The Cities That Will Orbit Jupiter: How Humanity Will Colonize the Outer Solar System
Humanity's expansion into the outer Solar System won't look like science fiction imagines. Instead of building cities on frozen moons, our first civilizations beyond Mars may live inside enormous rotating space habitats orbiting Jupiter and Saturn.
In this episode of Entropy Rising, we explore what life beyond the asteroid belt could really be like. We discuss asteroid mining, O'Neill cylinders, cycler spacecraft, the economics of deep-space settlements, how entirely new cultures could emerge around the gas giants, and why someone born near Jupiter might go their entire life without ever meeting a person from Earth.
Topics include:
• O'Neill cylinders and rotating space habitats
• Colonizing Jupiter and the outer Solar System
• Asteroid mining and the future space economy
• Cycler spacecraft and interplanetary transportation
• The Expanse and realistic space colonization
• Space culture, governance, and the future of humanity
If you enjoy conversations about science, astronomy, futurism, and the long-term future of civilization, subscribe for new episodes every week.
Website: https://www.entropy-rising.com/
1 You may go your whole life without meeting someone who's actually from Earth.
I love The Expanse, but there was a lot of hand-waving going
on with that Epstein drive.
When you're encircling Jupiter, a gas giant,
you form your own culture completely uninfluenced.
you might be thinking, "I'm in a pressurized tin can three
years away from any help, so, I'm not gonna be the one to
throw the first shot," right?
Hello, and welcome to Entropy Rising, a podcast all about
discussing science and futurism.
I'm your host Jacob, and joining me, of course, is the
ever-so-wonderful co-host Lucas.
Lucas, how are you doing today?
I'm doing great, Jake, especially with that intro.
Thank you.
How are you today?
I'm doing good, except for the fact it's, like,
110 degrees outside here in, uh, ever-so-hot North Carolina.
Yeah.
but we're recording, and we're talking about a topic I think
near and dear to many people's heart, including yours, I know.
Especially 'cause you're a huge fan of The Expanse.
Yes.
which is gonna be colonizing and life in our outer solar system, so
out past Mars on those gassy giants.
What's that economy look like?
What's that culture gonna look like, and how is all that gonna function?
So this is gonna be an interesting episode, and,
you know, I'm doing well because we're gonna be talking about
something that's gonna be fun.
it, it is exciting.
It's a topic that we've touched on here and there in, different episodes
in a couple of our earlier ones, but it'll be really fun to dive deep
into how this will actually function.
Yeah, we've touched on it.
We've talked about mining asteroids, and we've talked about, some parts,
when we did our episode on spaceships and moving around, , the solar system.
But I don't think we've ever really focused on and talked about what
life is gonna be like for these people who choose to live out in
the extremities of our solar system.
Yeah.
I think that, , a good way to probably dive into it would be,
going into it almost as a timeline.
, Like, how would it look like in Earth's
going into how it evolve over time.
For me at least, I think the early timelines for our outer
solar system probably are going to be these mining missions.
We have a lot of resources available in our outer solar system,
especially in the asteroid belts.
There's a lot of interest in some of the moons of these gas giants,
like Europa, lots of opportunity for scientific missions there.
Undoubtedly, when we get the ability to get people into space at a
reasonable cost and out to Europa, there's gonna be a science base there.
imagine some astrobiologists would love to set up and study
what's under the ice there.
Oh, yeah.
Just like with everything else, When you are setting foot into a new
frontier and you're breaking into, All these different unknowns that
could be hiding, on these millions of asteroids, that are in our asteroid
belt, there's, I imagine, going to be multiple science centers, but
those only come with the money that provides for them, so you'll have those
companies going out there as well.
like you said, the early stages of this, I really see it being outposts, right?
Science stations, , maybe funded by governments, mining stations
funded by companies that wanna- Mm-hmm … get out there and take
advantage of those very rich asteroids that… and they're in low gravity.
tha- definitely I could see being a way to bootstrap this
whole thing and get it started.
