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Hey folks, maybe you should consider terraforming Ceres. . . it's 1,000 km in diameter and has a surface area of 3 million square kilometers (almost half the size of the US, about the same as western Europe). It's density is twice that of water, indicating lots of water and other gasses. It is a carbonaceous chondrite by composition. Spectral analyses indicate hydrated clays on the surface, possibly frost on the surface (!), probably permafrost, possibly salts on the surface.
People would have to live in flying saucer-shaped apartment buildings with a fixed, unmoving outside and a spinning inside about fifty meters in diameter. Ceres has a gravity only 2.4% of Earth's, so it is not enough to give one's skeleton much of a workout. But spinning habitats oriented 90 degrees from the surface could have very nice terrestrial gravity inside. If these habitats were located inside large domed spaces, one could ascend to the hub of one's spinning habitat, descend to the exit at the ground level, walk out a tunnel, don wings, and fly to one's destination. Housing would be covered with tonnes of regolith for radiation protection.
Presumably plants could grow in 2.4% gravity, though we don't know that for sure. The sunlight is about 14% the level of earth, so mirrors might be needed to give plants enough to grow at a reasonable rate, or genetic engineering will be needed to improve the plants' efficiency and ability to utilize low-light conditions.
It might be possible, eventually, to enclose the entire asteroid in a single dome, one requiring an army of people and robots to maintain. Whether a greenhouse effect could be engineered to raise the asteroid's temperature sufficiently, I do not know. That may not be desirable if it causes subsurface heating and degassing of methane, ammonia, and hydrocarbon-rich compounds.
Ceres rotates once every nine hours. I suspect people could adapt; they'd get up in daylight, while they were at work or school it'd be dark out for 4.5 hours, go home in sunlight, and if they were up late enough they'd be able to enjoy midnight sun. It might be best to shift to a three rotation/27 hour "day" so that the sun does the same thing every day and is predictable. (Studies of people living in caves have shown that people often naturally shift to longer daily rhythms.) Plants might not adapt so easily and may require genetic modification.
Ceres's geology may be fascinating as well. It never melted all the way through, but interior temperatures probably got high enough to metamorphize the core and inner mantle, driving the water to the outer layers. Water volcanoes may have erupted on the surface in the early days and hydrothermal alteration of the interior may have produced useful ore bodies.
--- RobS
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Easier to land on, or to leave, Ceres might be a convenient supply station. It would be easier to integrate Ceres into solar system economics than Mars.
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Roof the whole place? Hmmmmmm.
I always imagined people living inside asteroids, with domes on the surface. But if you could put a roof over the whole place, that would be grand.
Ceres would make a cool moon for Venus.
"Run for it? Running's not a plan! Running's what you do, once a plan fails!" -Earl Bassett
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It would remain a cool moon if Venus were moved into Ceres orbit; but then, the other asteroids would be disturbed.
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Instead of a dome around an asteroid, just build a large structure by itself, possibly a rotating tube.
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The asteroids will become valuable building material for space colonies.
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Hi,
There are no asteroids in the solar system that can be terraformed. Check out my list at:
http://www.geocities.com/alt_cosmos/esc … scape.html
from my website:
http://www.geocities.com/alt_cosmos/ind … index.html
Michael
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On Ceres -- Let`s built a "Global Sky Ocean"!!!
Puting asside the topic of photo-exospheric athmosphere deterioration, in 2.4% g environment the hight of necesarry 1bar air column has to be about 50 times the earth`s. That means average 400 kilometers of air overground Ceres? Comparable with the planet`s radius. In such hights the gravity will be around 4 times lower and the dissipation will be further encouraged. Add the fast rotational period - the equatorial air bulge and other factors... and presurized Ceres surface will turn the planetoid in kinda comet, without powerfull artificial magnitosphere to hold the atmosphere molecules from escaping. Such tremendous volume of air necesarry for 1 bar brethable air mixture (comparable with the earth`s atmosphere mass) could be avoided with comperativelly simple technique, already proposed for domed 1 bar environments on bodies with little gravity:
For example, it is shown that on Moon, a presurized dome has to have quite big structural strength in order not to burst -- the engeneering decision -- make the dome from thin and weak sheet of sinthetic matter and burry it in several dozen of metters of regolith which weight will compensate the internal air presure...
Here you have ballancing counter-presure AND radiation protection.
The same work could be done by water layer. Liquid water is about thousand times denser than air in the same temperature span so moderate depth of water could compensate realy huge air column. Thin water layers are transperant.
If the body is so small and low gravity as Ceres, Vesta, others..., but round and big enough to be usefull in other sence than simple dismantling it for raw materials... ( in the "planemo" taxonomy of Gibor Basri -- residing between the lowest part of the mass spectrum of the planetary bodies and somewhere the earth`s moon size), than simply put the major part of the hydrosphere above the athmosphere:
1. Gradually cover the whole planetoid with TWO one-in-another "world tents"/"baloons"/"bags" of transperant plastic
2. Pump them incrementally to reach their full designed size -- nowhere touching the firm ground - say, average ten km above ground.
