Let’s face it, sometime within the next century or so, overpopulation, the exhaustion of natural resources, an alien invasion — or perhaps the optimistic spirit of adventure — will force us to leave Earth in search of a new habitat.
Because the exact same statement was made 60-odd years ago. Is this going to work like fusion power, which is about a decade away — always has been, always will be?
No, we missed our chance. Elon Musk will watch from orbit as bio-weapons and grey goo ravage our planet while his consumables run out.
Oh, no floating venus cities !
Overpopulation … leave Earth in search of a new habitat.
Earth’s population of homo sapiens sapiens will peak before the end of the 21st century; carrying capacity will likely not be a significant push factor. All six billion inhabitants today could fit on the 50 United States and still have less dense settlement than England today.
It seems to me that there is a change in the air.
It is argued that access to LEO is now understood and routine and that can be passed off to commercial through COTS and commercial crew. This leaves NASA free to get on with the difficult stuff of BEO.
This, to me, is fundamentally wrong.
LEO is the hard bit.
It takes something like 10kps to get to LEO from the ground.
You have to overcome gravity losses, atmospheric drag all of which means a heaps big first stage booster to get you up out of the gravity well.
Then you need a really good TPS to get you back down safely.
Past LEO none of these limitations apply.
With fuel depots you can go just about anywhere in small steps of 3-5kps.
No TPS required.
No massive thrust required.
It’s not easy, of course, but the requirements are a lot less than earth to LEO.
The bottom line, for me, is that with Commercial taking over Earth to LEO I am inclined to think that business won’t stop there and just leave BEO to NASA. We will quickly see business pushing the boundaries perhaps more than NASA.
Space colonies may be closer than we think.
All six billion Earthlings could fit in the state of New Mexico and find it infinitely more hospitable than any non-Terran locale in the solar system.
If you stacked all six billion inhabitants of the Earth on top of each other, the stack would reach well past the Moon. The top guy just has to grab on.
>>All six billion Earthlings could fit in the state of New Mexico and find it infinitely more hospitable than any non-Terran locale in the solar system.
Ahem, no. There are people that i always want to keep at least 1000 miles away from me.
Atmosphere and GCR be damned.
Darn, I once had an autographed copy of Gerard K. O’Neill’s book, but lost it in one of my moves.
If you stacked all the marxists on top of each other in the middle of an ocean, would that be considered a good start?
…New Mexico and find it infinitely more hospitable than any non-Terran locale in the solar system
Actually Kirk, preparing NM to receive them would cost magnitudes more than preparing for settlements that would be not just as comfortable but with an unlimited room for expansion so that six billion will become a small segment of the total of all human society. Why do people assume tuna cans in a sea of radiation? We’re humans, damn it. We make our environment to suit us. Given the unlimited wealth of the solar system (wealth = humans + creativity + trade) we can not even imagine how great it’s going to be. Some of us don’t even try.
Space colonies may be closer than we think
Not closer than I think for the reasons you mentioned (“halfway to anywhere.”) Image 9 “Cargo landers” will be the key to expansion.
The beauty of it is it will not be because of any pressure to leave earth, but because the human spirit wants it and will get it. Those that are close to doing it now will be joined by thousands as many once the path is shown to them. The cost seems great now because time and opportunity are not well understood. A company making profit in current markets can leverage that to start colonies at a relatively small marginal cost. I’m actually amazed that this is not better understood.
How you can get to live in a space colony at no cost to you?…
…by answering a want ad. The colony is going to need skilled labor and diverse DNA. The colony will search for job applicants and will pay for a young husband and wife team with the right skills to get them there. SpaceX is taking 5 people to orbit? Those two extra seats will be used. A space ship is going to mars? Two extra people will join them. An apartment and two paying jobs will be waiting along with a land grant for when you’re ready to develop it on your own and later retire.
Duel skills or better will give you a leg up on other candidates for the job.
That first want ad is coming in less than two decades.
Notices that all of the early lunar ideas were actually colonies.
All six billion Earthlings could fit in the state of New Mexico and find it infinitely more hospitable than any non-Terran locale in the solar system.
How about “Terran” locales in the solar system? My take is that a huge city, capable of holding six billion people, on Ceres, despite having something like 4% the gravity of Earth, is going to be a lot more hospitable to human life than dumping six billion people without resources in the middle of near desert on Earth (watch as we see a population crash from six billion people to perhaps 100,000 cannibals).
You know the old saw about “land is the best investment because nobody’s making any more”? Well, Space colonisation is the way that old saw is going to be made out of date. O-Neill’s book is the roadmap to it. Cosmic ray shielding? A few metres of dirt. Insulation? A few metres of dirt. Somewhere to grow crops? Well, you get the idea.
