NEO or HEO?

I appreciate that being close would be a good thing in emergency situations. However, the specific example you gave --- sudden need for a particular bacteria strain in order to prevent ecosystem collapse --- seems to me to be one of the more easily solved problems. Thousands upon thousands of species of bacteria could be frozen and just taken along to the habitat in case they were needed in some future emergency. This insurance would be very small in mass, and would avert the problem you mention. Perhaps the same could be done for insects, too; I'm not sure.

Ron Menich

"Combs, Mike"
07/12/2001 08:26 AM

I looked at the reference I mentioned below, and found the remark I remembered. It was from George Friedman, and it was part of his "Summary of the Evening Roundtable Discussion" called "The View from 1999" (pg. 36). One sentence said something close to "The logistics of habitat manufacture now favors their construction at the site of an asteroid, rather than in HEO from lunar resources."

Like I said earlier, I'm sure that in the long run, many more habitats will be built next door to an asteroid than in HEO. I expect that ultimately, the orbital population in the Belt will far exceed the population in various Earth orbits. But I'd still anticipate the first generation habitats to be built in HEO, even if we do pass up lunar resources in favor of asteroidal.

Charles Radley,while commenting on SPS built in HEO versus at a NEA, said if there was a critical need for some kind of spare parts or repair equipment, it could be transported to the construction site much more quickly. By the same token, if it should happen that we find ourselves in a situation where the very large and elaborate ecology we've just created is going to totally collapse in 2 months unless we import a certain kind of insect or bacteria, that's not going to be a time to be 9-12 months away from Earth. Much better to be 2-3 days travel time from Earth in such an emergency biological shipment scenario. The very first habitat built, at the very least, I very much expect to be built in HEO.

Regards,

Mike Combs

"Some thinkers at SSI have recently said it might be better to send your
ore refinery/manufacturing center to a NEO and to build a space habitat
there rather than in HEO. "

Do you have any names and/or Web references?
I think what I was thinking about was in a conference summary toward the front of the 1999 SSI Conference Report. I'll have a look tonight and see if any particular researcher was mentioned.

Regards,

Mike Combs