Ed Wright points out some cut-rate science fiction. I haven’t looked at it, so can’t vouch, but you might want to check it out.
19 thoughts on “A New Space Video Series”
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Ed Wright points out some cut-rate science fiction. I haven’t looked at it, so can’t vouch, but you might want to check it out.
Comments are closed.
The episode at the link starts with the standard “mankind has used up all the Earth’s resources” trope that was tired (and disproven) back in the 70’s (the classic Simon-Erlich wager). I stopped listening at that point. If they’ve got interstellar travel, even sub-light, then resources are NOT going to be a problem.
Pretty much that, Maltusian nonsense + Star Trek Commie fantasie with CGI.
I find space science of the kind of Escape from Terra more interesting than this tired garbage.
http://www.bigheadpress.com/eft?page=1
And they speculate that maybe aliens showed up and gave the humans the equivalent of small pox blankets to wipe us out, as if Indians really did catch small pox from infected blankets, which can’t actually happen.
“The episode at the link starts with the standard “mankind has used up all the Earth’s resources” trope that was tired…”
Yup.
And they have L-5 colony and launching to go to the stars from the Earth surface.
Why?
If you had L-5 colony, the who of who going to nearest star system is Martians, Lunatics, Mercuians, or the L-5ers. Earth isn’t going to be a sponsor- and certainly not the launch site.
One might think the Martians wouldn’t be contention, since perhaps populated by people who want to “self-sufficent” and isolated from Earth. But Mars would also be the natural hub of asteroid miners [Mars being close to the Main belt].
Anyhow, if it’s Starship [rather a modification of dwarf planet or asteroid] I would think people living on Mercury would most likely to make and launch a starship.
Jerry Pournelle wrote an essay a long time back called “Those Pesky Belters and Their Torch Ships”, where he uses actual orbital mechanics to show that proximity isn’t necessarily an advantage for asteroid mining. With a high thrust high Isp drive it doesn’t really matter where in the inner system your base is, and it may as well be where your customer base is. If you don’t have a high thrust high Isp drive then you probably don’t have human miners; even if you did, there’s not a lot of compelling reasons to base them on Mars.
With a high thrust high Isp drive it doesn’t really matter where in the inner system your base is, and it may as well be where your customer base is.
But that’s the rub, isn’t it. Every so often, I’ve come across blog posts saying, “You know, if we just built a rocket that accelerated at 1G, we could go to Mars in a matter of days.” Yes, that’s true. And if frogs had wings, they wouldn’t bump their butts when they hopped.
Right now, we have high thrust systems that are chemical rockets. The problem is their low Isp. The biggest ones burn through all their propellant in a matter of minutes. The only operational high Isp systems we have (ion and Hall Effect thrusters and the like) have very low thrust. VASIMR promises higher thrust than current electric engine technologies with higher Isp than chemical rockets. It sounds like a big step in the right direction but we aren’t there yet. Even VASIMR won’t have the thrust to accelerate a manned vehicle at anything remotely approaching 1G. More likely, we’re talking accelerations in the range of .001 to maybe .01 G. That’s still a big improvement over what we have today, though.
I think Mars could be good place in the solar system to grow food [and trees].
Exporting food from earth, requires you to get out of rather large gravity well.
Plants grow best in more sunlight, but Mars provide enough sunlight. Mars has a lot land area and enough water [if water is conserved] for farming.
I don’t think terraforming mars makes economic sense, or at least terraforming which makes Mars similar to Earth- doubling or tripling the atmosphere might worth the effort- but that’s not earthlike- one still can not breath without a pressure suit. So directing a few space rocks at mars before there is many people living there, seems possible.
So, farming would need to be done in greenhouses, and also therefore conserving water would be consistent with greenhouse agriculture.
Mars has trillions of tonnes of water, but it’s very dry planet compared to Earth and same type of farming as done on earth would use far too much water. But Mars could afford export the moisture content of food if say totaling below say, a billion tonnes per year.
Oh, it’s also possible that mining space rocks, could achieved dropping them on Mars. Small rocks say less than 50 meters in diameter. In that case, maybe you would eventually terraform Mars [if these rocks have a significant amount volatiles]. Lunatics may not want rocks impacting their surface because it pollutes their vacuum. And I doubt earthlings would want to do this:)
But is growing stuff on Mars any cheaper than growing it in a midget L-5? You have to lift it out of a martian gravity well, launch into some sort of transfer ellipse, and yank it out of the ellipse at the other end. If you’re talking Hohmann transfer ellipses, it’s 1.6 years from Mars to Ceres, repeating every 3.2 years (new shipment of food every 3+ years). Maybe it’s cheaper to grab the water from a comet and just grow your trees at your mining site.
