How would you colonise space?

[CraigD]

Originally Posted by Skywyze

Uh... Since when is rocket fuel made from oil??

The lower stages of many modern, liquid-fuel multi-stage rockets, use oil-derived fuels – RP-1, T-1, RG-1, kerosene, diesel, etc. Notable exception are the US Space Shuttle, which uses a single liquid hydrogen fuel main engine and solid fueled “strap on” boosters, the French Ariane 5, which has a LH fuel lower stage, and the Japanese H-2 series rockets, which have solid fuel lower stages.

There are a surprising number of rocket fuels, and systems in use today.

Compared to the development and manufacturing of engineering components of both expendable and reusable rockets, though, fuel is minor part of the cost of spaceflight.

[Eclipse Now]

What do we all make of the Virgle (Virgin and Google) plan for Colonising and starting Terraforming Mars?

See their 100 hear plan.

Virgle: The Adventure of Many Lifetimes

Especially, what do you make of their economic implications?

Note: item 4 is the escape rockets if things don't quite work out OK for those early pioneers, but they are "meant" to function as fuel storage tanks indefinitely... as the base / city grows, etc.

[Eclipse Now]

Oh come on! Nobody recognises an April Fool's day joke?

Virgle - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Project Virgle, dubbed by Google as Virgle: The Adventure of Many Lifetimes, was a Google April Fools' joke featured on the main page of Google Search on April 1, 2008. The motto of Project Virgle was, "Things will get better. Eventually".[1]

One interesting aside: I just learned that James Lovelock, yes Mr Gaia himself, has written about super-powerful PFC's as super-greenhouse gases for terraforming Mars. I mean, these beasts are up to 9000 times as powerful as CFC's and last 50 thousand years!

Anyone seen any calculations as to how many tons of PFC's we'd need to really cook Mars up to our average temps?

[Moontanman]

No need for Mars or chemical rockets, use the resources of the asteroids and comet like bodies and use nuclear powered rockets. Like the nuclear light bulb rocket! stay away from gravity wells, use artificial toroidal colonies with artificial gravity. (centrifugal force) electric type rockets for long range trips. see this link for example of nuclear light bulb rocket.

http://www.nuclearspace.com/Liberty_ship_menupg.aspx

[Eclipse Now]

I think I'm with the 'no gravity wells' approach until we get some new means of propulsion that makes leaving gravity wells more economical.

But what explains the massive interest in Mars? Are some people intuitively aware how hard it is to create a viable ecosystem in a rotating cylinder in the vacuum of space, and want a "backup earth" in case something goes wrong here? That seems to be the major meme on this Slashdot discussion.
Slashdot | Buzz Aldrin's Radical Plan For NASA

Also, if Mars's lower gravity really DOES allow a space elevator for mineral production. Then the space elevator on Mars has the "gravity well advantage" of the slingshot effect where launching a minerals ship from the end of the elevator gives it a significant velocity as it speeds back to earth.

Plaster a big package of metals in heat shields and a bunch of parachutes, have a few "catching craft" in the vicinity of Earth's L5 to help "redirect" the package at the other end, and might we even make minerals from Mars economical in some super-huge future economies of scale? I suspect we'll just get into recycling here on earth, or nano-technology, instead, but maybe the space elevator slingshot will help passengers on a return trip from Mars? I understand it's a significant amount of extra velocity to consider.

[Moontanman]

Mining the asteroids for the minerals makes much more sense than mining Mars. The asteroids at the Lagrange points of Jupiter represent more minerals than have ever been mined from the earth many times over. Mars is a gravity well, the Lagrange points are easy to send things from and to. Large toroidal colonies do not need to be enclosed ecologies any more than an aquarium is an enclosed ecology. Totally artificial methods can and will need to be used to maintain these colonies. Far to much emphasis is placed on the unattainable dream of a enclosed ecology that is self maintaining. Even the earth is not self maintaining over long periods of time. many non biological processes help recycle the materials of the earth. in an orbiting colony adding to and subtracting from the ecosystem will be reletively easy.

[Eclipse Now]

I'm sympathetic to that as well. I guess, if the economics are ever there for getting into space in the first place, once one "base" is up (such as a space colony or Mars base) there may be demand for others. Once one colony ship is out there and becomes self-sustaining, even growing, out of this "first" gravity well, who knows where they'll go from there?

