Slashdot Mirror

As I discussed here (~25years ago): http://www.pdfernhout.net/prin...
"As outlined in my statement of purpose, my lifetime goal is to design and construct self-replicating habitats. These habitats can be best envisioned as huge walled gardens inhabited by thousands of people. Each garden would have a library which would contain the information needed to construct a new garden from tools and materials found within the garden's walls. The garden walls and construction methods would be of several different types, allowing such gardens to be built on land, underground, in space, or under the ocean. Such gardens would have the capacity to seal themselves to become environmentally and economically self-sufficient in the event of economic collapse or global warfare and the attendant environmental destruction. "

And: http://www.pdfernhout.net/reco...

And here: http://pcast.ideascale.com/a/d...

But many others have discussed similar things, so just another voice in the choir in that sense. If Musk really reflects on these issues (other than being another Mars fanboy) he will see that there are many possible avenues to decentralization and resiliency, of which Mars is just one. As we gain knowledge and experience in creating such systems, then we can disperse farther and farther to deal with bigger and bigger possible disasters (including the ones you point out about gamma ray burst or wandering neutron stars).

More ideas in that direction: http://www.kurtz-fernhout.com/...

And by others:
http://www.luf.org/
http://tmp2.wikia.com/wiki/Mai...
http://lifeboat.com/ex/main
http://openluna.org/

Also something I've been involved with, but has since became more broadly "Open Manufacturing" and the maker movement: http://openvirgle.net/

So, generation ships etc. are interesting ideas, and they all fit into a large general picture of possibilities.

Still, for all that, making the Earth work well for most everyone (zero emissions cradle-to-cradle manufacturing, better healthcare and nutrition, a global basic income, better education for all, indoor agriculture, new power sources like dirt cheap solar and hot and cold fusion, and so on) is a good first step towards knowing how to live in space, especially given we are already on what Bucky Fuller called "Spaceship Earth". So, I see no big incompatibility between trying to make the Earth work for everyone and preparing for a future where there are quadrillions of people living in self-replicating space habitats throughout the solar system and ultimately the galaxy and beyond -- perhaps even into other dimensions and realities and simulations? Of course, there are philosophical issues still about all this about meanings in life and so on.

• The Artemis Project - The project is a private venture to establish a permanent, self-supporting community on the Moon. Brief overview of the Artemis project.
• The Mars Society - To further the goal of the exploration and settlement of the Red Planet.
• The Moon Society - An international nonprofit educational and scientific foundation formed to further the creation of communities on the Moon involving large-scale industrialization and private enterprise.
• National Space Society - grassroots organization dedicated to the creation of a spacefaring civilization. Magazine.
• Stanford on the Moon (by 2015?) And yes, Stanford as in the university.
• Space Frontier Foundation - seems to have projects for space colonization, missions to the Earth's moon, and so on. Looks like a large scale organization.
• The Space Settlement Initiative
• Space Access Society - activism for getting out of the NASA-only paradigm/reality.
• Students for the Exploration and Development of Space - `... is dedicated to expanding the role of human exploration and development of space. We also seek to educate the public in such a way as to attain this goal. `
• Space Studies Institute - `SSI's stated mission is: Opening the energy and material resources of space for human benefit by completing the missing technological links to make possible the productive use of the abundant resources in space.`
• International Space University - `The International Space University provides graduate-level training to the future leaders of the emerging global space community at its Central Campus in Strasbourg, France, and at locations around the world. ` (mentions 'systems engineering' on the About page)
• Space Settlement Institute - `The Space Settlement Institute is a non-profit association founded to help promote the human colonization and settlement of outer space. `
• Cygo's Space Initiative - plan and conduct exploration missions to minor planets, build and mass produce (while in space) a multi-purpose interconnectable module, and to offer products and services using space and the materials therefrom.
• Freeluna - `Freeluna.com is dedicated to the proposition that the colonization of outer space is critical for the long term survival of the human species, and that colonization of the moon and the exploitation of the moon's natural resources is one of the very best first steps in that incredible journey off planet.` ... and when I first visited this page, I was visitor #3371. Yikes. Contact: Bill Clawson, wclawson@freeluna.com
• Island One Society - associated with the Artemis society, seems to be mostly a resource-help site.
• The Living Universe Foundation - `The Living Universe Foundation seeks to bring the galaxy alive with life from Earth, while healing the damage that humanity has already inflicted upon the Earth. We believe that expansion into space in the immediate future is a step towards accomplishing this aim.` turmith@yahoo.com --- This organization was inspired by the publication of a certain book. This is heavily related to Project Atlantis or Oceania (artifical floatin

