What should be the focus of human space society/exploration?

Dook · 2005-12-07 15:44:43

Might have made it up...hehe, yeah but I didn't have to. Why would I make up living in Louisiana? I already got my FEMA $2,000. That doesn't come close to paying for new clothes, living room furniture, bed, computer desk, and dresser.

I don't know why you are so interested. New Orleans and it's suburbs is the s***hole of the universe. The slums in Catania Sicily are actually better. The people there will try and steal your wallet but they won't kill you for it.

Many of the roads in Gretna are made of 15 foot long cement blocks that are all sinking at slightly different rates. Even when they are even you still hear a 'pop' every second as you drive.

There are some asphalt roads, like Lapalco, but not enough.

Martin_Tristar · 2005-12-07 17:12:45

Dook

A Budget of US$130 Billion per year would allow US$20 Billion for exploration such as probes, droids, small human explorer missions for planetary research before outposts and human settlements, US$30 Billion for Earth-Moon Space ( including L Points ) and US$80 Billion for Large Human Colonization Projects.

Out of the US$80 Billion the lunar surface operation would receive US$45 Billion and Development of Space vehicles for human colonization would receive US$ 35 Billion. Within a shorter period of time the development of the Lunar , Lagrange Points and earth orbit would be complete and the next phase would be the creation of a larger settlement and small outposts on Mars and outer moons of Jupiter and Saturn.

We need to move rapidly into space for many reasons : 1. To make the world understand the growth in human knowledge and spirit is tied to understanding and growing in space technoiologies and adapting in space. 2. To stop having all our human eggs in on small basket on earth and provide the ability for our race to grow and prosper in space. 3. The knowledge that we would gain would open new fields of technology and understanding for humanity. 4. To bring the exploration spirit back to the human race because we need to move out to meet new challenges.

We developing on the moon could provide the catalyst for expanding into space by development of the fusion generator thus provide the means for plasma drive and ion drive systems but large spacecrafts are needed. The Lunar facilities will provide the construction hangars for construction and mining the resources for these crafts. As we increase our knowledge into drive system larger space vehicles can be designed for specialist tasks like asteroid mine processing vessel, long range explorer vessel, larger colonization cargo and human settlement vessels and more.

Their are other technologies that we have just started to examine and work towards that will come through in the next hundred years including wormhole travel part of quantum physics. It all comes down to resources and placing those resources to focus on expanding human presence in space for the long term benefit of the human race.

8)

Dook · 2005-12-07 17:51:10

$130 billion? Where are we going to get that from? We already spend $500 billion a year more than we take in. The US is going into bankrupcy because the public refuses to accept the responsibility and elect someone who will balance the budget and begin paying down the national debt. 11% of the taxes we pay each year goes to interest on the national debt, a lot of it owned by foreign investors. We continue to pass the debt onto our children like our parents and grandparents have done to us.

We don't need to move rapidly into space.
#1 To make the world understand the growth in human knowledge? What? Half the world is worried about food, clothes, and shelter. Most of the other half has some luxury but will only momentarily pay attention to new discoveries in space.
#2 Our 'eggs' have been in one basket for a million years, there's no reason to rush out to the nearest rock to hide. And if it does happen what makes you think that the moon or mars are safe? Have you ever seen a picture of their surfaces?
#3 Knowledge again. We've been funding research in many areas of science for decades. Having someone on the moon (who we have to constantly resupply) only reduces the amount of funding for those areas.
#4 Exploration spirit, finally I will agree with you. But we do it smartly. Test Mars hardware on the moon, make improvements, then go to mars. Asteroids, forget about it. Nothing there we need that we can't get down the road at a rock quarry. What do you think the earth is made of?

Further, they've been working on fusion for a long time. It may not even be possible. Again having a colony on the moon reduces the amount of money we can put toward this research.

Human settlement vessels? Why would we ever sentence humans to such a dispicable life where their bodies atrophy into virtual skeletons? Even criminals have rights.

Wormhole travel? Uh, yeah, those things are just all over the place.

With our current level of technology having humans in space is not a benefit, it's a burden. Look how much time and money we have wasted on the ISS and that is the best that we can do. We can't build the Galactica or Deep Space Nine.

So, what is your real reason for wanting humans in space? Which Star Trek episode?

Commodore · 2005-12-07 17:54:05

The best reasoning for creating self sustaining bases off world is to provide an example for creating a civilization less dependant on environmental issues. Space based agriculture will lead the way in recreating earth based agriculture to be less dependant on fragile climactic changes. I hate to bring global warming into what is already a mud slinging fest, but its the reason. Global warming or cooling will happen no matter if we burn fossil fuels or not, because its happened before.