Now, I do think there is… the elephant in the room that I,
I know someone's gonna be asking, is a lot of what we just described does
seem to be making the assumption that a lot of this is going to be done by
hand, and isn't there any risk that this will all be automated and no one has to
go out there and it'll all be drones?
that is a great point to bring up.
just because drones, of course, would be more efficient, but also I feel like it
would be almost, a wasted opportunity.
Humanity always wants to expand.
personally, if I had the option to right now, I would love to
go and live on the outer rim.
maybe not forever, but it would be a really fun experience.
But I think it's, with most things in the future, going to
be, part human, part automation.
Yeah, I would agree with that, and I do see the point of maybe everything in the
future can be automated, and it definitely seems like we're gonna have the technology
to do that, within our lifetimes, I would expect, especially with all the
advances we're making in robotics and AI.
That doesn't necessarily mean, though, you're gonna wanna turn
all these robots loose so far away from Earth without any oversight.
I could definitely see there being a case and maybe even law saying
you're not allowed to do that.
And I don't imagine we're gonna have people literally crawling
around and mining asteroids.
I do think that part will be automated because it's just not safe.
But you may have some human sitting on a ship outside of that asteroid monitoring
the robots, making sure they're doing what they need to do, and, being there as
kind of a fail-safe.
Supervision, making sure that things go according to plan, and then, the
human aspect will mostly come in, like you were talking about before,
in research, in scientific outreach, and fulfilling that general curiosity,
. Especially if that is our first time breaking out into the outer rim.
Yeah, I fully agree.
So while, yes, there's definitely a possibility of this being a more automated
future, do think humanity will still have a role in that future should we so choose.
And, For what it's worth, one of my favorite
science fiction authors, Iain M.
Banks, in his Culture series, which I don't think I need to introduce,
so many people are familiar with it, they depict a fully automated
future where humans still choose to get themselves involved in
work just to have something to do.
It's not necessary, and if they don't do it, a robot will do it, but some
people still just want to do that.
So I do think there would be a future for humanity out in the
stars and in our outer solar system.
that would be a beautiful future, you're not there by force, but by choice.
But- Putting that topic aside, thinking about how this whole thing would actually
work, and the big thing that comes to my mind is I know earlier I said I would
love to do it if I could come back.
But if we aren't capable of burning fast enough and getting to this outer
rim and coming back, it might be a one-way trip for a lot of people.
So I actually don't think so, and the reason I disagree with that is
I just don't think we would send people into the outer solar system
without a way to bring them back.
we've thought about doing this on Mars, sending people there to
live permanently.
Even then, that's kind of a hard sell, and I'm not
sure that'll ever happen.
But the outer solar system being so far from the sun and so desolate, and
you need so much infrastructure just to support a person, I just don't
foresee us actually sending a person out there unless we can get them back.
for example, I don't think we would've ever sent someone to the Antarctic
without a way to bring them back, 'cause it's so inhospitable, That you
have to plan for that return trip.
I don't foresee in the early days anyone going into our outer solar
system without the option to come back.
Maybe in the future people will choose to live out there, but I,
still think that'll be a choice, and they'll be able to come back.
that is a great comparison.
I guess in my mind I was mostly thinking about the amount of time that it would
take to get from Earth to the outer rim, and then back, solely going off of
the technology that we have currently.
that's a fair point.
The travel times are definitely something to consider, especially
if you're talking about, colonizing some of the moons
around Jupiter and around Saturn, which we'll definitely talk about.
and kinda like doing what they did in The
Expanse, Colonizing some of those larger, especially asteroids
too, in our asteroid belt.
And the travel times are gonna depend so much on the technology available
and how you decide to get there.
Because in the early days, I expect them to be quite long, right?
Like right now, it can take decades to get to our outer solar system, just
because we have to be so fuel efficient.
And when you're launching something off of Earth, you have to carry all the
fuel for that journey off of the planet Earth itself, and takes so much energy.
You need to be extremely fuel efficient, do all these gravity
assist, and take time to get out to Jupiter and get out to Saturn.
But I, think once you get a foothold established
in space, especially around the Moon, and you're able to actually build your
spaceship in space where they should be built, and then you're able to fuel
them in space so you're not getting off a planet, we can take much more
energy intensive routes, and expend more fuel to start getting there within,
a couple of years instead of a couple of decades.
that definitely makes it better.
