Maybe in a couple hundred years. For now it will probably be more like spam in a can rather than large spinning wheel space stations.
I think much sooner if Elon’s schedule is remotely accurate there would be too many people in space not to have to build something like these.
The remarkable thing about the MCT is that it would be amazingly reusable but only able to send stuff to Mars every 2 years. What’s it doing the rest of the time? Build a second upper stage for it for Earth-bound use, and launch it even as infrequently as every 6 months or every year. A beast like that could put hundreds of tons into LEO. Figure at least 250 tonnes to LEO, that’s 250/500 tonnes per year, or 2500/5000 tonnes per decade. I dare say that with 5k tonnes of equipment to play with it should be easy to support hundreds if not thousands of people on orbit. Even with a low estimate of, say, 10 tonnes of habitat equipment per permanent inhabitant that’s still 250 people per decade.
If we instead assume much higher figures like one MCT LEO launch every quarter, or even every month, then you easily get into the realm of habitat for thousands to tens of thousands of people per decade.
Or more to the point… Martians will have a viable continuously upward economic slope that works for each individual assuming they are not enslaved to those that know better.
A space habitat that jumps past precursor habitats isn’t going to be cheap and the colonists will be employees of the colony rather than individuals pursuing their own dreams (unless their dream like most people today is continued enslavement.)
The fact that talking about enslavement of current people sounds whacko is how whacked we are since that is the reality. Govt. regulations (Federal to local) are a form of slavery since consent is a fiction.
You’re free, until they tell you different. Is that freedom?
Why so many windows? Looks like a bad idea to me. And did anybody else look at this and think of Rendezvous with Rama?
You need some way to get light inside. But a setup where neither hard radiation nor micrometeorites have a straight path to reach a pressure shell window has advantages.
I can’t see building it with one enormous pressurized compartment.
Build big enough and a hole in the pressure shell becomes a “send repair crew to sector …” situation, not a panic.
The trouble is that if the internal volume is big enough, a hole creates a spiraling vortex like a tornado, which makes the repair crew’s approach impossible because they’d get pelted with high-velocity lawn furniture.
And faux tikis, torches and Japanese lanterns. Flying hibachis and barbecues will be the worst though.
Is that concrete? Everything is under tension in a pressurized colony, concrete is for compression.
You can run steel or Kevlar cables through holes in concrete, and cinch up the cables really tight. Then you’ve got a tensegrity structure, taking advantage of the tensile strength of steel and the compressive strength of concrete. Probably a kind of Sintercrete, now that I think of it.
It’s called prestressed concrete, I think the weight penalty of the concrete would be too great to justify its use. Remember not only is the habitat under tension from its atmosphere, the whole mass is also under tension from its own spinning mass, less unnecessary mass means lower loads.
Could be lunar concrete (lunarcrete), which would be much cheaper. I’d be worried about heat rejection in that design, particularly with the solar forcing.
You need enough massing for radiation shielding if it’s going to be parked at a Lagrange point. All this stuff was gone over by O’Neill et al back when. At least reinforced concrete is more coherent than loose-packed regolith, which is the usual solution for shielding in an “Island Three” O’Neill colony.
I don’t know, the O’Neill concepts were part of a decadent-Modern obsession with mass and scale which never really paid out in the real world. I mean, show me an actual constructed arcology, the sort of thing we thought we’d be living in, in the Future. Instead, everyone’s living in cookie-cutter one-and-a-half-story semi-detached condos in the exurbs.
As I said below, this design doesn’t appear to have adequate shielding for BLEO.
The radiation shield of the Stanford Torus was a separate non rotating structure so as to keep the structural loads down, rotating the shield was, in engineering terms, unrealistic.
Andrew,
The lack of adequate shielding was discussed at the presentation at ISDC 2014 and it was indicated that perhaps a magnetic field or additional water shielding could be used to offset the lack of current shielding.
Sounds like an improvised fix for a flawed design.
Yep, 3D printing will be key to building these structures in space, not only for shielding but for almost all the structural elements.
Shielding looks inadequate for anything outside of LEO.
For a colony in LEO my thinking is a design with everything hanging down from the hub, narrow at the top, flared out at the bottom and enclosed in a transparent pressure hull.
I don’t think so. I have been meaning for about 6 years to write a paper on the economic and political reasons it’ll be “spam in a can” forever. Short version: this design implies a very difficult time creating a competitive water and air recycling company, and a competitive market in utilities without “technical monopolies” are more sustainable.
I’m a bit of a fan of co-operatives when it comes to natural monopolies, and a natural monopoly is after all what a local government running water reticulation systems to its district is.
In most communities in the US, water and recycling services are a monopoly controlled by the city government or the homeowner’s association. While that approach may lead to certain problems, I don’t think you can assume it is unworkable or that no one will try it in the future.
Yes, it’s workable when you don’t have a choice, and it’s subject to government, etc. My thought process was that, with well-defined standards and modular design, you don’t need to have “natural monopolies” or “technical monopolies”, and there’s a property rights issue that happens when you need to construct the real estate before other people can live in it.
Maybe it’s an idea that’s better as a short story, where a lot of different ideas are compared. This is kind-of why I never wrote the paper.
It’s still early for me, after a late night. I don’t think I was clear. The property rights issue is that 1. private developers presumably constructed the space station, so the division of property of “the space station belongs to me” and “my home in the space station belongs to me”. Representative government becomes problematic in this case, unless it was constructed initially by a collective, but that implies some kind of social bond amongst the residents before construction, which is fine but not universal. 2. Current treaties assume a governance structure in the space station similar to a captain’s role in a oceanic vessel, which in a residence becomes a dictatorial government. 3. The potential for abuse of life-support systems under a tyrannical regime becomes very worrisome, and it’s not difficult to imagine that “spam in a can”, with the potential of sub-contracting competitive life support firms would be significantly more successful, making large open spaces like in the picture either emblematic of tyranny, or very wealthy “gated community”-type residences.
Of course, this is all just me thinking. I’ve done some of the historical research for it, but never finished it.
Current treaties assume a governance structure in the space station similar to a captain’s role in a oceanic vessel, which in a residence becomes a dictatorial government.
What treaties require that?
While I’m not a fan of cruise ships, I think most people would be surprised to find out that they are repressive dictatorships.
Not that treaties between Earth-bound nations are likely to matter in the long run.
If it’s a repressive dictatorship there’s gona be a revolution.
If this were built by property developers they’re looking to make a profit.
