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There, you'd need gravity. If you're opting for hydroponics, why bother? The plants won't care.

Plants grow well without a gravity feed? Well, if you're growing algal feedstock for a "food synthesiser" (what is the Unobtanium budget for one of those? Or does it use Handwavium?), maybe not. Otherwise, for something resembling a balanced diet for the crew (assuming most of the colony-building animals are shipped as gametes, and a small number of live animals for use as wombs on arrival), you're going to need a variety of plant types.

Unless you have a drive of novel physics (again, what is the Handwavium/ Unobtanium ratio?), the only pseudogravity you're going to get is by rotating. So ... it's either the inside of a sphere or a cylinder (or several cylinders, for isolation in the event of leaks/ disease outbreaks). How much you allocate to agriculture and how much to inhabitation / maintenance is where your optimisation options lay.

Whether you could pull off a Rendezvous With Rama-style dormancy is unclear

Is there any significant biology to support this being possible for large (centimetre-plus) organisms. I've been watching the science press for about 4 decades now, and seen nothing that classifies as "science" rather than "fiction". It's dead popular in fiction, I agree. In something resembling the real world, I see no evidence that it would be possible. Which leaves doing it the slow, generation-ship way as the available option. With a fusion power plant (itself pretty hairily close to Handwavium-plated Unobtanium) and something on a Rama-esque scale, it's doable. But the original departees would have been forgotten by the ship residents (along with this "living on a planet" lark) long before arrival at anywhere. Not good fiction material.

I'm thinking of casually stealing your idea for a short story, though, as that's probably one one the best solutions I've seen. That ok?

I've lifted most of it from the 1975 NASA report on space habitats. (Various places. Try http://www.nss.org/settlement/... ) Steal away, I did.

If you've that much shielding, then your primary problem is getting rid of excess heat.

"That much shielding" is equivalent to about an Earth atmosphere - which is the only shielding system with a million-year testing programme behind it. Unless ... you've got a shielding system with a two million-year track record? Tell me more!

The inner surface of the shielding will all be in contact with the bags of water and/or rock which initially be at Asteroid Belt temperatures. Say, 100K. As it warms up (during construction/ flight trials) you'll get the thermal balance checked out. You might need active heat dumping (radiators and ... maybe ammonia/CO2/water coolant fluid? Extract from some of the shielding if you need top-up en route, but you should be able to out-engineer that sort of problem. Minor leaks your biosphere microbes should be able to process into crops.) I doubt that excessive heat buildup or loss would be major issues, but again that's something you'd address in detail engineering. This is more like nautical science (I've sweltered and frozen inside different vessels from the sub-Arctic to the Tropics.) than rocket science. Insulation adjustment on the skin when vacuum is free and your shielding is cold and attached in relatively small lumps, multiply layered isn't challenging.

I wonder if that could be used, in some way. Just direct the IR in a relatively tight beam.

Not with any physics I know of. Or that I can bring to mind in several years of thinking along these lines.

Regardless, [...] If the minimum exceeds the maximum, the design is impossible with that technology.

Yeah, except the numbers are actually there for Falcon 9 Heavy (if it works - we'll know more next week). http://www.nss.org/articles/fa...

1/4 the launch cost of a Delta IV Heavy while boosting over 2x the payload weight. Delta IV Heavy costs about an order of magnitue more per pound of payload.

Sounds like progress to me (if it works).

And the answer is the same reason why NASA doesn't use them - while mobility in them is superb, they're significantly heavier.

This is the reason that people like the National Space Society want to establish manufacturing facilities on the moon and in orbit. Once you already have the item in space, the weight is much less meaningful.

It is still expensive to do orbital plane changes, but now weight just becomes a trade for time. It will just take you longer to get where you want the heavier you are.

Right now we have to deal with launch costs and planetary thinking. So lightweight suits it is.

Atlas V is about $109 million (used to be about $180 million before competition).

Delta IV Heavy is about $435 million. USAF contract of $1.74 billion for 4 launches.

What may be skewing your analysis is that although there are about 2x as many Atlas V launches as Delta IV, because we're using a mean price, it's the higher cost rocket which affects the mean more, not the rocket with more launches (4x the cost @ half the number = 2x the effect on the mean). The one with more launches affects the median more.

Also worth noting that a "fair and reasonable" price is not what it costs to make the product plus some percentage. It's what the buyer is willing to pay. If the buyer (govt in this case) thinks it's worth paying $1 billion per launch (space shuttle), then that's a fair and reasonable cost. As long as what you pay is less than the benefit you gain, then it's a reasonable economic transaction.

