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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/

NINE YEARS! You, too, can buy a space station for $3,168.81/SECOND for the next nine years (yes, that's $20,000/minute, $11,407,711.61/hour). Of course, ;Ma rs Direct would have cost around $30 Billion. Maybe if China goes to Mars first, we'll take notice that there is something there that we may be interested in.

This link tells of the ease of going to Mars. But I can't find the real link of interest. Telling of that the ISS is being built so that the shuttle has something to do. If we took the money from the ISS, and not even touch the money from the shuttle runs, we could colonize Mars in 20 years.

Oh, and I loath the idea of terraforming Mars. Let's rip out Yellowstone and pave it over while we're at it. We need to adapt to the other planet, not ruin it the second we get there.

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/

Whether or not Hawking's predictions of climatic upheavle is correct or not, the Earth will eventually cease to be habitable by humans. That may happen in a few hundred years, as predicted by Hawking, or in a few hundred million when the sun overwelms the ocean's ability to regulate the Earth's temperature. Its going to happen.

In the mean time, I expect that people will be moving off into space. In a hundred years or so, access to orbit and beyond should be common enough that anyone can manage it, and once this is possible, the moon, Mars, and the Asteroids are just down the street. I probably won't be here to see it. My kids may not be. But my grandkids probably will, and their kids almost certainly will.

Why should we want to go live somewhere else? Why not stay here on Earth and fix up the mess that we've made of things?

One reason: its smart not to keep all your eggs in one basket.

Some references:

• The Moon Society
• The Mars Society
• Permanent: Project to Employ Resources of the Moon and Asteroids Near Earth in the Near Term
• Space ASAP
• OrbitalHabitat

You might only get a few months warning on those at best (they mostly shine within the orbit of mars), and at worst, they come at you from the sunward direction where our telescopes can't see them. You wake up one day wondering what that wall of fire is. Or maybe we don't wake up at all.

There probably is no reasonable defense against such asteroids. Moving them- there probably is no way that can be done in that short time scale.

Think about it. This is a planet busting disaster and there is no way to save the earth.

Its not particularly likely to happen soon, but it will happen eventually. Even long period comets that come round once a millenia or so. So this time they line with the earth for the first time and...

There is one way for humans to survive however. We need to build space habitats as soon as we possibly can.

Check out:

Artemis

Neofuels

Permanent

Sleep well, don't have nightmares!

The exact damage inflicted by an asteroid or comet depends upon a number of factors -- size, speed, composition of object, and whether it hits land or ocean. (HDCA, paper ref.)

For a land impact, it can be said in general that an object of roughly 75 meters diameter can destroy a city, a 160 meter object can destroy a large urban area, a 350 meter object can destroy a small state, and a 700 meter object can destroy a small country.

For an ocean impact, the destruction is much greater -- smaller objects can cause far more widespread damage. The effects of an ocean impact are felt much further away than the effects of an airburst due to the more effective propagation of water waves, and the fact that human populations and assets are largely concentrated in coastal cities which historically became established due to water transport (i.e., shipping and trade) and businesses near ports.

For example, the earthquake-induced tsunami in Chile in 1960 produced waves in Hawaii 10,600 km away of height up to over 10 meters (30 feet), and up to 5 meters (15 feet) in Japan 17,000 km away with an average of 2 meters, causing heavy damages and loss of lives.

There are a number of organizations who are interested in developing space for its commercial applications. These include (but are not limited to):

• Artemis Society
• PERMANENT
• The Mars Society
• The Island One Society
• The Lunar Society

At the current time, there is to obvious economic benifit to going beyond geosyncronous orbit. Yet all of these organizations believe that we should so proceed. Why? Because there are abundant resources available on the moon, Mars, and asteroids. No, they are not in the forms that we are used to using them, but they are the same 100 odd elements of which everything here on Earth is made. I will not repeat the cases for going to the various bodies in our solar system... the different organizations which I listed above, and others like them, make a better case that I have time or space for here.

Currently, the chief restriction to executing any of these exploration and development programs is the high cost of getting materials into orbit. Face it, the space shuttle is overpriced, and alternative launch vehicles are not much better. However, several private firms (in addition to several government contractors) are in a race to develope low cost launch systems. Will they succeed? Almost certainly so within the next five years.

And once we have low cost (relative term) launch systems, I expect we will see a space tourism market begin. That will probably be the early economic force in the development of space.