By the way Tristar, your missing link and the best way to exploit lunar minerals is with a mass driver. That way you can cheaply collect resources without the trouble of zero g mining, shoot it off the surface cheaply, and construct objects in in zero g with ease. Its much easier that launching with rockets, and almost infinately scalable. Parts of huge spacecraft could be prefabed on the surface, launched and put together much like huge oceangoing ships are today.

Dook · 2005-12-07 18:01:42

Commodore: I know we've discussed the lunar mass driver before. I can't remember the exact details but I believe your electromagnetic launcher has to be miles long in order to build up enough speed to escape the moon.

Wouldn't a lunar space elevator be better?

Martin_Tristar · 2005-12-07 19:15:45

Dook

I will show you the maths behind the US$130 Billion = 600 million (sales units means a single or multiple customer) spending $30 per month = $18 Billion per month x 12 = US$216 Billion of which US$130 billion for space development, US$16 Billion Operational Costs and US$70 Billion for earth based projects for humanity. The corporate ownership vehicle would be a research foundation based in a non-tax country for No corporate Taxes thus all monies could be used for developments. All funds are derived from product sales and not handouts from government budgets.

To settle Mars would require the development of cargo and human centric space vessels with small explorer missions and then large outpost missions with more and more cargo requires these transport methods. Each construction add an assets but also a piece of overall infrastructure for the colonization of space by the human race.

Commodore

Yes , I agree with your statement regarding the mass driver development and the creation of agriculture in space.

Commodore · 2005-12-07 21:04:18

Commodore: I know we've discussed the lunar mass driver before. I can't remember the exact details but I believe your electromagnetic launcher has to be miles long in order to build up enough speed to escape the moon.
Wouldn't a lunar space elevator be better?

An elevator would be best for things that do not take kindly to high acceleration or high gs. After a year on 1/6g I don't think I'd put crews through a sudden high g ride. But for dead weight its the ideal solution, at least untill an elevator is up. Its relatively simple to contruct and could be done pretty early on.

The trouble with the elevator is it would require an anchor. You'll spend decades launching enough mass from Earth to do it. An effort to bring one anywhere near earth would have to be a highly controlled and extremely difficult under any circumstance. One could agrue you would need the moon with mass drivers to launch either the mass, or perhapes the fuel to propell it, if thats even possible. Certainly a worthy goal, but something that would not be needed right off to acheive other goals, and would be easier if we do other things first.

sdc2 · 2005-12-08 03:38:44

Commodore: I know we've discussed the lunar mass driver before. I can't remember the exact details but I believe your electromagnetic launcher has to be miles long in order to build up enough speed to escape the moon.
Wouldn't a lunar space elevator be better?
An elevator would be best for things that do not take kindly to high acceleration or high gs. After a year on 1/6g I don't think I'd put crews through a sudden high g ride. But for dead weight its the ideal solution, at least untill an elevator is up. Its relatively simple to contruct and could be done pretty early on.
The trouble with the elevator is it would require an anchor. You'll spend decades launching enough mass from Earth to do it. An effort to bring one anywhere near earth would have to be a highly controlled and extremely difficult under any circumstance. One could agrue you would need the moon with mass drivers to launch either the mass, or perhapes the fuel to propell it, if thats even possible. Certainly a worthy goal, but something that would not be needed right off to acheive other goals, and would be easier if we do other things first.

Commodore,

A Mass Driver, ie: Magnetic Repulsor Technology, ie: Rail Gun, would not only be important for moving raw materials, but also in launching space craft from the surface of Luna and Mars. This technology only requires the launch system (Ramp & Repulsors) and a power source (Nuclear Preferred). This system would not have the restraints of a chemical fuel system or technology, once built and in operation.

This can also be used on the Earth as a First Stage Launch Element for SSTO Reusable Space Planes.
http://www.international-spaceplane-program.org

A Mass Driver, ie: Magnetic Repulsor Technology, can also be used to move materials, space ships, and space facilities around the asteroid belt, using the materials in the asteroid belt as a propulsion mass.

I support your ideas for a Mass Driver, ie: Magnetic Repulsor Technology, as this will give great capability for range and transit in our solar system.

Large asteroids can act as a core structure on, and in, which manufacturing and operations bases can be established in a safe and shielded environment.

