Asteroid use

The same breakthroughs are nened for any mars mission. Where do you
think the mars habitat is going to come from. Its will be shipped with
the mars colonists. Do you think people are going to walk out witha
wheel barrel and pick on the surface of mars?

To get to mars you would have to build a starship the size of the
international space station at a minimum, develop space agriculture,
build power satellites, design and build low acceleration engines.

In fact you would have to build a large section of the space
infrastructure you need for space settlements before you even think of
starting to move it towards mars.

If we could go to mars today, we can start building space settlements
today.

Bill

> It may be wise not to shut-out any colonization effort (i.e. planet
vs. colony vs star) since the economics and political will in the
future will make the final decision. You see, Mike, we could send a
mission to Mars with current technology and around 50 billion
dollars. We could do marvelous things on Mars for only 10% of the
defense budget, but what could we do in space colonization for the
same amount? Two major technological breakthroughs are needed IMO:
> 1) Much lower launch costs, and
> 2) Advanced telerobotics to mine, manufacture and assemble
fabrications in space remotely from a space station or from a planet
such as Earth or Mars. Mars, with it's closer proximity to the
asteroid belt, may be better suited part of time when Earth is on the
far side of the sun from the asteroid in question. Naturally, if you
can transport the asteroid to orbit around Earth, then this would only
leave the issue of huge rockets to transport the asteroid.
>
> So, you see, we are technologically ready for Mars, and to colonize
Mars, but we lack technology for a massive space colony.
>
> Cheers,
>
> Tom
> From: Combs, Mike
> To: 'spacesettlers@egroups.com'
> Sent: Thursday, January 04, 2001 1:12 PM
> Subject: RE: [spacesettlers] Asteroid use
>
> From: Marcel Williams [mailto:newpapyrus@y...]
>
> MW: If a 1000 tonne asteroid being transported to
> earth were to hit the Earth it would be the equivalent
> of a 2.5 megaton nuclear weapon. Obviously, such
> asteroids could be safely placed into Earth orbit. But
> would you trust dozens, if not hundreds of private
> companys to do this. What about asteroid
> transportation companies based in third world
> countries. An asteroid disaster would be a lot bigger
> than some damaged Liberian oil tanker. And the
> insurance cost would be-- astronomical-- if we
> attempted to place these asteroids in Earth orbit or
> even in Lunar orbit, IMO. And the environmental
> protest would make the anti-nuclear protest of 1970's
> look trivial.
>
> Mars, however, also has practically all of the natural
> resources necessary for human survival. And a much
> lower gravity well than the Earth. And there would be
> little protest about transporting hundreds of 1000 to
> 10,000 tonne asteroids into Marsian orbit every year
> to be processed. The satellite market is estimated to
> be worth about 20 trillion dollars in the next 20
> years. The manufacturing of satellites out of asteroid
> materials in Mars orbit would allow Mars to dominate
> this potential 20 trillion dollar industry.
> I'll be the first to admit that protests from self-styled
"eco-activist" who aren't good at math will be a major hurtle to
overcome. But I have a hard time getting from "Protesters will scream
if you so much as bring an asteroid into cislunar space" to
"Logically, Mars is the best place to build satellites from asteroidal
resources". If the market for these satellites is an Earth market,
that to me means the logical place to build them is HEO, where your
workforce is much closer to Earth.
>
> Maybe rather than bringing in asteroids whole, perhaps we should
only bring in greater numbers of multiple loads of ore, each of which
would be too small to do major damage even if it did strike the
Earth. Alternately, one could propose building the satellites in the
Belt, and only importing the finished product. At least this would
reduce the tonnage being nudged toward Earth, but one could skip the
step of the stopover at Mars.
>
> Personally, I would vote for transporting asteroidal resources to
either L-4 or L-5, which are stable on all 3 axis, and simply
educating the populace that bringing in an asteroid at the distance of
the moon would not pose a significant danger to the Earth.
>
> But if we're talking an Earth orbit market, I wouldn't expect Main
Belt resources to be used at all. I'd sooner expect use of NEOs, and
lunar resources. I have no doubt that Main Belt asteroids will be
used, but I think they'll be used in place, by folks living
permanently in the Belt.
>
> Please forgive me, but this just strikes me as an attempt to
involve Mars out of a sense of romance, with no real consideration of
the value Mars adds to this process. I'd have thought that anyone on
this maillist would be familiar with the work of Gerard O'Neill, the
main thrust of which was that planets are not the best places for
expanding industrial civilizations. Personally, I think Mars is going
to have much less to do with the industrialization or settlement of
space than what most people tend to think.
> MW: Orbital telescopes would be a lot more expensive
> than lunar telescopes manufactured on the moon.
> I'm assuming use of lunar resources to build them (provided that
we're talking about really giant telescopes). In that case, the only
added expense would be the cost of lifting the resources out of the
lunar gravity well. O'Neill calculated that his mass driver could do
this for pennies a pound. It's also likely that manufacturing
processes in HEO will be less expensive than on the lunar surface due
to the constant availability of sunlight. It's even possible that
access to 0 G may have benefits. I don't think the difference in
price tags would be all that much, and the added flexibility of being
able to point wherever you want might be worth something.
>
> Also, a telescope built in 0 G could be even bigger and flimsier
than what would be possible in 1/6th G.
> And
> lunar telescopes would be easier to maintain because
> there would be people there already. A space telescope
> would be a lot more expensive to repair.
> Why assume that there would be people available on the lunar
surface, but not in HEO? I thought this was the Space Settler's
maillist, where we were taking it for granted that there are going to
be space settlements.
>
> If we want to talk about transportation costs to and from Earth,
obviously they are less for HEO than for the lunar surface.
> MW: Asteroids only 1 kilometer to 100 kilometers in
> diameter would probably be the most difficult to mine
> since they would be to heavy to transport into a
> planetary orbit and might be too small and to rugged
> to set up large facilities on its surface-- especially
> if their rotations are very fast. And the labor cost
> would be very high since you would have to find people
> willing to work in isolation in such environments.
>
> Ceres is a C-type of asteroid that probably has all of
> the elements required for an industrial society in
> abundance. And with a gravity well below that of even
> the moon, it would be extremely cheap to transport
> materials off its surface. And being the largest
> asteroid would mean that many companys could
> congregate there to exploit its resources. And that
> would mean hundreds, possibly even tens of thousands,
> of people working on its surface or in orbit around
> the asteroid. So there would be much less of a feeling
> of isolation with so many others also working there.
> And Ceres would have the equivalent resources of
> approximately 1 million 1 kilometer asteroids-- all in
> one place. Ceres is clearly the motherload of
> asteroids. And only those asteroids that you could
> transport by lightsail would be cheaper to exploit,
> IMO, than the largest asteroids.
> OK, I think I see your argument now. Yes, there might be some
synergistic advantage to clustering our facilities and settlements.