It's too bad there really are no alternatives to living in a suburb, unless you can telecommute or are a farmer. I would, naturally, prefer to live in a more pedestrian friendly place, but that just ain't gonna happen.

The Living Universe Foundation http://www.luf.org/index.html in the 1990's were tracking the work being conducted in the field of OTEC's. Some experiments were conducted off the coast of Cuba in the 1960's and they found it took more energy to run the pumps than were generated by the thermal gradients of the ocean.

The University of Hawaii (I believe) were trying some different techniques to achieve a positive energy efficiency, by using a closed-cycle system and alternative fluids such as ammonia. In 1979, they were able to achieve a positive efficiency, however the cost of the system and environmental/safety concerns of using ammonia proved the system to be more expensive than using fossil fuels.

Actually, I read a book a few years ago talking about various future technologies, centering on the OTEC. The basic concept was to locate these stations in areas of the seas considered "dead zones," generating energy to split water for a hydrogen-based economy. Since the water displaced in the OTEC process is rich in deep-sea nutrients, this upper-level dead zone in the sea could be farmed, consequently providing nutrition for developing nations. It was an entertaining read.

I think the book was called the Millenial Project. I think it may have some relationship to the Living Universe Foundation (http://www.luf.org/), as their site covers the same subjects.

Not that I'm bitter or anything, but I submitted a story about OTEC to /. over a year ago and it was rejected.

I first read about OTECs about ten years ago in a book by Marshall Savage called The Millennial Project, a rather wild futurist yarn about colonizing the universe. It is quite an entertaining read, if only a little bit 'out there'. But it is interesting to see a number of his (no doubt collected) ideas slowly come to pass over the past decade. Sadly, their web presence is a little thin and unimpressive...

And while you're at it, why not just drop a super long anchor out at sea, declare your cruise ship to be an artificial island, and petition the U.N. to recognize you as an autonomous state?

"It would be economically beneficial to mine the ocean floor"

Probably not. Countries only have a few hundred miles or so off their coasts that they can rape for resources, which is only a small fraction of the world's oceans. The rest is international waters and international treaty, for the most part, makes it difficult or impossible to harvest resources there. See http://www.luf.org/artisle.html for more info.

A supposedly scientifically based proposal for near and far term large scale projects. His near term proposal was to make floating cites out this material (which he called "seacrete"). It was a wonderfully idea and I really like to live in such a place. But I must say the longer he goes on the more he falls on his face and just winds up being a total freak. Of course freaks are like gravity and attract other freaks so a foundation was formed and years later, circa 2000~1 I checked up on them again and the "foundation" was doing "research" in what looked to be a Florida trailer park. Naturally the Millennial Foundation faded away (although the fanatical remnants can still be found: http://www.millennial.org/see/) but spawned other groups like: The Living Universe Foundation-http://www.luf.org/. None of whom have figured out how to recover from the fact that the books foundational assumption does not fucking work: OTEC http://www.nrel.gov/otec/... yeah the NREL site sums the whole thing up quite nicely.

Still I'm only bitter because I can't live there.

Abundance is a mirage. You can't make something from nothing.

True, but when you're talking about a system that involves, say, the energy output of a star (like our sun), for all intents and purposes, energy gleaned directly from it is unlimited. You can draw your "entropy box" right around the planet, ignoring the sun for engineering/economics as a limitless supply of energy from nothing. We only use a tiny, tiny fraction of the sun's energy.

This says nothing, however of where this energy goes after we use it - usually back into the atmosphere as heat, which as we are learning, we cannot afford to ignore.

My gedankenexperiment: stipulate that at some point in the future we can manage to move all of our energy generation to directly pull off of the solar largesse. There are many different proposals for the means, some of them are even quite within our reach now.

