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# 2233 bymonart@... on Dec. 5, 2001, 7:40 a.m.

Member since 2021-10-03

Subject: [Starship_Forum] Re: A Suggested Program of Space Settlement
Date: Sat, 01 Dec 2001 11:04:45 +0000
From: "P.T. Galt"
Reply-To: Starship_Forum@yahoogroups.com
To: Starship_Forum@yahoogroups.com

[I have split PT's post into two; the second part to follow, which I've titled
"Airlock Despotism", is worth a new thread. -Moderator]

Monart Pon wrote (11/26):

> Thanks, PT Galt, for posting (11/21) your program of space settlement. The
> ideas you proposed add to those suggested by others like Dennis May, and
> enrich the growing archives of this forum on the technology of moving into
> space.

Thank you, I'm glad you enjoyed the post.

> I hope you would continue to offer more of your projections, in
> particular: how you see the O'Neill-type settlements developing. Will
> O'Neill's plans and designs have to change significantly? How likely will
> free-space floating city and country-sized habitats come to fruition,
> technologically?

As I see it, when an O'Neill settlement finally comes to fruition, I
don't think it would be something O'Neill would recognize. I haven't
read O'Neill's work myself, but as I understand it, an O'Neill colony
is envisioned as a giant construction project using more or less
conventional assembly techniques, but vastly scaled up. E.g. the
pictures of giant "wheel"-type space stations being assembled in
orbit by astronauts and a swarm of space shuttle/Venture Star type
spacecraft and/or orbital shipyards found in many of the books
about "our future in space."

Even if launch costs could be dramatically reduced, say, to $100 a
pound or so, I do not see such construction ever being economically
feasible. In terms of delta-V, construction difficulty/danger, etc.,
it would be far easier and cheaper to build a city on Mars. For
example, large habitable structures could be built on Mars out of
locally-produced bricks and/or concrete (thick walls and arched
roofs), then buried under a few feet of soil for radiation protection
and airtightness, with doors and windows being the only parts of the
building requiring anything the Romans couldn't have done.
Transparent geodesic domes could contain greenhouses and open-air
environments (parks, etc.), and could be produced from local
resources. No giant orbital shipyard or complicated microgravity
construction process necessary.

"O'Neill" colonies will have to be *grown,* not built. Freeman Dyson
proposed creating habitable environments in the Kuiper Belt using
genetically engineered plants that would grow habitable volumes not
unlike the way pumpkin plants produce hollow vessels. I think
someone mentioned this proposal on this list, but I don't recall who
it was.

Nanotechnology offers another path, though IMO by the time Dyson's
advanced gengineering exists, it'll be indistinguishable from
nanotechology. The "plants" could just as "easily" be grown as
diamond-lattice structures as genetically engineered cellulose. IOW,
if the folks from Star Trek were to show up in one of their clunky
metal spaceships, they might scan a diamondoid plant/colony and have
a tough time deciding if it was a life-form or a construct. To the
people--likely Transhumans, IMO--who live there, there would be no
real distinction between life and technology.

The reason such biomimetic (life-imitating) structures will be the
path to O'Neill size space habitats is because they'd require a very
small input of launched material (the nanobots/genegineered
organisms) and no on-site human labor to construct. No need for
thousands of shipyard workers in spacesuits and many thousands of
expensive launches from Earth. Instead, a small rocket containing
self-replicating nanoscopic or microscopic assembler/organisms would
land on an asteroid or Kuiper Belt object and start reproducing from
local materials, then growing into useful, human life-supporting
shapes. In short, life will colonize the asteroids much the same way
it colonized initially barren volcanic islands--by sending "seeds"
that self-replicate on-site and make the place habitable for
subsequent colonists, like Darwin's finches.

Another possibility that would be much easier than constructing city-
or country-sized buildings in space would be to
gengineer/nanoengineer the human form (and a suite of other
organisms) to require no atmosphere (and/or breathe other types of
atmosphere). Imagine a human body designed with closed-cycle life-
support systems that work on a cellular level, with its skin as the
only spacesuit its owner needs. Such settlers could move to the
asteroidal body of their choice, plant their Trans-crops and Trans-
animals, and build their open-space cities using even the simplest of
techniques.

Of course, the technology that makes them possible will also make the
nano/genegineered "living" cities possible, as well as grown
structures with strength and utility far beyond anything we, or the
busy astronauts of classical O'Neill colonies could build.