3.Paralelly introduce water between the two sheets of the 'dome' during the corresponding increase of the beneath air presure.
4.Finally you have 1 bar (under few % of g`s) brethable athmosphere encapsulated/pushed down in packaged "sky ocean" of liquid water.
Pay one constructional effort and receive:
-statical forces` balanced presure dome;
-the best radiation shielding;
-hydro-ecosystem environment-a whole completelly functional ocean floating above the air layer;
-water reservoir and distributor;
-termal/greenhouse shield/insulator
-managable ocean-currant global termoregulator...
-air-leakage preventor... ...
Under the ocean on "terra firma" grow giantic trees, biuld huge dwelling complexes, whatever...
The access to and from space could be easily done by Beabtalks puncturing the ocean. The synchronous oprbit is quite low because of lesser gravity and fast spinning of the dwarf-planets -- with common materials, say, kevlar, could be biult a whole ring encircling the globe at that orbit with looong tethers reaching far out (to degree dependant entirely of the tether tensile strehgnt) to be used as momentum transfer utility for interplanetary transit maneuvres, cathapulting and receaving cargo without fuel expenditure even if moving far faster than the orbital velocity of the minor planet. The resources of Ceres, Vesta or other such body here or in anoither planetary system could be used equally successfull under air presure too. There is more than enough vacuum on "walk/fly" distance at the synchronous ring facility...
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For stability, the tube arrangement might be more manageable.
If the tube were slightly narrower in the middle then water would flow to the end maintenance units. Having 2 maintenance units would provide backup if one got hit by a meteor.
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A "tube arrangement" for the Ceres` "Sky ocean"?
Or you mean the rotating space colony designs?
Building the last is also unavoidable, but it doesn`t contradict to terraforming the surfaces of the existing gravity centers of sufficient size. There is enormous quantity of material in mere space rocks and dust -- from microscopic particles to asteroids with dozens of km in linear dimensions. We don`t need to dismantle the big bodies, the sighseengs of the System to construct enough living room in rotating tube-like manner. Only in the atmosphere of Venus, from which we one way or another must get rid off, in order to meliorate the surface conditions, there is enough carbon for buckies to biult colonies with dozens of thousand times bigger surface than earth`s. The Sun itself contains more than thousand earth masses, about 4 Jupiters, of carbon -- the best chemical bound relating for tensile strenght building material...
Depending on the size of the naturally available distinct pieces of matter -- single atoms` clouds, dust nano- and microparticles, sand grains, stones, rocks, planemos, stars..., there could be used the whole spectra of canonical artificial ecology construction techniques: 1.rotating tubes, 2.terraforming solid planetary masses, and finally -- 3.supra-shells.
In our own solar system we could see all these methods unfolding. Tubes--short ones O`Neal`s or Pat Gunkel`s topopolis designs + terraformed dwarf planets like Pallas, Vesta, Ceres...
Extreme low gravity 1 Bar presurized environments could be vast resorts and entertainment places. Ceres as a little planet should for sure occur to be more valuable as real estate, as place, as branch of civilization, than as a piece of ore.
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The Terra forming of Ceres was becoming so complex as to totally remake it into a difficult configuration, and I thought, just make it into a large tube world. That might not work either because of lack of metals.
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It will be interesting to find out more when we send probes there. Ceres might have been a water world that lost it's surface water, or a comet remnant in an unexpected orbit ?
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Ceres is C-type, mainly carbon, and contains about one third of the overall mass of the traditional Main asteroid belt, so the eventual rareness of usefull metals is not important. With carbon buckyes as you know wider tube designs coulb be built - with effective diameter of , say, 1000 km. Remaking it in really large tube-world shall work, deffinitelly. But deffinitelly, shall not be more difficult and complex engeneering task than covering it with water filled planetary blanket hovering above terrestrial in presure and content atmosphere. The mentioned, eventual hydrotermal processes` ore deposits could be exploited under air even easier...
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But my point is that Ceres (~1000km diam.), Vesta and Pallas (~500km diam., each but belonging to iron-core/basalt-crust denser "terrestrial" type), on they own represent nice, small, ROUND, "ready", finished planets, not small irregular shape and undistinguishable mere asteroids. These planets are unique and only three, the anonimous asteroids are millions only in the inner sistem. Ceres/Vesta/Pallas are existing and attractive Solar system destinations. Their value is in exactly this appearance and image of them. Each possesses 2-3% of ther earth`s gravity, and has vast and various terrain. Having in mind that the material for planet-size and bigger tube world could be extracted from numerous other plentyfull places in the system it will be enormous waste or nature to exterminate/erase entirelly any noticeable big and interesting astronomical body around Sol.
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The Dawn mission will arrive at Vesta and Ceres in the secong decade of the century and we`ll know more about them. With more data and knowledge about these little worlds, they`ll become even more interesting, attractive, "dear" and alive in the social "cosmic" consciousness.
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