11.) Assemble a fast transfer vehicle for transporting personnel to
the NEO.

We've already launched a vessel with mining and refining equipment
towards our designated NEO on a long term and economical orbit.

If the technology is sufficient to process that NEO without human
presence then steps 11-13 become redundant.

I'm assuming that some human presence is required.

What I think makes sense is that the vessel to take the humans to
the NEO basically has a small living compartment and a whole bunch
of propulsion equipment so that the transit time can be reduced.
This would allow for reduced radiation shielding, reduced life
support equipment, reduced medical complications, etc.

This vessel is assembled in LEO with components brought up by
shuttle.

Testing of the vessel takes place in LEO and possibly it takes a run
or two to the moon. If it can't function on a week long journey to
the moon, it surely can't operate millions of kilometers away when
the NEO makes its closest approach to Earth.

I'm placing the NEO journey this early in the process to allow for
the long transit times, and to allow for long production runs with a
small amount of equipment, with limited capacity, to produce the
nitrogen, hydrogen and carbon we'll need over the coming decades.

Do you agree with this priority in the scheme of things? Should we
send larger capacity equipment later in the game to produce the same
amount of volatiles?

I think it would make sense to use these volitiles to provide the
gases we'll need for the lunar installations, and for the orbital
infrastructure as well, not to mention the eventual habitat many
years later.

TangoMan

Hello Tangoman.

What can be done to eliminate the early requirement for human presence?

Human presence HUGELY expands the cost of the mission and greatly
increases the risks to every step of the project AFTER the point where
human presence requirements are introduced. If the human becomes too
expensive and you have to redesign the project it messes up all the
scheduling and investment cycles and targets and, and, and....Ick!

Bluntly, can you write a scenario that returns something of physical
value to LEO without introducing a single human to space?

If you can do that there is a much better chance you can make money.

If you cannot do that, I suggest reducing scope until you can eliminate
the human(s).

Ideally, I would like to see the "something of physical value" returned
to some place on the surface of the Earth with no need for ANY human
presence in space. A nice big chunk of platinum would be nice. Maybe a
block of frozen ammonia and methane with some interesting amino acids
tucked inside would work? It must be high value and repeatable or there
won't be any profit.

Please note, this revolt against human presence is for "proof of
concept" projects only. I want to build a village on Mars as much as
anybody. I just don't believe it will happen until somebody creates
MANY ways to make LOTS of profit from space resources. I don't believe
you can see profits until you remove the human presence from the
equation. Either that, or we all sit on our thumbs waiting for
technologies that vastly reduce the costs of reducing risk to humans in
space.

Look at telecommunications. INTELSAT made money. Even with real
profits in hand, and all sorts of "crowding" issues in the most
desirable commsat orbits, does INTELSAT invest in human-tended
telecommunications platforms? No, they don't. The costs do not justify
the benefits.

Colin Keizer

--- In ssi_list@... "Colin Keizer"
> Hello Tangoman.
>
> What can be done to eliminate the early requirement for human
presence?

Lots and little. In orbit, if you have a specific task that must be
performed repeatedly and in an identical fashion, then after
extensive terrestrial research and development a robotic system can
be placed into orbit. This alternative is much cheaper than human
presence. I concede to this point.

If your orbital tasks are many but each must be attended to only
occasionally, then to eliminate human presence you're faced with the
R&D for innumerable robots, each designed to perform a limited
number of tasks. Now the cost/benefit isn't so clear because of R&D,
launch, maintenance, fabrication, and ground controller costs. It
could still turn out to be cheaper than human presence but the case
is now much murkier.

To paraphrase Arthur C. Clarke (2010), humans are the best designed,
most complex, adaptive, self-learning, most adaptable pieces of
equipment to have on a space voyage. If a screw needs to be
tightened to save a billion dollar piece of equipment a human
doesn't need special training to perfrom that mission.

