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Colonizing any other planets is a ways off. First we need reliable space vehicles capable of making round trips a d of sufficient size to haul lots of equipment and supplies. Liquid fuel rockets won't cut it. We also need ships that can attain much higher speeds to make space travel practical...
More than fifty years ago, the ideal fuel for deep space was postulated to be hydrogen with fluorine as an oxidizer. The resulting HF gas would cause no problems in space. It would be easy enough to transport materials to build nuclear power plants. This would allow extraction of oxygen as well as water and other desirable elements and compounds from the rock. The obvious strategy is to make a space colony self-sufficient to eliminate the need for resupply from Earth. This is possible with the initial building of a large enough infrastructure. Self-sufficiency is practical in a situation of this sort. It's nothing like the nonsense of the self-sufficient family that is continually spewed here. Large facilities could produce all of the crops found on Earth. It would even be possible to produce artificial meat that would be chemically identical to the natural product. Virtually all agriculture could be underground.
The problem that I do see is an overweening government because of the requisite infrastructure and because there will be no place to go for people who are dissatisfied with it.
Years ago, I read a fascinating book on liquid rocket fuel. It's still in my library.
As long as governments control space exploration, very little in the way of common sense will prevail. Invariably it will be constrained by partisan politics and red tape.
Look at the progress of the high speed rail program enacted for California. . . it keeps getting pushed back decades.
Governments are adequate for jobs like securing endowed rights. Beyond that, they are not competent, nor efficient.
IMHO, the optimal path to space colonization is to utilize autonomous robotic factories launched to rendezvous with near-Earth asteroids, comets, etc, and incrementally build the tools, that build the bigger tools, that mine, refine, and build the necessary materials for space colonization : storage tanks, hulls, vessels, etc.
Once constructed, use the Interplanetary Transport Network to "surf gravity" and bring the empties to near Earth (L4, or L5), for commissioning as self sufficient autonomous habitats and vivariums. Once commissioned, use the ITN to insert into orbit around the sun, cycling between planets, around planets, moons, etc.
In that way, space travel is simple as 'hitching a ride' on colonies, whose orbits intersect your destination. It's slow, but safe.
The key advantage of space settlements is the ability to build new land, rather than take it from someone else. This allows a huge expansion of humanity without war or destruction of Earth's biosphere. The asteroids alone provide enough material to make new orbital land hundreds of times greater than the surface of the Earth, divided into millions of colonies. This land can easily support trillions of people.
As long as governments control space exploration, very little in the way of common sense will prevail. Invariably it will be constrained by partisan politics and red tape.
Look at the progress of the high speed rail program enacted for California. . . it keeps getting pushed back decades.
It's an interesting comment you wrote, but I'm not sure how much/little the government is going to be involved. They will have to regulate, but once the ship lifts off, there's an argument that the bird is in international territory and can do whatever it wishes.
High altitude jets or low orbit spacecraft have commercial reasons for existing. If you think about how fast something can orbit around the planet, it may soon become faster to make many flights via space. I don't think the governments will take us to Mars (or in the suborbitals) but commerce.
It's an interesting comment you wrote, but I'm not sure how much/little the government is going to be involved. They will have to regulate, but once the ship lifts off, there's an argument that the bird is in international territory and can do whatever it wishes.
Why do you think government must regulate?
Why should free people need government permission?
And you're correct in pointing out that once colonies are outside the territorial and terrestrial boundaries of a nation, there is no authority to govern. Ergo, why bother spending public funds on it?
Quote:
Originally Posted by artillery77
High altitude jets or low orbit spacecraft have commercial reasons for existing. If you think about how fast something can orbit around the planet, it may soon become faster to make many flights via space. I don't think the governments will take us to Mars (or in the suborbitals) but commerce.
I don't think that any society based on money madness and plagued by usurers or constrained by commerce will achieve the potential for space colonization.
An aspect of lucre lunacy is the common practice of evaluating everything in relation to the current medium of exchange. To illustrate, one can find estimates of value of asteroids reaching into the trillions and quadrillions of “dollar bills.†In addition, there are sober estimates of the “net worth†of the USA exceeding 90 trillion “dollar bills.â€
What’s wrong with using current money as a measurement of worth?
The tokens do not exist.
If we were dealing strictly in dollars (gold coin), pursuant to the Coinage Act of 1792, the 147.4 million ounces in Ft. Knox depository, if coined, would amount to 2,948,000,000 dollars. (Almost 3 billion dollars) Or if we somehow could coin all the gold bullion (est. at 5.6 billion ounces), it would compute to 112 billion dollars.
