Space colonisation

[niviene]

This is such a neat thread. I do think that somehow eventually we will have, or at least experiment with, colonies either on the moon or on other planets. However, something that bothers me about all of this stuff is.. well, I suppose I've always considered that even with all the pollution and waste that the stuff we have on this planet is here on this planet, in some form - everything just changing form. (and, of course, we get a lot of space dust and particles... but I'm not really including that). I am worried about what would happen if we were to start creating stuff in other places and bringing massive amounts of foreign things in and sending massive amounts of stuff out. I can't put into words exactly why it worries me - it just feels like it would throw off the balance of things. I feel like nature finds a way to balance out - and this would be an attempt to outsmart mother nature, and I have a bad feeling that she would find a way to win anyway. Call me crazy. Still, if it were to work out, it would take eons worth of testing and experimenting. I have always (in spite of my worries) sort of harbored some deep hope that Mars would prove to be inhabitable and that we would at least get a person/team there - or that we would find some real proof that life once was abundant on that planet.

[mojassty]

This is such a neat thread. I do think that somehow eventually we will have, or at least experiment with, colonies either on the moon or on other planets. However, something that bothers me about all of this stuff is.. well, I suppose I've always considered that even with all the pollution and waste that the stuff we have on this planet is here on this planet, in some form - everything just changing form. (and, of course, we get a lot of space dust and particles... but I'm not really including that). I am worried about what would happen if we were to start creating stuff in other places and bringing massive amounts of foreign things in and sending massive amounts of stuff out. I can't put into words exactly why it worries me - it just feels like it would throw off the balance of things. I feel like nature finds a way to balance out - and this would be an attempt to outsmart mother nature, and I have a bad feeling that she would find a way to win anyway. Call me crazy. Still, if it were to work out, it would take eons worth of testing and experimenting. I have always (in spite of my worries) sort of harbored some deep hope that Mars would prove to be inhabitable and that we would at least get a person/team there - or that we would find some real proof that life once was abundant on that planet.

 

Yeah, pollution is definitely a big problem here, and I would hate to junk up other worlds once we begin visiting them. Walking around on the surface of a planet, or sending a robot, might be harmless enough, but if we have a group of people living on an alien world for an extended period of time, they're bound to generate plenty of waste.

 

Actually, I think the answer to our pollution problems lie in space. Being so big and empty makes it like a bottomless garbage can. We could just package all of our filth onto a rocket or something and launch it out into the void! If we aim it out of the plane of the planets and give it enough velocity to escape the solar system, I don't see how it could have any negative consequences.

[Adrian Cobon]

i dont think the asteroid would be such a good idea... ever heard of 'every reaction has an equal and opposite reaction' would the boosters used to take off from the asteroid potentially knock the asteroid out of earth orbit and send it crashing down towards the rest of us...

 

Yes, I have thought of that. Ever heard of braking? Have two sets of jets latch onto the satelite and simply allow one to puch the asteroid to Earth and let the other one decelerate it enough to become trapped in the L point. Sadly, I do not know the exact formula on how to compute how much energy would be required to do this, but I feel it is within the range of possibities. And who says it would hit the Earth? L points are, by definition, some ways away from the Earth, even if it where pushed too close to the Earth wouldn't it be possible to put the most destructive force known to man to good use, send a carefully controlled nuke and obliterate it? And to be safe, before the asteroid even starts its journy toward Earth have a detonation site located on it. :rant: Would that be a good, peaceful, and potentially lifesaving use for the aging nuclear arsenal that the nuclear powers control? Plus, when it comes to space, doesn't every action contain a risk, however slight, of a cautostraphic reaction?

[Boerseun]

There is, pardon for the expression, more than one way to skin a cat. As I understand it, it is theoritically possible to send out machines to capture asteroids from the asteroid belt and simply push them toward Earths L-points.

Quite right. Although, as Carl Sagan pointed out, we as a species have a long way to go still before we can confidently engage in such a game of 'celestial billiards'. One wrong push, and we wipe out a considerable area of Planet Earth.

 

These colonies would have next to nothing gravity well (except for what artifical rotation would induce.) thus making it simplier to escape.

Provided you bore out the insides of these asteroids, and live underneath their surfaces. Any rotation induced in these stones, will fling objects off the surface due to centrifugal force. If you want to park off on the surface, these space rocks betters be real, real still. Their gravity is way too small to be of any use (which makes them useful for space resources, as you have pointed out, but introduces a host of new difficulties).