The key to lowering costs is competition, not requiring transparency of the seller's accounting. Nobody wants to have to go through Walmart's accounting books to guarantee they're getting a "fair and reasonable" price when they go shopping there. It's a helluva lot easier to compare prices at a bunch of competing stores selling the same stuff. If the government wanted lower prices, they should've prohibited Boeing and Lockheed from forming ULA together.

BioSphere II was a poorly planned theme-park garden now owned by the University of Arizona.

Want to see what can be done if you really understand ecology and not just theme park construction? Look at Ascension Island. Joseph Hooker, with the aid of Charles Darwin and Kew gardens, built the ecosystem on the island out of completely foreign species. This cloud rainforest was built whole cloth on a bare lump of clinker sticking out of the ocean long before electrification.

The key difference is ocean.

Biosphere II was designed with almost no significant bodies of water containing phytoplankton, which produce up to 85% of all the oxygen. The facility has a glorified wake pool that would have fit in a large cities' water park. The planners put in 50% more grassland than synthetic ocean. Much of that 850m "ocean" is dedicated to a coral reef. Unsurprisingly, the oxygen levels crashed soon after closing the doors. Both times.

If one thing was unrealistic about O'Neil Colonies it was the sheer lack of mixing oceans in all the designs. Water is one of the most abundant substances outside the dry line in the Solar system. It's also a good radiation shield and has high thermal mass. The giant magic space windows that somehow didn't let in vast amounts of cosmic radiation were more realistic.

O'Neil also wrote about Bernal Spheres. These are slightly better, but have their own engineering challenges. Artists still show the interiors as if they were a cutout of a heavily populated Italian riverside. More relaistic would be 70-80% ocean with islands or peninsula. But in Bezo's case it's probably a matter of go big or go home. And the Island Three plans are certainly Big Homes.

That is obviously a ridiculous idea. If anything, it would be much better to put mirrors into space, since we have the ability to create reflective surfaces with the power-to-weight ratio of something like 100 MW/mt, whereas full energy conversion systems are much, much heavier. Not to mention the issues of simplicity, reliability, servicing etc.

Will it turn into a pile of dust if it's hit by lightning?

The original NIAC study on the space elevator dealt with issues such as lightning, corrosion from atmospheric acid and oxygen, micrometeor strikes and aircraft exclusions zone. It also dealt with the mass required to anchor it, proposed how it would be built and which areas in the world would be suitable for the first one.

http://www.nss.org/articles/fa...

To the AC above: If the majority of readers haven't heard about them either, then "who gives a fuck about L5?" Seriously, if this L5 society is worth at least even a little, they should be known as much as Space X, given that they've existed for so long.

The L5 society merged with the National Space Institute back in 1987 to form the National Space Society ("NSS") NSS is still around.

If you haven't heard of them, I'd say, well, so what? There are probably tens of millions of things you haven't heard of, some important, some not. That's a statement about you.

History of the L5 society here: http://www.nss.org/settlement/...

To the AC above: If the majority of readers haven't heard about them either, then "who gives a fuck about L5?" Seriously, if this L5 society is worth at least even a little, they should be known as much as Space X, given that they've existed for so long.

The L5 society merged with the National Space Institute back in 1987 to form the National Space Society ("NSS") NSS is still around.

If you haven't heard of them, I'd say, well, so what? There are probably tens of millions of things you haven't heard of, some important, some not. That's a statement about you.

History of the L5 society here: http://www.nss.org/settlement/...

The moon is perfectly positioned to lob rocks at the earth. BIG rocks. With enough kinetic energy to destroy a city. Except you won't see them coming like you would with an ICBM lifting off from earth that has a noisy radar and thermal signature and already has a satellite pointed at its launch location. What's more, once your city was reduced to a crater, your adversary could claim it was a naturally occurring meteorite that hit you (assuming they didn't decide to take out multiple targets.)

Remember the mass driver research NASA did once upon a time about moon mining? It was basically a magnetic sled that could launch big rocks fast enough to escape lunar gravity. Mining was a cover story; nobody was really thinking about commercially feasible mining operations when they designed this. These were rocket scientists, not idiots. They were thinking about a moon base with a weapon system that could easily take out cities, military bases, aircraft carrier battle groups, you name it. It could do this with very little chance of the enemy spotting or impeding the incoming missiles and when they had done their work, there would be none of that nasty radioactivity you get with nuclear weapons.

