G'day,

I have been reading the Lewis One Space Colony paper and have some
questions that I would like to raise.

Firstly, I'm sceptical about using electric lights for illumination of
the habitat. Theres going to be a awful big electricity bill. How much
electricity would be required?

A better way may be to pipe natural sunlight in with fiber optics.
This is now being done in buildings using hybrid lighting. See

http://www.ornl.gov/sci/hybridlighting/techoverview.htm

You might also be able to concentrate the infra-red and pipe it in as
a general heat source for domestic and industrial use.

What are the habitat modules made off? Could you get rid of the
seperate radiation shield and construct them from re-enforced
mooncrete? I'm sure there was such a proposal for a Stanford Torus
some years ago. Intergral shielding would make the habitat more solid,
sure beats living in an aluminum can.

Is the Lewis One video available for download on the net?

ta

Ralph Buttigieg

--- In spacesettlers, "r_buttigieg" wrote:

> G'day,
>
> I have been reading the Lewis One Space Colony paper and have some
> questions that I would like to raise.
>
> Firstly, I'm sceptical about using electric lights for illumination
> of the habitat. Theres going to be a awful big electricity bill.

I think the assumption here is that electricity will be so obscenely
cheap that this will not be a problem. I don't know just how cheap,
or if it will actually be cheap enough, but that is the idea.

> How much electricity would be required?

Good question. Anybody here have a good answer?

> A better way may be to pipe natural sunlight in with fiber optics.

This is my currently favorite way of doing such things for Stanford
Torus, Bernal Sphere, Crystal Palace, and maybe even O'Neil
Cylinder. Even if windows are used, I see no reason that fiber
optics can't be used for household (and restaurant, department store,
etc.) lighting. After all, it would available (using such basic
things as shutters and filters) in intensities ranging from off to
moonlight-level to full daylight to brighter than the Sahara at noon
on the Summer Solstice, and to have as much IR, UV, or any visible
colors you could ever need or want.

> This is now being done in buildings using hybrid lighting. See
>
> http://www.ornl.gov/sci/hybridlighting/techoverview.htm

I like it. Of course, you could also...

> You might also be able to concentrate the infra-red and pipe it in
> as a general heat source for domestic and industrial use.

My favoritism with fiber optics comes in part from the ability to do
this. Even stove-top cooking could be done this way. BTW, in Israel
there have been experiments in which as much as 8 watts of energy
have been sent down a single fiber. Now, these fibers are only about
0.1 mm thick, so a 1 mm * 1 mm bundle of fibers could carry as much
as 800 watts of energy. A stovetop burner generally uses less than
2,000 watts, even when deep frying or wok use, so 2.5 mm^2 would be
enough to supply even a big stovetop burner with cooking power. My
GF's stove has three burners of about 16,500 mm^2, and one large
burner of about 25,450 mm^2, so if we assume that the smaller burners
have a maximum of 1500 watts, and the big one is a 2000 watt monster,
then 8 bundles (1*1 mm) could provide enough cooking power. In fact,
a 3*3 mm bundle could provide sufficient power, with a burner's worth
to spare. Even if we assume that a "bundle" would have to have
enough coating, insulation, etc. that its diameter is doubled, I
don't imagine that it would take more than one or two 1 cm "heat
lines" (bundles of bundles) running into a house in order to meet all
heating needs, including cooking, heating bath water, and so on.
Make it three heat lines if the habitat has a wintry climate (the
inhabitants love to ski, or insist on a White Christmas).

http://www.photonics.com/todaysheadlines/XQ/ASP/url.lookup/id.4201/QX/
today.htm

> What are the habitat modules made off? Could you get rid of the
> seperate radiation shield and construct them from re-enforced
> mooncrete? I'm sure there was such a proposal for a Stanford Torus

The extra mass to be rotated would require a much stronger shell.
Not that it couldn't be done, I just wonder if it would be worth it,
just to be able to say "our shell is all one piece."

> some years ago. Intergral shielding would make the habitat more
> solid, sure beats living in an aluminum can.

