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Terraformer

Member

From: The Fortunate Isles

Registered: 2007-08-27

Posts: 3,906

Website

Re: Colony Ship Design

Any ideas for a colony ship? I think we should have another forum for this, but...

My design would be assembled in a HEO Shipyard (it would have to be, it would be that big), and rendevous with craft bringing the colonists up. It would be nuclear powered (sod the rest of the worlds opinions on Nuclear Power), and water would be used as the sheilding for the entire craft. It would have a central centrifuge (bit of a mouthful) to simulate artificial gravity. Any more ideas?

Imagine if NASA would give the spare boosters (or even just one) they'll have lying around after the shuttles retirement to a not-for-profit coalition. Imagine what we could do with them.        Anyone want to ride one of NASAs rocket as a first stage?

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Use what is abundant and build to last

Martian Republic

Member

From: Haltom City- Dallas/Fort Worth

Registered: 2004-06-13

Posts: 855

Re: Colony Ship Design

Any ideas for a colony ship? I think we should have another forum for this, but...

My design would be assembled in a HEO Shipyard (it would have to be, it would be that big), and rendevous with craft bringing the colonists up. It would be nuclear powered (sod the rest of the worlds opinions on Nuclear Power), and water would be used as the sheilding for the entire craft. It would have a central centrifuge (bit of a mouthful) to simulate artificial gravity. Any more ideas?

Imagine if NASA would give the spare boosters (or even just one) they'll have lying around after the shuttles retirement to a not-for-profit coalition. Imagine what we could do with them.        Anyone want to ride one of NASAs rocket as a first stage?

Those not-for-profit coalition wouldn't do a whole lot with those spare boosters or anything with those retired shuttles.

Once they used those spare boosters up, then they would be back in the same boat there in right now and nothing much would change from what it is right now.

Giving those not-for-profit coalition those retired shuttle wouldn't help either. It cost about 1/2 billion to 1 billion dollars to launch one of those shuttle, which would cost too much for those not-for-profit coalition to own or operate.

So it wouldn't make any difference either way. A not-for-profit coalition group is just not going to make a serious space effort no matter what you say.

Larry,

John_Frazer

Member

From: Boulder, Co. USA

Registered: 2002-05-29

Posts: 75

Website

Re: Colony Ship Design

I'll post more later, but for now I'll say that this seems to go well here, maybe with links in appropriate threads in the "Human Missions" topic (not cross-posting, but shared links to relevant things are good.)

Build the thing up from HLV-boosted sections (~80 to 100 tons per "Ares-V CaLV", if it ever flies). Send ship sections up unmanned as big dumb booster cargo, and send crew up in a safe crew vehicle.
Just about any common Mars mission plan (aside from Mars Direct) uses at last a few hundred tons in LEO for start, and this should be plenty to send some sort of hab along, which could be bootstrapped at Mars' moons into a fully shielded, full Earth G hab.
It'll very likely take 2 or 3 such space assembled ships to get up to a base which can use regolith to make truss & cable spin-arms capable of spinning a fully shielded hab (it'd be too massive to send on the ship). On the way out, they have (SWAG?) 1/2 G unshielded to keep the spin-arm mass down, with a non-spinning solar flare shelter.