Now that we know the real reason it was so important to get to the moon in the first place in the 1960s, realize that nothing has changed about the military strategic advantages of being there. Also realize that countries like China have figured this out and want to be there first.

Well, the National Space Society already has a space roadmap:
http://www.nss.org/settlement/...

I will also unapologetically list my twenty-some-year old Footsteps to Mars, presented at Case for Mars V, Boulder CO, 26-29 May 1993.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com/...
http://www.wired.com/2014/03/f...

On the other hand, radiated heat may be all you need if you can tune your materials well enough.
If you can manage to keep your part exposed to deep space (not illuminated by sunlight), the radiation efficiency metrics are fairly well defined.

Media management might be a problem, but even that might not be so bad if it could be engineered to clump.

And if so, you could probably engineer some really large printers to print in free space (not enclosed in the ISS).
If you can manage the materials well enough you could print entire structures in space that you couldn't fabricate on
earth due to gravity (like large lattice structures) or, complete living modules, bigger than any lift vehicle etc. You'd have
to lay it down layer by layer with a "traveling depositor" of some sort.

That's not consistent with what I've read about this subject. For instance:

...in some quarters outright disbelief remains regarding the launch prices actually posted on the SpaceX website for the Falcon Heavy. No other company has posted fixed launch prices on the Internet — only SpaceX. The actual taxpayer cost of US government launches can only be guessed by calculating from the cost-plus contract costs, which are usually for multiple launches from the same customer. If SpaceX does multiple launches, the posted price would be reduced depending on the number of launches.

Or this:

Rather than the traditional cost-plus model, in which companies are reimbursed the cost of a project plus an additional amount that guarantees them a profit, SpaceX and Orbital are working under newly established Space Act Agreements, in which NASA pays increments of a fixed price once the companies accomplish previously agreed upon milestones.

To reiterate, this is no guarantee that it will actually work better (and not just more cheaply) than the old system. For it to really be a success there needs to be a competitive market, a sustainable business model, and a lack of heavily subsidized competition from the Chinese. But I really hope it does succeed.

You remember correctly.

It's easier (= less delta-v) to get from the surface of the moon to LEO than from the surface of the earth -- the latter is just as hard as from Phobos or Deimos. LEO to Mars requires half the delta-v of earth to LEO.

My favourite answer lies somewhere in the following article:

http://www.nss.org/settlement/nasa/spaceresvol3/pmofld1a.htm

"This discussion of geochemical availability and extractive metallurgy implies that extraction of minor elements in space is questionable unless specific natural concentrations are discovered or energy becomes very inexpensive. The relative costs of scarce and abundant metals will become even more disparate in the future on Earth as well as in space. "

Anyway, he was a key part in the opening ceremony for our pyramids, I will always remember him. Rest in Peace Mr. Armstrong.

There have been ill spent investments before, appealing to authority won't change that.

I don't question the part of your argument where you want to keep resources in orbit. The issue is with shipping them to earth. Then you have to ponder the energy spent on transport. If you can get it with less energy from earth (almost a given) then mining asteroids won't do anyone any good.

Here is a link going into more detail.
http://www.nss.org/settlement/nasa/spaceresvol3/pmofld1a.htm
I particularly like: "This discussion of geochemical availability and extractive metallurgy implies that extraction of minor elements in space is questionable unless specific natural concentrations are discovered or energy becomes very inexpensive.". So energy is the catch, either nature has invested it already or you have to invest it to concentrate ores.

By 2030 we're going to spaaaace.

When one modest asteroid can hold $6.6tn in raw materials (the table represents $13.5B/year for 500 years), we can continue economic growth.

Solving our problems here means solving our problems in space:

http://www.nss.org/settlement/nasa/spaceresvol3/pmofld1a.htm

"This discussion of geochemical availability and extractive metallurgy implies that extraction of minor elements in space is questionable unless specific natural concentrations are discovered or energy becomes very inexpensive. The relative costs of scarce and abundant metals will become even more disparate in the future on Earth as well as in space."

Coincidentally this substitution frequently means higher energy requirements, there is a paper called "The Age of Substitutability" that makes this requirement. Solar power may not even be the cheapest way out, given its thin distribution. I would expect us to go to space once we have solved the energy problem we are facing on earth. This isn't even just energy availability but also the decreasing ore concentration that requires greater energy inputs, even as far as abundant metals are concerned.

Also don't forget that ores in space probably are less concentrated in space, because hydrothermal processes aren't available to the degree we have them on earth, yet another reason to look for watery planets out there.