Also, asteroids and near Earth orbiting large objects can be used by space ships to latch on to with tow lines and sling shot space craft or push off in a desired direction, using the mass of these large objects.

Dook · 2005-12-08 07:46:16

I wouldn't attempt to launch all of the mass from the earth for a lunar space elevator anchor. There must be someway to manufacture a stable anchor point on the moon with lunar resources.

Or dig a deep hole, place the moon end of the elevator cable down in it and fill it up with some kind of lunar cement.

SDC: What kind of base or manufacturing would we ever need on an asteroid?

GCNRevenger · 2005-12-08 09:12:01

A railgun to shoot Lunar ore or Aluminum ingots out to a Lagrange point makes no sense... how are you going to aim the thing if its many miles long? How are you going to stop and collect the material when it gets there? How are you going to power the thing? How are you going to smelt and mill the metal into useful parts on a space station of reasonable size? How are you going to move enough metal during the short "firing window" without becoming too big? ...And most of all, how could you possibly compete with a factory on Earth paired with a low-cost launch method? (that last one is a rhetorical question, you can't)

There is just no way to compete with a factory on Earth that can make prefabricated "kit" sections right here on the ground where its easy. The cost of launching parts from Earth will never, ever come close to the cost of an orbital or Lunar rocket factory with a low-cost launch method (true RLV, space elevator) reguardless how you get stuff off the Moon. Its just so much easier to build the parts here on Earth with our preexsisting industrial base, ready supply of materials, and "everywhere shirtsleeve" environment. Period, end quote, full stop.

The solution to making a space elevator anchor is to start with a light-weight elevator and lift counterweights up the cable from the ground. Obviously.

A rail-assisted spaceplane doesn't make a whole lot of sense for several reasons: the biggest though is that it cannot contribute but a small (under 5%) of the velocity needed to reach LEO. Second, unless the rail can achieve a very high flight rate, it will be unable to compete in serial versus in parallel with traditional airstrip or pad launch from rest. The long lengths required to minimize acceleration requires a confluence of very high startup costs and offers many places for catastrophic failure. If a spaceplane crashes, thats just the plane and one airstrip, but if one of the magnets buckles the resulting derailing would destroy most of the rail completly as it bulldozes the track faster than any racecar and explodes... and there are a whole lot of magnets.

Asteroid mining is the next best thing to impossible, you can't effectively drill or saw without large downforce, which you can't get easily. And when you do cut up the asteroid, how do you refine the resulting ore without gravity? A spinning space station attached to an already spinning asteroid (they do spin you know) is a recipe for trouble. You can't use solar power either, which means you will need a VERY big nuclear plant to smelt the ore, and it won't come cheap. The combination of natural multi-axis spin (the bane of space farers) and low-but-not-zero gravity of the asteroid would make landing/launching from it very difficult too, just as the Japanese with their probe.

Grypd · 2005-12-08 12:44:28

Grypd: Terraforming mars might not even be possible. Mars may not have enough CO2 to even make the attempt. How does oxygen at the poles increase temperature there? Oxygen is not much, if at all, of a greenhouse gas. It's just going to freeze. Methane doesn't compare to the real super greenhouse gasses (SF6, octoflouropropane and others...) unless you can produce much, much, more of it more efficiently than the others. As far as terraforming goes, I'm all for it after we explore most of mars.

Did I say that we would produce carbon at the poles, No. We would though use the black Carbon sprinkled on preferably south pole to allow it to absorb more heat and melt so increasing the atmosphere. The preferable place to produce this is the Martian equator which gets more light, is warmer and also the best spot for a Martian base. This oxygen is for the use of those bases so that people can breathe. The chemicals SF6, octoflouropropane, and others are manufactured products. Methane though is a natural result of certain bacterial function and as such it be quickly produced by hard fast breeding bacteria. Mars may well not have enough CO2 to allow the atmosphere to be Earthlike but as noted in other threads the more the atmosphere the better it is for Humans. So you want to have all of Mars explored easy just ensure we have a lot of people there so that means large bases. Definitely will also need large space infrastructure and Moon infrastructure to be able to do this too

Hmm, lunar library of human knowledge? If we get wiped out and somehow the moon survives, who is then going to go dig on the moon?

Do you think we are alone in the universe, do you not think someone will one day visit. I dont know. At least though we will have left something tangible saying hey we existed this is the best of us come learn.

BWhite · 2005-12-08 13:50:58

CGNRevenger, I agree with you about lunar fabrication with the possible exception of vapour phase deposition of nickel carbonyl. And perhaps other metals.

