all kinds of bad effects for long term exposure. Until a proper fix is found, telepresence and perhaps an outpost akin to the space station's time frame would be the only feasible Ganymedian effort.
Not even the sight would be worth the recuperation that one would have to go through or the meds they'd need for long term habitation on Ganymede. Ultimately, it's about "effort". Is it worth the effort to colonize a moon like that when a space station would be far more appropriate (and easier as human resources go)? I think not. Humans will have to stick to same or close to same gravity as Earth does, because that's how we evolved. And THE biggest reason for that is not just because of the health issues, but also because of what humans are... which is a really vile race that still (in this long) hasn't understood that fighting each other is utterly meaningless and that money, wealth, power... wanting them, are just symptoms of a deranged mind that needs to be placed under medication. Some people tend to want to see the best in humanity, i just see what happens now, with several wars that are happening because some human shaped refuses are wanting for power, while the rest of the human race is struggling under troglodytes with ambitions of grandeur who think that it's "ok" to pollute our planet's sky (without asking anyone, really) with space trash just so they can squeeze MORE money out of people who are clueless to the effects of their actions. Yeah, no. I'd rather ban any space flight in the first place if this eventually leads to settling and therefore, creating, yet another issue. Humanity as a whole needs to cook longer before it can even consider something like this, because we think too fast and feel too slow. And honestly, this feels like it would be a mistake.
thanks
Good Morning, Isaac.
Heavily stooped in the fiction from "sci-fi," but I'd be interested in a video on apotheosis. Any takes?
I'm Ganymede a drink, snack and a doobie for this one
Lava-tube Wives will be a big reality TV hit in the future Sol System! ***1/2
It's funny to think that we have no idea at this point whether lava tubes will be the choicest high-end real estate, or the equivalent of trailer parks.
The Real House Wives Of Ganymede
@@arcadiaberger9204The main factor is their proximity to the ice. But who knows, they might have ice in them…. They _have_ been shadowed for billions of years after all…
@@oberonpanopticon Well, we'll have the ice and anything else with industrial value out of them before we begin using them for habitation, won't we?
Heinlein's " Farmer In The Sky" was set on Ganymede....I think...
Heinlein wrote about this - "Farmer in the Sky"
Yes
What’s bad is the radiation from
Jupiter
Yep! And "they" don't much talk about that fact in this lame video.
Colonizing Triton next please Isaac.
Hmm... possibly, Id have to think what make Triton uniquely interesting though
@@isaacarthurSFIA I tend to think of Titan as especially suitable for mechanic lifeforms (maybe mechanisms instead of organisms) due to its coldness, aridity, and abundance of methane. I'm p sure I got the idea from you, but either way you can expound on it.
Maybe a group of isolationist mechanisms claim Titan as their homeworld, potentially focused more on miniaturization and virtual existence. Though ofc it could also become the origin of a militarist mechanic nation or singularity.
@@joelcamilo5436 Dude said Triton, which is Neptune's biggest, rather than Titan, Saturn's big boy. I'm inclined to think Titan is the more interesting of the two.
ok so im totally an arm chair game den physicist, (partial to Callisto because of Xena warrior princess) but there have been discussed on this show, mushrooms that "eat" nuclear radiation. would not Jupiter's radiation be useful to them, and would that not be a viable approach to energy and or food production?
We would just need to figure out the evolution of human genetics in low gravity situations. But by the 24th century, I'm sure we'd be there.
Why not pull it around Venus