"You want believable? Put first colony in the solar system at least a hundred years in the future to avoid being alive and mocked when the proposed date has passed and all we have are 30-foot wide cars, 30 angstrom thick phones, 30 inch long penises..."

Yeah this is what it look s like.

It's much worse though:

http://www.nss.org/settlement/nasa/spaceresvol3/pmofld1a.htm\

So his Story should start like, "After an international fusion energy consortium (probably not ITER) of the western/eastern block (assume more fractured blocks the further you go into an energy poor future) barely saved mankind in the 2040s from descending into stoneage 2.0, with the decline in net energy that made itself felt since at least 2006, it became possible to carry on with more sensible resource management to solve the most pressing of mankinds problems like preventing massive epidemics among earths starving people, and repairing much needed infrastructure.
Once stable conditions prevailed, mankind used this final wakeup call to decide to expand into space, applying the precautionary principle religiously now since it had so long been neglected."

Sorry for the long sentences.

Deep space (outside the van Allen belts, i.e., anything but low Earth orbit) has a serious amount of radioactivity. This takes two forms

- Solar flares (where the solar radiation suddenly increases by many orders of magnitude). These require shelters, with warning times in hours. The worst (biggest) flares could kill an unprotected human. These are most likely to occur at certain times of the solar cycle, and there might be a few a year to really worry about then.

and

- Galactic cosmic radiation (high energy particles - aka cosmic rays). The lifetime occupational dose for an astronaut would be reached in about 2 years. So, these can be (more or less) ignored for voyages, but cannot be ignored for habitation. In particular, a pregnant woman will need serious shielding.

Now, there is a wrinkle in shielding for high energy galactic cosmic radiation - these particles have kinetic energies > the rest mass energies of pions, protons, and the like, and, so, when they hit a nucleus in the shielding, they turn into a shower of pions, protons, and the like, each of which itself has enough energy to be dangerous. On the Earth, we avoid this as this all happens 20 + km up. In space, that means that a modest amount of shielding can make things worse if it is close to you. So, you either need room, or a lot of shielding, or both. And, if people work outside (or in lightly shielded auxiliary ships or stations) they need a solar flare warning system plus some sort of shelter within easy reach.

So, if by colony you mean "a place where children are brought to term," you need to address this. That, to me, says that the first colonies (under that definition) will be either on the Moon, in lunar caves (aka lunar skylights), where 40+ of rock will provide excellent shielding (and where lunar ice likely exists and will be much easier to access than at the Lunar poles), or in a O'Neill type cylinder or habitat, where there is enough space to shield the inhabitants properly. If I had to guess, the O'Neill cylinder / habitat would be at least 1 km long, and would be made from either Lunar material (brought up by a Lunar Space Elevator), or from an asteroid (and probably made in place, i.e., using asteroid material without moving it very much.

By the way, water (liquid or ice) would make an excellent shield, if you don't have megatons of rock handy.

"... we will exhaust our planet's resources long before we're actually able to permanently survive somewhere else."
Precisely.

An interesting aspect is though that if we solve this resource exhaustion problem here on earth, i.e. find a better nearly inexhaustible and dense energy source, we would be able to extract resources on other planets. The do the math blog mentions that we have to stop growing then, otherwise we would heat up the planet too much.

Here is a link about resource concentrations:
http://www.nss.org/settlement/nasa/spaceresvol3/pmofld1a.htm

Here is a quote:
"This discussion of geochemical availability and extractive metallurgy implies that extraction of minor elements in space is questionable unless specific natural concentrations are discovered or energy becomes very inexpensive."

This is so silly, why did no one tell me about this, people know about this issue since the seventies.

If your goal is to set up self-sufficient colonies independent of Earth, the asteroid belt is the best place to do it. But I don't think it will be economically rewarding without our lifetime.

L4 and L5 are better and closer. Go Out, young man!

"Burrying our heads in the sand" is, for better or worse, not only almost certainly succesfull approach in whatever catastrophe we might face, but also the only thing we could realistically accomplish. And for millions.

ROI is not high enough, it is not multipurpose. Off-world colonies can accomplish more than simple survival and redundancy, things which cannot be done here (or at least cannot be done with the same economies of scale). (See the Interplanetary Commerce section of Zubrin's Case for Mars.)

In addition to sending human-controlled robots to the moon, lets send along refineries and factories to produce solar panels. Then we can build thousands of square kilometers of the stuff on the moon from local materials at a very low cost and beam the energy back to Earth. Covering roughly 1% of the moon's surface area with present-day solar tech would yield on the order of 20TW, worth tens of trillions at today's energy rates and capable of meeting the world's energy needs.