As Mike Combs has pointed out, it's more like living in a battleship
hull, surrounded by a six-and-a-half foot thick concrete wall.

> Is the Lewis One video available for download on the net?

I'd like to know that myself.

> ta
>
> Ralph Buttigieg

Xenophile (who wants to build the hull from a composite of glass
fibers embedded in aluminum, in which case we'd be making a lot of
glass fiber anyway)

Saved your lighting suggestion/link, Ralph. Thanks.

I hope to use asteroidal material for the hull and shielding of our
SpaceCar which is a multi-purpose interconnectable module 27 meters
long and 6.5 meters in diameter. We're planning a 2cm thick steel
hull. Inside is a half meter allowance for shielding/pipes, etc
leaving a space about 5.5 in diameter. Shielding would be primarily
applied to the inside.

Just three of these modules connected end-to-end should be sufficient
to begin the primal/initial artificial gravity spin without making you
throw up (lol). The first long-term mining platforms would probably
be mostly of this nature. Then, more modules can be added over time.

On applying shielding to the outside, I like toying with the idea of
using Gold.

--- In spacesettlers@yahoogroups.com, "r_buttigieg" wrote:

> From: Xenophile
> > You might also be able to concentrate the infra-red and pipe it in
> > as a general heat source for domestic and industrial use.
>
> Now, these fibers are only about
> 0.1 mm thick, so a 1 mm * 1 mm bundle of fibers could carry as much
> as 800 watts of energy.

One potential problem with this would be with cut cables. The 3x3mm could
carry 7.2kW and would be ~3000x more powerful than sunlight. That could give
workmen some nasty burns, or start fires, and it wouldn't cut it self off
like electricity does. You also get extra expense if you're laying one
utility network for heat, light, and electricity when electricity can do the
job of all three.

John

On 8/4/05, ANTIcarrot. wrote:
>
> One potential problem with this would be with cut cables. The 3x3mm could
> carry 7.2kW and would be ~3000x more powerful than sunlight. That could
> give workmen some nasty burns, or start fires, and it wouldn't cut it self
> off like electricity does.

Um. I've worked with very thin fiber optic cables in the 5-20 MILLIWATT
range, and these can cause permanent retinal (eye) damage at a range of a
foot. It was actually quite safe- you just hold it at arms length.
Diffraction from the tiny fiber means it disperses quickly with distance.

But a 3x3mm cable carrying 7.2kW? You could melt holes in things with that.
Like your eyes. At a large distance, just by looking at it, doesn't even
have to be pointing at you.

John
>

--
-Ian Woollard

Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication - Leonardo
"Communism" is deprecated. Please use "Terrorism"

From: spacesettlers@yahoogroups.com
[mailto:spacesettlers@yahoogroups.com] On Behalf Of ANTIcarrot.

> That could give workmen some nasty burns, or start fires,
> and it wouldn't cut it self off like electricity does.
> You also get extra expense if you're laying one utility
> network for heat, light, and electricity when electricity
> can do the job of all three.

Good points.

Ralph Nansen wrote a very good book about Solar Power Satellites (linked
below). But in one section, he extolled the virtues of electricity in
general. And when you actually pause to reflect on it, it seems
nearly-magical that there would turn out to be a single source of power
easily distributable with insulated conductors to our homes and
factories, and once there can be converted to light, heat, rotary
motion, and used for entertainment, data processing, etc. Even though
O'Neill himself wrote about using direct solar power for stove burners,
I predict that space settlers will continue to use electricity as the
do-all energy solution the same way we do.

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0964702118/qid=1123168982/
sr=8-1/ref=sr_8_xs_ap_i1_xgl14/002-7216179-7132060?v=glance&s=books&n=50
7846

Regards,

Mike Combs

--- In spacesettlers, "ANTIcarrot." wrote:

> One potential problem with this would be with cut cables. The 3x3mm
> could carry 7.2kW and would be ~3000x more powerful than sunlight.
> That could give workmen some nasty burns, or start fires, and it
> wouldn't cut it self off like electricity does.