The process is:
1. Colony is built.
2. Colony subdivided into real estate sections, dwelling and other structures are built.
3. Properties sold off to individual colonists and investors.
4. Governance is colonists problem.
I’m at work at a-nonspace company, so I can’t look it up now, but my impression from Reynolds and Merges (1988) is that the legal regime in space is based on maritime law. While a cruise ship is not considered a “repressive dictatorship”, it technically could be, with the captain of a vessel the final legal authority on almost all issues, from executing pirates to conducting marriages, etc. It’s not done on a cruise ship, but that’s because they are cruise ships and there aren’t a lot of permanent residents on a cruise ship, requiring permanent courts and legislatures and bar associations and what-not.
the legal regime in space is based on maritime law.
No, not really. It would be simpler if it were, but the Outer Space Treaty screwed that up.
Despite what you may have learned from sitcoms, US law does not give the captain of a ship the power to perform marriages (unless he happens to be a clergyman or justice of the peace), much less execute pirates.
Not that performing marriages or executing pirates equates with repressive dictatorship.
While it seems that previously conflicting case law (http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/02/fashion/weddings/a-marriage-at-sea-get-me-rewrite.html?_r=0) has resolved since that captains do not have marriage authority, they do enjoy extensive right to “find people guilty of crimes and jail them” (ibid) and “[t]he captain has enormous legal powers and is responsible in all aspects for a ship underway. Powers include the right to use deadly force to suppress piracy and mutiny.” (http://maritime-connector.com/captain-nautical/) Perhaps “execute” pirates was too harsh, but my larger point remains: that, in addition to current accepted international recognition, there are practical roots to this authority in the history of maritime that may rear its head and create complications in the exercise of democracy in a deep-space colony.
Rand, that’s an interesting take. My understanding was that some of the problems with the Outer Space Treaty was that it treated deep-space stations and extra-terrestrial settlements as flagged vessels subject to maritime-like laws. I’ll have to re-read a few things to refresh my memory.
No, Jon, cruise-ship captains do not “have the power to find people guilty of crimes.” Unless they happen to be summoned to jury duty.
Likewise, the “right to use deadly force to suppress piracy” applies to any citizen, not just ship captains.
(Although I’m a bit surprised that you mention deadly force. Given SFF’s ideological position on weapons in space, I supposed you would just ask space pirates to please go along nicely to the World Court.)
Years ago I wrote a blog post that concluded it was going to be spam in a can.
The real issue is that you want to support X number of people, and the spam can method comes in drastically cheaper, especially in the early stages. Many of the large colony designs are essentially useless until completed and pressurized, whereas spam cans work in small sizes. If nothing else, the people building a large colony will be living in the cans until the mega project is finished.
In addition to George’s comment, on which I’ve hung this, this comment is also intended to address issues raised by Al in his comment of June 11, 2014 at 2:39 pm and comments Henry Vanderbilt posted on June 11, 2014 at 5:53 pm & 7:43 pm. All three of these additional comments are further down in this thread.
As an advocate of free-flying space habs as the normative future domiciles of most extra-terrestrial humans, I’ve also been bothered by the problem of the up-front expense and lead-time involved in habs of heroic scale like those illustrated in O’Neill’s book and elsewhere. The politics and governance of such places is also problematical as they would intrinsically share many resemblances to past Earthly “water empires” which have not proven delightful regimes under which to live.
The idea of a tract bungalow in space rotating slowly around a hub that anchors both it and a counterweight has potential as a way to sidestep most of the problems of unitary habs of epic scale. As noted, the minimum hab would be the “can” (bungalow) in which one or a few people would reside, counterbalanced by a suitable mass at a complementary distance from a central hub. This hub wouldn’t have to be much, but it would have to be strong enough to anchor the tethers. It wouldn’t cost much additional to overbuild it by quite a bit.
That would permit the incremental addition of other “cans” to the neighborhood. One additional can, containing a completely separate social group, could be substituted for the counterweight up front, for instance. If the hub were built sufficiently strong to start with, it would be possible to hang additional cans from it – in pairs – at different angles. The longer the tethers and the slower the rotation of the hub, the more room there’d be for such future additions.
At whatever point it was no longer safe from a hub loading standpoint to add more paired “cans,” the hub could be extended, axially, and more paired cans attached to the extension. This basic architecture would appear to provide a mass-producible housing option that could meet the requirements of nearly any personality type from confirmed hermits – who could live alone in single cans with counterweights, all the way up to people who prefer the population densities, and opportunities for social interactions, of big cities.
Big city-type habs would probably tend to accumulate some larger paired cans as time went by to house things like playing fields, parks and such. Such an extensible hab with multiple hub extensions and hundreds or thousands of cans attached would look a bit like the business end of one of those cylindrical hairbrushes with tiny knobs on the end of each bristle. The whole hab would sweep out a volume potentially many times the size of even a really big O’Neill-type colony, but without there being a unitary shell. Such a hab would also be nearly immune to catastrophic damage from any single pressure loss incident caused by random bits of space debris.
The most important thing, though, is it could allow for starting small and growing in equally small increments into something with no obvious upper size/population boundary. It would also allow for incremental renewal/replacement of cans, tethers and hub segments in a way analogous to the renewal processes of Earthside cities.
You’re describing something like this. Start with a couple modules and tethers and just keep adding modules – or removing them as need be. That seems far more achievable in the near term rather than something like Kalpana One.
That looks to be a reasonable Earthside facsimile, yeah.
It doesn’t have to be mega projects vs. tuna cans. A trench is the beginning of a habitat you cover with dirt. You can make them of any size. Each provides industrial space for making materials for bigger projects.
I mean “competitive water and air recycling market”, not “company”. Sorry.
This isn’t anything new. Those of us active in space settlement are well familiar with the Kalpana One that Al Globus and his team have been working on. He gave a good update on it as ISDC2014.
Why is two cans with a 3-stop ‘space elevator’ strung between them, then set to rotating not the top choice? A “250m radius” isn’t very large at all if you shift your thinking from ‘fixed pieces’ to ‘suspension bridge’
I can see precession (on an -orbital- station), vibration, and perhaps wobble from a shifting center of mass as issues, but they’d all seem amenable to reduction via active measures, no?
Al,
Al Globus actually discusses that in depth in the 2007 paper in the first link I provided which is a good engineering analysis of different shapes for large space habitats.
Thanks, (yes, I should refresh before posting. Srry.)
I don’t know if I was the first, but I came up with that idea about a half-day into my second ISDC, ’87 in Pittburgh. The actual thought process involved looking around and thinking to myself “I do NOT want to live in a space hi-rise with most of these people! I need a suburban ranch house in space”. House, counterweight, tether/elevator, garage at the center of rotation, and there it was.