I'm not sure how good this paper is, but it has some more details on the basic idea: http://www.acm.org/ubiquity/views/v7i28_kumar.html Certainly a more detailed study would be needed before really doing this to ensure there weren't any show-stopping problems (such as the one DOE/NASA undertook on the solar satellite idea, where they concluded it was not economically worthwhile with the lifting costs http://www.nss.org/settlement/ssp/library/doe.htm).

This path would be even better for science too, as it would create a permanent human presence on the moon instead of probably being a one-off mission. There would also be interest in creating a self-sufficient lunar economy so that Earth wouldn't have to keep supplying it. A robotic lunar colony capable of launching solar satellites and other craft would be of great value to both science and the economy.

We can do this with today's technology, as it's essentially a different approach to the old solar satellite idea.

Delta IV Heavy launches now. You'd be better off planning lunar missions with the Delta IV Heavy than with Ares V. My take is that four to five Delta IV launches could put up the Apollo mission, for example.

Or heck, there was even NASA's 1996 "Human Lunar Return" proposal, which would've used launch vehicles even smaller than the Delta IV Heavy at a total program cost of $4 billion.

http://www.nss.org/settlement/moon/HLR.html

See http://www.nss.org/settlement/ssp/spacepower/spacepower01.html for example.

The receiving areas on Earth that they typically talk about in space-based solar collectors would be large enough to make transmission safe. I'm sure Japan is more worried about its own safety since the receiving area would be in Japan.

I'm happy to read that SpaceX will be taking over resupply. We should encourage private launch companies.

Having NASA handle all launch needs was putting all our eggs in a single basket, and killed any chance for private launch. It's already expensive and hard to develop a new space launch system; to do it when NASA is offering launches at cut-rate prices was impossible. (NASA has always been embarrassed by how expensive the Shuttle actually was, and never charged anywhere near a profitable amount for flying things on the Shuttle.)

Once we have several private companies flying things to orbit, we can expect the cost to orbit to come down drastically. And once you are in orbit, you are halfway to anywhere in the Solar System.

NASA is talking about a return to Mars 30 years from now. That's crazy; once we have cheap launch, we can assemble a Mars mission in pieces, rather than launching the whole mission on one giant rocket (as we did the Apollo missions). If you can cheaply and reliably launch dozens of launch vehicles, each ferrying up a tonne of fuel, you could make a Mars mission with lots of gear, lots of fuel, lots of safety margin.
steveha

Right. Because simply swapping out the antenna itself is such a herculean task, nobody would ever attempt to (gasp) replace an antenna!!

On a satellite in orbit? Yes, it is very difficult. Not impossible, but by doing so, you're cutting off your own air supply. Presumably, your country put those satellites up there to provide power, and changing them into weapons means you'll have power shortfalls.

If the military sees value in the basic technology at all as a weapon, then it'll be as purpose-designed satellites. Trying to convert the civilian ones over would be unlikely to be cost effective.

As I mentioned in another post, if there is any military value in this, it will be in 1) powering remote bases and equipment, and 2) reducing the number of wars being fought by removing oil as a source of conflict.

#1. If "beaming the power" as you so "scientifically" put it, is that easy, and the engineering is already in place... then why isn't it being done on a wide scale already? Surely more than just "cost" if so, provide figures.

Not "cost" exactly, but economics. You have to find an investor willing to put in billions of dollars on a concept never shown in practice.

The NSS study has a full business case:

FINDING: The SBSP Study Group found that even with the DoD as an anchor tenant customer at a price of $1â2 per kilowatt hour for 5â50 megawatts continuous power for the warfighter, when considering the risks of implementing a new unproven space technology and other major business risks, the business case for SBSP still does not appear to close in 2007 with current capabilities (primarily launch costs).

#2. Since there are already safety issues with existing microwave technology, this is a valid concern.

What we have is a bunch of loons parroting off crap about high voltage transmission lines, microwave ovens, cell phones, and WiFi. They contradict longstanding physics regarding ionizing vs. non-ionizing radiation, and studies attempting to show a link to these things and some damage have invariably fallen flat. It's fine to contradict long held physics, but you better have some good evidence if you do.

Strategic use of a high power platform can include precision jamming of ground targets, damaging sensors on spaceborne equipment like spy satellites or missiles . . .

All of these require very specific frequencies which simply won't work for civilian purposes, but . . .

. . . or even powering other equipment making those platforms cheaper to launch.