If we were dealing in “dollar bills†(notes), which are debt, the sum cannot exceed the current national debt (in excess of 19 trillions, July 2017). (See: Title 12 USC sec. 411)
Q: How much U.S. currency is in circulation?
A: There was approximately $1.54 trillion in circulation as of April 5, 2017, of which $1.49 trillion was in Federal Reserve notes.
U.S. Population (2017) : 326,474,013
>>> $4,563 per capita <<<
How can a sane person make a measurement with a unit that does not exist? It’s like climbing a stepladder to heaven.
You cannot go into a local bank and say, “Mr. Banker, I wish to borrow 30 trillions to use in harvesting asteroids worth 300 trillions, and will gladly pay 19% interest rate to do so!â€
The. Money. Tokens. Do. Not. Exist.
And for CONgress to create 30 trillion more "dollar bills" would require deficit spending on the order of 30 trillion in order to authorize the 30 trillion for the asteroid miners to borrow. . . Let's not even think of how they're going to sell 300 trillion dollar bills worth of minerals with a subset of dollar bills.
So when I say MONEY MADNESS I am not speaking hypothetically or rhetorically. People are barking mad when it comes to money.
Location: MA/ME (the way life should not be / the way it should be)
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On a serious note, i doubt any space colony could ever make it to 100% self sufficency, even with trillions of dollars and collaboration from all the nations on earth. You could set up the mecanics to make it self sufficent for the foreseeable future, but you still need to deal with the changes in the atmosphere (no oxygen), lack of water, lack of food. So if the world stops sending new supplies, and your magical O2 creator breaks down, and you have no spares, what do you do? How do you create water for your crops/animals when the water synthesizer breaks down?
Im going to say humanity has a better chance of surviving on earth if all the icecaps instantly melt, blight kills all the worlds wheat fields, and the yellowstone caldera blows in the same year, then making a mars colony within the next 500 years that is 100% self sufficent when cut completely off from earth.
On a serious note, i doubt any space colony could ever make it to 100% self sufficency.
If you're referring to a colony located down a gravity well, I concur. Costs too much to climb up and down.
But an orbital habitat and vivarium, constructed via robotic factories in space, powered by that nearby fusion reactor 24/7, utilizing the abundance of raw materials (all known elements, including hydrocarbons), would be more than autonomous and self sufficient - it would be prosperous.
To put it in perspective
. . .
. . .
An “Island Three” O’Neill colony might consist of (2) 5 mile diameter by 20 mile long cylinders.
Each cylinder could hold 1320 “floors” of concentric cylinders, with a total surface area of 207502.19 square miles.
Combining both cylinders, the net result is 415,004.38 square miles.
(For comparison, the surface area of California is 163,696 sq mi)
If the population density was 100/ sq.mi.(6.4 acres per person), a space colony could contain 41,500,438 passengers.
McKendree Space Colony (290 mi x 2900 mi)
5,284,158.84 sq. mi. (outer most shell)
76560 decks (10 ft)
2 x 10,127,094,564.45 sq.mi.
= 20,254,189,128.9 sq.mi.
Capacity :1,012,709,456,445 (@50 per sq.mi.)
1.01 trillion people
. . .
Even if we don't engineer the biggest possible colonies, we can still exceed the population growth rate of humans.
EARTH is 70.8% water, 29.2% land
Surface area of Earth 510,072,000 km2 (196,940,000 sq mi)
Usable surface area = 148,941,024 km2 (57,506,480 sq mi)
. . .
● 139 Standard colonies would have the equivalent of the earth’s land surface.
● 475 Standard colonies would have the equivalent of the earth’s total surface.
. . .
Based on a geometric progression construction cycle, where each completed colony builds another, the number of colonies can rapidly grow, providing far more habitat than colonizing any other moon or planet, in this solar system. (Assume 25 year construction cycle)
Cycle. .Colonies. .Year.
0 . . . . 0. . . . . . .2100 <Start
1 . . . . 1 . . . . . . 2125
2 . . . . 3 . . . . . . 2150
3 . . . . 7 . . . . . . 2175
4 . . . .15 . . . . . .2200
5 . . . .31 . . . . . .2225
6 . . . .63 . . . . . .2250
7 . . . .127. . . . . 2275
8 . . . .255 . . . . .2300 <More than Earth’s land surface
9 . . . .511. . . . . 2325 <More than Earth’s total surface
10 . .1,023 . . . . 2350 <More than two Earths
15 . 32,767 . . . .2475 <More than 68 Earths
20 .1,048,575 . .2600 <More than 2,207 Earths
Many countries and private groups could easily destroy a "space habitat." It's the equivalent of a floating country at best and a sailboat at worst.
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