Having said all of the above, I don't mean to convey that I am a
proponent of humans doing work that robots can do. If you'll note,
the systems I advocate sending to the moon are all robotic and
they'll function either independently or via tele-operation, for a
few years as they lay the ground work for future missions. I felt
that their size and complexity would preclude them from being
launched from Earth as complete systems given launch vehicle
constraints, thus they would need to be assembled in LEO by, none
other than humans.

The human presence in space that I advocate is there for the
assembly of large and complex structures, to wit, a NEO mining
vessel, a NEO crew vessel, a LEO tether, a MEO tether, a lunavator.
I've laready written that I don't foresee astronauts being welders
and assembling every girder, rivet, piece of sheet metal, etc.
Robots are better suited to that work. The humans are there, small
in number, perhaps 12-40 crew?( I really don't know) to maintain the
robots, oversee the complex construction taking place in LEO,
actually perform the numerous small and complex tasks that aren't
suited for robots, such as connecting the electrical wiring buses on
the assembled components of the vessels, integrating the systems so
that the ground controllers can take over, troubleshooting issues
for which solutions haven't been programmed in the robots and for
which a local presence is necessary so that the experts at ground
control can take over as soon as possible.

> Human presence HUGELY expands the cost of the mission

Yes it does, but just so that we're not writing past each other,
let's be clear about one issue: I'm taking the position that the
mission COULD NOT take place without human presence at some very
critical junctures. So, we do send up robots, they perform their
tasks, but then the whole mission falls apart because we can't
design robots to perform a number of tasks that humans can.

>and greatly increases the risks to every step of the project AFTER
>the point where human presence requirements are introduced.

If this is indeed so, then I think it becomes a necessary cost of
the mission.

>If the human becomes too expensive and you have to redesign the
>project it messes up all the scheduling and investment cycles and
>targets and, and, and....Ick!

Well, not really, because the scheduling and investment cycles would
flow from earlier mission plans, which would first look at necessary
requirements, determine how best to achieve them with techology,
capital and personnel. I highly doubt that human presence in space
is going to come as a surprise half way through some future mission.
They'll know in advance when, for how long, and how many persons in
space they'll need and they'll budget, design and plan accordingly.

> Bluntly, can you write a scenario that returns something of >
> physical value to LEO without introducing a single human to space?

I'm sure I could but every scenario that comes to mind meets your
goal but doesn't meet my goal of creating an infrastructure in
orbit. So here goes: use a few hundred russian rockets to launch all
of the components of a SPS into orbit, then have robots asssemble
the 100% IDENTICAL PARTS together. For the non-standard parts, such
as the transmitter array, launch dedictated robots to perform the
integration of that part.

Launch on a single russian rocket a deep space probe to go to a NEO.
Once there, it scoops up ONE cubic meter of frozen methane, and
returns to LEO using atmospheric braking to kill velocity and parks
itself in LEO where we now have to figure out how to retrieve that
Methane and what to do with it. If you're feeling that I'm purposely
stacking the deck here by not sending a complete refinery to the
NEO, making fuel there for its journey back and returning a sizable
cargo of volatiles, well, all I'm doing is looking at the the
payload size of launch vehicles and I'm having trouble imagining
fitting the complexity of a refinary into an existing launch vehicle
or of robotically assembling in orbit such a refinery and vessel.
Frankly, that's where I think humans are necesary.

> If you can do that there is a much better chance you can make
> money.

Maybe, maybe not. No matter how lucrative a mission may be, if you
don't have the robotic technology to achieve it, then your chance of
making a profit is zilch. Human presence may eat up some of your
profit but at least the mission can be accomplished. Something is
better than nothing.

> If you cannot do that, I suggest reducing scope until you can
> eliminate the human(s).

It seems to me that what we have here is a failure to communicate.

I'm not proceeding from the assumption that I want to find ANY
mission to perform in orbit that will make a profit.

Rather, I'm advocating a mission which lays out an infrastructure in
space, that gets us to SPS and High Frontier, and pondering how to
best trailblaze that route.