Would scarcity continue to be a limiting issue? Or would it be the heat/waste pollution generated by overabundance of energy/information. If heat/waste could be controlled, or recycled into less harmful byproducts of our consumption, what would be the limiting factor?

To make an anaology in terms of our present energy economy: Are we going to suck the last drop of affordable oil/fossil fuel out of the ground before we pollute the atmosphere beyond the limit to sustain ourselves?
I purposely haven't addressed the usage of physical matter (for food to make more people, for structural elements to build houses to put them in, etc.), although with the promise of nanobuilders and molecular beam epitaxy, it becomes largely an issue of how much energy can be invested into manufacture, therefore physical good are still a potential overabundance under the model of this thought experiment. There's a lot on this at www.luf.org

So yes, you can't get something from nothing as thermodynamics (not-so-gently) reminds us, but from the scale of stellar bodies, we can get as much as we could want until the death of our sun; this is an overabundance by any strech of the human imagination.

Robert Heinlein wrote a good essay, "Spinoff" (you can find it in Expanded Universe), which was adapted from testimony he gave before a Congressional committee on "applications of space technology for the elderly and handicapped." In it, he details how his own life was saved, at least in part because the doctors treating him used the latest available technologies, which were ultimately derived from the space program.

However, I would agree with some of the other posters here in that at least part of the problem is not only NASA, but the current aerospace industry. They're all making too much money the way things are to really want to change; promising projects like X-38 and DC-X have been killed because, ultimately, they couldn't support the bureaucracy that the Shuttle does, and manufacturers like Boeing and Lockheed Martin aren't willing to sink R&D costs into better launcher systems because their 70's-vintage (or even earlier) launchers provide them with a guaranteed rate of return. So we may be stuck with STS and expendable rockets for the next decade, if not longer.

It may take something like The Millennial Project (see here) to develop new space technologies to the point where we can finally begin to really get off this rock. But get off it we must eventually; our species has basically one chance to spread beyond the bounds of a single planet, and, if we squander it, we won't get a second.

Eric

Marshall Savage suggests in the Millenium Project that humanity is most likely to spread to other stars once we have already inhabited the Oort Cloud and the outer planets. Some of the objects in the cloud have longterm orbits that likely intersect with Alpha Centauri's similiar objects. A culture of spacers who had created diverse settlements throughout the Solar system, would then spread, slowly and organically, into the next system, planets becoming optional. His vision of this progression also involves building, eventually, green habitats of bubbled-in life throughout the solar system and other local stars, enough to change the spectra of those stars!

More info at the Living Universe Foundation: http://www.luf.org/

ad astra!

The real benefits of asteroid mining will be to make self-replicating cities in space. These will allow a diversity of human-derived cultures to flourish.

What will be of value in the space frontier is using the energy from the sun and matter from the asteroids to build space cities or space habitats. These will provide homes for trillions of ideas. The wealth that will flow back to Earth won't be material -- it will be spiritual (new dreams), intellectual (new designs), and political (peacemaking).

Such habitats will also provide a place for misfits to go -- as the American frontier was for a time -- letting the Earth settle down.

To create a space city that can self-replicate from asteroidal ore and sunlight will take a better understanding of manufacturing and how webs of manufacturing processes fit together.

Links:
http://members.aol.com/oscarcombs/s ett le.htm
http://members.aol.com/oscarcombs /sp acsetl.htm
http://www.permanent.com/
http://science.n as. nasa.gov/Services/Education/SpaceSettlement/
http://www.luf.org/
http://www.ssi.org/
http://www.ssi.org/alt-plan.html http://www.spacedev.com/
http://www.spacehab.com/
http://www.kurtz-fernhout.com/oscomak/

1. Open source library of knowledge for developing nations (making the world's intellectual wealth available to all)
http://www.oneworld.org/globalp roj ects/humcdrom/
http://www.oneworld.org/globalprojects/& lt;/a>
http://www.oneworld .or g/globalprojects/humcdrom/copyrigh.htm
http://payson.tulane.edu:8888/
; http://www.globalprojects.org/
; http://www.humanitylibraries.net/ http://www.villageearth.org/
http://www.villageearth.org/ATLi bra ry/cdrom.htm