That was also the ISDC where they gave me a room right next to two-fourths of Bon Jovi. Not the quietest place I’ve ever slept…
That aside, if I read the original story correctly, they have the thing rotating at 2 rpm for gravity? That’s 12 degrees/second, which is about twice the limit for human comfort, last I looked.
I didn’t run the numbers for 1G at the radius they give; maybe that was a typo for 1/2 rpm, which is about half the 5-6 degreees/second limit IIRC, and seems like a much more reasonable design target.
And with a single-family-home-on-a-tether, of course, the minimum-cost issues to get your spin radius adequately large are much less – you mainly just need a longer tether.
There’s been a lot of head scratching over how O Neil’s Stanford team arrived at the 1RPM limit, these days a lot of people think rotation rates around this speed acceptable.
The Graybiel 1977 angular rate experiment cited sounds like the one I recall.
“..at 1.0 rpm even highly susceptible subjects were symptom-free, or nearly so” sounds to me like a marginal upper limit for long-term occupation by non-selected population. Sure, the rest of the results indicate you might go a little higher for shorter durations and/or selected, trained crew. But somewhere below 1 rpm, AKA 6 degrees-per-second is where it no longer matters at all. “Or nearly so” at 1 rpm is NOT totally symptom-free.
Me, I tend to be conservative about potential rest-of-my-life questions – 1/2 rpm is 100% margin under “almost symptom-free.” Sounds good to me.
That’s ~3000 meters radius for 1G at ~1/2 rpm. Sounds like tethers would be a LOT cheaper than a unitary spin hab that size.
Higher spin and/or lower G might well turn out to be long-term healthy. Maybe.
This is a reply to Andrew_W and Henry on the next level down, actually. My understanding of the experiments looking for the maximum rotation speed was done in a rotation chamber on Earth, with the body’s axis parallel to the spin axis. That has always seemed very suspicious to me; the brain is very capable of detecting that while the bulk of current acceleration is towards the circumference, some acceleration is directed toward’s Earth center, and nausea comes from a detected anomaly between visual perception of “down” and the inner ear’s perception of “down”. In space, all acceleration would be towards the circumference. It seems reasonable to me the brain in the spinning room experiments would be able to detect “I am spinning on Earth”, and experience it differently from “Down is towards the circumference.” Do you know if there’s any other experiments looking into this? I’ll be looking for those articles mentioned in Andrew_W’s link, but I just wanted to know if I was totally off-base on that.
1977 was a long time ago. Early studies were based on short-term effects, but more recent studies suggest that humans can adjust to higher rotation rates over time.
According to Lackner and Dizio (Artificial Gravity as a Countermeasure in Long-Duration Spaceflight — J. Neurosci Res., 2000 Oct. 15), “Rotation rates as high as 7.5-10 rpm are likely feasible.”
I can see why limiting “reply” availability past a certain comment nesting depth may be a good idea, but it needs to be a layer or two deeper – I’ve seen it making extended discussion awkward multiple times here recently.
As for practical max spin rates, yes, I can see that the ’77 research may be overly conservative. May be.
The real answer is to get up there and start DOING THE FARGING EXPERIMENTS on long-term human rotation-rate and reduced-G tolerance, of course. We’ve wasted decades on keeping space safe for government bureaucrats already.
As with other forms of motion sickness, there’s a great deal of individual variability, and psychological factors are important, too. (We saw one subject report symptoms *before* the platform started to spin.)
I can’t help but think about all those fairground rides with people doing far higher revs a minute, or people simply traveling in cars on winding roads.
Sometimes we get too precious and exaggerate the harrows of space.
Since we’re getting serious about space colonies, I am going to make a recommendation to my senator and to Administrator Bolden regarding SLS. Since NASA has conclusively proven that assembling things in space over multiple launches is far too risky to even contemplate, we need to make sure that SLS can launch anything imaginable that may come along in its life cycle. I propose that we raise the payload weight to 100,000 tonnes to LEO. The resulting rocket would have a liftoff mass of 7.86E09 pounds, and use 2,000 AOK (ATK plus Orbital) solid rocket boosters every launch. At a very reasonable $1 trillion per launch, this would certainly stimulate the aerospace industry.
Given the tremendous risk and uncertainty surrounding something as untried and unproven as orbital rendezvous and in-orbit assembly, I see no other way to proceed in space.
I said the same thing three years ago; only back then, I proposed a rocket capable of sending 16 million tonnes to escape velocity. That amount of mass is roughly 16 city blocks worth of dirt down to a depth of 20 meters or so. Coincidentally, the US Capitol building and its grounds cover roughly 16 city blocks.
Launch DC into orbit? Definitely! Make sure they’re in session and the executive is with them.
We’re going to have to build up to space communities. It will take generations of designs (technical, economic and social) to get it right. They do have some advantages, but the disadvantages always get glossed over and they are severe. Perhaps they can sell solar power but probably at low profit. It could be enough for a small settlement if they have good recycling. Economic loss may be covered by providing laser propulsion to ships that drop off trade goods. But the community will be a type of collective which is fine for some people. The communities will tend to be static like many on highways across America and else where in the world. You can tell these are static communities by visiting a diner and having all eyes follow you around the room.
Dynamic growth will happen on planets in the next century. Travel between rocks will provide markets for the space communities. They will become the high priced service stations between real colonies. If they are at the right junction they will become larger communities themselves.
I get that you’ve got Mars in your heart. However, writing off everyone else is shortsighted. You think your business case can close now, just think of how much easier it would be to close if you had large orbital waypoints at L1 and orbiting Phobos or anchored to Deimos.
One thing that has been holding back development in space is a mindset that there must be One Mission To Rule Them All. It gets the space enthusiasts fighting along artificial lines i.e. there must be One Destination (Moon, Mars, asteroid, what-have-you), One Ship that does everything (Shuttle, MPCV), and worst of all, One Thing that the mission participants accomplish (which results in the asinine questions “But what would the colonists do?” and “Wouldn’t it be better to just send a robot?”).
For example, I can envision a colony in Earth orbit which functions as a combination of Hedonism II, Las Vegas, Monte Carlo, and Amsterdam. One couldn’t build such a combination city anywhere on Earth, but an orbital Vice City would be extremely lucrative.
Ed,
Yes, it will be as complex and varied as the settlement of the New World, from fur traders up north, to Cod in New England, to ship building and tobacco in the Virginia region to cotton in the South, while the Spanish just moved in a looted the Aztec and Inca empires.
Thomas, you are so blinded by historic trade precedents that you can’t imagine anything else. It may never be economical to trade mass between planets beyond personal possessions. Perhaps ever. That is not the end of economic trade which will be vibrant.