The closest thing I think we'll see to classical O'Neill colonies
will be Neuffer Ring SSTO space stations, inflated-foam "instant
stations" and complexes gradually assembled by adding new N-Rings and
components. The difference here is that each component (N-Ring
or "instant station") would be economically viable in one or at most
a handful of launches. Unlike the giant ring-stations of _2001_ or
any "country-sized" structure, these space towns could grow a bit at
a time, just as towns on Earth do.

Nor would there be the vast, up-front capital expense and decades of
construction before people could move in and start producing
revenues. Had the British East India Tea Company been required to
build a full-fledged London or Liverpool in America before they could
send in colonists, I doubt they'd be able to raise the many billions
it would take even today. There'd be one or two goverment-
financed "research stations" (like the International Space Station or
McMurdo Station in Antarctica) and old woodcuts from 1600 showing
hundreds of city-builders working off of sailing ships building
the "London of the future" that somebody's grandchildren might
inhabit someday. >grin<

I think these towns will be rather small in terrestrial terms because
of factors such as internal transportation, external traffic (a
spaceborne LAX offers far too much potential for city-destroying
disaster) that raise the costs of growth higher than the costs of
creating a new small settlment (hotel, microgravity factory, tax/data
haven, etc.).

I expect most of these towns to be in Earth orbit and Hohmann
transfer orbits between Earth and Mars. The first will profit from
tourism, infobusiness and microgravity manufacturing of high-value,
low-mass products such as pharmaceuticals, semiconductors, and high-
strength alloys. The latter will be wayposts for people and goods
coming and going between Earth and Martian colonies.

Once a critical mass of space stations exists in Earth orbit, it may
be profitable to boost Neuffer Rings and/or "instant stations" to
Near-Earth Objects to mine resources for use by the stations.
However, Mars has significant advantages over NEO's as a source of
nonperishable resources such as metals and volatiles. Since it has a
useable atmosphere water and an Earthlike mineral composition, and
our millennia of mining and colonizing experience is derived from
planetary conditions, it will be easier to build substantial colonies
and industries (using more-or-less conventional technologies) on Mars
than on NEO's.

Since Mars has not had 5000 years of human mining activity, it's
probable that there are deposits of useful metals and minerals close
to the surface. If the cargo is something like iron or water
(instead of something like lettuce) it doesn't matter whether it's
spent a year or so in transit, once a shipment schedule has been
established.

Nonetheless, NEO's offer the prospect of metals and hydrocarbons with
no planetary dirt on top of them, low delta-V and short transit times
(the last being valuable in the case of space-based "just-in-time"
manufacturing), so there may be demand for NEO towns providing
resources for the Earth-orbiting towns.

[...]
[The remainder is in a following post "Airlock Despotism" -Moderator]

P.T. Galt

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# 2234 bybestonnet_00@... on Dec. 5, 2001, 8:08 a.m.

Member since 2021-10-03

--- Monart Pon wrote:
> Subject: [Starship_Forum] A Suggested Program of Space Settlement
> Date: Wed, 21 Nov 2001 11:03:00 +0000
> From: PT Galt
> Reply-To: Starship_Forum@yahoogroups.com
> To: Starship_Forum@yahoogroups.com
>
> A Suggested Chronology of Space Settlement
>
> I. LEO (Low Earth Orbit) Operations
>
> This is the stage we are presently in. Privatized, semi-privatized,
> and government-funded space assets provide a high-value, massless
> product--information (the satellite industry). The first major for-
> profit human space exploration is tourism (Dennis Tito's trip to the
> International Space Station). Unless forcibly prevented by
> government, a space tourism industry offering sub-orbital trips for
> about $10,000 or so should spring up in the near future.

Once it starts to look like a good business governments will start providing
help for companies involved for the simple reason that to do so will mean that
that country gets the business. The help could be as simple as just providing
some regulation so that customers can be sure the craft will be safe or it
could go as far as R&D money and tax concessions (Japan would be very likely to
do that).

> Once such an industry exists, there will be incentive to develop
> longer, orbital missions and then destinations to visit: relatively
> small space stations/hotels in LEO. Ideally, these first stations
> would have rotational gravity and be created with a single launch
> apiece (no in-orbit assembly as with the ISS boondoggle).