 

And who says anything about needing boosters to escape Luna's gravity well? The theory I have about escaping its gravity well is simple. You know how a linear accelator works? Imagine one on a vast larger scale that is meant to propel objects out of Lunar orbit, say to Earth or Mars?

Yeah - a magnetic railway track powered by solar arrays built horizontally over a couple of lunar kilometers, able to accelerate huge masses to orbital or higher speeds, seeing as they don't encounter any atmospheric resistance etc.

Granted. it's a neat idea.

But... seeing as it's built statically over a couple of kilometers, you have a static launch platform, and your vehicle (projectile) can't do much about it. So, if you want to launch to Mars, you're either going to have to have several launch tracks, all pointing in different directions (even a few degrees would be deemed critical - increasing the needed amount of rails enormously) or you'll have to wait long stretches at a time for your very small and very limited launch window. Which, if you were to miss it with only several minutes, will force you to wait for another very, very long and boring time. You can't launch to the Lagrange points either with a static track, seeing as they are constantly moving as well, as the sun/earth/moon system reconfigures itself constantly.

 

The cost, in the terms I am thinking about (actually getting the object out of Earths main gravity well.) will go down if people world wide deal with the situation as if it wern't static - it is simply a minor technical problem that can be dealt with if enough research is done on alternative fuels and launch systems, not advertising (since advertising companies are kind of stuck in following public interest).

If it's not following the public interest, they will not do it. That's what killed Apollo's TV-ratings. If you've seen one moonwalk, you've seen them all. Ask Michael Jackson.

People saw gritty TV-pics of the Michelin Man bouncing around the lunar surface, and completely lost interest by the time Apollo 17 came around. If you don't keep public interest in a venture, you're dead. Figuratively speaking. Or, like (with respects to Unle Al) Bush the Lesser, politically. He can't keep public interest in his little Iraqi fracas (expensive little fracas, I might add), and will therefore keep on losing popularity and money. One way to do it is advertising, 'cause advertisers won't place ads if the public's not watching. It's a good way to let their public affairs people carry the cost of telling you wether you're still on track. Even though your main booster was painted to look like it's wearing a huge condom.

Come on, it'll be funny, at least.

How about a Space elevator? About the farm colony - imagine if a famine struck a huge part of the Earth - would you feel more comfortable with an alternative agricultural system that would be unaffected or without one?

I would feel more comfortable with an agricultural system on Earth, where I can at least get to the food. Providing food for millions of people, even with the best hydroponic systems available, will take up thousands of hectares, in the case of the moon, thousands of undercover, sheltered, pressurised hectares - depening upon a soil which dynamics we don't even know, but which has proven to contain extremely sharp edges on its particles - which will probably cut soft roots to shreds. So, we'll have to import some kind of static growth medium for a hydroponic exercise - and the costs keep on piling up. There are thousands, if not millions, of square kilometers unused tillable land on Earth. And that's where the hungry mouths are gonna be, for a long, long time still to come.

 

It needs to implemented, I feel, ASAP because of Moores Law - anything that can go wrong will - it is only a matter of time. I personally prefer to have a backup system in place, even if it is used initally to provide food to other colonies.

You are referring to Mister Murphy, Esq. We don't have to grow carrots on the moon 'cause processing power just doubled...?

[GAHD]

How ever much land there is, the population is growing at an exponential rate. That land starts looking smaller and smallr by the second.

 

Sadly I think the problem will hit home at the end of my generation, we'll need to have a solution ready and fast or it'll be time for soilent green.

[Jay-qu]

Actually, I think the answer to our pollution problems lie in space. Being so big and empty makes it like a bottomless garbage can. We could just package all of our filth onto a rocket or something and launch it out into the void! If we aim it out of the plane of the planets and give it enough velocity to escape the solar system, I don't see how it could have any negative consequences.

 

I dont think this is such a good idea... it would be ok for the short term, but think about it all our rubbish in the past was put in the ground and decomposes - abiet over a long time it stays on earth and remains in a fairly 'closed system' if we start attaching jets to big piles of rubbish we will start losing mass from earth ( yes a small amout relativly but think about the long term...) I think this is what niviene was trying to get at

[mojassty]

I dont think this is such a good idea... it would be ok for the short term, but think about it all our rubbish in the past was put in the ground and decomposes - abiet over a long time it stays on earth and remains in a fairly 'closed system' if we start attaching jets to big piles of rubbish we will start losing mass from earth ( yes a small amout relativly but think about the long term...) I think this is what niviene was trying to get at

 

That's a complication I hadn't thought of. But if we do start mining asteroids and other extraterrestrial bodies, and transporting that material back to earth, wouldn't the Earth be gaining mass? Maybe we could devise a system whereby we import useful resources and export an equal mass of rubbish. The transport ships to and from the asteroids could carry trash from Earth on their way to the asteroid belt, eject it into space, and then be filled up at the asteroid mines.