Decade or two, or a year or two, or, is a very big difference.
and building up a space infrastructure to be able to achieve that is not
super far out in the future, I feel like.
Definitely not, yeah.
And you would ha- I think, have to have that space infrastructure before you
ever thought about sending an actual person to our outer solar system.
Yeah.
And again, another reason would be the why.
If we are mining resources and we need to span to our outer asteroid belt,
chances are we're already building large structures in space, and that's
why we're mining it to begin with.
Yeah, most likely.
It's just, it's a hard case to make for building up all that
infrastructure to get asteroids to bring them back to use on Earth.
A lot of the material mined in space is gonna be used to build
infrastructure in space, I think that's a common misconception people have.
People think we're gonna go out, mine all these materials in space,
and bring them back to Earth.
And maybe some extremely valuable resources that'll happen,
but for the most part, no.
materials mined in space will stay in space.
Earth has more than enough resources to build itself up.
Yeah.
These would be for massive structures that we're building in space.
Yeah, massive structures, or just extremely rare elements that we can't find
a way to engineer out of our materials.
I mean, if you find an asteroid that's all
gold, sure, you can probably use that to fund and bootstrap getting into space.
And in the early days, sure, we might be mining some asteroids and sending
valuable resources back to Earth.
But I do think a majority of those resources are gonna be used in space.
yeah.
I would definitely agree.
Yeah.
It's still no easy task to think of, Having to sacrifice a couple years.
the early stages, going back and forth.
But you're definitely right, it's something that people
would be willing to do.
I think so, and I do think there are multiple ways you can go about it.
For one, if we live in an Expanse-like,
uh, universe, where we can accelerate at a constant one G there, and then
do a flip and burn halfway through, and decelerate at a constant G,
the value proposition becomes a lot more, because I think the journey to,
like, Neptune shrinks to 13 days if you can do that
one G burn there and back.
And I think Jupiter is something like nine or 10 days.
So then you're talking about skirting around
the solar system in basically a little over a week.
And at that point, that's a whole different value proposition, right?
at that point, it's almost like you're doing more contract work
than you are going out there to live you would be, like, fly in
and fly out on an oil rig.
Yeah.
Something like that.
I think that's a great comparison.
It could potentially be much more like that, where you're gone for a
couple months out of the year, and then you're returning, and it…
That's definitely a feasible future if you can accelerate at one G.
That's a big if.
It is a big if, because I love The Expanse, but there was
a lot of hand-waving going on with that Epstein drive.
And it's, absolutely impossible levels of
efficiency, Not saying that we can't do that, but it's always
gonna be an extremely expensive way to get around the solar system.
And personally for me, what I think is a more likely future is that even if
you have the capability to accelerate at 1G constantly, those are probably
still gonna be expensive direct trips that only very wealthy people pay for.
I think the best way to maybe compare it would be like flying a
private jet or flying the Concorde.
You remember that, the supersonic airline- Yes … ? that failed because
it was so expensive and fuel intensive.
It was fast, though.
It was fast.
So I think the 1G transfers like that, that get you there in 13
days, are probably not going to be the every man's way to get there.
no.
It'll be, For necessities and people who
have the money to spend to do so.
Yeah, I think a lot of the average everyday people, like your miners,
are probably taking the slow boat way and looking at much longer trips.
And the nice thing is There are ways for them too, So
I know we were talking about it before the show, I believe this was
a new topic that I introduced to you, but it's the idea of cyclers.
Yes, never heard of them before, but very cool concept.
Yeah, we talk about 'em a lot, if you're engaged in like the
science or futurism community.
There's a lot of talk about cyclers around Earth-Moon, Earth-Mars, and they're
basically these really long elliptical orbits that, intersect any two bodies.
So any two orbiting bodies in a system you can put a cycler orbit around.
And effectively what it allows you to do is you can build a,
a really bulky big spaceship, put it in one of these cycler orbits, and it'll
have a short leg between the two planets and then a really long return trip.
It's like an elliptical orbit that intersects these two bodies.