It might be hard for rotational space stations to be done single launch if you
want to be able to dock without without spinning down but we really don't need
to assemble as much as for ISS. ISS was massively overpriced.

> One approach is the Neuffer Ring, featured prominently in Victor
> Koman's magnificent work _Kings of the High Frontier_ (a novel that
> portrays, in a powerfully gripping story, how freedom-loving space
> pioneers could overcome government resistance to space settlement).
> The Neuffer Ring is a torus of joined spherical tanks, resembling a
> pearl bracelet. The tanks contain fuel, supplies, and acceleration
> couches for the crew. Non-toxic fuel would be necessary, as the crew
> would move into the tanks once the station was in orbit. Decks of
> mesh grating would be installed in the tanks. These would form the
> basic structure of floors and walls without interfering significantly
> with the flow of fuel during the ascent. Opaque materials such as
> foam or plastic sheeting would be installed by the crew to turn the
> tanks into "home."

Water would be a good fuel, you store it as simple water then run electricity
through it when you need fuel to get Hydrogen and Oxygen. They were originally
planning to do that for ISS but when the Russians came on board they changed to
UDMH.

> Another approach would be to launch light, unfolding structures like
> Hoberman spheres, or an inflatable toroidal form that would be filled
> (inflated) with a light but strong foam in orbit. Once the structure
> solidified, astronauts could move in with the non-structural
> components of a space settlement. It should be possible to design an
> inflatable form that would include plumbing (foam-inflatable "sub-
> pipes" within the main toroidal "pipe"), and perhaps electric and
> fiber-optic wiring (depending on weight, available space in the
> launch capsule, and "fold-up-ability" for the launch phase). Either
> of these approaches should be quicker, cheaper, and provide a far
> better space station than the "bolted-together tomato can" approach
> used for ISSA--which is useful for spreading pork-barrel projects
> through numerous Congressional districts and foreign nations, but
> quite absurd and inefficient as a means of constructing a space
> station.

Or those spent fuel tanks could be used. Sooner or later we're going to need
space construction abilitiles. May as well develop them early.

> Yet another approach would involve using tethers to suspend large
> vessels such as external fuel tanks or rocket stages from a central
> docking hub and set them in motion. If NASA had attatched small
> boosters to its Space Shuttle Main Tanks and kicked them into orbit
> instead of throwing them away in fireballs over the Indian Ocean, it
> would now have more than enough habitable volume in orbit for a
> number of good-sized space stations. I don't know exactly how much
> one of those SSMT's weighs, but with launch cost to LEO at about
> $10,000 a pound (if I recall correctly), it's a colossal waste only a
> government could make, over and over again, for 20 years.

NASA have offered to take them all the way to orbit but private enterprise has
to be able to keep them in orbit.

> Perhaps a cunning space entrepreneur might design a fairly cheap
> unmanned rocket especially to intercept discarded SSMT's and boost
> them into orbit for later assembly into a space station. Such a
> salvage operation might be doable with a capital investment
> comparable to those of maritime salvage/exploration companies.
> Consider the costs of their multimillion dollar research ships, high-
> tech sensing equipment, deep-sea sumbersibles (which, in terms of
> life-support and instrumentation, are basically manned spacecraft
> with propellers instead of rocket thrusters), etc. If the government
> decided to play "hardball" and threaten violence, the entrepreneur
> would have a supply of tank-shaped potential meteorites to use as
> deterrence.

Such a thing could be designed but it would have to be pretty cheap because
such space ventures would be considered by investors to be high risk and they
may not want to spend much. Also I would suggest at this point in time not to
threaten the government. Until you get to the point of moving asteriods around
the system whatever you can do to them they can do worse back.

> Once the first space stations are built, microgravity manufacturing,
> data-/tax-/electronic banking privacy havens, and other high-value,
> low/no-mass products and services can be offered. Combined with
> space tourism, these provide a firm basis for investment and profits
> in LEO settlements.

You need to have tourism as the others could be done either at a reasonable
cost with current launchers or there is some earth based country that is a tax
haven which could be used.

> Another source of revenue for early space settlement companies will
> be "spinoff" technologies. The inflatable-foam construction
> technique, for example, may be workable on Earth as a means for
> creating "instant houses" that can be set up quickly and more cheaply
> than conventional manufactured homes. Even if some variant of
> the "tomato can" method is used, the R&D used to develop the "tomato
> cans" could be applied to making zero-maintainence, super energy-
> efficient, environmentally-benign housing (or "climate-controlling
> vessels," to use the term preferred by Buckminster Fuller for his
> advanced housing concepts).