And beyond that? As Robert Heinlein said in his writing, "Once you reach Low Earth Orbit, you are half way to anywhere in the Solar System."

b) they're gonna demo a 10 kilowatt version and expect it to scale by 3 orders of magnitude?

c) What's the point in doing this when all the really good stuff is on the asteroids anyway- and asteroids are stuffed full of this neat fuel called, wait for it, WATER (which incidentally makes a really great radiation shield...) and they have loads of rare metals, like URANIUM. Hey that's handy ;-)

d) this system pisses away power like crazy- throwing exhaust away at 30km/s is actually too fast... very little of the energy ends up in the spacecraft almost all of it goes into the exhaust. Unless you have energy to burn you probably don't need the speed.

e) check out the link above- the timetable to get the nuclear reactor that big in space doesn't happen till 2020... with conventional technology we could be there in 5 years- 10 if we stop off at the asteroids- and asteroids can actually generate revenue.

Except oil is from rocks not dinosaurs. It's just floating up from below and getting trapped at various depths. Not only is it not nearly as limited as previously thought, but if we run low we could go get an asteroid full of carbon and make more...

Our space agency has become an outdated dinosaur, capable only of ponderous movement, when it isn't mired in the swamp of bureaucracy. A number of up and coming private companies (including, but not limited to Cerulean, Pioneer, Kistler, and Kelly) are working on inexpensive launch systems. One or more is certain to manage it in the next few years.

Once we have this cheap access to space, there are any number of Entrepeneurs waiting to exploit it. Most well known is Bigelow, but there are others.

Space, and our activities therein are popular with a lot of people. The growth of such private organizations as Permanent, The Mars Society, and Artemis is strong evidence of this.

NASA may not be prepared to go fetch some rocks from Mars anytime soon, but they may find others already there when they do.

For an excellent on-line collection of relevant international documents and statutes relating to space law, check out the Archimedes web site. A survey of applicable treaties can be found at the Space web site.

An article on the point raised in the note is: "Emerging law of outer space - the analogy of maritime salvage" / Almond, Harry H., Jr. / 19 J. OF SPACELAW #1, 1991, P67. You should be able to find this in most law school libraries.

The problem with the salvage analogy is that there is at present no legal mechanism for a nation to absolve its responsibility for objects placed into outer space. There doesn't really seem to be legal recognition of abandoned property in space. I understand that the prohibitions against military operations in the Outer Space Treaty have been argued to preclude private salvage as well. This is not to say that salvage is prohibited, only that interest in any property rights to the salvage estate are unclear.

Though I practice intellectual property law, these remarks should be considered coming from a lay person -- I have absolutely no real clue what is going on in these space law/admiralty issues beyond a rudimentary understanding of the Space Patent Act.

John Lewis (the author) is one of the heros of the space settlement revolution. A more technical book by him is "Physics and Chemistry of the Solar System": http://www.astro.umd.edu/ ~mcfadden/books/Lewisreview.html

He is involved somehow with Spacewatch (a program at the University of Arizona, led by Dr. Tom Gehrels) which has done much of the pioneering work in the field of NEO detection. http://www.xs4all.nl/~carlkop/asterimp.h tml

Another good site is: http://www.permanent.com/ where Mark Prado also has a book on this topic.

• We'd prospect for the kind of asteroid we want. Metal or fluff, depending upon whether we need metal framework or acoustic tiles.
• Any part of the surface is "a place to land". Low gravity. Harpoons probably needed to stay in solid contact.
• Smelt with mirrors. On Earth we can melt metals with mirrors. A lot easier when we don't have to hold mirrors in place against gravity.
• Space colonization is not a population growth measure. Not enough people can be moved...unless we can build space elevators. Colonists would be a few people and their children. Population growth can happen off-planet also.
• Space is enormous. Plenty of room for some humans.

Here's another thing I fear... if, as proposed, they try to come within a mile of the asteroid with NEAR -- something that has never been attempted before -- and they crash, people will again bitch as NASA for failing. *sigh*

There is no technical reason that we could not establish permanent bases on the moon, Mars, or on an asteroid. The fact that we could send manned missions to the moon with less than 10 years lead time (from the idea being first proposed) suggests that we can develop the technology.

It is unlikely that NASA would be able to execute such a mission. Unfortunately, the space agency is no longer the can do group it was in the 1960's. Instead, it has grown into another Bureaucratic monster, more concerned with maintaining its funding that searching out new, expansive goals.

We can expect privately funded space launch services such as Rotary Rocket or Cerulean Freight Forwarding Company within the next five years. With these and other companies providing access to low earth orbit, there will be a ten fold decrease in the cost off access to space. This will allow more activity in space, which in turn will encourage more launchers to provide access. It is quite likely that Space Vacations will be available for the affluent inside the next ten years, with costs as low as $100,000 per person for a two week stay in a space.

There are groups who want to move permanently into space. Eventually, we will be going to the moon, Mars, the Asteroids, and elsewhere. If you are interested in promoting space, I recommend that you join one or more of these organizations.