When the cables have to be worked on, a shade would cover the sunward
end. If a break or some such occured along the route, a shade would
cover the sunward end, but there would have to be a way of knowing
that such a break had ocurred, other than "Hey! We got a fire here!!"

> You also get extra expense if you're laying one utility network for
> heat, light, and electricity when electricity can do the job of all
> three.

I really don't have an answer for that, other than to say that you
are right. This piping sunlight around business wouldn't be done
unless it were fairly cheap, and there was a good reason, and I'm not
sure the coolness factor would be enough. Of course, if piping
sunlight is how the habitat is lit up in general, then we have a lot
of fibers being produced, and the price drops. Drops enough? I
honestly don't know.

On Jul 29, 2005, at 6:31 PM, r_buttigieg wrote:

> G'day,
>
> I have been reading the Lewis One Space Colony paper and have some
> questions that I would like to raise.
>
> Firstly, I'm sceptical about using electric lights for illumination of
> the habitat. Theres going to be a awful big electricity bill. How much
> electricity would be required?

About 60 kw/person. 50 for closed agriculture and 10 for other
purposes. 10 is the US average, but that includes industrial
processes. The Lewis One solar array isn't big enough. A newer
design, Kalpana One, uses SPS to generate the power and beams it to the
colony.

>
> A better way may be to pipe natural sunlight in with fiber optics.
> This is now being done in buildings using hybrid lighting. See
>
> http://www.ornl.gov/sci/hybridlighting/techoverview.htm

Wait for the Kalpana One papers. There is a unique solution.
>
> What are the habitat modules made off? Could you get rid of the
> seperate radiation shield and construct them from re-enforced
> mooncrete? I'm sure there was such a proposal for a Stanford Torus
> some years ago. Intergral shielding would make the habitat more solid,
> sure beats living in an aluminum can.

Kalpana One goes to internal shielding, but not with lunarcrete.
Rather, it keeps the reinforced metal hull and puts in a couple of
meters asteroid or lunar regolith to double as soil and shielding.
>
> Is the Lewis One video available for download on the net?

No. Lewis One was done pre-net. The software to generate the video
would be difficult to resurrect. To tell the truth, the video wasn't
all that good, particularly by today's standards.

>
> ta
>
> Ralph Buttigieg
>

Space tourism could be our ticket to the stars. Save your pennies,
suborbital flights for about $200,000 may start in a few years. See
www.virgingalactic.com for details.

Al Globus
Evolvable Systems Group (http://ic.arc.nasa.gov/projects/esg)
CSC at NASA Ames Research Center
http://www.nas.nasa.gov/~globus/home.html

Views expressed in this email are only my opinions and are not the
position of any organization I'm familiar with.

On Jul 29, 2005, at 9:45 PM, Xenophile wrote:

> --- In spacesettlers, "r_buttigieg" wrote:
>
>> G'day,
>>
>> I have been reading the Lewis One Space Colony paper and have some
>> questions that I would like to raise.
>>
>> Firstly, I'm sceptical about using electric lights for illumination
>> of the habitat. Theres going to be a awful big electricity bill.

Lighting for people to see is trivial compared to the light necessary
for closed system agriculture. That runs out at about 50 kw continuous
per person. All other purposes may be around 10 kw per person,
although that's a very soft estimate.

As I've said before, the Lewis One solar arrays are much too small.
Our new design puts power generation on separate solar power satellites
and beams the power to the colony (there are body mounted radiators for
emergency power).

BTW: in case you don't recognize the name, I wrote the Lewis One paper.

