Space Habitats

this man can make infinte content for space, and im all for it

Plot twist: Isaac is from the future and is only spreading what is considered common knowledge in his time.

There's an argument to be made for sky panels on cylindrical habitats. A large enough habitat (Island 2 or larger) will have it's own weather system, and that will mean rainfall. Naturally, the rain will fall on the sky panels as well as the land panels, so somebody (I don't remember who) suggested having the sky panels double as lakes. Light will pass just fine through a few meters of water, and that also provides extra radiation shielding. Imagine taking a sail across the water, and the sun is beneath you!

"forced migration should never be high on your list of problem solving tools" - this is just one example of why I love your channel. You never give in to eco fascism. You always consider the cultural human cost of a decision. Too often when discussing futurism people ignore or worse belittle cultural/ societal priorities. I love your work 💜

My all time favorite topic. YAY! Even if we don't get useful carbon nanotubes any time soon, we can still construct truly enormous O'Neill cylinders. By using super-tensile materials like Kevlar or Zylon, stretched out for the skin/floor of the station, and supporting that with a steel or titanium lattice, we could build a cylindrical habitat with a circumference in the 120 kilometer range, and six to ten times that long. Nor would it be too early to begin standardized construction of a connected ladder using these as rungs to encircle the Earth.

I could easily see any of these space habitats lasting longer and being a more permanent home for a family than any civilization on earth.

11:00 "...so that visitors can enjoy seeing mammoths while skiing down the many slopes." That would be a sight to behold. More like Pleistocene Park instead of Jurassic Park.

The use of Rotating Habs for workers while they work on space based structures makes so much sence since we do this in the oil industry up north with camps providing for the needs of workers.

"Safety Sphincter" - that would be a great band name.

i love the idea of tiny rotating habitats just for like growing crops that you could have float above you. all you would have to do is get some rail system, and some rcs thrusters and you could have things appear to fly around as art structures from the outside. But inside they could have useful things that dont need human comfort gravity.

I love the description of O'Neill cylinders that post-humans live on, in the book Accelerando: "Somewhere in the gas-sprinkled darkness beyond the local void, carbon-based life stirs. A cylinder of diamond fifty kilometers long spins in the darkness, its surface etched with strange quantum wells that emulate exotic atoms not found in any periodic table that Mendeleyev would have recognized. Within it, walls hold kilotonnes of oxygen and nitrogen gas, megatonnes of life-infested soil. A hundred trillion kilometers from the wreckage of Earth, the cylinder glitters like a gem in the darkness."

I'm currently both playing in and designing the setting for a pen and paper RPG generally set in space so binging all these videos is truly something else

oh algorithm gods! look upon ye humble servants' plea and spread this video

Your writing just gets better and better! The last few minutes were genuinely moving. Thanks for keeping inspiration alive for a world beyond the here and now, Isaac!

Great video! This a really thought-provoking topic to me, because it seems to be so close and within reach, no lightspeed-breaking fantasy tech needed!

At the end of the podcast, I’m just so impressed. So interesting. But also your positive attitude and optimism. If everyone was like you, these futures would really happen.

Considering most people don’t think we will do anything but just terraform new planets to live on with maybe the occasional space station, how/when would public opinion change so drastically to have it be the case that the majority of people live in space habitats? Even most popular sci-fi usually just shows people living on planets and maybe some smallish space stations. I’m sure most people will come around to the concept, but it will definitely be a dramatic shift.

Isaac has built such trust in me that I've bought Neil Blevin's book already.

The main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter has enough material to construct a number of space habitats that would equal the surface area of 3,000 Earths. The Kuiper belt is about 20-200 times as massive as the asteroid belt. The Oort cloud is possibly 30-100 times as massive as the Kuiper belt. Time to start building.

This principle is why I do actually love Mobile Suit Gundam. This EXACT topic and theory- the hopeful migration of all mankind to near-earth Lagrange point O’Niell cylinders to save the planet - was brought up in the 80s. Definitely ahead of its time as a mass media franchise for sure