And for example, a, an Earth-Moon cycler, I believe I was looking into
it, it's about a 12-day round trip where you have a three-day trip from Earth
to the Moon, and then the remainder of that trip is just the return for
the cycler, or it might be 28 days.
But I think you get my point.
There's a short leg and then a long return path.
it's a really cool concept because, Although it seems inefficient having
all that lag time between when it can actually be used, Jake brought
up the fact that you could have just multiple of these running at one time.
this would allow you to put these, space stations into an orbit, and then
once it's there, it's able to just keep fluctuating between the two planets.
Yeah, exactly.
So for example, a cycler between Earth and Jupiter I think would take around 13
years total, but the lag between Earth and Jupiter would only be about 13 months.
So you're talking about a travel time of a little over a year, and the nice thing
about these cyclers is once you get that orbit established, it's a free-fall orbit.
. You only need to do some basic station keeping, and you can do that when people
are coming to and leaving the station.
I wanna quickly clarify why these are so valuable, 'cause some people might
still be thinking, "I don't see the point." The main benefit of a cycler is
instead of building this really heavy, bulky ship that has everything people
need to survive for 13 months, all the radiation shielding and all of that, and
then powering that to where you wanna go, you basically only have to do that once.
You build this huge space station.
It's got everything you need to live on it for 13 months, all
the radiation shielding you need.
You invest a ton of energy to get it in that established orbit, and then once
it's there, people can leave and come to the station on much smaller that
they might only be on for a few days.
They really just need to have an intercept, hop over, transfer
onto the cycler, and then they can ride to their destination.
having something like that is actually so valuable because you
take out the entire need for fuel, like you said, once it's there.
and it also gives you this consistent orbit where you're able
to plan things back and forth.
The more of them that you have, the more resources you can transport.
I feel like it would be the average man's way to travel the stars.
Yeah, I definitely think so, I could definitely see people taking,
like, five-year contracts, six-year
contracts to go out to the outer solar system, especially if
there's money to be made there.
Or, like what we see in The Expanse,
You go out there to move out there.
The average person can really only afford that a trip once, maybe
twice in their life, so this is something you do, on occasion.
And I, I know a one-year trip might
still sound crazy, but that's within the realm of reason.
People have done similar trips in the past, especially when they had to go
around, the Cape of Good Hope or around South America when they were transporting
in America back in the days of sail.
So there's precedence for people traveling for this long, and I think it's a much
easier pill to swallow, especially if our lifespans start to get longer.
I mean, if you're living to be 150, 160,
taking a one-year trip a few times in your life might not seem so crazy.
don't think it's crazy at all.
And you made a great comparison.
like, the sailors of old, from 1400s to,
the 1800s They would be on ships in open water, similar to how these
would be in open space just at the prospect of jobs, wealth or,
a brighter future.
so I… it's 100% possible.
It's like we're reverting, but in a futuristic way.
yeah.
It's really fun to think about, and we can even take this further, still
people are probably thinking, "12 months on a ship? That sounds miserable."
But this doesn't have to be a ship.
We've already talked about how people might spend their whole lives living
on O'Neill cylinders, and there's no reason you couldn't put an O'Neill
cylinder in one of these cycler orbits.
And it could basically function as, a tourist transient town, right?
I think I gave the comparison of it functioning like a college
town, where your population swells when you're on your short leg.
People, move, and then population shrinks, and then you've got a nice
long loop around where it's just… kinda like the summer in a college town.
Mm-hmm.
And then you just have this cyclic repeating of people coming and going.
And the benefit to that is if you're a community that lives on
an O'Neill cylinder, for you it, doesn't matter what you orbit.
Whether you orbit Earth, Jupiter, or you just orbit the Sun, life inside
that O'Neill cylinder is the exact same.
It doesn't change.
So picking one of these cycler orbits might be a way to make
your life more interesting.
You're gonna have people transiting through your community more.
It might be a way to, offer an incentive for people to come
and generate economic value for you.
there's a lot to be said for why one of these communities would wanna do that.
And then in turn, for the people who are buying passage on this O'Neill cylinder,
they could live a life of luxury.
They might be in a city comparable to New York City,
supporting hundreds of thousands or millions of people, having all of the
amenities just like they have here on Earth, just they're on a cycler
heading to their next post in Jupiter.
it's definitely an interesting thought.