“But is growing stuff on Mars any cheaper than growing it in a midget L-5? You have to lift it out of a martian gravity well, launch into some sort of transfer ellipse, and yank it out of the ellipse at the other end. If you’re talking Hohmann transfer ellipses, it’s 1.6 years from Mars to Ceres, repeating every 3.2 years (new shipment of food every 3+ years). Maybe it’s cheaper to grab the water from a comet and just grow your trees at your mining site.”
Mars has a much land area as the Earth has land area: 145 million square km. Or about 35.8 billion acres. Or if land on Mars sells on average for $100 per acre that totals 3.5 trillion dollars.
I sort of think of L-5 being similar to office space, let’s say 1/10th price of office space on earth, and therefore more 1000 times more per acre. Office space normally rented sold per sq foot- and 43,560 square feet in a acre. Say, to buy it’s $100 per square foot so 1/10th is $10 per square foot. Of course, office space is improved land and real estate on Mars- isn’t.
No power, water, roads, etc, etc. Whereas a space structure has to be “improved land”, it *should* cost more than not improved land- particularly when there is no shortage of Mars land.
Or when Mars land [or cheap farmland on earth] is priced at $100 per acre, and apartments or stores which are more than 1000 times this amount per square foot- you will have far more demand for something 1000 times more expensive per sq foot [10 per square is very cheap urban prices- with nice parks, parking, hospitals, restaurants, available work, etc, etc.]
Of course with Mars land one needs to improve in order it to farm it- if this cost around say $1000 per acre, then you will have reasonably cheap farmland, if instead it’s $10,000 per acre that pricey for farmland compared to Earth. Or since there is 43,560 square feet in a acre, to keep below 10,000 per acre your material cost will need to around 10 cent or less per square foot [need cheap glass/plastic]. Therefore plants requiring the least air pressure and tend to grow well in cooler climate would be cheaper to grow.
As far lifting out gravity well. We are assuming there is high volume- some number well over 10,000 tons per year or least 10 times more space travel than currently is on earth.
On Earth in this higher volume future, launch would be less than $100 per lb and possible it’s $10 or less [as cheap or cheaper than current comparable airtravel- getting to orbit similar to flying once around the world].
And for Mars to cheaper, it needs to in range of $1 or per lb.
To look merely as cost of energy [to get some clue].
Mars escape velocity is 5.03 km/sec in joules per kg, it’s kg halved times velocity [meters] squared.
So 12.6 million joules or watts seconds. Or 3.5 kilowatt hours.
A gallon of gasoline is 36 kilowatt hours. In range of 35 cents in electrical power per kg.
Which means unless energy very cheap, it’s not going to get much below $1 per lb or much below $2000 per ton. In regards freight shipping on earth that pretty expensive.
With doing same thing thing with earth, it’s 16.8 kilowatts [in terms of just energy not huge difference].
So, with a cannon [hydrogen gas] one could get 6 km/sec velocity:
http://quicklaunchinc.com/hydrogen-gun-technology/
The above ref is for earth- and also use rocket engines gain the additional velocity needed to attain orbit.
With Mars you are not limited as much by a thick atmosphere as on earth- so with cannon on Mars you probably could get a higher velocity than 6 km/sec and/or of course one needs less than 6 km/sec to escape Mars.
And probably use larger barrel and less gee loading [don’t squash the tomatoes] by using longer barrel.
So with cannon one deliver to low orbit [3.4 km/sec], and/or a mars L-point [about 5 km/sec, or place like Ceres [over 5 km/sec].
Now you say it’s 1.6 year to Ceres with Hohmann transfer.
Ok, sounds about right, but that on opposite side of the sun in the orbital trajectory, and with that trajectory you bit over 5 km/sec delta-v cost from Mars. And It’s similar to saying Mars is 9 months from earth- and we sending spacecraft there in about 7 month- one doesn’t do a “perfect” Hohmann transfer- one adds a patched conic:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patched_Conic_Approximation
Which mean one has some kind propulsion- but just relying direct shot from such distances without adjustment- not likely anyhow. But if a large enough payload [say ton or more- such guidance doesn’t need to add much to per lb costs- and assume it’s reused and some means to “catch it” at Ceres].
One can also not do hohmann transfer and depending where Ceres are in relation to each other and if adding considerable velocity it could be couple months instead of a more than a year.
But not talking couple weeks, so it is certainly not fast delivery. But faster than from earth- though because mars would be different distances depending the “time of year” one could at particular times could get faster shipment from earth.