Eliminating humans is not the goal of the latter, though it may well
indeed be a goal of the former. Further, the former may be
achievable without humans, but I suspect that the latter is
impossible without humans in space.

> Ideally, I would like to see the "something of physical value"
> returned to some place on the surface of the Earth with no need
> for ANY human presence in space. A nice big chunk of platinum
> would be nice.

Let me turn the tables for a moment. How exactly do you propose to
do that? How large of a spacecraft is necessary, how will it be
launched, what mining and refining equipment is necessary, how will
unforeseen problems be addressed at the NEO? How will your cargo be
returned to the Earth's surface? Will the heat shield necessary to
survive Earth re-entry be carried all the way to the NEO and back on
this mission?

My gut tells me that we won't be seeing ANYTHING of physical value,
including platinum, being returned to Earth, for a long time after
an orbital economy is established. The transport costs are too large
and the Earth developed commodity is either less expensive or there
is a ready substitute. O'Neill hit the nail on the head, energy is
the holy grail and will pay for orbital development.

> Maybe a block of frozen ammonia and methane with some interesting
> amino acids tucked inside would work? It must be high value and
> repeatable or there won't be any profit.

Who's going to buy ammonia or methane in orbit? No organization that
I know of. To consider returning it to the Earth's surface is to
consider extending your losses even further.

If that methane or ammonia is to have any value in orbit it must be
refined into a commodity for which there might be a buyer. That begs
the question, where is the refinery, and further, who shall be the
buyer?

Ultimately, I suspect, the "economy" in orbit will be demand driven
by the very infrastructure program I'm outlining, one which leads to
SPS and High Frontier.

> Please note, this revolt against human presence is for "proof of
> concept" projects only. I want to build a village on Mars as much
> as anybody. I just don't believe it will happen until somebody
> creates MANY ways to make LOTS of profit from space resources.

The trouble as I see it with the above statement is that too many
people have FAITH that there are many ways to make lots of profit
but we (space enthusiasts) are having trouble describing those
methods. I know I am. A look around in the business community
reveals that there aren't a lot of successful space ventures, there
is no orbital marketplace, what value space does have is pretty much
now served by satellites, and most of that value added is done on
the surface of the Earth via design, construction, launch, ground
control and most especially, content.

I acknowledge that I'm riding on O'Neill and Glaser's coattails, but
I challenge people to make the case for specific proposals to turn a
profit in space. I can't think of any that don't require an
infrastructure to support that effort.

> I don't believe you can see profits until you remove the human
> presence from the equation. Either that, or we all sit on our
> thumbs waiting for technologies that vastly reduce the costs of
> reducing risk to humans in space.
>
> Look at telecommunications. INTELSAT made money. Even with real
> profits in hand, and all sorts of "crowding" issues in the most
> desirable commsat orbits, does INTELSAT invest in human-tended
> telecommunications platforms? No, they don't. The costs do not
> justify the benefits.
>
> Colin Keizer

I resepct what you write and I know that others on this list have
argued the same point, but I need someone to show me a robotic
system that has sufficent A.I. and mechanical control to perform
tasks with the versatility that humans can. I've spent a lot of time
researching these questions, and I didn't come away with that rosey
a picture of robotics and A.I.

I'm not sure if the proposition you're arguing is one based on
belief or you have facts to support it. I would love to see the
facts, because I wholly support your contention that human presence
in space is expensive, and if we can reduce it then so too will our
expenses be reduced.

Your example of telecommunications doesn't support your argument. I
don't recall there ever being a proposal to launch "Marge, the human
telephone operator" into orbit to handle the great switchboard in
the sky :)

Thanks for the critique of my post. The act of defense helps sharpen
the concept for me. I've already conceded to others that human
presence need not be one of the first steps in the process, but I
hope you can also see my point that without human presence in orbit,
laying out an infrastructure is impossible. Show me otherwise.

TangoMan