An intact Ni-Fe asteroid (like Hoba) will yield metallic nickel (not oxides) even if the PGMs are scarce. Grind into powder and make Ni(CO)4 gas. Then deposit on a mandrel at modest temperatures.

Here are a few representative interesting links:

NVD Note: "excellent dimensional accuracy and reproduction of very fine surface textures"

Weber Manufacturing

INCO does quite a lot of NVD fabrication and in Wales they do NVD at open air temperatures.

Any opinion on William Jenkin's ideas?

I recall reading somewhere that if boron is properly introduced into the nickel carbonyl gas stream that a nickel boron alloy superior to stainless steel can be vapor deposited.

= = =

As for chopping up an asteroid, you make excellent points. Therefore let us first look for intact fragments like Hoba on the luanr surface.

If that fails, we can still enclose small asteroids inside a cage and use the cage to mount drills and the like.

Difficult? Yup. Finding one on the Moon seems easier.

= = =

PS - spining asteroids? Okay I'm stumped for today. :?

Some of the spin rates are quite high, many RPM for example - - multiple revolutions per minute.

Earth rotates at 1 revolution per day for our other readers. 1 R per 1440 minutes not multiple R per 1 minute.

sdc4 · 2005-12-08 14:07:06

I wouldn't attempt to launch all of the mass from the earth for a lunar space elevator anchor. There must be someway to manufacture a stable anchor point on the moon with lunar resources?

If a space elevator were to be built on Luna, it would be the best place. The Earth & Mars have atmosphere, which creates drag and lateral forces on the Space Elevator, and both also have much higher Gravity. Luna has no atmosphere (to speak of) and very low gravity. Perfect conditions for a space elevator.

Or dig a deep hole, place the moon end of the elevator cable down in it and fill it up with some kind of lunar cement?

This would work, and in fact has been proposed.

SDC: What kind of base or manufacturing would we ever need on an asteroid?

An asteroid can be used as a shell for a space facility or factory. The core would be mined and used for the ore (if any) and the hollowed out shell would be used as a very protected space facility. It would be both the structure and the shielding from radiation and impact protection.

Many Asteroids are mainly large chunks of raw ore. Unlike on the Earth where millions of tons of soil and rock need to be mined, processed, and refined to obtain thousands of pounds of raw ore to be smelted and used for metal production. On an Asteroid, the Asteroid is the raw ore, you simple pull up a large mining facility or ship along side, and start smelting ore (not all Asteroids, as some are non-ore in nature). Ore in space will be held in a magnetic field and heated with ion or laser beams to a melting point, spun to move the heavier elements to the outer parts of the ore globule, cooled, and then the heavy ore on the outside of the now cooled ore globule will be harvested and machined into parts. The core left overs of the ore globule will be used for non-structural materials, like shielding, mass for propulsion, and low grade building materials.

Asteroids will play a very important part to the future of human space efforts.

Dook · 2005-12-08 14:27:28

Grypd: Exploring all of mars does not take a lot of people, we have two machines that are doing a pretty darn good job of it right now, no people needed. Sure I want a human mission to go there but not one burdened with establishing a colony.

Nothing validates a large moon base. Not even Star Trek.

I'm sure we are not alone in the universe but how are these other beings supposed to know to go and dig on a moon orbiting a destroyed planet?

Asteroid mining, sigh... Why spend billions to go into space and attempt to get rocks there when I can go down to the local rock quarry and get the same thing? We have plenty of rocks here on the earth.

What's with this desire to send humans out beyond mars? They're just going to atrophy disgustingly and struggle to exist day after day. Everything there is best explored with machines.

sdc4 · 2005-12-08 15:05:13

A railgun to shoot Lunar ore or Aluminum ingots out to a Lagrange point makes no sense... how are you going to aim the thing if its many miles long? How are you going to stop and collect the material when it gets there? How are you going to power the thing? How are you going to smelt and mill the metal into useful parts on a space station of reasonable size? How are you going to move enough metal during the short "firing window" without becoming too big? ...And most of all, how could you possibly compete with a factory on Earth paired with a low-cost launch method? (that last one is a rhetorical question, you can't).

1) A rail gun would launch finished parts and ore ingots ready for manufacturing into parts and structures.

