Digest 1105 Msg 7

At the moment what we are lacking the most are the
right motivations and economic feasibility of space
settlements
With existing technology , at 10000$\Kg in LEO, no
plans are possible.
If you consider that to put 10 people in LEO with the
shuttle the cost is about 400MIL$ that makes
40MIL\PERSON in LEO only
TO GO TO L5 AS AN EXAMPLE ADD ANOTHER 20mil\person,
which is a very conservative figure, and you would
have a 60mil$ per person just for transportation.
for 1000colonists means 60B$ for the 10000 as envision
by ONeill is 600B
Does this make any sense?
So let's go back to reality and see the entire
operation from a strategic point of view
Priority one, is to slash transportation costs to LEO
to no more than 100$\KG.
With such capability the space frontier will at last
open up to private entrepeneurs, Mars missions, space
tourism, lunar bases and so on.
How we go from LEO to other desired locations at an
affordable cost?
By deflecting asteroids, put them in cycler
trajectories between earth and the main destinations,
equip them with a space station type of facility and
utilize their resources for life support activities,
including fuel for shuttle between the cyclers and the
final destination and we have a nearly cost free
cruise ship .
Only after we have such a capability, we can start
seriusly talking about space settlements and their
economic feasibility, prepare business plans and
define the motivations for their construction.
In the meantime we can update the settlement design
with state of the art concepts,such as defining the
design goals, flexibility, modularity, expansion
capability, asteroid as material source, allowing any
solar system location and so on.
The final goal must not be a few small space
settlements but in the long range the capability of
mankind to leave their planet of origin and expand in
space, first in the solar system later in interstellar
space
The only and best way to go will not be to try to
terraform planets , the gravity with earth will always
be a major obstacle, but to build artificial planets ,
in the best possible stellar orbit, utilizing local
comets and asteroids as raw materials and assuring the
possibility to billion of humans to expand their
presence in space.
According to Kardashev a Dyson sphere habitat is only
a 1.6 society classification which means that we still
have a long way to go, being at .8 at the moment
before we can make significant progress in space.

--- Frank nd@... ha scritto:

>I'm sure that robots will be involved, but whether
they'll be used as
>extensively as you envision I'm not so sure. If your
scenario comes to
>pass then why do we need to even have a Habitat in
orbit for the
>people will become redundant?

One reason would be to secure other places for
humanities existence.
We now already have a mood on Earth that some groups
(terrorists) are
not shy off of dying only to do harm to the hatred.

If that mood doesnt change - with ever newer
possibilities of
technology, Earth might become a dangerous place for
humanity - think
alone of biological or chemical weapons or nuclear
power stations
going off.

Some more reason could be spirit of adventure and the
need to get
engineers out into space for better understanding the
products
(robots, space factories) they are developing.

To speed up the process of going into space with the
abilities we have
now, I would think, first habitats (following the ISS)
would emerge
Near Earth within Earths magnetic shields to avoid
the need for heavy
shielding. That is the phase we are in now, we have
already a habitat
in space, the ISS and should bring it ultimately to
work for space
construction.

In that phase we need engineers and workers in Near
Earth locations to
speed development of space infra structure up.

Later I agree with you, were it only for space
manufacturing or
extraction of ore, humans in space could become
redundant.
We could do a lot remote controlled from Earth.

Frank

www.solar-thruster-sailor.info

For the first solar sail design of a carrier ship with
docking able
landers and with roller reefing

making it possible to leave the atmospheric drag zone
near a space
station and getting back again delivering asteroidal
ore to that
Near Earth space station

take a look at:

www.solar-thruster-sailor.info/figs/fig13.html

http://www.solar-thruster-sailor.info/figs/fig14-15.html

http://www.solar-thruster-sailor.info/figs/fig17.html

Space
exploration
Computer science
Science education
Princeton university