You could well be right that trading mass between planets may never amount to much. But, if, as I expect, the vast majority of future space dwellers are in free-space habs, the prospects for trading in mass seem excellent. Metals to build the habs and water to shield them would likely be the big items of inbound trade. The easiest place to get large quantities of metal is the Asteroid Belt. The easiest place to get large quantities of water is the Enceladus-fed F-ring of Saturn. Outbound in return would be foodstuffs and radioactives to support the energy infrastructure of beyond-Martian settlements where the solar flux is weak.
Dick,
Exactly. It will be expensive to lift mass through an atmosphere like Mars, so whatever goods they export will need to be worth the expensive, just as its expensive to ship to/from Antarctica. That is why the only profitable exports for that region were/are seals and whales from the offshore islands and oceans.
But nearly all of the needs for space settlements, from ores and metals to water and gases are much easier to mine from the asteroids, short-term comets and the moons/rings of the outer planets. Indeed, the resources of the Martian moons will be more accessible than those on the surface.
And again, this is the problem with Mars, the high gravity and atmosphere combined with the lack of any unique physical resources, expect for possible biological ones, make it a poor destination for space settlers. Its key value will be for scientists and researchers who will likely oppose any settlement for fear of contamination, just as they do for Antarctica. Sadly the precedents which may be set from the drive for Mars settlement may have a negative impact on other more economically viable destinations for space settlement.
Dick,
In space colonies must have mass trade. That’s why they will develop slower.
I’m not at all writing others off Ed. I just know that economic expansion will happen at different rates for different places. Mars is unique in our solar system. If we become more realistic about nuclear power moons become viable as well.
Power is the primary requirement which produces every thing else. On mars, solar panels and methane engines for concentration of power get you started before we become adult about using nuclear power.
Mars has the fastest growth potential assuming we don’t starve the colonists of power. They need enough industrial capacity to produce more power for themselves. There is never enough.
Las Vegas in orbit makes sense now before anything else including mars colonization, but it’s not the big future.
I think people need to think in terms of reusable launch vehicles.
If 100 vehicles are build and each can launch twice a week carrying 20 passengers, that’s 200,000 people a year to LEO. We need this thing to house all the tourists and the staff!
Andrew,
Reusables will be important, but more for cargo than for humans. The maximum estimate emigration rate to New England in the 1600’s, at the height of the English Civil War, was only about 2,000 a year. That is a probably a good estimate to use to build traffic models for space settlement.
Cargo is too expensive to move. Reusables will be moving colonists (with privately owned supplies.)
Ken,
Do you have any idea how much spacelift is required to support a space settler in the early stages of economic development? And to build the necessary infrastructure? Human spaceflight, despite the fixation space advocates have on it is going to be only a minor part of the mass uplifted.
Do you have any idea how much spacelift is required to support a space settler in the early stages of economic development?
Yes.
To elaborate. For ‘in space colonies’ it never ends since space is basically empty except for energy.
For my mars plan. Zero after the first landing. This is because support comes in the form of contractual private property which includes a mass surcharge making that property extremely valuable trade property yet is included in the price of every ticket. It’s one of the main advantages of my plan over any other.
Even the first landing only requires about twice the mass of subsequent landings. After the first, most resupply (by personal property) is not in the form of basic life support… That gets supplied abundantly by the colony itself.
The MCT actually follows this basic design. Although capable of taking 100 passengers, earlier missions will have just a few with the rest of the mass being cargo to get a colony started. We needn’t wait for MCT since the Mars One Lander can get us started. Robotic missions prepositioning supplies.
Ken,
You are really determined to repeat the mistakes of Roanoke aren’t you? Well at least there will be videos of the tragic last days when they learn Mars isn’t really as Earth as folks believe it is.
That is the entire problem with Mars, the myopic vision folks have of it from all the movies and novels, that it is simply a desert version of Earth from. Even the very worst desert on Earth, supposedly the Taklamakan, would be a paradise compared to Mars.
Space Habitats are where the future of humanity is, not the bleak barren surface of a planet.
Put those space habitats on the surface of mars and what changes? Lower energy density but infinitely more of everything else. You fix the energy density problem by just having more collectors to meet whatever needs you have.
Infinitely more because a space habitat has to have everything brought to it at a cost that isn’t covered by profits. They can’t sell much energy because it cost more to most customers than other options.
I have shown you how a mars colony is economically viable. You haven’t done that for a space colony. Water mining is probably the closest thing but that requires colony migration to provide a good sized market. Migration drives the economics. Those migrants need someplace they can grow independently from capt. Asimov.
I have shown you how a mars colony is economically viable.
No, you just think you have.
Then refute it Rand. Give me something to work with. Let’s nail down the issues together. Have I not provided arguable points?
None worth my time to argue about. I don’t care about Mars that much.
where the future of humanity is
I’ve been giving you reasons and you respond with assertions.
You avoid dying by sticking to fundamentals. Humans have some basic needs. You make sure those needs are indigenously supplied. You can’t do that with space colonies… ever. You can do that with mars immediately on landing in a very straight forward manner using gaslight era technology (making it extremely robust.) Failure does not result in death because it is systemically fault tolerant. It is designed to fail in a fixable way independent of earth. Are you having comprehension trouble? If not, address this specific issue please.
We will have space colonies BEO but only after we economically develop the places that already have the resources for independent growth.
It is ironic that Roanoke failed precisely because of what you promote… dependence on non local logistics.
I get that you’ve got Mars in your heart.
Ed, I’ve got the universe in my heart.
But the galaxy comes first.
Before the galaxy comes locals stars.
Before local stars comes our own solar system… from inner system to Oort cloud.
In our own solar system we start in LEO but LEO Is not a stopping point. We go right past it to the most earth-like place… mars.
We go to mars first because no place else has the independent growth potential No place else.
Growth is the primary issue. Slow growth limits everything that follows.
Some people realize that space is important.
Even the very worst desert on Earth … would be a paradise compared to Mars.
What a ridiculous statement Thomas. Dying on earth is easy. We don’t do it because of infrastructure. Building that infrastructure on mars doesn’t have to be any harder, once there. The challenge is the reward.
Maybe in a couple hundred years. For now it will probably be more like spam in a can rather than large spinning wheel space stations.
I think much sooner if Elon’s schedule is remotely accurate there would be too many people in space not to have to build something like these.
