Hollywood loves to glamorize space colonization. In “Avatar” we were presented with massive commercial vessels that crossed the stars and spared no luxury, George Lucas gave us a massive galaxy spanning society that client races gained access to when they left their homeworld in “Star Wars, New Hope”. I think the most accurate depiction will be more like “Ice Pirates”, a horrible 1980s science fiction film that offered bad guys being good guys in space, everyone needed water and there wasn’t enough, it was dirty, diseased and unappealing.
Crossing the voids between the stars will tax our most intrepid explorers. Our most clever engineers will need to build a device of unparalleled technology. Our philosophers will need to imagine protocols of communication to use between fleet and home and between our explorers and possible alien encounters! But it will be dirty, white surfaces will not stay white and somebody will be drinking urine.
Thats right. I went there. To cross the voids between stars the way we currently imagine it. Someone is going to eat a feces burger with a side of recycled paper potatoes and a large recycled urine beverage. Not just one somebody. All the people on the first successful inter-solar crossing will have shared the re-eaten lunch.
Lots of people have been reduced to drinking their own urine on the vast oceans of Earth. For a week or two, they would plug their nose and choke it back, rehydrating and preventing fast death. In space, voyages will last years, or decades, or in some particularly ambitious plans for centuries. So basically, get ready to get used to that unappealing yellowish stain on your teeth if you want to touch boots under a foreign sun. See you there!
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Well written site, well researched and useful for me in the future.I am so happy you took the time and effort to make this. See you around