Nudists in space

Space colonization might lead to some changes in how we live our lives. At least initially.

Humans depicted on the Pioneer plaque currently making its way to other solar systems on the Pioneer 10 and Pioneer 11 probes. Source.

Humanity will hopefully colonize space sometime in the not-to-distant future. When this happens it would have been good if it had been a swift and comprehensive affair where thousands upon thousand humans were quickly settled in prepared space habitats and human life could continue much as before, just up in space.

This is most likely not what will happen. Due to technological and economic factors the colonization of space will almost certainly be a drawn-out affair where the first colonists will be real pioneers fighting adverse conditions. Only to be followed by a steady dripping of new settlers that will slowly make the new colonies more akin to a real society.

These initial conditions will call for some special solutions. Solutions that will be tailored to the environment of space and rotating space habitats. You might think that whatever happens in this early pioneer period is unimportant to the long-term future of human populations in space. Maybe. But probably not.

Space colonies have enough separation from Earth to develop their own distinct cultures. There will be such a thing as a space culture. With new cultures there is a first-mover advantage. After all, America is English-speaking, despite Englishmen making up probably no more than 10% of Americans ancestry. Being first and thereby setting the dominant culture served the English very well.

It is still unknown who will set the dominating culture in space (but most likely they will speak English or Chinese). Whoever it will be, they will not be able to make a carbon copy of their own culture. After all, America is not England, its culture is American, forged through the specifically American conditions that the first settlers encountered on the new continent. The conditions in space are even more peculiar than in the western hemisphere. How will that affect space culture? Time will tell. But in the meantime we can always speculate. 

No country for old men

Who will the first settlers in space be? One might assume they will be some highly educated, astro-boffins. Or maybe they will be heavily decorated pilots. Astronauts of today usually are one or the other, so why should not space colonists of tomorrow be the same?

There are, however, major differences between astronauts and space colonists. Astronauts usually spend their days going to places, which requires pilots, or doing research, which requires boffins. Space colonists will do neither, at least not initially.

The main occupation for early space colonists will be production, especially agricultural production. Settling space is mostly about replacing Earth-based production with space-based production. And most initial production will focus on food stuffs. In essence, early space colonists will be glorified farm hands.

Farm hands usually do not need lots of education or lots of experience. Instead there are numerous arguments for keeping them very young. For one thing space colonists are going on a one-way trip and their value for the space settlements depend on how long they are able to work. Sending a 30-year old into space instead of a 40-year old means 10 extra years of production.

For the earliest colonists there is also a case for keeping them even younger. People in their 30s tend to reproduce. While that is generally something positive, creating new space colonists without the prohibitive cost of shipping them from Earth, child rearing saps productivity, which is not very good in the earliest days of colonization when manpower will be sorely needed. But since space-produced babies are such a net positive it is a shame to forego them completely. The solution may well be to send very young colonists, more 20 than 30, in order to first let them do the pioneer thing for a decade or so and then, when things are settling down, start producing new space-born humans.

If the first space colonists consist of very young individuals they will most likely lack much formal education. Experience of manual labor will have been more important in their selection. What this will mean for the culture of space is difficult to say, but it may generate a culture less respectful towards academia and abstract knowledge. The first settlers will not need a lot of abstract knowledge since that will be provided from Earth, by a plethora of people supporting the pioneers up in space.

Down on Earth, manual labor has low status because an abundance of people can do it. The situation in the early space colonies will be almost exactly reversed. In space there will be a dearth of manual laborers. In contrast, intellectual labor can be done by the vast intelligentsia on Earth and the result transmitted up to space. This should generate a culture that celebrates manual labor, and the youth that is best placed to perform this manual labor.

Nerds over jocks

A youthful population of manual laborers should be sporty as well. Not likely. For the very simple reason that sports, as we know it, are practically impossible in a rotating space habitat.

The Coriolis force makes everything that should go straight instead move along a curved line. And this curved line is curving differently depending on its direction compared to the rotation of the habitat. In theory, this makes some nifty ball tricks possible, it should for example be possible to throw a ball in an upwards angle that makes it do a quite large looping before returning to the thrower.

In practice all kinds of ball games are probably hopeless. Just throwing a baseball back and forth is nigh impossible, playing a complete game even more so. And just forget about golf. Getting that small ball that stays in the air forever even remotely close to its intended target would require calculations that only a computer can pull off.

Simple physical exercise, like running or weight-lifting, should still be possible (although no one really knows how clumsy humans will be in a rotating environment, Coriolis forces might affect things like balance in unknown ways) and colonists who do not get enough exercise from their manual labor might engage in that.

For genuine leisure it is likely that the colonists opt for decidedly more nerdy topics. Everything without too much motion should be excellent choices. Like playing chess or reading a book. Or, if one wants to utilize the new possibilities of space living, then stargazing should be high on the hobby list.

Vegan future

Production of edibles will be one of the main tasks for early colonists. Food is far too expensive to be shipped from Earth, even in the very first years of space colonization. Producing a full range of human nutrients will therefore be high on the priority list.

This full range of human edibles will probably not contain any animal food. Not out of ethical concerns but for practical reasons. Growing vegetables is simply much easier than raising animals. Especially since plant cultivation will be a breeze in the park in space. No weeds, no pests and always perfect weather mean that plants more or less grow themselves. In comparison, animal husbandry is a lot of work.

Sooner or later there will of course be animal husbandry in space as well. Most likely poultry will be the first candidate, producing both eggs and chickens. Other species should follow but it will probably take a while.

While plants are comparatively easy to produce on a small scale, animal husbandry lends itself to economies of scale. Even a small automated milking system is designed for fifty cows and upwards. Notwithstanding the difficulties of building such a herd of dairy cattle it will also take several thousand space inhabitants to consume all the milk produced.