2) The rail gun would not need to "AIM" it would only place the payloads into a stable orbit around Luna. On orbit, a network of orbital tugs and transfer space craft would move the payloads to either larger ships for transport or to an orbital manufacturing facility around Luna. However, I suppose the vast bulk of ore and ingots materials will be processed on surface (actually sub-surface) of Luna, and only the finished parts, and manufacturing ready ingots, will be launched by such a system.

3) Power will be likely Nuclear, but direct focused solar energy can be used as well in the smelting process (Not Solar Cell Power, Not Efficient Enough).

4) If you were to directly compare a Luna Smelting & Manufacturing Facility with an Earth Based Smelting & Manufacturing Facility, you would be right, the Earth Based facility would be much cheaper to operate. However, factor in the launch costs and problems of putting the Earth Based materials in Orbit, you would be wrong, the Luna Facility would now provide cheaper parts in space.

5) In space, there is no firing window, as such. A firing window mostly is due to the fact, that launches presently have to join up with other objects in Earth Orbit, ie: like the ISS, or in the case of an interplanetary launch the vehicle must be directed at a passing or moving object, ie: another planet. When a robust orbital fueling and support infrastructure is in place, launch vehicles will have unlimited orbital transit abilities, and can be launched with much smaller on board fuel & structure mass just sufficient to make semi-stable orbit, be refueled and continue to orbital or extra-orbital destination, or be latched onto by an orbital tug and towed to destination.

There is just no way to compete with a factory on Earth that can make prefabricated "kit" sections right here on the ground where its easy. The cost of launching parts from Earth will never, ever come close to the cost of an orbital or Lunar rocket factory with a low-cost launch method (true RLV, space elevator) regardless how you get stuff off the Moon. Its just so much easier to build the parts here on Earth with our preexsisting industrial base, ready supply of materials, and "everywhere shirtsleeve" environment. Period, end quote, full stop.

Not True!

The solution to making a space elevator anchor is to start with a light-weight elevator and lift counterweights up the cable from the ground. Obviously.

Your reply in this regards is very simplistic, and lacks any detail.

A rail-assisted spaceplane doesn't make a whole lot of sense for several reasons: the biggest though is that it cannot contribute but a small (under 5%) of the velocity needed to reach LEO. Second, unless the rail can achieve a very high flight rate, it will be unable to compete in serial versus in parallel with traditional airstrip or pad launch from rest. The long lengths required to minimize acceleration requires a confluence of very high startup costs and offers many places for catastrophic failure. If a spaceplane crashes, thats just the plane and one airstrip, but if one of the magnets buckles the resulting derailing would destroy most of the rail completly as it bulldozes the track faster than any racecar and explodes... and there are a whole lot of magnets.

All you say is true, but all launch systems face these same what ifs and dangers!
The difference between an Expendable Launch System and a Rail Launch System on the side of a mountain near the Earths Equator. Is like comparing a small wooden bridge over a stream and the golden gate bridge. The small wooden bridge faces the very same problems as the larger bridge but at a much smaller scale, and the larger bridge is much more robust and moves thousands of cars an hour in stead of only a few cars a day. Could the golden gate bridge come crashing down from some unseen disaster or mishap. Yes it certainly could, but the facts are the golden gate bridge would fare better in any situation compared to the small wooden bridge. Also the risk of such what ifs, is off set by the transit of thousands of cars a hour as compared to a few cars a day. Furthermore the expendable systems waste massive precious resources, materials, and manpower each and ever time (ie: burned up on reentry), where as the rail launch system would be 100% reusable, and delivery 100 fold more capability and launches than any expendable launch system could ever deliver! The golden gate bridge is a better investment by far, than a bunch of wooden bridges that are burned and destroyed after just one vehicle uses it.

Asteroid mining is the next best thing to impossible, you can't effectively drill or saw without large downforce, which you can't get easily. And when you do cut up the asteroid, how do you refine the resulting ore without gravity? A spinning space station attached to an already spinning asteroid (they do spin you know) is a recipe for trouble. You can't use solar power either, which means you will need a VERY big nuclear plant to smelt the ore, and it won't come cheap. The combination of natural multi-axis spin (the bane of space farers) and low-but-not-zero gravity of the asteroid would make landing/launching from it very difficult too, just as the Japanese with their probe.