Now we're finally getting to the one valid military use of this. But probably not equipment in space. Rather, it helps the military solve a logistical problem of powering equipment in remote places around the globe.

The other military use is more of a Sun Tzu thing: the best way to win a battle is not to fight it. Eliminating oil as a major source of energy also eliminates it as a major source of conflicts. This is exactly the position taken by the DoD's own report into SBSP.

It's not like it's filled with rare minerals we don't have here

O Rly? But wait, there's more!!

Amazing, it is as if all the great feats of space exploration in the 60's and 70's, and the grand plans we had to follow up with space colonies, lunar colonies, space power and asteroid mining are all just strange myths from a distant past.

This was all conceived back in the 70's. http://www.nss.org/settlement/ColoniesInSpace/colonies_chap03.html It was even remotely possible back then. It can certainly be done now.
Would it be safe? Yes. Would it be practical? Possibly, depending on how it is done. Is it less objectionable than other forms of energy? Not to those who understand it, want it, and appreciate the long term benefits... but they are few.

We can't use abundant, cheap coal because of irrational fears of CO2. We can't use nuclear because of only slightly less irrational fears of radioactive waste. We can't use wind because it's big and noisy and no one wants it near them. We won't be able to use Orbital Solar Power because "the microwaves will cook us", "the energy balance of the Earth will be disrupted", "the big satellites will ruin the night sky" and a host of other silly reasons.

Such a pity. Building these first PowerSats could herald the new age of Space Colonization. More likely fear and ignorance will keep us trapped on this muddy little rock for the rest of time.

A rotating skyhook (a rotating line connected to a ballast on one end and a payload on the other) wouldn't have that problem.

http://www.nss.org/settlement/L5news/1983-skyhook.htm

But a rocket hook combination makes the most sense right now, it would reduce the launch weight by removing the need for the vehicle to accelerate itself all the way to orbital velocity.

Getting ESA to shoulder more of the burden? Greenhouses? I couldn't agree more. In theory. How do you suggest actually getting that done? How does one get the fractious, miserly, feuding Europeans to actually get that sort of things done? Or, for that matter, Japan?

You show me a battle plan and I'll climb aboard. But for now I'll just continue paying my NSS dues, encourage local kids to get into space-related stuff (spent about fifty bucks and about three hours on that in the past month), and stick to what I can see in front of me.

Right now, the US DoD considers energy independence to be a national security issue. The best way to win a war is not to fight at all, and they'd rather not fight any more wars over oil. Which is why the NSSO is interested in space-based solar power.

The economic benefits of unmanned exploration are not up for debate. The use of satellites for telecommunications and weather prediction are too great to simply pass off. And that's just what we can put up there economically with a relatively lightweight payload up to geosynchronous orbit (at best). Reduction in launch costs and getting all the way to the Lagrange points opens up the massive metal reserves in asteroids, among other things.

Manned exploration is more debatable. I'd argue that as necessary as part of the self-actualization of the species (in the Maslov Hierarchy sense), not as direct economic benefits. Unmanned exploration, though, is a settled issue.

• http://www.planetary.org/home/ The Planetary Society
  
• http://www.marssociety.org/ The Mars Society
  
• http://www.nss.org/ The National Space Society
  
• http://www.seds.org/ Students for the Exploration and Development of Space
  
• http://www.space-frontier.org/ Space Frontier Foundation
  

Lucifer's Hammer by Niven and Pournelle had "Hot Fudge Tuesday" http://www.nss.org/resources/books/fiction/SF_018_lucifershammer.html

This is a situation where we need a concrete reason to develop the heavy lift infrastructure needed.

And a moonbase makes as much sense as the "International Space Station".

The REAL driver for developing the infrastructure remains Space Based Solar.

http://www.nss.org/settlement/ssp/library/final-sbsp-interim-assessment-release-01.pdf

If we started TODAY, in 50 years we'd have all the pieces. Sustainable, Renewable, Non-Polluting Energy; Heavy Lift to GEO; And the ability to deploy a workforce to GEO to do the work needed.

We'd go to the moon for R&R. What happens on Luna STAYS ON LUNA!

... In case someone doesn't know what the OP meant [1].

- Gilboa
[1] http://www.nss.org/resources/books/fiction/SF_018_lucifershammer.html

That's not true.

http://www.nss.org/settlement/ssp/library/nsso.htm

Officially, it was considered a poor economic choice when plentiful cheaper alternatives existed.