There is no shortage of dirt, after all. Lunar regolith or the slag from asteroid mining and ore processing will do just fine. Under conditions of actually using all the resources that will be available to humanity in a couple of hundred years’ time if not before (if we have the guts!) the carrying capacity of the Solar system for humans is about a quintillion.
There does however have to be an incentive to take the first step. SPS will do just fine for that. Someone will have to build the stations, and they will need somewhere to live. Enter the first space colony, stage right.
There is no one single Right path. There are millions of interacting and interdependent paths. SPS is part of it. So is mining, refining, processing, and the industries necessary to support those… and with those, every human endeavor.
This is why NASA cannot accomplish large-scale expansion of humanity into space. It is limited to choosing one or a few paths at most at a time. NASA can’t do it all.
Mr. Minchau, I agree. However, one has to start somewhere. And SPS has one virtue as a starting point; it is possible to get it started using Earth materials. But it will very rapidly become obvious that using space materials has the potential for more profit – and that’s where the mining and manufacturing come in.
Actually, I would say that NASA can’t do any of it. Like any other government organisation, it is a mechanism for transferring taxpayers’ money into the hands of bureaucrats. As I these days often advise people – get into an nice safe government job and you’ll never have to do a day’s work again. Which is why I am in favour of altogether scrapping NASA except as an organisation to hand out X-prizes.
There is no one single Right path. There are millions of interacting and interdependent paths.
I’d settle for just one known path.
Presley, so would I. But there isn’t one; we will have to find it. But the fact that there is, to take just one example, enough iron in the Asteroid Belt (and most of it in virtually pure metal) to plate the USA a metre deep in steel should tell you that the resources are there.
On a related point, one of the challenges of the outward route is to make it actually worth while for people to join in. Science and engineering are hard subjects; why, then, would someone want to study them if when they become qualified they get a twentieth as much money for it as someone whose only skill is in shuffling money around?
The USA, and the world, needs more scientists and especially engineers. It most definitely does not need more lawyers, accountants and bankers. In fact, of the lesser group it needs considerably fewer.
I believe the search for a replacment for fossil fuels will eventually force us to mine the obvious replacment nestled amongst the lunar regolith – ie Helium 3 (enough potential fuel there to replace fossil fuels for the next 2 to 3 thousand years at the present rate of consumption).
I find this statement a trifle bitter:
Let’s face it, sometime within the next century or so, overpopulation, the exhaustion of natural resources, an alien invasion — or perhaps the optimistic spirit of adventure — will force us to leave Earth in search of a new habitat.
Because the exact same statement was made 60-odd years ago. Is this going to work like fusion power, which is about a decade away — always has been, always will be?
No, we missed our chance. Elon Musk will watch from orbit as bio-weapons and grey goo ravage our planet while his consumables run out.
Oh, no floating venus cities !
Overpopulation … leave Earth in search of a new habitat.
Earth’s population of homo sapiens sapiens will peak before the end of the 21st century; carrying capacity will likely not be a significant push factor. All six billion inhabitants today could fit on the 50 United States and still have less dense settlement than England today.
It seems to me that there is a change in the air.
It is argued that access to LEO is now understood and routine and that can be passed off to commercial through COTS and commercial crew. This leaves NASA free to get on with the difficult stuff of BEO.
This, to me, is fundamentally wrong.
LEO is the hard bit.
It takes something like 10kps to get to LEO from the ground.
You have to overcome gravity losses, atmospheric drag all of which means a heaps big first stage booster to get you up out of the gravity well.
Then you need a really good TPS to get you back down safely.
Past LEO none of these limitations apply.
With fuel depots you can go just about anywhere in small steps of 3-5kps.
No TPS required.
No massive thrust required.
It’s not easy, of course, but the requirements are a lot less than earth to LEO.
The bottom line, for me, is that with Commercial taking over Earth to LEO I am inclined to think that business won’t stop there and just leave BEO to NASA. We will quickly see business pushing the boundaries perhaps more than NASA.
Space colonies may be closer than we think.
All six billion Earthlings could fit in the state of New Mexico and find it infinitely more hospitable than any non-Terran locale in the solar system.
If you stacked all six billion inhabitants of the Earth on top of each other, the stack would reach well past the Moon. The top guy just has to grab on.
>>All six billion Earthlings could fit in the state of New Mexico and find it infinitely more hospitable than any non-Terran locale in the solar system.
Ahem, no. There are people that i always want to keep at least 1000 miles away from me.
Atmosphere and GCR be damned.
Darn, I once had an autographed copy of Gerard K. O’Neill’s book, but lost it in one of my moves.
If you stacked all the marxists on top of each other in the middle of an ocean, would that be considered a good start?
