How will mankind travel between space and the earth in the future?

According to scientists' imagination, when mankind enters a new era of developing asteroids, there will be two different development trends in space colonization. One is to build a super-large space city, and the other is to develop autonomous small social groups or autonomous "cosmic villages".

In the future space colonial era, it is mainly to build a wheel-shaped space city with a population of 1 000. Because according to the experience on earth, if the city population is too large, such as more than 654.38+10,000 people, it is not only difficult to manage, but also prone to criminal activities such as theft, assassination and robbery or other immoral behaviors. However, in the future era of space colonization, in order to establish a social entity completely independent of the earth, it is necessary to establish some larger space cities. This space city is different from the Stanford Wheeled Space City designed in the summer research of 1975. This super-large space city is a "sister city" composed of two cylinders.

Each cylinder is 34 kilometers long and 6.7 kilometers in diameter. They all rotate around the axis in opposite directions and at a speed of one revolution every two minutes to generate gravity similar to that on the ground. The two trains are 90 kilometers apart, but they can communicate with each other. Although the two space cities are close at hand, summer and winter are different. When one space city is in hot summer, the other is in cold winter, just like the southern hemisphere and northern hemisphere of the earth.

There are two ring-shaped structures outside twin cities, and there are many flowerpots. Each flowerpot is an independent agricultural area. There are no droughts and floods here, but the soil is fertile, the sun is abundant, the climate is mild, the humidity is suitable, and the weather is favorable. It can be said that it is an ideal place for Aerospace City to develop agriculture and animal husbandry. At the top of the column, there are factories, communication facilities and docks. Solar power stations are deployed at both ends of the cylinder to provide electricity for agricultural production and residents' lives in the space city.

Inside twin cities, there are not only rivers around the city, rippling lakes and beautiful gardens, but also an atmosphere 3,000 feet high and 2 miles long, forming a blue sky with clouds. Such a thick atmosphere and soil in agricultural areas is a natural "barrier" to prevent the invasion of cosmic rays. Because the whole cylinder and shell are very thick, it can completely resist the attack of meteoroids. For this super-large space city, if it is punctured by a small meteor somewhere, it will take 300 years to exhaust the air in the city.

In this super-large space city, if its population density is the same as that of Stanford Space City, it can accommodate 20 million people. But there is no need to live in so many people. Because when humans can build this super-large space city, there is absolutely no need to pay attention to economic principles as when the space city was originally designed, but should focus on beautiful environment and spacious and comfortable living. By then, the space city can be designed as an open layout, and the urban layout is roughly the same as that of Columbia, Maryland, USA. Many two-story exclusive houses such as villas are beautiful and elegant, just like fairyland, either by the mountain or by the water, or by the rippling lake, or hidden in the shade of trees.

There are hospitals, post offices, restaurants, commercial centers, theaters and even beautiful parks in all residential areas of Space City. Because the big space city is completely independent of the earth, it attaches importance to the development of industrial and agricultural production, culture and education and various service industries. Residents of Space City can choose their careers according to their own specialties and hobbies. Some people may become agricultural experts, engineers or managers, some may be artists or writers, and some may be experts in a certain scientific field.

These are the trends of large-scale development of space colonization. But in the era of space colonization, especially the era of asteroid mining, another possible development trend is to allow the establishment of various small autonomous social entities, or "cosmic new villages." Some ethnic minorities who don't want to live on the earth or people with unique thoughts and lifestyles can voluntarily combine together to establish autonomous social entities in the asteroid belt. Perhaps it is because, for these people, if the earth wants to establish a country or an autonomous region, it will certainly be subject to various restrictions or encounter unimaginable difficulties. For example, Indians demand the establishment of autonomous regions, while Jews try to establish their Israeli state at the expense of Palestinians.

In the era of space colonization, this thorny problem can be solved easily. No matter ethnic minorities, religious groups or anyone else, they are allowed to build autonomous space cities.

For those who want to build a "Xanadu" social entity, they can go to space to build their own space city and let a group of like-minded people live there to test whether their new ideas or new ideas have vitality. From a long-term point of view, through such experiments, it is likely to find the most ideal and promising social organization and cultural form for mankind, which may be a brand-new social organization that has made the greatest contribution to mankind in the process of space colonization.

If some people don't like living in downtown, they can move their families to an asteroid, or a small group of families will build a small spaceship in the space city in the future. The spacecraft is fully equipped, including water supply and power supply systems, as well as equipment needed for developing asteroid resources and engaging in industrial and agricultural production. It is estimated that such a set of equipment may only need 5000 ~ 65438+ million dollars, which is about equivalent to the cost of buying a house in many places in the world now. In the future, people who want to travel in the solar system and settle on asteroids can settle on asteroids by purchasing such a set of equipment, or travel in the solar system for a long time. Space experts believe that such space travel is easier than people crossing the choppy Atlantic Ocean now. In case of emergency, as long as you send a distress signal to the interstellar expedition team or the nearby space city, it won't be long before the rescue boat will arrive at the scene to help them escape.

Astronomers also estimate that there are millions of asteroids with a diameter of about 30 meters between the asteroid belts, and each such asteroid can live a group of people. For people on earth who need to flee for war or political reasons, these asteroids are likely to be extremely ideal "shelters". Of course, for some adventurers or romantic people, these asteroids are ideal places for their temporary life.

At first glance, the above idea sounds a bit as bizarre as science fiction, but it is not science fiction, but a completely realizable reality. In the process of space colonization, with the continuous enrichment of human experience in building space cities and the continuous development of spacecraft, at some point in this century, human beings will begin to March into asteroids. They will first develop the resources of asteroids that intersect with the earth's orbit, and use these resources to build many space cities of different styles and sizes, and then take these space cities as bases to continuously extend human civilization to the whole asteroid. It is estimated that in the future 100 or even longer, countless space city groups or "cosmic villages" of different sizes will spread all over the entire asteroid belt of Mars and Jupiter. Every space city uses the resources on asteroids to develop its own industrial and agricultural production, thus prospering and developing its own economy. Although the economy of each space city is relatively independent, the trade between them is also indispensable, especially the trade or friendly exchanges between them and the earth. In a sense, the earth is still an important market for their products. If in the next 100 years, more than half or at least one third of the people on the earth will move into space to settle down, human beings will travel back and forth between heaven and earth very frequently. According to O 'Neill, the most active advocate of space colonization, "by 20081,200 million people will travel between the earth and the space city every year." It is predicted that there will be a high-speed spaceship with a speed of 30,000 kilometers per second. Although some space cities are millions or even tens of millions of kilometers away from the earth, it is much easier for humans to travel around space cities in such a high-speed spaceship than it is for people to travel around the world by plane today. This is the bright future of space colonization in front of mankind.