The remarkable thing about the MCT is that it would be amazingly reusable but only able to send stuff to Mars every 2 years. What’s it doing the rest of the time? Build a second upper stage for it for Earth-bound use, and launch it even as infrequently as every 6 months or every year. A beast like that could put hundreds of tons into LEO. Figure at least 250 tonnes to LEO, that’s 250/500 tonnes per year, or 2500/5000 tonnes per decade. I dare say that with 5k tonnes of equipment to play with it should be easy to support hundreds if not thousands of people on orbit. Even with a low estimate of, say, 10 tonnes of habitat equipment per permanent inhabitant that’s still 250 people per decade.
If we instead assume much higher figures like one MCT LEO launch every quarter, or even every month, then you easily get into the realm of habitat for thousands to tens of thousands of people per decade.
Link’s a bit buggy.
http://sploid.gizmodo.com/what-a-space-settlement-would-actually-look-like-in-rea-1589315268
It’ll be built by martians.
Or more to the point… Martians will have a viable continuously upward economic slope that works for each individual assuming they are not enslaved to those that know better.
A space habitat that jumps past precursor habitats isn’t going to be cheap and the colonists will be employees of the colony rather than individuals pursuing their own dreams (unless their dream like most people today is continued enslavement.)
The fact that talking about enslavement of current people sounds whacko is how whacked we are since that is the reality. Govt. regulations (Federal to local) are a form of slavery since consent is a fiction.
You’re free, until they tell you different. Is that freedom?
Why so many windows? Looks like a bad idea to me. And did anybody else look at this and think of Rendezvous with Rama?
You need some way to get light inside. But a setup where neither hard radiation nor micrometeorites have a straight path to reach a pressure shell window has advantages.
I can’t see building it with one enormous pressurized compartment.
Build big enough and a hole in the pressure shell becomes a “send repair crew to sector …” situation, not a panic.
The trouble is that if the internal volume is big enough, a hole creates a spiraling vortex like a tornado, which makes the repair crew’s approach impossible because they’d get pelted with high-velocity lawn furniture.
And faux tikis, torches and Japanese lanterns. Flying hibachis and barbecues will be the worst though.
Is that concrete? Everything is under tension in a pressurized colony, concrete is for compression.
You can run steel or Kevlar cables through holes in concrete, and cinch up the cables really tight. Then you’ve got a tensegrity structure, taking advantage of the tensile strength of steel and the compressive strength of concrete. Probably a kind of Sintercrete, now that I think of it.
It’s called prestressed concrete, I think the weight penalty of the concrete would be too great to justify its use. Remember not only is the habitat under tension from its atmosphere, the whole mass is also under tension from its own spinning mass, less unnecessary mass means lower loads.
Could be lunar concrete (lunarcrete), which would be much cheaper. I’d be worried about heat rejection in that design, particularly with the solar forcing.
You need enough massing for radiation shielding if it’s going to be parked at a Lagrange point. All this stuff was gone over by O’Neill et al back when. At least reinforced concrete is more coherent than loose-packed regolith, which is the usual solution for shielding in an “Island Three” O’Neill colony.
I don’t know, the O’Neill concepts were part of a decadent-Modern obsession with mass and scale which never really paid out in the real world. I mean, show me an actual constructed arcology, the sort of thing we thought we’d be living in, in the Future. Instead, everyone’s living in cookie-cutter one-and-a-half-story semi-detached condos in the exurbs.
As I said below, this design doesn’t appear to have adequate shielding for BLEO.
The radiation shield of the Stanford Torus was a separate non rotating structure so as to keep the structural loads down, rotating the shield was, in engineering terms, unrealistic.
Andrew,
The lack of adequate shielding was discussed at the presentation at ISDC 2014 and it was indicated that perhaps a magnetic field or additional water shielding could be used to offset the lack of current shielding.
Sounds like an improvised fix for a flawed design.
Just add a few million tonnes of water…
Concrete requires water. Think sintered 3D-printed rock.
Edward,
Yep, 3D printing will be key to building these structures in space, not only for shielding but for almost all the structural elements.
Shielding looks inadequate for anything outside of LEO.
For a colony in LEO my thinking is a design with everything hanging down from the hub, narrow at the top, flared out at the bottom and enclosed in a transparent pressure hull.
I don’t think so. I have been meaning for about 6 years to write a paper on the economic and political reasons it’ll be “spam in a can” forever. Short version: this design implies a very difficult time creating a competitive water and air recycling company, and a competitive market in utilities without “technical monopolies” are more sustainable.
I’m a bit of a fan of co-operatives when it comes to natural monopolies, and a natural monopoly is after all what a local government running water reticulation systems to its district is.
In most communities in the US, water and recycling services are a monopoly controlled by the city government or the homeowner’s association. While that approach may lead to certain problems, I don’t think you can assume it is unworkable or that no one will try it in the future.
Yes, it’s workable when you don’t have a choice, and it’s subject to government, etc. My thought process was that, with well-defined standards and modular design, you don’t need to have “natural monopolies” or “technical monopolies”, and there’s a property rights issue that happens when you need to construct the real estate before other people can live in it.
Maybe it’s an idea that’s better as a short story, where a lot of different ideas are compared. This is kind-of why I never wrote the paper.
It’s still early for me, after a late night. I don’t think I was clear. The property rights issue is that 1. private developers presumably constructed the space station, so the division of property of “the space station belongs to me” and “my home in the space station belongs to me”. Representative government becomes problematic in this case, unless it was constructed initially by a collective, but that implies some kind of social bond amongst the residents before construction, which is fine but not universal. 2. Current treaties assume a governance structure in the space station similar to a captain’s role in a oceanic vessel, which in a residence becomes a dictatorial government. 3. The potential for abuse of life-support systems under a tyrannical regime becomes very worrisome, and it’s not difficult to imagine that “spam in a can”, with the potential of sub-contracting competitive life support firms would be significantly more successful, making large open spaces like in the picture either emblematic of tyranny, or very wealthy “gated community”-type residences.
Of course, this is all just me thinking. I’ve done some of the historical research for it, but never finished it.
Current treaties assume a governance structure in the space station similar to a captain’s role in a oceanic vessel, which in a residence becomes a dictatorial government.
What treaties require that?
While I’m not a fan of cruise ships, I think most people would be surprised to find out that they are repressive dictatorships.
Not that treaties between Earth-bound nations are likely to matter in the long run.
If it’s a repressive dictatorship there’s gona be a revolution.
If this were built by property developers they’re looking to make a profit.