A O'Neill cylinder with its economy based around tourism-
simply because of the orbit that it takes, Is not too far-fetched.
there's entire towns and cities, in Alaska, for example, that run
almost entirely off of tourism.
. So with that being known, Why wouldn't it translate into our
future economies and culture?
Yeah, and I just see a lot of benefits of doing that way, and,
once you get your O'Neill cylinder established
In that orbit, it seems like a win-win, really.
, Which now kinda brings me also to a secondary point, is that when we
think about people actually living in the outer solar system, right?
I think most people watching this have probably seen or read The Expanse,
and that gave, I think, a fairly bleak image of what it's gonna look like
living in the outer solar system.
these were people who were effectively poor.
, They weren't able to go back to Earth because they grew up in low
gravity, and Being in the belt in the Expanse universe wasn't a very
comfortable existence for most people.
I don't think that it necessarily needs to be that way.
for one, we already spend so much time
talking about O'Neill cylinders, so there's no reason that people
couldn't live in O'Neill cylinders in the outer solar system.
The only thing that might change is that if you do live in the outer
solar system, your O'Neill cylinder might be powered through nuclear
fusion or nuclear fission if we haven't cracked nuclear fusion, which
I, I think by this point we would've.
I would hope so.
I would hope so too.
But you'll probably be powered by something like nuclear fusion
instead of being powered by the sun.
If you are powered by the sun, you probably have massive,
hundreds of kilometers of reflecting surface to catch all that sunlight,
especially if you get out toward, like, Neptune.
but there will be a crossover point where your O'Neill cylinder will
probably be internally powered.
But other than that, there's functionally no difference between orbiting the
inner solar system or the outer solar system except for who might be near you.
Yeah.
realistically with O'Neill cylinders, you can make any part
of our solar system comfortable.
but I did think that The Expanse got something very interesting, and that was,
the culture shift- that the outer rim had.
it was essentially, A ruffian blue collar culture that
was built around violence because of a detachment from government.
being ruled over by, corporations
And greed, and then some of them fighting back against said things.
Something I think The Expanse did really good, and one of the reasons
it's such a good book, is because of What you said, it really delved
into the socioeconomic things that made the Belters, and it
did the same thing with Mars.
So like you were saying, the Belters in The Expanse,
they were blue-collar people.
Most of them, or a lot of them were, escaping an overpopulated Earth.
Many of them were selling every last thing they had, to jump on
one of these companies' ships, and they were basically kinda owned by
the company when they got there.
And it did a really good job of exploring
what that would do to a culture of people, and why it's such a good book.
that's why I love James S.A. Corey.
It's why I like all of his books.
but it doesn't have to go that way, right?
That was a very bleak depiction, and I definitely think he did a great job of
extrapolating out and seeing what the consequences would be of that start.
but hopefully we have a better start into our outer solar system.
I hope so at least.
Oh, yeah, of course.
You can always hope for the best.
but, Whether these people are going out there for work, like we said
before, it would be accompanied by automation, probably would
not be as much of a struggle.
I would think not.
Like you said, it's gonna be automation.
I imagine a lot of people who are out there
are out there because they want to be, for research, or they're,
Overseeing a bunch of drones who are out and mining these asteroids.
also a good place to put some, Orbital outposts in our outer
solar system to do some deep observing of space in general.
So I could see it being a very research-heavy place instead of this,
like, ruffian, culture that was given, in The Expanse
I definitely agree as well.
Now, it does bring me to an interesting topic, thinking about
how these people will be governed.
And I know that we've talked about it before.
If it's O'Neill cylinders, they would probably have their
own governments amongst the cylinders because that's an entire
civilization or a city within itself.
but, breaking into that and thinking about, how they would sanction
things off, if it was companies doing research, things like that, I feel
like it might cause disarray just because there's no solitary body-
for them to be able to latch onto.
, Which could cause conflict in the future.
Yeah, I could see that.
I do think there would be some bodies to latch on.
I think there would be some of the moons around, the either Jovian system or even
in the Saturn system would be really good.
I already mentioned, for example, Europa.