Not True! :-) Mining companies have already solved these problems!
I will not waste my time outlining these many technologies and techniques, as it is clear you troll all the time anyways! As others have said, you nearly never start a thread, and never bring anything new to the table, but mostly focus on cutting others down. So you are either a Troll, or on a Fishing Trip to steal others ideas! Cut and past easy pickings into a thesis or scientific paper using others ideas is what I suspect a person like you is doing here, based on the fact most of your input is one liners and put downs of others ideas and efforts. I have seen this many times by lazy academics looking to sell a book or publish a paper.

publiusr · 2005-12-08 16:15:25

Some penetrators should give you an anchoring force, and will let you bear down on the rock. Or it can be knocked into the moon hitting a mountain just so to fragment it further and dump enough speed shearing the mountain top off. The debris will fall without making such a large impact crater and you will have some handy bits to drive to and collect.

Dook · 2005-12-08 16:32:23

Ingots in space? Lunar manufacturing facility? Somebody really needs to explain to me why we would ever need either?

Have you all forgotten how far away everything is in space?

What rocks doth an asteroid have that I can't get at the local quarry?

Grypd · 2005-12-08 17:02:21

Grypd: Exploring all of mars does not take a lot of people, we have two machines that are doing a pretty darn good job of it right now, no people needed. Sure I want a human mission to go there but not one burdened with establishing a colony.
Nothing validates a large moon base. Not even Star Trek.

Dook want to know a secret the total distance the martian rovers have travelled well opportunity which is in severe trouble has gone 4.04 miles and spirit 3.39 miles. As an example the russians got lunokhod 1 to travel 6.52 miles and the lunokhod 2 to a massive 24.3 miles. But compared to this a human going for a walk could easily match any of these rovers in a single day. It has taken thousands of years for us to explore our planet and so we expect to do it with robots. Im a robot advocate but even I know there capabilities. 1 person could do what the entire martian rovers and landers have done in a week. And we need hundreds of people to do a realistically decent job on Mars research.

Why do you immediately claim any idea you dislike as being Star trek originated. Not accepting the facts is showing you live in a world of fiction, why can you not accept that any realistic and decent job will need a decent amount of people. Anything less is waste and im sorry your budding space cadets can only do as much as there supplies. In short if you want people to be able to do a decent job then you have to be able to send enough to do the job in the first place and have the capability to do the job in the first place.

I'm sure we are not alone in the universe but how are these other beings supposed to know to go and dig on a moon orbiting a destroyed planet?

hopefully they will be interested in who and what we where and the library would have means of being detected.

Grypd · 2005-12-08 17:06:05

Ingots in space? Lunar manufacturing facility? Somebody really needs to explain to me why we would ever need either?
Have you all forgotten how far away everything is in space?
What rocks doth an asteroid have that I can't get at the local quarry?

Ah but can your quarry get them into space. And does your local quarry have PGMs and if it does they are from outer space like our great sources in Canada and South Africa.

Space is 100 miles above us and this is not far. Just we have to take all our fuel with us to get there so guess what its expensive. If we can use materials in space instead of launching them then we save money and trouble.

Dook · 2005-12-08 17:46:52

Me not accepting the facts? I claim all of these crazy ideas are based in Star Trek because they are not driven by necessity or efficiency.

Fact: No mining on the moon or on any asteroid will be profitable until we have an substantial decrease in launch costs from the earth.
Fact: With our current level of technology human travel to mars is full of risk. Human exploration beyond mars increases the cost and risk exponentially and provides absolutely NO improvement over machine/robot exploration.

I claim all of these crazy ideas are based in Star Trek because they are not driven by pure scientific need or desire but by a self imposed one. You think life will be better out there.

Hundreds of people to research mars? Yeah, but not all at once. Four-six at a time. More just increases the mission risk and cost. That's a fact Mr. Spock.

Can my earth bound quarry get them to space? Sure, if needed. But the thing is, it's not needed and won't be for 100 years at least. PGM's? We have 200 years worth.

Materials in space? All of the sizable materials in space are in deep gravity wells-meaning, you use fuel to leave earth, use fuel to land elsewhere, refuel, then use fuel to leave. Another fact.

Commodore · 2005-12-08 19:04:50

A railgun to shoot Lunar ore or Aluminum ingots out to a Lagrange point makes no sense... how are you going to aim the thing if its many miles long? How are you going to stop and collect the material when it gets there? How are you going to power the thing? How are you going to smelt and mill the metal into useful parts on a space station of reasonable size? How are you going to move enough metal during the short "firing window" without becoming too big? ...And most of all, how could you possibly compete with a factory on Earth paired with a low-cost launch method? (that last one is a rhetorical question, you can't)

You don't aim it. You put a basket in front of it. Or send it with its own means of maintaining its orbit while still reducing the amount of fuel required to launch it. Although in theory you could building a big turn table in center of a large crater and put extentions every few degrees on the craters rim, effectively putting it in whatever orbit you want.