The process is:
1. Colony is built.
2. Colony subdivided into real estate sections, dwelling and other structures are built.
3. Properties sold off to individual colonists and investors.
4. Governance is colonists problem.
I’m at work at a-nonspace company, so I can’t look it up now, but my impression from Reynolds and Merges (1988) is that the legal regime in space is based on maritime law. While a cruise ship is not considered a “repressive dictatorship”, it technically could be, with the captain of a vessel the final legal authority on almost all issues, from executing pirates to conducting marriages, etc. It’s not done on a cruise ship, but that’s because they are cruise ships and there aren’t a lot of permanent residents on a cruise ship, requiring permanent courts and legislatures and bar associations and what-not.
the legal regime in space is based on maritime law.
No, not really. It would be simpler if it were, but the Outer Space Treaty screwed that up.
Despite what you may have learned from sitcoms, US law does not give the captain of a ship the power to perform marriages (unless he happens to be a clergyman or justice of the peace), much less execute pirates.
Not that performing marriages or executing pirates equates with repressive dictatorship.
While it seems that previously conflicting case law (http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/02/fashion/weddings/a-marriage-at-sea-get-me-rewrite.html?_r=0) has resolved since that captains do not have marriage authority, they do enjoy extensive right to “find people guilty of crimes and jail them” (ibid) and “[t]he captain has enormous legal powers and is responsible in all aspects for a ship underway. Powers include the right to use deadly force to suppress piracy and mutiny.” (http://maritime-connector.com/captain-nautical/) Perhaps “execute” pirates was too harsh, but my larger point remains: that, in addition to current accepted international recognition, there are practical roots to this authority in the history of maritime that may rear its head and create complications in the exercise of democracy in a deep-space colony.
Rand, that’s an interesting take. My understanding was that some of the problems with the Outer Space Treaty was that it treated deep-space stations and extra-terrestrial settlements as flagged vessels subject to maritime-like laws. I’ll have to re-read a few things to refresh my memory.
No, Jon, cruise-ship captains do not “have the power to find people guilty of crimes.” Unless they happen to be summoned to jury duty.
Likewise, the “right to use deadly force to suppress piracy” applies to any citizen, not just ship captains.
(Although I’m a bit surprised that you mention deadly force. Given SFF’s ideological position on weapons in space, I supposed you would just ask space pirates to please go along nicely to the World Court.)
Years ago I wrote a blog post that concluded it was going to be spam in a can.
The real issue is that you want to support X number of people, and the spam can method comes in drastically cheaper, especially in the early stages. Many of the large colony designs are essentially useless until completed and pressurized, whereas spam cans work in small sizes. If nothing else, the people building a large colony will be living in the cans until the mega project is finished.
In addition to George’s comment, on which I’ve hung this, this comment is also intended to address issues raised by Al in his comment of June 11, 2014 at 2:39 pm and comments Henry Vanderbilt posted on June 11, 2014 at 5:53 pm & 7:43 pm. All three of these additional comments are further down in this thread.
As an advocate of free-flying space habs as the normative future domiciles of most extra-terrestrial humans, I’ve also been bothered by the problem of the up-front expense and lead-time involved in habs of heroic scale like those illustrated in O’Neill’s book and elsewhere. The politics and governance of such places is also problematical as they would intrinsically share many resemblances to past Earthly “water empires” which have not proven delightful regimes under which to live.
The idea of a tract bungalow in space rotating slowly around a hub that anchors both it and a counterweight has potential as a way to sidestep most of the problems of unitary habs of epic scale. As noted, the minimum hab would be the “can” (bungalow) in which one or a few people would reside, counterbalanced by a suitable mass at a complementary distance from a central hub. This hub wouldn’t have to be much, but it would have to be strong enough to anchor the tethers. It wouldn’t cost much additional to overbuild it by quite a bit.
That would permit the incremental addition of other “cans” to the neighborhood. One additional can, containing a completely separate social group, could be substituted for the counterweight up front, for instance. If the hub were built sufficiently strong to start with, it would be possible to hang additional cans from it – in pairs – at different angles. The longer the tethers and the slower the rotation of the hub, the more room there’d be for such future additions.
At whatever point it was no longer safe from a hub loading standpoint to add more paired “cans,” the hub could be extended, axially, and more paired cans attached to the extension. This basic architecture would appear to provide a mass-producible housing option that could meet the requirements of nearly any personality type from confirmed hermits – who could live alone in single cans with counterweights, all the way up to people who prefer the population densities, and opportunities for social interactions, of big cities.
Big city-type habs would probably tend to accumulate some larger paired cans as time went by to house things like playing fields, parks and such. Such an extensible hab with multiple hub extensions and hundreds or thousands of cans attached would look a bit like the business end of one of those cylindrical hairbrushes with tiny knobs on the end of each bristle. The whole hab would sweep out a volume potentially many times the size of even a really big O’Neill-type colony, but without there being a unitary shell. Such a hab would also be nearly immune to catastrophic damage from any single pressure loss incident caused by random bits of space debris.
The most important thing, though, is it could allow for starting small and growing in equally small increments into something with no obvious upper size/population boundary. It would also allow for incremental renewal/replacement of cans, tethers and hub segments in a way analogous to the renewal processes of Earthside cities.
You’re describing something like this. Start with a couple modules and tethers and just keep adding modules – or removing them as need be. That seems far more achievable in the near term rather than something like Kalpana One.
That looks to be a reasonable Earthside facsimile, yeah.
It doesn’t have to be mega projects vs. tuna cans. A trench is the beginning of a habitat you cover with dirt. You can make them of any size. Each provides industrial space for making materials for bigger projects.
I mean “competitive water and air recycling market”, not “company”. Sorry.
This isn’t anything new. Those of us active in space settlement are well familiar with the Kalpana One that Al Globus and his team have been working on. He gave a good update on it as ISDC2014.
Here is a history of it.
http://space.alglobus.net/Kalpana/KalpanaOne.html
The PDF link goes to a 2007 paper discussing the engineering aspects of the design.
There is a link to a more recent PDF paper by Al Globus on the justifications for space settlement at NSS Space Settlement Journal website below.
http://www.nss.org/settlement/journal/
Why is two cans with a 3-stop ‘space elevator’ strung between them, then set to rotating not the top choice? A “250m radius” isn’t very large at all if you shift your thinking from ‘fixed pieces’ to ‘suspension bridge’
I can see precession (on an -orbital- station), vibration, and perhaps wobble from a shifting center of mass as issues, but they’d all seem amenable to reduction via active measures, no?
Al,
Al Globus actually discusses that in depth in the 2007 paper in the first link I provided which is a good engineering analysis of different shapes for large space habitats.
Thanks, (yes, I should refresh before posting. Srry.)