That would probably be a hub, especially of scientific.
So there may be some natural points of interest-
Right that people accumulate around.
I do agree, that there could potentially be some clashing of heads, so to speak.
'Cause you gotta imagine, If you've got two rival nations that are
funding expeditions or funding O'Neill cylinders in the solar system,
well . If they're orbiting the same body or
if they're in that same system, uh, at any given time, they might be either
really far apart when things are good or, They might have orbits
bringing them really close.
And it makes you wonder what happens if you have two O'Neill cylinders funded by
two different nations, and those nations back at home, start to have a conflict,
How does that affect these people who are potentially months
if not years of travel away?
That is an interesting thing.
Honestly, the entire time I'm going under the assumption that Earth is
already unified, but it could not be.
Yeah, I don't think that's a good assumption.
it's funny because, unsurprisingly, I delve into,
like, a bunch of science fiction writing communities, it's
kind of just a hand wave.
Because you're likely never really gonna see a unified planetary body.
If you tried to make a government that could unify a whole planet,
then there's gonna be so many subsections of that government.
It'd be like the UN today, or I guess the US with all of its states.
Lots of different sub-governments representing people.
that definitely does make sense.
So that actually kind of breeds even more, life into,
the concern that I had, before.
It's kinda like , when the Cold War was right on the brink, and
The American submarine and the Russian submarine that w- had been just,
like, circling around each other for so long.
After all these tensions were high, they were like, "Do we attack?
Do we not attack?" because o- once you're out there for so long, you kinda
dissociate from where you came from.
Yeah, absolutely.
And even if your home states back on Earth are,
telling you to attack, you might be thinking, "I'm in a pressurized
tin can three years away from any help, so I'm not gonna be the one
to throw the first shot," right?
So there's definitely some promise that cooler heads
may prevail, when you're out there in the outer solar system.
hopefully.
And I, feel like, you know, it might end up like a colony thing.
Like, why would I listen to orders
from somebody so far away?
Yeah, and I could definitely see these stations seceding as well, and,
Being their own thing.
And there's no reason these have to be funded by governments.
I know when we talk about O'Neill cylinders a lot, talk about how you
could really have these go and split off, you may have an O'Neill cylinder that's
orbiting Jupiter, and it's obviously gonna be mining and doing all these things.
There's gonna be some economic activity and some industrialism happening there.
And so naturally, they might have the ability to build another O'Neill
cylinder and go through this, meiosis process of one turns into
two, and then give it some time, and those two might turn into four.
And so you may, over the generations, end up with people who've always
lived in that outer solar system and don't even consider Earth something
It's a distant planet that they might not even look that fondly on.
Yeah, I mean, they'll be like, "Grandma talked
about Earth, and she said it sucks." Yeah.
So.
It sounds horrible, right?
We get perfect 70-degree days all the time.
We live in this beautiful coastal area, and if we start
to get overpopulated, we just build another O'Neill cylinder and
split our population, And there's always cheaper land 'cause they're always
making more of it, so it is very possible that people would choose to go out
there for something like that as well.
Yeah.
Never to look back again.
.
Something else that would be interesting, system, we already talk about people
living in O'Neill cylinders, but imagine the cultural difference between an O'Neill
cylinder that's orbiting Earth and an O'Neill cylinder that's orbiting Jupiter.
That would be interesting to think about.
Because you'd have the entire economy of Earth,
the culture of Earth completely influencing the O'Neill cylinders
that would be going around it.
It's similar to how, like, some of the smaller Asian
islands are influenced by big, countries like Korea or Japan.
where when you're encircling Jupiter, a gas giant,
you form your own culture completely uninfluenced.
Yeah, I could definitely see that.
Although it is also interesting because you may have O'Neill cylinders that
are orbiting Earth, but it still takes a ton of energy to get off of Earth.
I mean, in some ways it might also be, I wouldn't
say easier to get to Jupiter because no, but even O'Neill cylinders or space
stations orbiting Earth are still not gonna be as connected as Earth.
It's not like you're gonna pop down there for lunch, Cause it's very expensive to
get off-planet, and unless we ever build something like an orbital elevator or
skyhooks, that's never gonna change, which we definitely need to do an episode on.
but yeah, I definitely think you should get some cultural differences.