It's amazing how few people realise just how much technology came out of the
space program that they use everyday.

> An essential requirement for any space settlement will be a closed-
> cycle, solar-powered life-support system. Applied on Earth, CS life-
> support technologies could be used to eliminate industrial pollution,
> expensive and inefficient municipal (gov't) waste-treatment/sewage
> systems, etc. For a good example of such a system, see
> http://www.livingmachines.com.

We haven't got CELSS working well enough yet but it shouldn't be too long.

> II. ON TO MARS AND THE ASTEROIDS
>
> By the time the first private space stations are built and operating
> profitably in LEO, the greatest governmental obstacles will probably
> have been overcome (see _Kings of the High Frontier_). The first
> reusable tourist ships (i.e. not a one-time shot like Tito's trip)
> will likely mobilize the dreams of the large segment of
> industrialized humanity that hopes to see space for themselves. The
> space companies will have what amounts to an instant voting bloc.

By that time NASA will probably have somehow got a manned mission to mars.

> Creating and servicing the space stations will build the experience
> and technical know-how (a growing astronaut corps, closed-cycle life-
> support, etc.) necessary to reach deep space. Market competition to
> reduce launch costs will spur the development of cheaper, more
> advanced spacecraft, along with a demand for materials originating in
> space. The cost of lifting manufacturing materials and "volatiles"
> (oxygen, water, etc.) from Earth will make Near Earth Objects
> (asteroids) and Mars attractive and economically feasable for
> settlement.

Mars probably will never be economically feasable for settlement. The only
reason to go there would be for the science that is on the planet.

> Robert Zubrin's "Mars Direct" program, explained in detail in his
> book _The Case For Mars_ could create a program of Martian
> exploration and settlement for as little as $5 billion (or $20-30
> billion as a NASA project--still cheap in gov't terms) using
> presently available technology such as Russian Energiya rockets,
> modified Space Shuttle boosters, enines, and tanks, or even re-
> engineered Saturn V's.

Saturn V's would probably be a lot more expensive then just building a new
booster from scratch as we would probably have to re-design the whole thing for
modern technology.

> This low price assumes a fully-private enterprise without the "cost-
> plus-percentage" system that encourages government-subsidized
> aerospace firms to pad their budgets as much as possible. Another
> example of the inefficiency of government space is the odd fact that
> missions are launched from Florida, but controlled from Houston,
> Texas. Why? President Kennedy needed the support of the Texas
> Congressional delegation. A glance at the list of contractors for
> any major NASA project (such as the now-dead Venture Star, or the
> International Space Station) shows the vast, complicated divvying-up
> of the project to numerous different companies in different states
> (and foreign nations) needed to build the necessary Congressional and
> employee-union support--with further complicated layers of
> bureaucracy necessary to integrate the resulting designed-by-
> committee components into a single space vehicle able to get off the
> ground. A fully-private company could operate as a single,
> integrated, streamlined operation.

Doesn't always happen though. Getting into space will probably be a mix of
private and government.

> Each crew will spend 500 days exploring Mars, prospecting for water
> and minerals, experimenting with Martian greenhouses, etc. before
> climbing into their ERV for the return trip. They'll leave behind
> the truck, the rover, and the reactor. The result: a chain of
> exploration bases located within safe rover-range of each other,
> waiting to be used by the permanent colonists who will eventually
> follow the explorers.

I wonder how long humans can survive in 1/3 g.

> The basic infrastructure of habs, ERV's and heavy-lift boosters could
> also be adapted to exploring NEO's and the Moon. Revenues for the
> venture could come from a number of sources. A line of model and toy
> ships, habs, trucks, rovers, action-figures, T-shirts, lunchboxes,
> etc. Advertizing slots on the live feed from the first Mars landing
> ought to at least pull in Super Bowl rates, if not more. Selling ad-
> space on the feed, or selling rights to air the feed and clips
> therefrom to news organizations should reap considerable funds. The
> returning cargoes of Martian soil and rock (or lunar soil and rock
> from a lunar mission) will be immensely valuable because of their
> rarity on Earth. Research departments and even well-heeled
> collectors would provide a lucrative market for "plain ol' rocks."

Wouldn't be too long before the collectors market dries up.

