Help Design your FutuHome in Space

On Jan 11, 2016, at 2:40 PM, 'Robert Smith, SSI' robert@... [ssi_list] ssi_list@... wrote:Yes, thank you!It was a very pretty form, nice pics and high level overview of a type of colony.LEO seems an interesting choice, and probably because of the space available for a surveythe amount of information on 'what will people do there' was limited to the fun stuff from the backcover of The High Frontier..****Equatorial**** LEO is chosen because theres not much radiation there and its close to Earth. To understand the work behind the survey there are three papers that go into gruesome detail. The guts of these papers is a set of radiation computations using OLTARIS, NASAs web front end to their radiation codes, and a careful examination of the rotation literature.The first paper summarizes the second two and then goes further:"Space Settlement: an Easier Way,"by Al Globus, Stephen Covey, and Daniel Faber, November 2015 describes a relatively easy, incremental path to free space settlement by taking advantage of very low radiation levels in Equatorial Low Earth Orbit (ELEO) and higher rotation rates. Low levels of radiation in ELEO permit settlements with little or no radiation shielding. Higher rotation rates permit much smaller settlements. Together this reduces settlement design mass by two to three orders of magnitude and places early settlements very close to Earth, radically reducing the difficulty of building the first space settlements. The mass model used in this paper is availablehereas an Excel spreadsheet."Space Settlement Population Rotation Tolerance,"Al Globus and Theodore Hall, preprint, June 2015. This paper reviews the literature to find that space settlement residents and visitors can tolerate at least four, and proabaly six, rotations per minute to achieve 1g of artificial gravity. This means settlements can be radically smaller, and thus easier to build, than previously believed. Combined with the next paper on radiation shielding, the first space settlements can be two orders of magnitude less massive and closer to Earth than previous designs making launch from Earth practical."Orbital Space Settlement Radiation Shielding,"Al Globus and Joe Strout, preprint, July 2015. The major result of this paper is that settlements in low (~500 km) Earth equatorial orbits may not require any radiation shielding at all based on a careful analysis of requirements and extensive simulation of radiation effects. This radically reduces system mass and has profound implications for space settlement as extraterrestrial mining and manufacturing are no longer on the critical path to the first settlements, although they will be essential in later stages. It also means the first settlements can evolve from space stations, hotels, and retirement communities in relatively small steps.. it does strike me that that limitation made it out to be more of Elysium where rich people go to eat grapes rather that the idea of a off-Earthhabitat being a place where people will want to go to do something they can feel good about (andto do things worth getting paid to do) but,again, Iunderstand the limitation. It's a survey with a specificoverview goal. And it's a great thing to do. Cudos.However, if anyonesends this survey out to people who aren't currentlypassionate about non-planetary living and getsa ping back that the person found it interesting and would like to know more about theway this can be made and made profitable, there is The High Frontier (available as an Amazon Kindle book) and theSSI.orgwebsite has just started releasing the archive of the SSI Newsletters which document the work that goes into filling in so many parts ofThe High Frontier Concept. The 'whys and hows' that it takes to get any great project off the ground. And since it is an archive it also gives the benefit of hindsight as to what works and what doesn't.http://ssi.org/reading/ssi-newsletter-archive/I hope that this survey is part of a process of more to come that will add up to a finely tuned understanding of the market's true interest and that the results are shared here and elsewhere.RobertOn January 11, 2016 at 10:32 AM "sailorbarsoom@... ssi_list@... wrote:Thank you for letting us know about this. I filled it out, optionals and all.