[Adrian Cobon]

Okay - I always get Murphy's and Moores law mixed up.

 

Who says that, at least for transporting matter out of the Earth-Luna System that the main catapult system has to be tied to any particular body? You can use one system (like a space elevator I mentioned earlier) to get the desired object off the planetary body and have it propel itself (through boosters) to a accelator that is pointed (through computers) at Mars constantly. About adding or removing matter from the earth - say you can remove a square acre per day of refuse - that is only 365.25 acres per year or roughly 3,653 acres per decade and when comparing to the Earths size (I can't find it via google- what is it?) I figure that this is only a drop in the bucket.

[mojassty]

you would be transporting a volume, not an area, so you would have to measure it in cubic acres.

 

look up the radius of the earth and plug it into the equation for the volume of a sphere (i can't think of it off the top of my head). That should give a rough estimate of the size of the earth.

[Jay-qu]

That's a complication I hadn't thought of. But if we do start mining asteroids and other extraterrestrial bodies, and transporting that material back to earth, wouldn't the Earth be gaining mass? .

 

Yeah that MAY work, at least the mass could be kept constant. But what about things like density and composition? If we export lots of carbon based polymers that cant decompose quickly here on earth then bring back an equal mass of say Nickel from an asteroid then we are still upsetting a balance, and we have no idea the effects it could have... keep thinking we can solve this...

[Boerseun]

Actually, I think the point is pretty moot.

 

Planet Earth gains hundreds of tons of mass every single day, thanks to space dust, being hammered by the solar wind, etc.

 

We still have a very long way to go before we can even reach the stage of removing a hundred tons of mass off Earth on a daily basis. As a matter of fact, our power-to-weight ratios on even our best boosters are such that for every ton of mass thrown into orbit, hundreds of tons of polluting exhaust stay behind in the atmosphere.

 

So - before we will cause a detectable alteration in Earth's orbit due to our tampering with the planet's mass, we'll all die from rocket exhaust pollution and related issues.

[niviene]

Planet Earth gains hundreds of tons of mass every single day, thanks to space dust, being hammered by the solar wind, etc.

....

So - before we will cause a detectable alteration in Earth's orbit due to our tampering with the planet's mass, we'll all die from rocket exhaust pollution and related issues.

 

Well, yea, this is what I was getting at, B... we get space dust all the time, but I would still be worried about adding or removing anything else from the planet. I think one of the big things keeping us from successful colonization is that we would have to find a place that had some amount of resources that we could use in our survival there, rather than trying to ship supplies constantly... if Mars had some resources for us, it would seem much more likely and feasible that in the near future we could experiment with the concept - if, as C1ay's post implies, we could be sure we'd survive the trip in the first place!

[Boerseun]

I can't see anything stopping us from colonising Mars, or the Near Earth Asteroids, right now. From a technological perspective, that is. If we put our minds, effort, and above all, capital, into it, we can genetically engineer algae that can survive on Mars' hostile surface, turning the surface dark, decreasing the albedo, increasing the oxygen and temperature, etc. Technically and theoretically, it's all possible.

 

The only question is: Why do we want to do it?

 

If overpopulation is an issue, this is not the solution. We'll have to boost more than 300,000 individuals off to Mars every single day, and that'll only maintain the status quo on Earth as far as body count goes. And that's patently inpossible.

 

If it's for the sake of exploiting new frontiers, the way humans have been doing for the last how many years, we should keep in mind that the seafloor is still there - and it's a much closer frontier - and constitutes more than 70% of the Earth's surface area - than Mars. If we want to test technology for future Mars ventures, we should do it on the seafloor. And, if we find that the technology works, why not stay on the seafloor and exploit what's left of it? Think about it: High pressure, hostile environment, a whole bunch of challenges. It's not comparable to Mars in any way except for the fact that both habitats will have to be self-sufficient and hermetically sealed. Which, in itself, will already be a big test of our resolve.

[G2006]

Hi

I read somewhere that if cost was not an issue (We wish) the most resonable way of colanizing mars is to put the a huge bubble dome over it, like the ones they use down on the eden project in the uk. Anyway once you have the bubble dome set up fill it with plants and carbind dioxide cillinders leave it for 60 years then when you come back up their will enough oxygen in the dome to substain how many thousand of people in the dome. Google it for more info