Although using the same equipment for different missions is a great way to help
get into space. Joint development of something that two groups need allows the
risk and cost to be spread. Sometimes co-operation is better then competition,
particulary at the early stages when the market would be too small for more
then a few companies.

> Hydrocarbons, volatiles, and metals would be profitable commodities
> in the space stations, being much cheaper in delta-V terms than their
> terrestrial equivalents. Martian and Near Earth Object real estate
> speculation is another possible source of revenues. How much would
> companies like Pepsi or Nike be willing to pay to put their logos on
> the hab, to be seen in the background of the Most Watched Television
> Broadcast Ever--the "Neil Armstrong moment" of the first human
> setting foot on Mars?

Some people would like to see advertising banned.

> By launching boosters into Low Earth Orbit and attatching them to a
> Neuffer Ring-type space station, they could be used to boost it into
> a "free-return trajectory" between Earth and Mars. The FRT is an
> orbit that regularly brings the station close to Earth and Mars in
> turn. It, and others like it, would serve as an orbiting escalator
> between the planets. Ships launching from Earth or Mars could
> rendevous with the station, exchanging colonists for returning cargo,
> forming the first real Earth-Mars trade route. This would make it
> possible to reach Mars from Earth and vice versa at far less delta-V
> cost by letting celestial mechanics pay most of the freight.

Accelerating to dock with the cycler would require the same dV as going there
directly on the same path as the cycler.

> This can all be done using ordinary chemical rockets. Nuclear-
> thermal, ion-drive, magsail, and other more advanced propulsion
> systems would be developed in the context of an already-operational
> space economy, shortening travel times for humans and leaving the
> tried-and-true FRT system available for minimum delta-V shipment of
> non-perishable cargo.

Tethers could also help.

> The main obstacle to the Mars Direct program is its requirement to
> launch nuclear reactors into space. The political opposition to this
> will no doubt be immense, considering the political impossibility of
> building new reactors on Earth with the most elaborate containment
> facilities. Putting a nuclear reactor on giant Roman candle and
> lighting it off will not be welcome in a political environment
> anything like today's. Nor would governments be happy about the
> notion of powerful rockets and nuclear payloads in private hands.
> This alone may make it necessary to explore and settle NEO's first
> using solar cells for power until a source of fissionable material
> can be found in space for a fully space-based nuclear power industry,
> or large-scale orbital solar panels (or some other exotic energy
> technology) built and sent to Mars to provide energy in place of the
> nuclear reactors.

Doing nuclear technology without being a government or large nuclear technology
developer would be hard. Probably better off to try to see what can be done
without it. If nothing can be then just hope the public are on your side (the
anti-nuclear protestors will probably make the same amount of noise as they do
for RTGs).

> III JUPITER AND BEYOND
>
> The availability of nuclear power in space opens the way to nuclear-
> thermal, fusion-pulse, magnetic-sail, laser-powered lightsail, and
> other high-velocity options that put Jupiter and the rest of the
> outer Solar System within reach. In the decades necessary to reach
> this point, genetics, robotics, nanotechnology, and machine
> intelligence will advance to the point that space exploration plans
> based on current technology and the current human form will become
> obsolete. The changes promised by such technologies are so vast that
> predicting their results from our perspective is like Neandertals
> imagining how their tribe's barter of flint spearpoints could evolve
> into the global market for computer software. Whether anything
> resembling "the State" could continue to exist and plague our future
> selves is anyone's guess.

Governments will still exist and probably won't really be much changed from
today. But those who would rather not have to deal with them can just go
further out away from the government's reach. Unlike on earth you can just
keep going out almost indefinately as there will probably never be a time when
the whole universe is claimed by someone (I may be wrong on this).

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# 2235 bybestonnet_00@... on Dec. 5, 2001, 8:21 a.m.