I don’t know if I was the first, but I came up with that idea about a half-day into my second ISDC, ’87 in Pittburgh. The actual thought process involved looking around and thinking to myself “I do NOT want to live in a space hi-rise with most of these people! I need a suburban ranch house in space”. House, counterweight, tether/elevator, garage at the center of rotation, and there it was.
That was also the ISDC where they gave me a room right next to two-fourths of Bon Jovi. Not the quietest place I’ve ever slept…
That aside, if I read the original story correctly, they have the thing rotating at 2 rpm for gravity? That’s 12 degrees/second, which is about twice the limit for human comfort, last I looked.
I didn’t run the numbers for 1G at the radius they give; maybe that was a typo for 1/2 rpm, which is about half the 5-6 degreees/second limit IIRC, and seems like a much more reasonable design target.
And with a single-family-home-on-a-tether, of course, the minimum-cost issues to get your spin radius adequately large are much less – you mainly just need a longer tether.
There’s been a lot of head scratching over how O Neil’s Stanford team arrived at the 1RPM limit, these days a lot of people think rotation rates around this speed acceptable.
http://www.artificial-gravity.com/sw/SpinCalc/SpinCalc.htm
The Graybiel 1977 angular rate experiment cited sounds like the one I recall.
“..at 1.0 rpm even highly susceptible subjects were symptom-free, or nearly so” sounds to me like a marginal upper limit for long-term occupation by non-selected population. Sure, the rest of the results indicate you might go a little higher for shorter durations and/or selected, trained crew. But somewhere below 1 rpm, AKA 6 degrees-per-second is where it no longer matters at all. “Or nearly so” at 1 rpm is NOT totally symptom-free.
Me, I tend to be conservative about potential rest-of-my-life questions – 1/2 rpm is 100% margin under “almost symptom-free.” Sounds good to me.
That’s ~3000 meters radius for 1G at ~1/2 rpm. Sounds like tethers would be a LOT cheaper than a unitary spin hab that size.
Higher spin and/or lower G might well turn out to be long-term healthy. Maybe.
This is a reply to Andrew_W and Henry on the next level down, actually. My understanding of the experiments looking for the maximum rotation speed was done in a rotation chamber on Earth, with the body’s axis parallel to the spin axis. That has always seemed very suspicious to me; the brain is very capable of detecting that while the bulk of current acceleration is towards the circumference, some acceleration is directed toward’s Earth center, and nausea comes from a detected anomaly between visual perception of “down” and the inner ear’s perception of “down”. In space, all acceleration would be towards the circumference. It seems reasonable to me the brain in the spinning room experiments would be able to detect “I am spinning on Earth”, and experience it differently from “Down is towards the circumference.” Do you know if there’s any other experiments looking into this? I’ll be looking for those articles mentioned in Andrew_W’s link, but I just wanted to know if I was totally off-base on that.
1977 was a long time ago. Early studies were based on short-term effects, but more recent studies suggest that humans can adjust to higher rotation rates over time.
According to Lackner and Dizio (Artificial Gravity as a Countermeasure in Long-Duration Spaceflight — J. Neurosci Res., 2000 Oct. 15), “Rotation rates as high as 7.5-10 rpm are likely feasible.”
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11020210?dopt=Abstract
I can see why limiting “reply” availability past a certain comment nesting depth may be a good idea, but it needs to be a layer or two deeper – I’ve seen it making extended discussion awkward multiple times here recently.
As for practical max spin rates, yes, I can see that the ’77 research may be overly conservative. May be.
The real answer is to get up there and start DOING THE FARGING EXPERIMENTS on long-term human rotation-rate and reduced-G tolerance, of course. We’ve wasted decades on keeping space safe for government bureaucrats already.
As with other forms of motion sickness, there’s a great deal of individual variability, and psychological factors are important, too. (We saw one subject report symptoms *before* the platform started to spin.)
I can’t help but think about all those fairground rides with people doing far higher revs a minute, or people simply traveling in cars on winding roads.
Sometimes we get too precious and exaggerate the harrows of space.
Since we’re getting serious about space colonies, I am going to make a recommendation to my senator and to Administrator Bolden regarding SLS. Since NASA has conclusively proven that assembling things in space over multiple launches is far too risky to even contemplate, we need to make sure that SLS can launch anything imaginable that may come along in its life cycle. I propose that we raise the payload weight to 100,000 tonnes to LEO. The resulting rocket would have a liftoff mass of 7.86E09 pounds, and use 2,000 AOK (ATK plus Orbital) solid rocket boosters every launch. At a very reasonable $1 trillion per launch, this would certainly stimulate the aerospace industry.
Given the tremendous risk and uncertainty surrounding something as untried and unproven as orbital rendezvous and in-orbit assembly, I see no other way to proceed in space.
I said the same thing three years ago; only back then, I proposed a rocket capable of sending 16 million tonnes to escape velocity. That amount of mass is roughly 16 city blocks worth of dirt down to a depth of 20 meters or so. Coincidentally, the US Capitol building and its grounds cover roughly 16 city blocks.
Launch DC into orbit? Definitely! Make sure they’re in session and the executive is with them.
We’re going to have to build up to space communities. It will take generations of designs (technical, economic and social) to get it right. They do have some advantages, but the disadvantages always get glossed over and they are severe. Perhaps they can sell solar power but probably at low profit. It could be enough for a small settlement if they have good recycling. Economic loss may be covered by providing laser propulsion to ships that drop off trade goods. But the community will be a type of collective which is fine for some people. The communities will tend to be static like many on highways across America and else where in the world. You can tell these are static communities by visiting a diner and having all eyes follow you around the room.
Dynamic growth will happen on planets in the next century. Travel between rocks will provide markets for the space communities. They will become the high priced service stations between real colonies. If they are at the right junction they will become larger communities themselves.
I get that you’ve got Mars in your heart. However, writing off everyone else is shortsighted. You think your business case can close now, just think of how much easier it would be to close if you had large orbital waypoints at L1 and orbiting Phobos or anchored to Deimos.
One thing that has been holding back development in space is a mindset that there must be One Mission To Rule Them All. It gets the space enthusiasts fighting along artificial lines i.e. there must be One Destination (Moon, Mars, asteroid, what-have-you), One Ship that does everything (Shuttle, MPCV), and worst of all, One Thing that the mission participants accomplish (which results in the asinine questions “But what would the colonists do?” and “Wouldn’t it be better to just send a robot?”).
For example, I can envision a colony in Earth orbit which functions as a combination of Hedonism II, Las Vegas, Monte Carlo, and Amsterdam. One couldn’t build such a combination city anywhere on Earth, but an orbital Vice City would be extremely lucrative.