2. Open source knowledge management systems
http://www.bootstrap.org/
http://bootstrap.org/colloquium/ar chi ves.html
http://www.bootstrap.org/dkr/discussion /

3. Self-replicating space habitats (support trillions of humans in style without overrunning the earth)
http://members.aol.com/oscarcombs/s ett le.htm
http://members.aol.com/oscarcombs /sp acsetl.htm
http://www.permanent.com/
http://science.n as. nasa.gov/Services/Education/SpaceSettlement/
http://www.luf.org/
http://www.ssi.org/
http://www.ssi.org/alt-plan.html http://www.spacedev.com/
http://www.spacehab.com/
http://www.kurtz-fernhout.com/oscomak/

4. Pursue the "Ecocity Berkley" vision in the book by that name by Richard Register and look for related visions of sustainable development
http://www.amazon.com/exec/ob ido s/ASIN/1556430094/
http://www.co-intelligence.or g/y 2k_commtyorgs.html
http://www.fuzzylu.com/greencenter/h ome .htm
http://www.ulb.ac.be/ceese/meta/sust vl. html
http://www.rmi.org/

5. Work towards ending the drug war and pardoning hundreds of thousands of Americans imprisoned on non-violent drug charges. (I believe drug use is wrong and should be avoided, and by all means as it is now illegal, so don't do drugs! But as with alcohol and tobacco and caffeine, drug abuse should be considered a medical problem, not a legal one (except when like DUI it hurts or puts at risk others directly)).
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pag es/ frontline/shows/drugs/
http://www.drcnet.org/facts/

6. Teaching tolerance and compassion
http://www.splcenter.org/
http://www.splcenter.or g/t eachingtolerance/tt-index.html

7. Open source educational simulations and simulation construction toolkits (one of the most meaningful ways to use computers in the classroom).
http://www.gardenwithinsight.com/ http://riceinfo.ri ce. edu/armadillo/Simulations/simserver.html
http://www.creativeteachingsite .co m/edusims.html
http://www.workingmodel.com/
http://www.idsia.ch/~andrea/simtools.h tml

8. Preserving biodiversity (when it's gone, it's gone forever)
http://www.tnc.org/
http://www.environment.about.com/newsissues/enviro nment/library/weekly/aa091700.htm

9. Develop any specific sustainable technology in energy (e.g. solar), recycling (e.g. recycle computers), materials (e.g. plastics from starch), society (e.g. participatory democracy & social justice).
http://www.google.com/sear ch? q=sustainable+technology
http://www.edf.org/issues/Recycling.htm l
http://www.sustainable.doe.gov/

10. Make corporations more accountable to human needs
http://www.adbusters.org/inform ati on/foundation/
http://www.adbusters.org/c amp aigns/charter/death.html
Previous link vanished, try instead:
http://www.google.com/search?q=cache:www.adbuste rs.org/ campaigns/charter/death.html+corporate+death+penal ty&hl=en
http://www.cwsl.edu/news/n_corpo rat e_death.html
http://monkeyfist.com/articles/340& lt;br> http://www.chaordic.org/

11. Reform the "Intellectual property" laws and their related organizations, perhaps so that copyrights are for a couple decades and most patents are for a dozen years and only for true innovations. Ensure that any IP developed with any government money is immediately put into the public domain.
http://danny.oz.au/fre e-s oftware/advocacy/against_IP.html
(Lots of other Slashot links!)

12. If you don't want to get you hands dirty volunteering your own time, look around and find good people (not organizations, although the people may be in organizations) already doing good things. Pick people with a track record of years of fighting for the common good or who have already made a major accomplishment demonstrating commitment and just anonymously give them $100K without strings attached. Example: Marty Johnson at Isles, Inc.
http://www.isles.org/mileston.html& lt;br> Find people just starting a career of public service or a charitable venture and struggling to do good things and give them $20K and tell them you believe in their promise and cause. Expect a bunch of the money to be wasted but give it anyway and learn how to give effectively. For ideas, look at the grantees list of any foundation. Then ask those people who they know who are just starting out and trying to do a good job.
http://www.beldon.org/grants2000_07.htm l