Member since 2021-10-03

--- Monart Pon wrote:

> Subject: [Starship_Forum] Re: A Suggested Program of Space Settlement
> Date: Sat, 01 Dec 2001 11:04:45 +0000
> From: "P.T. Galt"
> Reply-To: Starship_Forum@yahoogroups.com
> To: Starship_Forum@yahoogroups.com

> Monart Pon wrote (11/26):
>
> > I hope you would continue to offer more of your projections, in
> > particular: how you see the O'Neill-type settlements developing. Will
> > O'Neill's plans and designs have to change significantly? How likely will
> > free-space floating city and country-sized habitats come to fruition,
> > technologically?
>
> As I see it, when an O'Neill settlement finally comes to fruition, I
> don't think it would be something O'Neill would recognize. I haven't
> read O'Neill's work myself, but as I understand it, an O'Neill colony
> is envisioned as a giant construction project using more or less
> conventional assembly techniques, but vastly scaled up. E.g. the
> pictures of giant "wheel"-type space stations being assembled in
> orbit by astronauts and a swarm of space shuttle/Venture Star type
> spacecraft and/or orbital shipyards found in many of the books
> about "our future in space."

That could work if launch costs are low enough. Expect most of the labour to
be robotic though.

> Even if launch costs could be dramatically reduced, say, to $100 a
> pound or so, I do not see such construction ever being economically
> feasible. In terms of delta-V, construction difficulty/danger, etc.,
> it would be far easier and cheaper to build a city on Mars. For
> example, large habitable structures could be built on Mars out of
> locally-produced bricks and/or concrete (thick walls and arched
> roofs), then buried under a few feet of soil for radiation protection
> and airtightness, with doors and windows being the only parts of the
> building requiring anything the Romans couldn't have done.
> Transparent geodesic domes could contain greenhouses and open-air
> environments (parks, etc.), and could be produced from local
> resources. No giant orbital shipyard or complicated microgravity
> construction process necessary.

Microgravitry construction isn't really that complicated. The reason it's hard
is because the humans doing it have space suits on which really restrict
mobility. Useing robots either computer controlled or telepressence systems
would be much easier.

> "O'Neill" colonies will have to be *grown,* not built. Freeman Dyson
> proposed creating habitable environments in the Kuiper Belt using
> genetically engineered plants that would grow habitable volumes not
> unlike the way pumpkin plants produce hollow vessels. I think
> someone mentioned this proposal on this list, but I don't recall who
> it was.

That would depend on whether we can make any plants that will live in vaccum
with very cold temperatures.

> Nanotechnology offers another path, though IMO by the time Dyson's
> advanced gengineering exists, it'll be indistinguishable from
> nanotechology. The "plants" could just as "easily" be grown as
> diamond-lattice structures as genetically engineered cellulose. IOW,
> if the folks from Star Trek were to show up in one of their clunky
> metal spaceships, they might scan a diamondoid plant/colony and have
> a tough time deciding if it was a life-form or a construct. To the
> people--likely Transhumans, IMO--who live there, there would be no
> real distinction between life and technology.

Nanotech would be great for building space settlements. The size of an O'Neil
cylinder that could be made with the technology is just astounding. See
http://www.zyvex.com/nanotech/nano4/mckendreePaper.html for more information.

> The reason such biomimetic (life-imitating) structures will be the
> path to O'Neill size space habitats is because they'd require a very
> small input of launched material (the nanobots/genegineered
> organisms) and no on-site human labor to construct. No need for
> thousands of shipyard workers in spacesuits and many thousands of
> expensive launches from Earth. Instead, a small rocket containing
> self-replicating nanoscopic or microscopic assembler/organisms would
> land on an asteroid or Kuiper Belt object and start reproducing from
> local materials, then growing into useful, human life-supporting
> shapes. In short, life will colonize the asteroids much the same way
> it colonized initially barren volcanic islands--by sending "seeds"
> that self-replicate on-site and make the place habitable for
> subsequent colonists, like Darwin's finches.

You will need to provide material for them to use to make the colony. They
aren't replicators from Star Trek.

> Another possibility that would be much easier than constructing city-
> or country-sized buildings in space would be to
> gengineer/nanoengineer the human form (and a suite of other
> organisms) to require no atmosphere (and/or breathe other types of
> atmosphere). Imagine a human body designed with closed-cycle life-
> support systems that work on a cellular level, with its skin as the
> only spacesuit its owner needs. Such settlers could move to the
> asteroidal body of their choice, plant their Trans-crops and Trans-
> animals, and build their open-space cities using even the simplest of
> techniques.

That would be great, although it would require quite a bit of genetic
engineering or really good nano-tech. We would also need a way to move around
in space.

