Thoughts on Colonization

Dave,
I'm personally in favor of space-based colonies. While you're probably correct with respect to the fact that O'neill cylinders and Bernal spheres being a bit down the road, I truly believe that the place to start is with much reduced habitats based on the same concepts. Earth orbital space is cluttered with cast offs from various past missions, including a number of shuttle main tanks. Gathering these together and fabricating a system of girders to form them into a rosette that rotates around a common center might be a good start. We need to start at whatever level of achievement that we can DO CURRENTLY so as to get a population of fabricators and workers living and working in space. The beauty of space habitats is that they are infinitely expandable as need requires. I like your ideas on the planets, but NONE of those projects can be undertaken until we have a population living and working in space to manufacture the colony ships. We MUST start NOW with what we know we can accomplish with available resources and basically off the shelf technology.
Victor

From: Dave Powell
Sent: Wednesday, July 28, 2010 10:36 PM
To: spacesettlers@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [spacesettlers] Thoughts on Colonization

Mercury

It has ample sunlight to power the colony, making dangerous nuclear
reactors unnecessary. The best option would be to construct the
colony completely underground in the polar regions to take advantage
of what little ice is available in permanently shaded craters. The
benefit to colonizing Mercury would be that it is a way station en
route to the Outer Solar System.

Venus

This is probably one of my favorite colonization targets and in many
ways it's even more ideal than Mars. For one thing, the atmosphere is
100 times that of Earth, which means it has an ample supply of
nitrogen and water. Despite having only trace amounts, there is
enough water to cover the entire planet at a depth of 1.6 inches,
which is actually much more than Mars has. The abundant of sulfuric
acid can also be chemically converted to water, hydrogen, and oxygen.
The planet's intolerable heat is a source of energy that can be
harnessed.

Most colonization ideas involve floating cities. I reject this idea.
If we have the technology to build floating structures that are miles
in diameter, then we might as well forget Venus and just start
building Island III-type structures in space. If colonization of the
planet is to take place, then it should happen on the surface-- or
rather below the surface. Deep underground, the climate and pressure
could be controlled much easier than at the surface.

The Moon

This will probably be the first choice when we move beyond Earth, but
I still prefer Mars and Venus as primary colonization targets. The
microgravity could be a problem for permanent residents, since there
has not been a definitive study of the long-term effects on humans--
especially those who would travel to Earth after years or decades in
low gravity. If microgravity proves to not be a problem, then
obviously the Moon would be an excellent place to live.

Mars

Along with Venus, Mars is probably the best choice. The advantages
Mars has over Venus are the ability to colonize the surface without
too much difficulty. It has been suggested that even solar storms do
not produce enough radiation to cause serious health problems to
humans (Mars is too far away). We could build very simple colonies by
digging a pit in the ground and covering it with an airtight dome.
All of the essentials for life exist on Mars. The biggest
disadvantage is the fact that its atmosphere is too thin to use
aerodynamic techniques to land large vehicles on the surface, but too
thick to be able to land the way we would land on the Moon. We need
to figure out how to overcome this engineering obstacle before
colonization becomes possible.

The Outer Solar System

Three moons are perfectly suited for colonization: Ganymede,
Callisto, and Titan-- assuming the gravity issue discussed above in
the Moon section can be resolved. All four bodies have roughly the
same gravity and if humans can live on the Moon, they can also live on
the largest moons of Jupiter and Saturn. The moons of the outer
planets have even more water than Earth and the moons of Jupiter have
thin O2 atmospheres. The problem would be heating the colonies. On
Titan, this would be easy because the abundant methane can be burned
just like hydrocarbons are on Earth. Io and Europa are not
colonizable due to the extreme radiation from Jupiter. Saturn,
Uranus, and Neptune would be excellent places to build floating
cities, but then we're back to what I said before about the technology
being better used for O'Neill cylinders or Bernal spheres.

Space

I like the idea of millions of space colonies populating the solar
system. If you want a society that is homogenous and adheres to a
partiular world view, then it would make sense to simply build your
own planet rather than try to change the culture on an existing
planet. Socialists can have a socialist space colony. Libertarians
can have a libertarian space colony, and so forth.

The residents of the colony can vote for what type of climate or
seasonal cycle they want. On the planets, you take it as it is. They
can also experiment with new and untested forms of government and
social order. This is really exciting stuff. Unfortunately, I think
the engineering capability is probably centuries or millennia away.

Terraforming

I am adamantly opposed to terraforming. It's not only technologically
unfeasible, it's unnecessary. With proper engineering based on
realistic technology, people can live very comfortable and fulfilling
lives inside of artificial structures. Also, I don't believe we need
24-hour day/night cycles to survive. The arctic regions of the Earth
have very long days and very long nights, yet people, animals, and
plants still thrive.

Culture, Daily Life

I've began thinking about a multi-planetary civilization and how these
things might work themselves out. I've imagined flags for the various
planets, as well as calendars that take different rotation/revolution
cycles into account:

http://akdave.wikia.com/wiki/Davidian_Martian_Calendar
http://akdave.wikia.com/wiki/Flags_of_Planets