I think in general, cultures inside of O'Neill cylinders are gonna differentiate,
but I think as you move them further and further away from your host planet
you are gonna start to see even more cultural drift happening much faster.
Mostly just because you're gonna see people exchanging through those much
slower, sure, it might be expensive to get off of Earth, but if you're in Earth's
orbit, a lot of people are gonna have the money to make that happen, and you're
still gonna see people who are fresh off of Earth moving through these stations or
maybe some wealthy people who can choose to come up and visit your space station
for tourism.
But think about in Jupiter, right?
You may go your whole life without meeting someone who's actually from Earth.
That could be a very rare thing.
So you're gonna have a much faster rate of cultural drift, I'd imagine.
they would quickly become their own unified, uninfluenced culture.
assuming that they don't get programming from Earth, which would only be,
what, like six minutes delayed?
Yeah, they would definitely still be heavily influenced by Earth.
Mm-hmm.
Right?
But I mean, also in the same way that two countries
can be heavily influenced from each other's entertainment sectors.
And I mean, realistically, if you're living out
in Jupiter, your core, entertainment hub is gonna be Earth for a
long time as we colonize space.
It's gonna take, considerable amount of time for new
space stations to get the point of being, a cultural center.
It is definitely possible, Like, I could see some of
The earlier O'Neill cylinders being almost like a historic city,
or maybe some do build themselves around being great for movies.
You could imagine an O'Neill cylinder building itself to have a
mountainous view, a desert, and then, like, all these different, scenic
shots to facilitate creating film and,
TV, if it's not all AI by then.
Just floating New Zealand.
Yeah, just But yeah, absolutely.
I think Earth will have that influence for a very long time But it would be
interesting though, because even though Earth would have that influence, as
the cultures start to diverge, If you've always lived around Jupiter, if you
have thousands to tens of thousands of O'Neill cylinders in these outer solar
systems, they may start to develop and make their own entertainment
that matches what their reality is.
Oh, of course.
because humor and entertainment comes from either shock or relatability.
things like that, if your culture is different than another
country's and you try to watch A comedy show from another country,
not just because it's in a different language, even if you could understand
it, you might not find it that funny- just because it's so
different amongst the culture.
Yeah.
So I definitely could see, these Jupiter stations developing
their own entertainment industry.
Not to say they wouldn't still partake in Earth's, but it would
be interesting 'cause that cultural exchange could go both ways.
the same way it happens here on Earth, sometimes you have a,
a series that's based in another country just be an absolute hit here in the US.
I think Squid Games is the best example of that.
Yeah.
you could have a Jovian sitcom just absolutely
resonate with the people on Mars or Earth for some reason,
and that could be a way of sharing cultural exchange.
imagine the O'Neill cylinder that did that, and they just
become an overnight hit.
Maybe they'll adjust their orbit and do like a,
a fan path through the inner solar system to be like "Come visit
us." Isn't that neat?
That's, yes, the band from Jupiter- Yeah …
stopping by to sign autographs.
They're doing a quick 26-year loop through the solar
system- … so take it or leave it.
Once in a lifetime.
for you and them.
Yeah.
This, this is their last tour.
Yeah, but it is definitely interesting to imagine not just that could
exist, but what it would be like.
Another thing that I think The Expanse nailed, and I can definitely
see this happening not just out in Jupiter, even in O'Neill cylinders
or space stations orbiting Earth, is there might be a huge safety culture,
Anyone who lives in a space station probably has that, but especially if
you're thinking about going into the outer solar system and colonizing it.
There's gonna be a period of time where you're a long way away from help.
Maybe down the road, there will be enough infrastructure there where
you're reasonably close to help, but those first settlers might be
years and decades away from help.
And kinda like what we saw with the Belters in The
Expanse, I think it's reasonable that people might view really harshly
people tampering with safety systems or trying to take shortcuts that could
get other people hurt, and that could, spar a huge difference in culture.
If you are one ship that's, , at least a year away from anybody being able to help
them, somebody messing with something, being incompetent or, clumsy or just
unthoughtful, would be incredibly shunned.