Mars's gravity well is certainly easier to escape than ours. I'm just suggesting that it might not be an either / or thing, but maybe just a matter of timing. One will arrive first, then maybe another. Will it be the "romance" of developing a "home away from home" on Mars? Probably... I sense more activism and emotional energy like hope tied up in Mars than I do the asteroid belt, mainly because I think people can visualise living on a slowly terraforming world than a wholly artificial world, even though initially EVERYTHING on Mars will be JUST as artificial as an ONeil colony.

(Unless we send robots ahead to super-cook the planet with huge PFC greenhouse gas factories and make huge space mirrors to add extra solar heat. If that occurs, then at least there might be 'an atmosphere' even if we have to wear scuba-breathing gear when outdoors, and there will also be an environment in which we might start growing stuff).

With a space population having children, or gathering energy from Jupiter (as this Accelerando thread suggests), and growing exponentially, who knows what "super-industries" might develop across this solar system? It's certainly a different scenario to the usual peak oil & depletionist environmental concerns I try to deal with now. Nice to brainstorm about these things for a change.

Dang! If only we could come up with some kind of world federal government! The beauty pageant's "World peace" could reduce our military spending!
See these plans for expanding an improved EU constitution across the globe as a truly "DEMOCRATIC" world government, not the UN's "Diplomatic deals done behind closed doors" approach.
Federal Union

A world government might free up some serious money to solve global warming & peak oil with smart cities & renewable energy, and eventually pump HEAPS more money into kick starting a new industrial revolution heading for space.

I doubt the world economy is going to cope with peak oil unscathed, so that will probably delay space for a few more decades yet. We've walked right into this one!

But it is nice to dream of what our grandchildren might achieve.

[Moontanman]

I like the idea of super industries developing, we really have no idea what could be accomplished by a permanent presence in space. i am quite sure very few people for saw the new world being such a powerful force even after it was colonized.

[Eclipse Now]

Some of the super-industry scenarios suggested in the other thread.

Consider this scenario: Advanced semi-autonomous unmanned vehicles, launched using 20th century technology, arrive after the usual multi-year trip in the Jovian moon/ring system. There, some drop electricity-generating tethers onto the surfaces of suitable minor moons, using the power to extract silicates and metals to construct large solar-power panels, more vehicles, and special-purpose particle accelerator/collector/refrigerators. Others collect hydrogen and oxygen from the atmospheres of Jupiter and Europa for use in conventional rocket motors.

After decades of mining and assembly, immense solar-powered particle accelerators are boosted out of Jovian orbit into long, low-energy transfer orbits, ending in solar orbits closer than that of Mercury. There, they generate and expend hundreds of thousands of times the current artificial electrical output of Earth to, at very low efficiency, create, cool, and store at near absolute zero hundreds of kilograms of anti-hydrogen. This anti-hydrogen is used to fuel human passenger capable spacecraft capable of sustained multi-g acceleration and repeated Earth landings and launches.

Once started, the industry-like process can expand, though not to unlimited size, to a great enough size that, after 50 to 75 years, transportation from Earth to other locations in the solar system is as available as 20th century air travel. Limiting acceleration to a human-comfortable 1 g, inner-planet destinations require 1-2 day flights, Jupiter 3-4 days, Neptune, the outermost great planet, 7-8, Pluto and other Kuiper objects 9+.

However, even if the whole Jovian industry stage is aborted and we just use solar power & nuclear at the asteroid fields, IF we have robots that can grow our habitats out there exponentially on asteroid field junk that's already out there..... so much could be achieved. We could "domesticate" the asteroid field and eventually have a better chance of deflecting any Dinosaur Killer's on a nasty trajectory towards our home world. But the "mundane stuff" such as more minerals, solar energy, new industrial processes, adaptation, evolution, conservation... it's all out there.

I'm a greenie, so I'm also sympathetic to ecologists designing a "earth backup" on Mars. But those asteroid belts are definitely calling after chatting with you guys in these threads!

[lawcat]

The key to colonization is adaptibility to environment. and that lies in genetic engineering and programming since we don't have billions of years. Until we figure how to create flora and fauna on dry planets it will be difficult. A good place to test and develop adaptation of simple life forms to dry environment is moon.