But other than food delivery shot from a cannon and delivered to Ceres every year or so, the asteroid miner could also come to Mars. They could just come to Mars orbit and have a marketplace for whatever they doing with the asteroids, and buy much fresher food- delivered 20 minutes ago, freshly picked from a farm.
And they might want to do other things besides buying food and delivering whatever they selling. Get a tattoo, buy goldfish from Earth, go skiing on Mars, visit tourist locations, and whatever Martians and Rock miners like to do.
It all boils down to what assumptions you’re making, doesn’t it?
I’m not convinced that building farms on Mars is any cheaper than building them in space–you need atmospheric pressure, water, radiation shielding, UV shielding, soil. On Mars you have some atmospheric resources–you can extract carbon and nitrogen and oxygen from the atmosphere to replenish any which is lost from your habitat, but you could get most of those from a nice asteroid as well. You (well, your plants) have to deal with a lower gravity and less sunlight. In an artificial habitat you can provide whatever environment your plants do best at.
You could pretend that you have essentially fuel-less drive systems–rotating tethers or EM cannons or the like, in which case your main issue is travel time. It’d be interesting to work out just what limits you’d have to set to make a Mars base more economical than an Earth base.
“It all boils down to what assumptions you’re making, doesn’t it?”
Mars needs to be explored before it’s possible to have any significant degree of certainty.
We don’t even have Mars sample return. It’s possible that it’s somehow toxic to plant life- though It doesn’t seem at all likely. But I would want a certain level of quarantine, for any planet which is considered possible to have alien life [and maybe something killed it or is killing it- other than the more obvious factors:) ]
In terms near term commercial value, the Moon seems the best first choice. But the Moon also needs to be first explored- in order to reduce uncertainty.
But if commercial mining lunar water becomes viable, a key aspect of this is that if rocket fuel is made on the Moon, make it easier to get to the Moon, and easier to get every where else in the solar system.
I’m just not convinced that there’s anything on Mars worth exploiting–it depends on where the minerals are. Maybe Phobos and Deimos are worth mining, maybe Mars has been pummeled with enough asteroids to provide enough mineral concentrations to make settling it worthwhile. It’s certainly the easiest planet to inhabit outside of earth, but maybe it’s easier to build an orbiting habitat than a Mars colony. We just don’t know enough–maybe .38 g isn’t good enough and people die too soon or don’t conceive or don’t grow properly, and a viable colony would need a honking big centrifuge.
Near term, yeah, the moon seems pretty certain to be the first choice. Some of the near earth asteroids are certainly worth exploring–maybe they have materials that are easier to access than the moon’s.
Most likely routine access to the inner system is decades off, maybe a century off. Too bad; there’s no insurmountable technological barrier, just politics. Economics might rear its head later–maybe there’s nothing worth exploiting, but we won’t know that until we get out and look. A bit more development of Dumbo or Nerva or Timberwind might have yielded a high thrust rocket with Isps in the 1-2k range, which might not allow vacations on Mars, but it would make getting there a lot easier than it is now.
One of the best science fiction TV shows ever began with the exact same premise. I’m speaking of “Firefly.” In that show, I think it was just the premise to justify why humans were living on so many not-very-nice terraformed worlds. If that opening premise is the worst of the program’s sins, then it might possibly turn out ok. Or not.
Of course, once you get off the Earth and into the solar system, there are more resources than we can imagine using. Buckminster Fuller used to talk about “Spaceship Earth” but I always found that to limited. “Spaceship Solar System” seems a more apt metaphor.
This is more Nietzsche than I’d like but hopefully it does more good than harm.
Safari can’t translate. Then again if it’s warmed over Malthusian Star Trek premises, I’ll pass. Too bad.
I’m surprised they didn’t go with a Vernor Vinge singularity explanation. That’s the first thing I thought of when I read the premise.
That’s still on the table.
You don’t have to agree with a character (even the narrator) to enjoy a story.
Malthusian doomsaying has been popular in the space community for decades. Remember how Moonies justified the Bush Vision? “We have an environmental crisis (global warming) and a resource crisis (peak oil). The only hope is electric cars running on fuel cells. We can’t build fuel cells because we’re running out of platinum (another resource crisis) and no one can ever invent a substitute (an intellectual resource crisis). So, NASA needs to do Apollo II, which will quickly lead to lunar settlement and full-scale platinum mining.”
It’s not hard to imagine a starship project being justified by similar arguments.
It wasn’t clear to me that the L5 colony was built before the starship launched. Perhaps it was constructed during the 200+ years that the ship was away.