When I was about thirteen, I got about seven books out of the library on money thinking I wanted to become a millionaire. Six told me how to get rich (start a business and run it well.) One of them asked me "why do you want to be rich?" That is the one whose name I remember and the ideas in it have changed my life. For advice on setting a direction of what to do with wealth, read the Book "The Seven Laws of Money" by Michael Phillips and Sally Raspberry, especially the chapter on how foundations fail in their mission and how grants go to people who sound good but usually can't deliver (i.e. how hard it is to give money away).
http://www.seeingmoney.com/SevenLaws.ht m
http://www.hallbusi nes ses.com/biographies_primers/1420.shtml

My wife and I are working on a few of these issues ourselves (and a few example links are to our stuff). We make money contracting and spend it to "buy" our own time for making quality software the market can't or doesn't seem to want to pay for. Even without IPO riches, any competent software developer can make $75K-100K in today's market. Graduate students can live on $20K a year, and so can many software developers (kids make it harder) if they follow the path of Voluntary Simplicity. It's a question of priorities.
http://www.life.ca/subject/simplicity .ht ml
http://www.simpleliving.net/slj/ http://www.scn.org/earth/lightly/ http://www.thegarden.net/simplicity/

Voluntary simplicity leaves a lot of funds for doing good deeds - even if they are done on your own time by using your own money to take time off and develop open source software or do other worthwhile ventures. Or take a job that doesn't pay as well but involves helping an organization that you believe in.
http://www.idealist.org/

There are awesome things happening over the next twenty to forty years. According to Moore's law, desktop computers in twenty or so years will be a million times faster than today's. Already computers can drive cars somewhat well and identify vegetable better than humans.

http://www.research.ibm.com/resources/magazine/199 9/number_3/machine399.html ;

Other breakthrough innovations are happening in technological areas like energy, materials, nanotechnology, communications, agriculture, biotechnology, and robotics. Use your wealth to think deeply about what all this means and do something to ensure human survival with style.

It is saddening to see people spend so much money on less important stuff (another night club in this case). Now if it was a night club where these issues are discussed, then maybe it makes sense.

Capitalism without charity is evil, because capitalism only meets the needs of people with money.

Some people at NASA from a generation raised on planetary sci-fi just doesn't get it. Colonizing the surface of the Moon would create a habitable area equal to Africa. Colonizing Mars would produce a habitable area with a surface area equal to Earth's land masses (not including ocean surface). Sure, do it someday for fun, but not first.

NASA should instead invest the bulk of its R&D in creating one self-replicating space habitat that could duplicate itself using only sunlight and asteroidal ore. If duplicating once per year in a hundred years such a habitat and its offspring would produce thousands of times the habitable surface of the Earth, enough to support trillions of humans and large populations of other species.

Remember: a planet is a very wasteful way to use mass. It is much more efficient to use shells to contain atmosphere. If you wan't gravity, just spin it. If you don't want gravity, live in bubbles.

NASA should take on the responsibility of educating the public about humankind's future in space, not pandering to old obsolete notions in an effort to get funding.

Related links:
http://members.aol.com/oscarcombs /sp acsetl.htm
http://members.aol.com/oscarcombs/s ett le.htm
http://www.permanent.com/
http://science.n as. nasa.gov/Services/Education/SpaceSettlement/
http://www.luf.org/

Some people at NASA from a generation raised on planetary sci-fi just doesn't get it. Colonizing the surface of the Moon would create a habitable area equal to Africa. Colonizing Mars would produce a habitable area with a surface area equal to Earth's land masses (not including ocean surface). Sure, do it someday for fun, but not first.

NASA should instead invest the bulk of its R&D in creating one self-replicating space habitat that could duplicate itself using only sunlight and asteroidal ore. If duplicating once per year in a hundred years such a habitat and its offspring would produce thousands of times the habitable surface of the Earth, enough to support trillions of humans and large populations of other species.

Remember: a planet is a very wasteful way to use mass. It is much more efficient to use shells to contain atmosphere. If you wan't gravity, just spin it. If you don't want gravity, live in bubbles.