Back to the basket. A space station in geostationary Lunar orbit would be placed so that it recieves the bundles of material just as the force from launch is being overcome by lunar gravity. In otherwords from the stations prospective the cargo would hardly be moving at all. A large semi ridgid cone would absorb the little remaining impact and capture the material, and pull it inside for whatever processing it requires. The size and weight of the object would dictate how much juice to give it on the ground to reach the required trajectory.

Lunar factories are still a long ways off, and admittedly its going to be some time before were going to be able "export" large amounts of anything. But you underestimate what even small teams of what we would call on earth craftsmen working in small workshops can create. The amount of minerals that are going to pile up outside even the smallest lunar base from oxygen will literally demand that something productive be done with it, if for no other reason than the rover assigned to gather oxygen bearing regolith can't get around it! Basic smelters capable of churning out pure iron, aluminum, titianium, and other materials can be used for everything from structural beams to rover frames with simple tools that you can put in your very own garage. And everything that can be produced there is one less thing that needs to be launched from earth.

And the best thing is that it will all be of simpler to build and of higher quality because it doesn't have to endure a violent launch from earth while being similtaniously be light enough for launch.

There is just no way to compete with a factory on Earth that can make prefabricated "kit" sections right here on the ground where its easy. The cost of launching parts from Earth will never, ever come close to the cost of an orbital or Lunar rocket factory with a low-cost launch method (true RLV, space elevator) reguardless how you get stuff off the Moon. Its just so much easier to build the parts here on Earth with our preexsisting industrial base, ready supply of materials, and "everywhere shirtsleeve" environment. Period, end quote, full stop.

Only if you don't mind a $200 million surcharge on everything. The only route to truely bring launch cost down, barring a major advance in launch technology, is to reduce the force required to do it. And you can't find that here.

Asteroid mining is the next best thing to impossible, you can't effectively drill or saw without large downforce, which you can't get easily. And when you do cut up the asteroid, how do you refine the resulting ore without gravity? A spinning space station attached to an already spinning asteroid (they do spin you know) is a recipe for trouble. You can't use solar power either, which means you will need a VERY big nuclear plant to smelt the ore, and it won't come cheap. The combination of natural multi-axis spin (the bane of space farers) and low-but-not-zero gravity of the asteroid would make landing/launching from it very difficult too, just as the Japanese with their probe.

Asteroids are tricky. First you'd have to stablize its orbit. To mine it, the best way I can think of is to bring in scaffolds to put around it, and then firmly attach the scaffold to the asteroid, giving you something to lean against as you dig in.

That would only be practical with small asteroids though, which isn't by itself bad. Theres lots of them, and its saves the bigger ones (> 1km in diameter) for habitation.

Dook · 2005-12-08 20:23:44

Still with the lunar manufacturing, sigh...

No one has yet come up with a reasonable NEED FOR IT! Human exploration beyond mars? With our level of technology? You can't be serious!

Now I will propose a need, a large spinning space station in a high (geosynchronous?) orbit around the earth. This spinning space station would have a hangar for a space plane (shuttle, soyuz) at it's center with sealable doors. The station would have a small nuclear reactor to provide power but solar panels mounted on the arms also provide power.

This spinning space station would provide a gravity environment at the outer ring where the relatively small crew lives and works on the station, life support systems, and the onboard greenhouses. At the center of the station would be microgravity environment for experiments and the hangar where personnel maintain the docking shuttles and repair damaged satellites (for a payment from the owner) that have been captured by automated space tugs.

Now I can admit that this spinning space station is a want much more than a need. And a human mission to mars is more worthwhile venture.

Martin_Tristar · 2005-12-08 22:31:55

What are the costs for a lunar elevator, It sound like an impractical and unrealistic vehicle to build that wouldn't provide the cost benefits in the short medium and long term and require enormous resource costs.

We need to build within our current and short term future development and also have realistic development projects for expanding the space frontier. Space for humanity is for colonization, settlement, exploration and evolution of the human race not just a place for scientists to " play in ". In the short term our current technology wastes resources lifting cargo , people and resources into space, We need to develop over time the technologies to reduce the waste and expand the settlement of humans.

Humanity will also take time to grow into a society that expands for knowledge and the ideals of the race and society not just for personal ideals, but at this time we do things for our personal ideals. But until the race can evolve into a combined society of ideals for all humans we need to use the personal ideals to move things forward and create the future.