>
> I think the assumption here is that electricity will be so obscenely
> cheap that this will not be a problem. I don't know just how cheap,
> or if it will actually be cheap enough, but that is the idea.
>
>> How much electricity would be required?
>
> Good question. Anybody here have a good answer?
>
>> A better way may be to pipe natural sunlight in with fiber optics.
>
> This is my currently favorite way of doing such things for Stanford
> Torus, Bernal Sphere, Crystal Palace, and maybe even O'Neil
> Cylinder. Even if windows are used, I see no reason that fiber
> optics can't be used for household (and restaurant, department store,
> etc.) lighting. After all, it would available (using such basic
> things as shutters and filters) in intensities ranging from off to
> moonlight-level to full daylight to brighter than the Sahara at noon
> on the Summer Solstice, and to have as much IR, UV, or any visible
> colors you could ever need or want.
>
>> This is now being done in buildings using hybrid lighting. See
>>
>> http://www.ornl.gov/sci/hybridlighting/techoverview.htm
>
> I like it. Of course, you could also...
>
>> You might also be able to concentrate the infra-red and pipe it in
>> as a general heat source for domestic and industrial use.
>
> My favoritism with fiber optics comes in part from the ability to do
> this. Even stove-top cooking could be done this way. BTW, in Israel
> there have been experiments in which as much as 8 watts of energy
> have been sent down a single fiber. Now, these fibers are only about
> 0.1 mm thick, so a 1 mm * 1 mm bundle of fibers could carry as much
> as 800 watts of energy. A stovetop burner generally uses less than
> 2,000 watts, even when deep frying or wok use, so 2.5 mm^2 would be
> enough to supply even a big stovetop burner with cooking power. My
> GF's stove has three burners of about 16,500 mm^2, and one large
> burner of about 25,450 mm^2, so if we assume that the smaller burners
> have a maximum of 1500 watts, and the big one is a 2000 watt monster,
> then 8 bundles (1*1 mm) could provide enough cooking power. In fact,
> a 3*3 mm bundle could provide sufficient power, with a burner's worth
> to spare. Even if we assume that a "bundle" would have to have
> enough coating, insulation, etc. that its diameter is doubled, I
> don't imagine that it would take more than one or two 1 cm "heat
> lines" (bundles of bundles) running into a house in order to meet all
> heating needs, including cooking, heating bath water, and so on.
> Make it three heat lines if the habitat has a wintry climate (the
> inhabitants love to ski, or insist on a White Christmas).
>
> http://www.photonics.com/todaysheadlines/XQ/ASP/url.lookup/id.4201/QX/
> today.htm
>
>> What are the habitat modules made off? Could you get rid of the
>> seperate radiation shield and construct them from re-enforced
>> mooncrete? I'm sure there was such a proposal for a Stanford Torus
>
> The extra mass to be rotated would require a much stronger shell.
> Not that it couldn't be done, I just wonder if it would be worth it,
> just to be able to say "our shell is all one piece."
>
>> some years ago. Intergral shielding would make the habitat more
>> solid, sure beats living in an aluminum can.
>
> As Mike Combs has pointed out, it's more like living in a battleship
> hull, surrounded by a six-and-a-half foot thick concrete wall.
>
>> Is the Lewis One video available for download on the net?
>
> I'd like to know that myself.
>
>> ta
>>
>> Ralph Buttigieg
>
> Xenophile (who wants to build the hull from a composite of glass
> fibers embedded in aluminum, in which case we'd be making a lot of
> glass fiber anyway)
>
The International Space Station's (ISS) most important legacy may be
jump-starting space tourism. Consider: the first space tourist, Dennis
Tito, was supposed to go to the Soviet era Mir space station. Under
pressure from NASA, Russia de-orbited the Mir which resulted in Mr.
Tito going to the ISS instead. Now the Mir was a terrific space
station, but by the time of Tito's trip it was also old, smelly,
crowded and probably not all that nice. The ISS was brand new, shiny,
much more roomy, etc. Mr. Tito came back to Earth with glowing accounts
of how great space is. Would his experience have been as good on Mir?

Al Globus
Evolvable Systems Group (http://ic.arc.nasa.gov/projects/esg)
CSC at NASA Ames Research Center
http://www.nas.nasa.gov/~globus/home.html

Views expressed in this email are only my opinions and are not the
position of any organization I'm familiar with.