> Nor would there be the vast, up-front capital expense and decades of
> construction before people could move in and start producing
> revenues. Had the British East India Tea Company been required to
> build a full-fledged London or Liverpool in America before they could
> send in colonists, I doubt they'd be able to raise the many billions
> it would take even today. There'd be one or two goverment-
> financed "research stations" (like the International Space Station or
> McMurdo Station in Antarctica) and old woodcuts from 1600 showing
> hundreds of city-builders working off of sailing ships building
> the "London of the future" that somebody's grandchildren might
> inhabit someday. >grin<

They might be willing to build something to hold 10000 people up front after
there is already some space infrastruture.

> I think these towns will be rather small in terrestrial terms because
> of factors such as internal transportation, external traffic (a
> spaceborne LAX offers far too much potential for city-destroying
> disaster) that raise the costs of growth higher than the costs of
> creating a new small settlment (hotel, microgravity factory, tax/data
> haven, etc.).

There will probably still be some large space cities. People will want to
build them because they can or because they want to show off.

> I expect most of these towns to be in Earth orbit and Hohmann
> transfer orbits between Earth and Mars. The first will profit from
> tourism, infobusiness and microgravity manufacturing of high-value,
> low-mass products such as pharmaceuticals, semiconductors, and high-
> strength alloys. The latter will be wayposts for people and goods
> coming and going between Earth and Martian colonies.

Earth Orbit would be the most likely location.

> Once a critical mass of space stations exists in Earth orbit, it may
> be profitable to boost Neuffer Rings and/or "instant stations" to
> Near-Earth Objects to mine resources for use by the stations.
> However, Mars has significant advantages over NEO's as a source of
> nonperishable resources such as metals and volatiles. Since it has a
> useable atmosphere water and an Earthlike mineral composition, and
> our millennia of mining and colonizing experience is derived from
> planetary conditions, it will be easier to build substantial colonies
> and industries (using more-or-less conventional technologies) on Mars
> than on NEO's.

NEO mining wouldn't take long.

> Since Mars has not had 5000 years of human mining activity, it's
> probable that there are deposits of useful metals and minerals close
> to the surface. If the cargo is something like iron or water
> (instead of something like lettuce) it doesn't matter whether it's
> spent a year or so in transit, once a shipment schedule has been
> established.

Why bother with mars when there are a whole heap of NEOs which have no science
on the surface to wreak and are a lot cheaper?

> Nonetheless, NEO's offer the prospect of metals and hydrocarbons with
> no planetary dirt on top of them, low delta-V and short transit times
> (the last being valuable in the case of space-based "just-in-time"
> manufacturing), so there may be demand for NEO towns providing
> resources for the Earth-orbiting towns.

You also want to keep the transit times short as it will be hard to lug around
radiation shielding on a mobile spaceship.

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# 2236 bysteeledj@... on Dec. 7, 2001, 4:54 p.m.

Member since 2021-10-03

--- In spacesettlers@y..., "Combs, Mike" wrote:
>> From: Ryan Healey [mailto:bestonnet_00@y...]
>>
>> Accelerating to dock with the cycler would require the same dV as
>>going there directly on the same path as the cycler.
>
> True, but the ship that changes your delta-V can mass much less
than the
> kind of ship needed to support your existence for the months-long
voyage
> both ways. That's the only advantage to the cycler concept.
>
> Regards,
>
> Mike Combs

I would add:

1. Much greater potential internal volume.
2. Availability of in situ resources. Which gives the "colonists"
something to do enroute, i.e. "improve" their "spaceship".
3. Unlimited time for those "improvements" to develop - greenhouses,
waste breakdown, etc.
4. Massive shielding.

Dan Steele

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# 2237 byrabrooks@... on Dec. 17, 2001, 6:12 a.m.

Member since 2021-10-03

--- In spacesettlers@y..., "Combs, Mike" wrote:
> From: Ryan Healey [mailto:bestonnet_00@y...]
>
> Accelerating to dock with the cycler would require the same dV as
going
> there
> directly on the same path as the cycler.
>
> True, but the ship that changes your delta-V can mass much less than
the
> kind of ship needed to support your existence for the months-long
voyage
> both ways. That's the only advantage to the cycler concept.
>
> Regards,
>
> Mike Combs

The cycler can be a small asteroid with enough mass for radiation
shielding. Not to mention plenty of room for such goodies as
greenhouses.

The cycler might became a small space settlement in itself. I can see
people living their lives there, most in the businesses of providing
food, shelter, entertainment, various products, etc. for travellers.

Yours,
Rick Brooks

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