Related links:
http://members.aol.com/oscarcombs /sp acsetl.htm
http://members.aol.com/oscarcombs/s ett le.htm
http://www.permanent.com/
http://science.n as. nasa.gov/Services/Education/SpaceSettlement/
http://www.luf.org/

Related Links;

• Legal Opinion about the International Status of the Principality of Sealand rendered by Dr. Béla Vitányi, Professor in Public International Law, University of Nijmegen
• Proposed Inhabited Artificial Islands in International Waters: International Law Analysis in Regards to Resource Use, Law of the Sea and Norms of Self-Determination and State Recognition - Rene Kardol

Related Links;

• Legal Opinion about the International Status of the Principality of Sealand rendered by Dr. Béla Vitányi, Professor in Public International Law, University of Nijmegen
• Proposed Inhabited Artificial Islands in International Waters: International Law Analysis in Regards to Resource Use, Law of the Sea and Norms of Self-Determination and State Recognition - Rene Kardol

Granted - I'm no expert either. I was just thinking that as it's a permanent structure rather than a ship or a portable structure, it might come under property law rather than marine salvage law.. as said, however - dammit, Jim, I'm a sysadmin, not a lawyer. Claiming ownership of property based on abandonment is a very long-term thing, if I remember rightly.
This article and article 60 of this one (from a vague web search) look interesting.

Here are a few resources for anyone with the guts to make a go of it, and the brains to do it right. Some cover artificial islands, and some natural.

Proposed Inhabited Artificial Islands in International Waters

United Nations Convention
on the Law of the Sea Alas, for an 'artificial island' server farm, Article 121 states "3. Rocks which cannot sustain human habitation or economic life of their own shall have no exclusive economic zone or continental shelf." Sections 60 and 80 confirm this. For 'natural islands' the key article seems to be Article 76, covering the 'continental shelf' provision.

Isn't the new volcanic island off New Zealand? if so, this summary of the New Zealand Geologic and Oceanographic Service's interpretation of UNCLOS may be useful.

There's a lot more, but basically sovereignity does *not* depend on actually possessing territory (the Vatican was sovereign during the time when Italy claimed its territory, as acknowledged by the other major powers) and actually possessing territory, the consent of the governed, and an independent, fully functioning government with military forces sufficient to defend that territory is not enough to guarantee sovereignity. (Taiwan was once thrown out of the UN because it was deemed to lack sovereignity despite possessing all of these)

Happy planning -- and best'o'luck to you!


_____________

For example, consider the bubble designs by Michael Savage, consisting of a large air filled bubble, a layer of plastic, six feet of water (for cosmic ray shielding) and another layer of plastic (gold coated to control glare).
http://www.luf.org/bin/vie w/GIG/GalacticInformationGuide
http://www.luf.org/

Or consider the huge O'Neill habitats.
http://www.ssi.org/space_art.html

Sometimes, you just need to so something on a big enough scale.
http://www.imax.com/films/distributi on/L5.html

NASA needs to get over its fascination on building tin can space ships to go to planets (and tin can space stations to support that). It needs to start researching and doing civil engineering in space -- making new land and cities in space.
http://www.spaceandrobotics.org/debate.h tm

At least some people at NASA get it:
http://near.jhuapl.edu/

For example, consider the bubble designs by Michael Savage, consisting of a large air filled bubble, a layer of plastic, six feet of water (for cosmic ray shielding) and another layer of plastic (gold coated to control glare).
http://www.luf.org/bin/vie w/GIG/GalacticInformationGuide
http://www.luf.org/

Or consider the huge O'Neill habitats.
http://www.ssi.org/space_art.html

Sometimes, you just need to so something on a big enough scale.
http://www.imax.com/films/distributi on/L5.html

NASA needs to get over its fascination on building tin can space ships to go to planets (and tin can space stations to support that). It needs to start researching and doing civil engineering in space -- making new land and cities in space.
http://www.spaceandrobotics.org/debate.h tm

At least some people at NASA get it:
http://near.jhuapl.edu/

Here is a link to some fellas who have REALLY thought far out... except their timeline is, oh, 10 centuries for the complete domination of the universe by Mankind...