But, really, the only reason we don't have space based solar power already is because it would devalue fuel and energy and destroy every power structure on earth that relies on it, and that's a tough sell politically. Capitalism relies on scarcity to keep everyone obedient.

Now it's being actively pursued by the Pentagon because of its tactical significance.

Solar panels in space get at least 5X more sunlight energy than panels on earth.
Solar panels in space are offline only when eclipsed by the earth, which is for a few hours for a few weeks during the year.
There are no birds, insects, corrosion, dust, hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes, or volcanoes in space.
Studies financed by congress (not 2-bit back of the envelope type studies) found that the whole system would make financial sense. What killed it at the time was the widespread optimism regarding nuclear power. Now that that is gone due to the difficulties with waste/accidents, SBSP should get its turn in the limelight.
Don't forget the other way of generating power: Concentrating energy with mirrors to a closed steam cycle engine. It's more efficient, however maintenance becomes a problem in space.

Awesome online book on the subject here:
http://www.nss.org/settlement/ssp/sunpower/index.html

Woops, you made an error of three orders of magnitude, that's five to ten gigawatts not megawatts.

From the report.
http://www.nss.org/settlement/ssp/library/final-sbsp-interim-assessment-release-01.pdf

Typical reference designs involved a satellite in geostationary orbit, several kilometers on a side, that used photovoltaic arrays to capture the sunlight, then convert it into radio frequencies of 2.45 or 5.8 GHz where atmospheric transmission is very high, that were then beamed toward a reference signal on the Earth at intensities approximately 1/6th of noon sunlight. The beam was then received by a rectifying antenna and converted into electricity for the grid, delivering 5 - 10 gigawatts of electric power.

The Sun is a giant fusion reactor, conveniently located some 150 million km from the Earth, radiating 2.3 billion times more energy than what strikes the disk of the Earth, which itself is more energy in a hour than all human civilization directly uses in a year, and it will continue to produce free energy for billions of years.

You gotta like that. The SUN is conveniently located!

The basic idea is very straightforward: place very large solar arrays into continuously and intensely sunlit Earth orbit (1,366 watts/m2) , collect gigawatts of electrical energy, electromagnetically beam it to Earth, and receive it on the surface for use either as baseload power via direct connection to the existing electrical grid, conversion into manufactured synthetic hydrocarbon fuels, or as low - intensity broadcast power beamed directly to consumers. A single kilometer - wide band of geosynchronous earth orbit experiences enough solar flux in one year to nearly equal the amount of energy contained within all known recoverable conventional oil reserves on Earth today. This amount of energy indicates that there is enormous potential for energy security, economic development, improved environmental stewardship, advancement of general space faring, and overall national security for those nations who construct and possess a SBSP capability.

A single kilometer - wide band of geosynchronous earth orbit experiences enough solar flux in one year (approximately 212 terawatt - years) to nearly equal the amount of energy contained within all known recoverable conventional oil reserves on Earth today (approximately 250 TW-yrs). The enormous potential of this resource demands an examination of mankind's ability to successfully capture and utilize this energy within the context of today's technology, economic, and policy realities, as well as the expected environment within the next 25 years. Study of space-based solar power (SBSP) indicates that there is enormous potential for energy security, economic development, advancement of general space faring, improved environmental stewardship, and overall national security for those nations who construct and possess such a capability.

Let's get it done!!!

Warning: this is a 3.5MB PDF.

SBSB Interim Assessment

I remember, back in 1980 or so, when all the Reagan fans were jumping for joy because the actor was more popular than a naval nuclear engineer (yes; Carter actually knew his shit), Carter had proposed a system of orbital solar power stations. It would have been more or less the same thing as they are proposing today. Those of you who have access to Time magazine's archives will find an article on it.

So, here we are today, some 27 years later, and the same proposal gets floated.

Imagine if laziness hadn't dropped the issue back then. Iran, Iraq and the whole business of 9/11 would have been less critical than they now are.

"The issue here isn't Lunar vs. Orbital costs of living, but Near-Earth Asteroid costs vs. Lunar costs when you take the whole infrastructure into the equation and large scale mining operations. Also, you have a larger percentage of silicates in Lunar soils compared to the heavier metals you can obtain from the obviously high density asteroids."

We're talking about bootstrapping operations, tho. The heavier metals are worth a lot more than silicates - we aren't likely to have silica shortages soon - are we? Any mining operation on this scale will have to pay off as quickly as possible and as much as possible. A large influx of heavy metals from mining operations off-planet could provide a huge boost to the industrial and electronic industries.