Many people like animal food. Besides, having a ready source of milk is very good if one needs to nurse infants. But living several years on a strictly vegan diet probably makes people less inclined to go all-out carnivorous. Here, as in many other areas, practical restrictions forced upon the early colonists may live on as cultural baggage for a very long time. 

Bedouins in space

Speaking of dietary restrictions there is one type of food that space colonists may well never taste: fish. Fish live in water and water will be scarce in all space habitats.

Not that water in itself is scarce in space. Hydrogen and oxygen are plentiful on the moon and the asteroids where most of the raw materials for space colonies are likely to come from. But storing water in large open tanks, akin to a lake or a sea, is a different matter. Water is heavy and water a few meters deep will put a lot of pressure on the outer hull. If the water is enclosed in a particular area of a space habitat that water area will also be a lot heavier than other areas making the entire habitat unstable.

Fish that can be bred in small and shallow ponds might still be possible to cultivate, but anything that requires larger bodies of water is probably out of bounds. This will not only affect the diet of the first colonists, it will also affect behavior and culture. For a small habitat, like the first ones, even small pools of water are probably too demanding to construct. It might take decades before the space colonies are large enough and well-established enough to risk installing a swimming pool. A generation of space colonists are doomed to grow up as non-swimmers.

On a very long time-line these are transient problems. Very large habitats should have no problem installing swimming pools and even small lakes. It should also be possible to make special extra-strength habitats and fill all areas in them with water making stability a non-issue. A water world so to speak, not unlike a small ocean.

By the time that happens no one knows what relation space culture has to water. Much like desert peoples on Earth they might shun water altogether or at least be very cautious of it. On the positive side, the risk of drowning (at least in water) should be negligible in the early space settlements.

Clothing optional

In the early space colonies raw materials will be plentiful and energy will be limitless. The one thing limiting productivity will be human labor. Automation will be very sought after, robots, and especially 3D printers, will be employed to manufacture a whole range of products.

But there will always be things that are too complicated for machines to produce. At least for the machines available in space. For small and expensive things, like electronics or pharmaceuticals, this is not a big deal since they can be imported from Earth without incurring financial ruin.

The real problem is the things that are difficult for robots and machines to produce, yet bulky enough to make importation from Earth unfeasible. Foremost of these is probably food. Food production is possible to automate to a degree, but not completely. This might affect diets in some ways, for example skewing it towards foodstuffs which can be produced with minimal human intervention, like cereals.

But food is essential to humans and while diets may change to allow a more efficient production, it is not possible to skimp on food production in general. 

This is not the case with a number of other goods. Things that are hard to produce, yet not important enough to be strictly necessary. Foremost among these goods will probably be clothing.

Despite much research no one has been able to make a good tailor robot. Clothes are still produced by millions of human workers toiling away at their sewing machines. Since these human workers usually live in low-cost countries with very low salaries this is generally not something we in the rich world think about.

For space colonists there will be a lot to think about. No matter how cheaply clothes are produced on Earth they will still be very expensive once they have made the rocket ride to space. The alternative is to produce the clothes in space but then very valuable working time will have to be spent sewing clothes instead of producing other essential goods.

The solution is both logical and simple: just drop the clothes. This is easy in a space habitat which always has perfectly human-friendly temperatures, no rain, no wind and not even strong sunlight that risks burning fair-skinned settlers. It should be a no-brainer.

Clothes of today are mostly a social construct and just like it is perfectly normal for the Yanomamö to walk around with only a loincloth it could be perfectly normal for space colonists to walk around in only their underwear, or in nothing at all. Practical realities dictate it, but cultural norms may entrench it. 

No wood from Eden

Space colonies will lack a lot of things and in the early days they will also lack something as abstract as time. By this I mean that since they will be new there will not be anything that requires time to produce. There is one, very specific item, that more than anything requires time to produce. I am thinking about wood. 

Trees take a lot of time to grow. High-quality wood usually requires trees a hundred years old. Naturally, a newly built space colony will not have much wood paneling inside. As long as wood needs to be imported from Earth it will remain a very expensive luxury product. 

Given the very long growing times for trees, several generations of space colonists will grow up without wood products and without forests to stroll through. Sadly this will most likely produce no problems whatsoever. Many people down on Earth live lives where they never set foot in a forest and do not see much wood either. 

A more interesting question is if forests, or even large trees, will ever be a part of humanity’s space colonization project. Had wood been simple to produce the answer would have been a resounding yes. But that is not the case. Growing wood requires large areas (and large volumes) and, in contrast to Earth, also quite a lot of effort and consideration.  

Any forester worth his salt will tell you that a good forest needs meticulous supervision. But in reality that is not how forests are cared for down on Earth. On Earth (at least temperate parts of Earth), forests are what becomes of areas that humans deem too marginal to cultivate. In space there will be no areas too marginal to cultivate and hence no feral forests.

Or will there? Two very important factors that will determine the entire future of space colonies are the rate of immigration from Earth and the production capacity of the space colonists. If the colonists are able to produce (and maintain) new habitats at a rate that is constantly higher than the rate of population increase (immigration from Earth plus natural population increase in space) then the available area per inhabitant will steadily increase. An ever-increasing area means that land will eventually be marginal and might be set aside for forests.

Abundant living areas will also be the main wealth of space colonists. With ever expanding living areas it will be possible to splurge on all manner of things: pasture to raise cattle, ponds to farm fish and even nature reserves for all the strange creatures roaming the old home planet. In the long term space can be almost anything we want it to be. But chances are high that the cultural norms set in the short term will be there for generations to come.