--- In spacesettlers@yahoogroups.com, sraj wrote:
>
> The idea presented by Al Globus to begin space colonisation by putting habs
> in orbit around Earth looks very sound.
>
> One damper to the idea of having thousands (some say millions) of space
> habs orbiting the sun is the issue of conservation of mass; any thruster
> activity will lead to permanent loss of usable mass in the solar system.
> This loss is inevitable also for systems in orbit around the Moon and Mars.
> Hopefully, for systems orbiting Earth it may be possible to use Earth's
> gravity to recover the mass!? To make this possible we can also limit
> ourselves to Hydrogen-Oxygen thrusters and put a limit on the exhaust
> velocities.
>
> The big barrier to putting habs in orbit around the Earth is the issue of
> cost, which in an earlier discussions, we have put at around 3 trillion $
> for even a modest space hab.
>
> How do we reduce this cost? A possible way to do this is to get accountants
> of our backs.
>
> RENEWABLE ENERGY FOR COLONISATION OF SPACE:
>
> 1. Allot 50,000 sq Km of land in the Sahara Desert to a planetary country
> to be called SPACE COLONY ONE.
> 2. Populate this country with 200,000 inhabitants (who are judiciously
> selected).
> 3. Give them seed money of 200 billion $
> 4. They have to meet all their basic needs from the land under their
> possession (After an initial set up period of 10 years, they will be
> forbidden to trade with any country for any thing other than raw materials).
> 5. Their job, to manufacture space colonies and suitable launch systems.
> 6. They are forbidden to use any form of energy other than solar energy for
> their operations. All rocket systems must use only Oxygen and Hydrogen.
>
> Selvaraj

The conservation of mass is a non issue compared to the mass of the solar system. Also remove all the strings you've put on this experiment. Lastly the way to get more people into space is to get more people into space. Currently governments and a young tourism industry is all that exists to get humans into space. It is very unlikely that governments are going to agree to put significantly more resources into putting humans into space. But with a little push by the government, tourism could be expanded quite alot with almost all of it being private money.

There are thousands of interested wealthy people who have 25 million to spend on a 2 to 4 week stay on the ISS. NASA makes a deal with Bigelow for one of Bigelow's inflatable living modules and a deal with SpaceX to transport tourists to ISS on a monthly basis. Later adding another Biegelow module for expanded space. This would allow for a much larger number of people to live and stay on ISS. Currently ISS needs a large percentage of astronaut time just to maintain the stations support systems. With more people on ISS more manpower can go to science, also Bigelow can have a private staff member on board to help maintain systems as well. Each new inflatable module would add about 3 to 6 people to the current 6 person capacity of the ISS.

As the price of launches drops due to volume. Which a monthly tourist launch to ISS would do, other commercial ventures become more feasible. I see no reason that this slow expansion of ISS not be allowed to continue. The government gets cheap flights and help maintaining the station, the public gets more access to space, humanity slowly increases our footprint in space.

Eventually SPSS, asteroid utilization, a low gravity rotating area of ISS, a much larger new space habitat design can be considered. But until we get out of this very low activity, low launch rate, funk that is ISS we can't do anything else.
Brooks

Agree with your views on ISS. It is dumb to spend so much money on
something and so limit its scope.

Please note, the term I used was 'usable mass in the solar system'. Usable
in terms of what we need for space colonisation. Any station keeping that
involves angular rotation will not require loss of mass, every thing else
will. Let's keep in mind that the life of most satellites in orbit is
determined by the amount of station keeping fuel they have.

Regards,
Selvaraj