I urge both of you to read Lewis's book, he covers these arguments in much greater detail than I can. I'll buy a copy for you if necessary :)

Doc Ruby, I respect you, and I follow your posts (I say this because we don't really know one another, but Teancum and I do) and I'd love to continue this discussion elsewhere if it gets cut off here. Mkay? :)

"I personally think there is a place for Lunar exploration and mining, but it isn't so cut and dried as some would have you think it is. But there are some very definite adantages for Lunar exploration."

Agreed.

"One of the most significant is that the Moon is never more than 250,000 miles away. You can't say that about the rest of the Solar System, and nearly any effort to travel to the Moon is more or less trivial with even the current level of rocket travel. There is no need for exotic propulsion methods if you need to travel to the Moon in less than a week."

There isn't any need for one for most if not all NEAs, either.

LEO to Moon landing
6.3 km/s
LEO to Near Earth Asteroid
approx 5.5 km/s

(from http://www.nss.org/settlement/asteroids/sonter.html, see chart about a third of the way down the page)

There are also NEAs that have resonance orbits with Earth that are much easier to get to - the figures given there are averages (but not for the Moon!).

" Even the Apollo astronauts got to the Moon in less time than that."

Travel time will depend entirely on how much fuel we can burn and which target we select. Which will depend directly on how much resources we put into the mission. A half-hearted effort would likely suffer the same fate as Apollo did. (and so will a half-hearted moon effort directed towards putting some people in a tin can on the surface without the machinery to be at least semi-self-sufficient. Keep in mind that that mass of machinery masses many times what the life support does, and that building it for the moon or building it for an asteroid mining operation is building pretty much the same hardware. )

Resupply of astronauts on a NEA is easy - just launch your robot supply packages beforehand, and as often as a launch window presents (remember, these aren't emergency things, they can take low-fuel orbits and there's no "landing" per se).

Emergencies, sure, they are a problem. So make damned sure the astronauts are equipped - both hardware and personnel - as well as possible. But remember that a min-time emergency response to the moon is going to likely be at least two days - if the loonies there can't handle it in that time, it's probably game over anyway.

I think too many people forget just what our ancestors went thru when they went exploring in their dugout canoes and teakwood sail rafts. It's a new frontier. People are going to get killed exploring it. It's heartening that there's no shortage of volunteers, at least :)

" Getting to Mars in less than a month is going to be considered an exceptional task worthy of the most exotic propulsion systems that may ever be invented

• 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

Check out the asteroid belt, next time you're in the vicinity. It's a gold mine, in every sense. The amount of wealth out there is "beyond imagination".

Just one moderate-sized asteroid (Eros) is estimated to contain $1,000 billion in gold alone - more than has been mined (or indeed could ever be mined ) from Earth's crust in recorded history. Then there's the platinum and the other metals, minerals and rare earths, roughly $20,000 billion in total. And there's millions of asteroids in the belt.

It's not just the mineral wealth that has people interested. It's estimated that maybe half of the asteroids are carbonaceous, containing 20% water and a further 10% oxygen extractable from other sources (good fuel source stuff). Additionally, there are significant amounts of carbon and nitrogen - in total, enough basic resources to support human life on a huge scale. It's likely going to be easier to colonise the asteroids than to colonise Mars.

This is something that I care about a lot, and all I have to say is that if it matters to you, do something about it:

http://www.seds.org/ - Students for the Exploration and Development of Space
http://www.nss.org/ - National Space Society
http://www.yurisnight.net/ - Yuri's Night, the international space party
http://www.xprize.com/ -X-Prize Foundation
just to name a few...

or of course if you're young enough and willing to work a civil servants salary:
http://www.nasa.gov/about/career/index.html

-Brian

This (working to launching rockets from baloons) has been done in the US for quite some time. There are plenty of student baloon payload systems and in fact this week there is a confrence going this week on adressing just this topic. As far as using baloons as a launch platform, there is group from Huntsville AL http://chapters.nss.org/al/HAL5/HALO/that has been launching for quite some time. Good luck to the team from the UK but if any one realy interested in getting things done, perhaps all these individual groups should join forces. Just My 2 Cents

Yeah, now I can see why NASA were so upset about the small $15 billion dollar budget they'll get next year; they have so many important things to do that are really going to benefit the average person. Hmm, they say sarcasm is the lowest form of humor, and the escape of the witless mind... well I'm feeling witless. Seriously, how many kids could have had access to better computers at high schools with the money this cost? Each one of the processors in this beast, that's 10,240 computers...