…New Mexico and find it infinitely more hospitable than any non-Terran locale in the solar system
Actually Kirk, preparing NM to receive them would cost magnitudes more than preparing for settlements that would be not just as comfortable but with an unlimited room for expansion so that six billion will become a small segment of the total of all human society. Why do people assume tuna cans in a sea of radiation? We’re humans, damn it. We make our environment to suit us. Given the unlimited wealth of the solar system (wealth = humans + creativity + trade) we can not even imagine how great it’s going to be. Some of us don’t even try.
Space colonies may be closer than we think
Not closer than I think for the reasons you mentioned (“halfway to anywhere.”) Image 9 “Cargo landers” will be the key to expansion.
The beauty of it is it will not be because of any pressure to leave earth, but because the human spirit wants it and will get it. Those that are close to doing it now will be joined by thousands as many once the path is shown to them. The cost seems great now because time and opportunity are not well understood. A company making profit in current markets can leverage that to start colonies at a relatively small marginal cost. I’m actually amazed that this is not better understood.
How you can get to live in a space colony at no cost to you?…
…by answering a want ad. The colony is going to need skilled labor and diverse DNA. The colony will search for job applicants and will pay for a young husband and wife team with the right skills to get them there. SpaceX is taking 5 people to orbit? Those two extra seats will be used. A space ship is going to mars? Two extra people will join them. An apartment and two paying jobs will be waiting along with a land grant for when you’re ready to develop it on your own and later retire.
Duel skills or better will give you a leg up on other candidates for the job.
That first want ad is coming in less than two decades.
Notices that all of the early lunar ideas were actually colonies.
All six billion Earthlings could fit in the state of New Mexico and find it infinitely more hospitable than any non-Terran locale in the solar system.
How about “Terran” locales in the solar system? My take is that a huge city, capable of holding six billion people, on Ceres, despite having something like 4% the gravity of Earth, is going to be a lot more hospitable to human life than dumping six billion people without resources in the middle of near desert on Earth (watch as we see a population crash from six billion people to perhaps 100,000 cannibals).
You know the old saw about “land is the best investment because nobody’s making any more”? Well, Space colonisation is the way that old saw is going to be made out of date. O-Neill’s book is the roadmap to it. Cosmic ray shielding? A few metres of dirt. Insulation? A few metres of dirt. Somewhere to grow crops? Well, you get the idea.
There is no shortage of dirt, after all. Lunar regolith or the slag from asteroid mining and ore processing will do just fine. Under conditions of actually using all the resources that will be available to humanity in a couple of hundred years’ time if not before (if we have the guts!) the carrying capacity of the Solar system for humans is about a quintillion.
There does however have to be an incentive to take the first step. SPS will do just fine for that. Someone will have to build the stations, and they will need somewhere to live. Enter the first space colony, stage right.
There is no one single Right path. There are millions of interacting and interdependent paths. SPS is part of it. So is mining, refining, processing, and the industries necessary to support those… and with those, every human endeavor.
This is why NASA cannot accomplish large-scale expansion of humanity into space. It is limited to choosing one or a few paths at most at a time. NASA can’t do it all.
Mr. Minchau, I agree. However, one has to start somewhere. And SPS has one virtue as a starting point; it is possible to get it started using Earth materials. But it will very rapidly become obvious that using space materials has the potential for more profit – and that’s where the mining and manufacturing come in.
Actually, I would say that NASA can’t do any of it. Like any other government organisation, it is a mechanism for transferring taxpayers’ money into the hands of bureaucrats. As I these days often advise people – get into an nice safe government job and you’ll never have to do a day’s work again. Which is why I am in favour of altogether scrapping NASA except as an organisation to hand out X-prizes.
This should not be missed:
http://luna-ci.com/2010/chinas-lead-lunar-scientist-speaks-on-chinas-and-the-moons-status/
I’d settle for just one known path.
Presley, so would I. But there isn’t one; we will have to find it. But the fact that there is, to take just one example, enough iron in the Asteroid Belt (and most of it in virtually pure metal) to plate the USA a metre deep in steel should tell you that the resources are there.
On a related point, one of the challenges of the outward route is to make it actually worth while for people to join in. Science and engineering are hard subjects; why, then, would someone want to study them if when they become qualified they get a twentieth as much money for it as someone whose only skill is in shuffling money around?
The USA, and the world, needs more scientists and especially engineers. It most definitely does not need more lawyers, accountants and bankers. In fact, of the lesser group it needs considerably fewer.
I believe the search for a replacment for fossil fuels will eventually force us to mine the obvious replacment nestled amongst the lunar regolith – ie Helium 3 (enough potential fuel there to replace fossil fuels for the next 2 to 3 thousand years at the present rate of consumption).