On these ships, it might be punishable by death.
especially if you're tampering with a system that could hurt everyone.
, . Actually, one of the small issues, I, I love Andy Weir.
As an author, he does great work.
Project Hail Mary was obviously a huge success.
He has another book called Project Artemis that takes place on the moon.
And I'm not gonna get too in-depth in it.
I don't wanna do any spoilers because who knows, they might
make a movie out of it now.
but there is a character who tampers with a pretty vital system, and they
kinda just get off with a hand slap.
And that brought me out of the book a lot 'cause I'm like, "Anyone who lives in a
space station," especially in this book, the moon was depicted as being really far
away from Earth in terms of technology.
This wasn't a super advanced civilization.
It was pretty close to where we are now, so help is pretty far.
Anyone who tampers with life support or any systems like that, it's
not gonna be a slap on the wrist.
Just because You're risking so many people's life.
Yeah, Imagine you're going scuba diving and some guy's just,
with scissors on your air tube at, when you're 1,000 below the surface.
Just like, "Oh, oh, I'm gonna do it." you would probably fear
for your life and, want to incapacitate that person as fast as possible.
That or, Imagine you get down there and you
find out that whomever filled your tank actually skimped on some of the air.
They're taking a little off the top to save money.
If you catch that person, you might not look too favorably on them,
and you might take pretty extreme, actions, especially if they put
your life in such grave danger.
Yeah, and that's just actions against an individual.
Now imagine you threaten that reality for everybody on that ship.
Yeah.
So I definitely think that type of
culture could certainly develop, out in this, outer solar system colonies,
especially, in the early days.
Honestly, I think it would almost be a necessity.
Yeah, I fully agree.
Something else I did also wanna touch on, too.
we've done a lot of talking about people living in O'Neill cylinders in these outer
solar systems, but what about living on the moons themselves or on the asteroids?
Again, like what we see, The Expanse.
why?
That's, that's a fair question.
There, there is a reason, right?
If you wanna shield yourself from radiation, of which there's a lot in
Jupiter's orbit, mining into an asteroid could be a way to do that, and you
shield yourself with a lot of free mass.
Yeah.
So I could definitely see that happening.
I will say one thing, though.
You're not gonna spin up an asteroid like they do in The Expanse.
If you did that, the asteroid would fall apart.
And yes, you could study the asteroid and reinforce it and make it all happen,
but I think by the time you put in all that work and effort to reinforce the
asteroid in all the possible places it could be reinforced at, and you did a
bunch of safety studies you could have just built a bunch of O'Neill cylinders.
You might, however, choose to build O'Neill cylinders inside of
a smaller asteroid and use it as, A shield to keep you safe from asteroid
impacts, or maybe a bigger body where it has a little bit of gravity.
You could even make a kind of a conical structure.
And if you have, angled walls and it's spinning, the two
gravities will average together, and you could potentially do it that way.
And then you get the benefits of being inside of the asteroid.
You get the protection from micrometeorites and radiation, but
you also get all the gravity without risking the asteroid falling apart.
it definitely seems, like a much more difficult task
to, turn an asteroid into a livable habitat instead of just living
right off the asteroid itself.
Which I have seen in, uh, quite a few science fiction games.
Like, they turn them into raider outposts usually, but-
It's a cool concept.
It is.
I mean, I do like it.
It is very cool.
And I mean, I think it's also just
a bias that people have.
People imagine planets are the only way, and people seem to think that space
stations are not a permanent solution.
No one would wanna live in them.
I think we think very differently of that, but I,
I do believe That's what tends to lead people to
imagine terraforming asteroids or making them livable as much as you can.
. So with that, I think that's pretty much everything I had to say about
living in the outer solar system.
Lucas, did you have anything else?
No, no.
I, I feel like we, we touched on it all.
I, and honestly, I talked about it more than I thought I had to say,
so.
if you liked that episode, please consider following or subscribing on whatever
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where we're gonna be doing an episode all about food processing and what
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We're gonna be looking at some even more extreme things we might do to
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So if that sounds interesting, subscribe and keep an eye out for it.
And with that, take care.
Bye-bye.