Any Idea is good but in order to make it succeed you must provide the vision, project plan, the investment capital and the return on the capital invested. It doesn't mean it requires a return in monetary value, knowledge that could be used into monetary products or services also is valuable. We need also to work on longer timelines for these projects because of size and complexity of the tasks involved.

Just think of the costs, the resources and returns for humanity for the various projects/ vehicles/ and enterprises for humanity in space.

GCNRevenger · 2005-12-08 22:32:25

*sigh* Asteroid mining...:

-Asteroids spin, in multiple axies, and since their rotation rate and their orbital velocity are in no way related, plus the gravity is uneven, then landing on one in a particular spot is quite difficult. You can't hover (or "pull along side") over one spot on the asteroid at all without a delicate balencing act of medium/high-thrust rockets, which will run out of fuel pretty quickly and isn't reliable. Since asteroids spin, you can't use solar pannels for on them, which means you would have to bring along a really big (multimegawatt!) nuclear plant for power. Stopping an asteroids' spin is not practical for obvious reasons: the rotational inertia of even a modest rock is too huge to counteract with any space-portable means. How do you stop a million tonne mountain from spinning at even a fraction of an RPM?

Answer: you don't

-Scalfholding. A scalfhold will have to be really strong to resist the downforce required for heavy-duty (read: able drill/cut a meter or two into solid iron or rock). We're talking something pretty darn sturdy here... probobly on the order of a steel building frame. And say you want to wrap the whole rock with it? Thats going to be awfully heavy for a tiny rock, and truely astronomical for a big rock. If its impractical for a big one, and really small ones don't have that much metal, then whats the point? And say it is economical to try this way? Swell... now how do you move a 10,000+ tonne contraption from rock to rock?

Firing pietons (or however they are spelled) isn't going to work either. Most asteroids are either loose,marbled chunks of ice and charcoal that won't offer a stable hold, or else are made of solid metal or rock, in which case a penitrator able to anchor will just bounce off. Hit it too hard, and it'll shatter... and those gravel-sized chunks of fast-flying asteroid aren't too good for your health either.

-Smelting: This one is a real killer too... so after you figure out how to wrap a scalfhold around a spinning rock and you figure out how to push the multi-kilotonne contraption to the rock in the first place (and where did you get it from?). Now you have to take the chunks of low-purity iron or nickel or aluminum oxide into useful materials. Without gravity, you can't hold them and seperate insoluble impurities from liquified metal nor convert aluminum compounds into metal via electrolosys. This is kind of a fundimental problem, you will need a really big and high-power (able to spin up and spin down tonnes of ore/metal often) spinning smelter or something.

It is going to take an awful lot of energy to melt or crack tonne quanities of such materials, which has to come from a large (and expensive) heavy nuclear plant, which itself will need tonnes of Uranium from Earth. You can't use directed energy methods (laser, particle beam) because of their HORRIBLE energy efficiency. In fact, because its so hard to build really big nukes in space, you'll probobly need to use its coolant directly for initial heating with electrical for final and cracking. That is, assuming you bring along some molten electrolyte so you can do traditional electrolytic cracking of aluminum at all, since the energy requirement for direct thermal cracking of aluminum oxides in any quantity is absurd even if you could reach those temperatures.

-Say you want to use gasseous methods on less useful metals like Nickel or Iron in a carbonyl/carbon monoxide complex decomposition deposition? Thats going to take an awful lot of carbon and oxygen even assuming a high level of reuseability, which you'll have to bring with you... since carbon/water rich asteroids and metal/rock asteroids don't have both in any quantity. But say you do, then what? Now you need to seperate the metal complex vapor from impurities (pumps able to move tonnes of gas), more energy to decompose the vapor, and more pumps to recapture the cabon monoxide. Did I mention pumps weren't very energy efficent?

The real pain though is speed: its really slow. Big time slow. Hours and hours to lay down an ingot or I-beam or even a piece of plate metal with good mechanical properties. This means a CVD "smelting" plant is going to have to be really, really big to have much output, which means that its not going to be mobile nor reuseable. And then you have to bring rocket fuel to push the metal some place to do stuff with it. The process is also suited to nickel and iron, which are heavier than aluminum and aren't as practical for rockets for obvious reasons. Aluminum vapor deposition is possible, but you have to get Aluminum metal first, and it exsists exclusively as oxides in rocky asteroids.

"Mining companies have already solved these problems!"

No, they haven't.

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