Space Habitation
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Ken Sims 1 year, 9 months ago.
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July 23, 2011 at 10:49 pm #1562
I just thought it would be nice to have a place for seasteaders to share their views about space habitats. Seasteading is considered by many to be a step toward space habitation.
I was thinking also about how the next space station should orbit the Sun, and not Earth.
July 23, 2011 at 11:18 pm #14278there was talk of putting gigantic rotating cylinders at the Lagrangian points. Still in Earth orbit but pretty far out there…
July 23, 2011 at 11:50 pm #14279exactly!
the O’Neill Cylinder and Stanford Torus are iconic. i thought their idea was to orbit the Sun. but anyway, being inspired about that is what has always driven my interest in seasteading. humanity WILL eventually colonize space! this is why the stuff we talk about here is monumental, because it contributes to the momentum.
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“Leadership and do-ership are not the same thing”
July 24, 2011 at 12:29 am #14281are there any movements like seasteading but for space colonozation?
July 24, 2011 at 12:36 am #14282yes, many:
P.E.R.M.A.N.E.N.T.
L5 Society
Al Globus
“space colonization” (see also “space habitat”)
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“Leadership and do-ership are not the same thing”
July 24, 2011 at 12:57 am #14284Space colonaztion is no where near as easy as seasteading.
July 24, 2011 at 4:48 pm #14292This is an issue I hold very dear. For humanity to evolve we must move out into space. But that will not happen until we stop using stupid chemical rockets and move to more economical and practical methods.
Forget all the existing commercial ventures, they are just a tourist trap. Who cares if, for US$100k, you can get a few people a few minutes of microgravity? To colonize space, even in LEO, you are going to have to lift hundreds of thousands of metric tons of basic materials out of the gravity well. And that will not happen with any current lift technologies.
July 24, 2011 at 5:25 pm #14293nuclear pulse rocket design would fill your bill Smitty! It has extremely high performance using nuclear pulse rockets using fission type pulse units originally intended for use on interplanetary space flights. The original project included Nuclear fission pulse unit powered Orions could provide fast and economical interplanetary transportation with useful human crewed payloads of several thousand tonnes and get you from the earths surface into orbit in one stage! The trouble is it would irradiate the planet…
July 24, 2011 at 6:32 pm #14295aehm – the reason why this technology has never been used – not even during cold war – is because it distributes nuclear waste in fine particles in the atmosphere – much more efficient and widespread than Fukushima and Chernobyl….seems exactly what we need to promote for a better future…
July 24, 2011 at 11:05 pm #14298i_is_j_smith wrote:
To colonize space, even in LEO, you are going to have to lift hundreds of thousands of metric tons of basic materials out of the gravity well. And that will not happen with any current lift technologies.
Lifting that much is just not financially feasable, even at $100 / lb. You need to build the station using insitu materials, asteroids for instance, and only launch equipment too difficult to make in space.
Steve
July 25, 2011 at 12:23 am #14300sda1950 wrote:
i_is_j_smith wrote:
To colonize space, even in LEO, you are going to have to lift hundreds of thousands of metric tons of basic materials out of the gravity well. And that will not happen with any current lift technologies.
Lifting that much is just not financially feasable, even at $100 / lb. You need to build the station using insitu materials, asteroids for instance, and only launch equipment too difficult to make in space.
Steve
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They’ve recently discovered what seem to be massive ice deposits at the lunar poles
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/Mini-RF/multimedia/feature_ice_like_deposits.html
If the LCROSS ejecta is an indication, the ices have carbon and nitrogen as well as hydrogen and oxygen.
For a number of reasons this makes a lunar base more plausible.
July 25, 2011 at 8:09 pm #14294I like the idea, and if we could make it economical for the average consumer, I would be in favor of it over seasteading. This is a great idea that should be further explored.
July 25, 2011 at 8:29 pm #14317Yes, we would be wise to grab whatever we could that is already outside Earth’s gravity well. But fetching asteroids and mining the moon still requires an immense space-based infrastructure that will need to be constructed using materials brought up from the surface. There is no way around it, we will need to lift incredible amounts of materials up to LEO and then out to GEO.
There is no way to make this procedure economically feasible. This cannot be a money-making, capitalist venture. It needs to be done for the good of the human race, not to make a buck. I envision something along the lines of the first push to the moon. It was done as a social challenge, something done to better humanity and push our goals higher.
We better get cracking soon, too. Have you seen the new global population estimates for the next 50 years? We gotta start spreading or, like yeast in a bottle, we’re gonna kill ourselves.
August 2, 2011 at 7:02 am #14512i_is_j_smith wrote:
This is an issue I hold very dear. For humanity to evolve we must move out into space. But that will not happen until we stop using stupid chemical rockets and move to more economical and practical methods.
Forget all the existing commercial ventures, they are just a tourist trap. Who cares if, for US$100k, you can get a few people a few minutes of microgravity? To colonize space, even in LEO, you are going to have to lift hundreds of thousands of metric tons of basic materials out of the gravity well. And that will not happen with any current lift technologies.
settlement.arc.nasa.gov/Nowicki/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrodynamic_tether
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioisotope_thermoelectric_generator
quicklaunchinc.com/videos
Rutan was right to use hyrbid rockets, but he was way too generous on comfort. Rockets should be as accomodating as an unlicensed taxi. Make the fare wear a space suit and don’t bother pressurizing the damn thing. It’s a ferry, not a dorm room. I don’t know why people think they have to live out of their car. Burns way more fuel than setting up a tent and taking a motorcycle.
August 2, 2011 at 4:50 pm #14514Rockets should be as accomodating as an unlicensed taxi.
An unlicensed taxi is even more comfort than we need. We need to focus more along the lines of semi trailers and cargo containers. 99.99% of what we need to move off-planet will be raw materials like hydrogen, nitrogen, carbon, etc. as well as technology products like electronics, etc. People…by far the most sensitive cargo…will only be a tiny fraction of the overall transport.
Normal chemical rockets just can’t do it the high volume we need. We need a whole new way of doing things. Whether that’s an electromagnetic launch system with some type of orbital insertion assist, energy beaming for SSTO vessels, laser launch (either air or fuel burn), space elevator, or HARP system with LEO grab…I don’t know. But we need something new and we need it fast.
The issue is that all existing nations that have the capacity to complete a project like this already have immense infrastructures centered around archaic chemical rocket launch systems, and that infrastructure has a cloud of money and power around it that will never go away. Too many rich and powerful people are making too much money and power around the current system to ever let it change. That’s why it falls on seasteads to create something new and take the lead from those old decaying fossils on land. Same reason why renewable energy systems are languishing in the developed nations…everyone wants oil to go away except the people in charge, so oil stays.
Me, I’m leaning towards electromagnetic launch with laser assisted orbital insertion. Marshall Savage should be required reading for anyone thinking and talking about space colonization. While he got lots of his stuff wrong, the overall plan and many of his ideas are still golden.
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