Space News Letter to Editor

I just realized I forgot a key advantage of orbital settlements. Since
orbital settlements can be fairly close to Earth they are in a much
better position to provide value to Earth customers; e.g., tourism,
space solar power, and 0g manufactured products.

On Thursday, May 8, 2003, at 04:27 PM, Al Globus wrote:

> I just sent this to Space News. Thought the group might be mildly
> interested:
>
> I agree heartily with Mark Whittington ("Missing the Big Picture,"
> Space News 5 May) that space settlement is a goal truly worthy of a $15
> billion/year space program. If I may offer a slight change of course:
> the Moon and Mars are great places for science and exploration but
> lousy places to live. Our goal should be orbital space settlements:
> kilometer scale spacecraft housing thousands of people each, initially
> in earth orbit and later throughout the solar system. Princeton
> professor Gerard O'Neill proved that these are possible, although very
> expensive. True, many materials are easier to obtain on the lunar or
> martian surface as opposed to orbit, but near-earth asteroids can
> supply ample materials and some are energetically closer to Earth orbit
> than the Moon is. In most other aspects, orbital colonies are vastly
> superior to lunar or martian colonies. Consider:
>
> - orbital colonies have ample solar energy 24/7 rather than half time.
> - large pressurized structures will be much easier to build in 0g.
> - orbital colonies can be much closer to Earth, vastly simplifying
> logistics, particularly in comparison with Mars.
> - while orbital colonies can be rotated to supply any desirable
> psuedo-gravity level, Mars and the Moon have much weaker gravity than
> Earth with unknown consequences on developing children.
> - near the axis of rotation orbital colonists can enjoy 0g recreation
> (and manufacturing).
> - the view from many orbits (particularly near Earth, Saturn and
> Jupiter) is absolutely fantastic, and always changing.
> - the surface of Mars and the Moon combined is roughly equal to the
> surface area of Earth, whereas the materials from a single large
> asteroid can build orbital colonies with a livable surface area of at
> least 500 times the surface area of Earth (yes, five hundred time,
> that's not a misprint).
>
> The problem, of course, is inadequate Earth-to-orbit transportation.
> NASA should be spending at least half it's budget on this and cut
> whatever else needs to be cut. In particular, I suggest:
>
> - a robust propulsion and materials R&D program
> - improving the usability of test and launch facilities and making them
> available to private industry
> - a program to buy the first 10-15 orbital launches of any new US
> launch vehicle. This effectively pays for a flight test program and
> will allow private developers to borrow development funds. The
> taxpayer only pays for success (contrast this with the flightless
> aerospace plane, X33, and X34). Note that a stimulus for sub-orbital
> launch does not appear necessary, the X-Prize and potential tourist
> market seem to be adequate.
> - a robust program to identify and minimize damage to the atmosphere
> from future large scale launch activity.
>
> In any case, our future can be in orbit. We can, and should, build
> thousands of orbital space colonies and bring this solar system fully
> to life.
>
> -
> ---------------------
> The dinosaurs were destroyed by an asteroid because they weren't
> space-faring. It's almost as if Gaia then thought "Well, dinosaurs
> worked pretty well, but space-faring is necessary. Maybe I'll should
> try mammals this time." Humanity is now developing systems to detect
> and deflect asteroids, and could build orbital space colonies to spread
> beyond Earth to insure life would survive a planetary catastrophe.
>
> Al Globus
> CSC at NASA Ames Research Center
> http://www.nas.nasa.gov/~globus/home.html
>
> Views expressed in this email are only my opinions and are not the
> position of any organization I'm familiar with.
>

Space tourism could be our ticket to the stars. Save your pennies,
suborbital flights for $100,000 may start in 2005! See
http://www.spaceadventures.com/suborbital for details.

Al Globus
CSC at NASA Ames Research Center
http://www.nas.nasa.gov/~globus/home.html

Views expressed in this email are only my opinions and are not the
position of any organization I'm familiar with.