Ed,
Yes, it will be as complex and varied as the settlement of the New World, from fur traders up north, to Cod in New England, to ship building and tobacco in the Virginia region to cotton in the South, while the Spanish just moved in a looted the Aztec and Inca empires.
Thomas, you are so blinded by historic trade precedents that you can’t imagine anything else. It may never be economical to trade mass between planets beyond personal possessions. Perhaps ever. That is not the end of economic trade which will be vibrant.
You could well be right that trading mass between planets may never amount to much. But, if, as I expect, the vast majority of future space dwellers are in free-space habs, the prospects for trading in mass seem excellent. Metals to build the habs and water to shield them would likely be the big items of inbound trade. The easiest place to get large quantities of metal is the Asteroid Belt. The easiest place to get large quantities of water is the Enceladus-fed F-ring of Saturn. Outbound in return would be foodstuffs and radioactives to support the energy infrastructure of beyond-Martian settlements where the solar flux is weak.
Dick,
Exactly. It will be expensive to lift mass through an atmosphere like Mars, so whatever goods they export will need to be worth the expensive, just as its expensive to ship to/from Antarctica. That is why the only profitable exports for that region were/are seals and whales from the offshore islands and oceans.
But nearly all of the needs for space settlements, from ores and metals to water and gases are much easier to mine from the asteroids, short-term comets and the moons/rings of the outer planets. Indeed, the resources of the Martian moons will be more accessible than those on the surface.
And again, this is the problem with Mars, the high gravity and atmosphere combined with the lack of any unique physical resources, expect for possible biological ones, make it a poor destination for space settlers. Its key value will be for scientists and researchers who will likely oppose any settlement for fear of contamination, just as they do for Antarctica. Sadly the precedents which may be set from the drive for Mars settlement may have a negative impact on other more economically viable destinations for space settlement.
Dick,
In space colonies must have mass trade. That’s why they will develop slower.
I’m not at all writing others off Ed. I just know that economic expansion will happen at different rates for different places. Mars is unique in our solar system. If we become more realistic about nuclear power moons become viable as well.
Power is the primary requirement which produces every thing else. On mars, solar panels and methane engines for concentration of power get you started before we become adult about using nuclear power.
Mars has the fastest growth potential assuming we don’t starve the colonists of power. They need enough industrial capacity to produce more power for themselves. There is never enough.
Las Vegas in orbit makes sense now before anything else including mars colonization, but it’s not the big future.
I think people need to think in terms of reusable launch vehicles.
If 100 vehicles are build and each can launch twice a week carrying 20 passengers, that’s 200,000 people a year to LEO. We need this thing to house all the tourists and the staff!
Andrew,
Reusables will be important, but more for cargo than for humans. The maximum estimate emigration rate to New England in the 1600’s, at the height of the English Civil War, was only about 2,000 a year. That is a probably a good estimate to use to build traffic models for space settlement.
Cargo is too expensive to move. Reusables will be moving colonists (with privately owned supplies.)
Ken,
Do you have any idea how much spacelift is required to support a space settler in the early stages of economic development? And to build the necessary infrastructure? Human spaceflight, despite the fixation space advocates have on it is going to be only a minor part of the mass uplifted.
Do you have any idea how much spacelift is required to support a space settler in the early stages of economic development?
Yes.
To elaborate. For ‘in space colonies’ it never ends since space is basically empty except for energy.
For my mars plan. Zero after the first landing. This is because support comes in the form of contractual private property which includes a mass surcharge making that property extremely valuable trade property yet is included in the price of every ticket. It’s one of the main advantages of my plan over any other.
Even the first landing only requires about twice the mass of subsequent landings. After the first, most resupply (by personal property) is not in the form of basic life support… That gets supplied abundantly by the colony itself.
The MCT actually follows this basic design. Although capable of taking 100 passengers, earlier missions will have just a few with the rest of the mass being cargo to get a colony started. We needn’t wait for MCT since the Mars One Lander can get us started. Robotic missions prepositioning supplies.
Ken,
You are really determined to repeat the mistakes of Roanoke aren’t you? Well at least there will be videos of the tragic last days when they learn Mars isn’t really as Earth as folks believe it is.
That is the entire problem with Mars, the myopic vision folks have of it from all the movies and novels, that it is simply a desert version of Earth from. Even the very worst desert on Earth, supposedly the Taklamakan, would be a paradise compared to Mars.
Space Habitats are where the future of humanity is, not the bleak barren surface of a planet.
Put those space habitats on the surface of mars and what changes? Lower energy density but infinitely more of everything else. You fix the energy density problem by just having more collectors to meet whatever needs you have.
Infinitely more because a space habitat has to have everything brought to it at a cost that isn’t covered by profits. They can’t sell much energy because it cost more to most customers than other options.
I have shown you how a mars colony is economically viable. You haven’t done that for a space colony. Water mining is probably the closest thing but that requires colony migration to provide a good sized market. Migration drives the economics. Those migrants need someplace they can grow independently from capt. Asimov.
I have shown you how a mars colony is economically viable.
No, you just think you have.
Then refute it Rand. Give me something to work with. Let’s nail down the issues together. Have I not provided arguable points?
None worth my time to argue about. I don’t care about Mars that much.
where the future of humanity is
I’ve been giving you reasons and you respond with assertions.
You avoid dying by sticking to fundamentals. Humans have some basic needs. You make sure those needs are indigenously supplied. You can’t do that with space colonies… ever. You can do that with mars immediately on landing in a very straight forward manner using gaslight era technology (making it extremely robust.) Failure does not result in death because it is systemically fault tolerant. It is designed to fail in a fixable way independent of earth. Are you having comprehension trouble? If not, address this specific issue please.
We will have space colonies BEO but only after we economically develop the places that already have the resources for independent growth.
It is ironic that Roanoke failed precisely because of what you promote… dependence on non local logistics.
I get that you’ve got Mars in your heart.
Ed, I’ve got the universe in my heart.
But the galaxy comes first.
Before the galaxy comes locals stars.
Before local stars comes our own solar system… from inner system to Oort cloud.
In our own solar system we start in LEO but LEO Is not a stopping point. We go right past it to the most earth-like place… mars.
We go to mars first because no place else has the independent growth potential No place else.
Growth is the primary issue. Slow growth limits everything that follows.
Some people realize that space is important.
Even the very worst desert on Earth … would be a paradise compared to Mars.
What a ridiculous statement Thomas. Dying on earth is easy. We don’t do it because of infrastructure. Building that infrastructure on mars doesn’t have to be any harder, once there. The challenge is the reward.