Tele-Operation, observation and communication by a Satellite-Chain

I was thinking about the extension of
mankind into space through tele-operation.

In my imagination robotic craft (not humans in space) would shift
mining, processing of ore, energy production and production of goods off
Earth to low thrust asteroids while delivering goods and raw materials
back to Earth, space habitats and to gravitation wells like Mars and
Moon too. Getting materials from space to a gravitation well would be
not so costly.

Not having to provide for human sustainment in space might enable to cut
the costs of space operations by orders of magnitude.

Initially choosing low gravitation asteroids, instead of Mars and Moon
and Earth as a source of materials might cut the costs some more orders
of magnitude since smaller, low thrust spacecraft (ion-propulsion or
solar sail) would do the same job, as heavier spacecraft (with chemical
propulsion) and equipment needed on a gravitation well.

Going inward from Earth orbit toward the Sun, heading for one or several
of the more than 1000 known asteroids there, would enable humanity to
use the abundant energy of our free energy generator (Sun) for
transportation (solar sailing, ion propulsion) and production (melting
and refinement-processes and energy production). Near Sun that could be
done with smaller and less mass equipment and spacecraft since for
instance at 0.25 AU the Solar power pressure and energy per square unit
is 16 times of that near Earth.
Once again at least one more order of magnitude in savings would be
possible.

Using reusable spacecraft, stationed in space could reduce the costs at
least one order of magnitude further. If using the same spacecraft for
10 missions would be possible, that could save 9 launches.

Ok, in this group all what I wrote now is not really new for you.
This was just a way once again to visualize the importance of
tele-operation, the technology which could help to enable the mentioned
cost savings.

In my opinion cutting the costs down is essential, especially in times
of financial turmoil where heavier cost cuts might be possible to help
out for the struggling Earth bank and economy system.

So I personally would forget the costly Mars and Moon missions - not
forever - , but until we have some kind of space infrastructure, like
space solar power stations, a space based robotic mission fleet,
asteroid mining missions, space construction and fabrication facilities
in place.
Onto that infrastructure I would concentrate all available resources now.

Arrived at an adequate operation level getting humans out, while using
space resources and construction techniques, kicks in.
Tele-operation and robotics is in my eyes the strategic technology we
should depend on heavily.

One obstacle of using tele-operation is bandwidth. We need it since we
want to transmit uninterrupted film data to see what we (or our robotic
craft) are doing.

The strength of the signals weakens also converse proportional with the
square of the distance.

A chain of orbiting communication and observation satellites around Sun
could do the job. It would enable transmissions to locations onto the
opposite side of Sun (seen from Earth) and reduce the longest possible
distance, between
the tele-operated craft and Earth to the distance between each chain
member, since every satellite passing data by is freshen the signal up
again.

The chain would provide a lot more bandwidth and having the possibility
to route the data return through different satellites the possible
bandwidth would be enhanced even more.

Communication and observation satellites
Initially 7 of those spacecraft could build up an orbiting chain around
Sun at 1/3 AU of say 7 spacecraft each about 1/3 AU away of each other
which would pass data around Sun if the tele-operated craft are on Sun's
opposite side to Earth.

This would enhance bandwidth through several possible routes and also
reduce the most distant distance from the remote operated crafts to
Earth to 2/3 AU when operating inside Earth orbit.

The next 2.level would be 13 satellites, which have to be larger, since
they get only 0.25 the Sun-energy of the 1.level satellites and
therefore need more solar cell arrays.

Now Each point inside Earth orbit would be only 1/3 AU away of Earth and
that would be the distance the communication data transfer capacity of
each satellite has to be engineered to, to allow passing data by for
tele-operations, which should allow sending real-time data - with a time
lag - back to Earth.
This time lag would be less than to Mars for instance where we already
operate robots.

The satellite chains could also be used also for observation of the
environment of Earth, making spotting of (evtl. harmful) asteroids a lot
easier.

Best wishes

Frank
http://solar-thruster-sailor.info/figs/fig19-21d.html
(featuring a Solar-Sail-Launch-System for the direct launch of a
SEP-Solar-Sail mothership with at launch already docked in daughter
units, especially designed for complete asteroid return missions
or for satellite services with fuel-less station keeping and
attitude control
patented in UK, patent-applications pending in US and Germany)