What would you do if you got 15 Billion $ per year to spend?

neviden · 2007-05-29 03:52:16

What if, you became a CEO of a company, that would get 15 Billion $ subsidy (adjusted for inflation) for the next 50 years. That money could be spent on anything, as long as it is connected with space. You could use any launcher or technologie that is already developed (no matter which country has it), could develop any new launcher, new propulsion technologies,..

You could do anything in space and any profit you made, you could reinvest. After 50 years, you would be on your own and would have to support everything without any new subsidies, only the profits from space operations.

What would you do? What problems do you see in plans made by others?

noosfractal · 2007-05-29 05:19:02

Main project: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_power_satellite

Promise to purchase http://www.astronautix.com/lvs/searagon.htm flights if someone would build it.

1% of budget to venture fund, e.g., to encourage space elevator related tech.

1% of budget to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helium-3 Fusion R&D
until ready for prime time then
up to 10% of budget to automated/teleoperated lunar mining of He3 R&D
until I can get a definite yes or no on whether I can make it more profitable than the SPS swarm.

SPS project to include servicing by teleoperated robots.

0.1% on antimatter production & storage.

neviden · 2007-05-29 05:40:16

I would invest the money in NEP/SEP technologies for space transportation. I would put NEP/SEP onto a big truss (200 m long or more), put Transhab on one end, tanks and everything else on the other end, docking module in the center and an elevator to transport crew/cargo along the truss. That ship could grow its own food (gravity & greenhouse), could go anywhere (slowly, but with high isp) and be reusable. Crews would arrive on a Soyuz or some other capsule, parts for it on an existing rockets.

Build a few of them, assemble them in LEO, send them to asteroids to get water, metals, carbon and everything else needed. Bring everything into High Earth Orbit, separate metals from the rest of mass. Melt metals (iron?) into thick sheets, weld them together to form simple, large structures like: large space docks, rotating stations, mirrors…

Use rapid prototyping machines to make simple parts in space, send complicated parts on rockets to LEO (from where you can deliver them to HEO with electric propulsion). Grow food, fish and animals on large rotating station, recycle as much as possible, so that you can support maximum number of people with minimal support from Earth. Use existing (Earth) technologies in space since rotating space station would be something like a mix of a Cruise ship, Oil platform and greenhouse. Since, the thick walls would protect the people inside from radiation, sun would give more than enough energy the people could stay and live there for as long as they wanted. They could even have families and never leave the station if they wanted.

I would design everything to last for decades or even centuries, be as simple as possible and use as much as possible from what is already in space. That way the LEO deliveries would be kept down. The current price for a ride on a Soyuz is 20 million $, 1 billion $ would get you 50 people in space and back. It’s a little steep, but if you increased the flight rate and used bigger rocket, your ticket would fall drastically.

Use those workers in your space docks (attached to rotating space station in HEO), to process everything that would come from the rest of the solar system, build spaceships, solar powersats, extract platinum group metals or anything else that would be profitable.

To put 15 billion $ in perspective: The most expensive ship on Earth that you can buy is a Nimitz class aircraft carrier. One costs 4,5 billion $ to build. They are made from steel, are 333 m long, weigh 100.000 T, operate for 50 years, have couple of thousands of crew onboard and has 85 planes.

Fledi · 2007-05-29 16:40:21

I would start different projects at the same time.
First, we would need reliable and cheap launchers in the range from one ton to 100 tons, we could use existing ones, so I would just buy these.
Then we need a capsule for manned missions and a cargo transport. Once these are all together we can start on the more interesting part.
We need to do some development and testing on assembling very large, very lightweight structures in orbit. This will be the basis for space mirrors, solar cell arrays and tethers.
One of the first priorities will be developing a tug, mainly an orbital garbage truck really with a tether and some sort of a net. It would be equipped with electrical propulsion, some sort of plasma engines in the 10 to 20 km/sec exhaust velocity range would be ok. This tug (or several of them) I would use to collect space debris in similar orbits, then getting it to a processing plant in orbit, another early priority project.
This would enable us to clean EO of all the scrap while providing metals for simple orbital structures.

Let's assume this would take up the first 10 to 15 years.
By the end of that period we could start looking for the Moon.
While continuing the buildup of the Earth orbit infrastructure, we would send out early manned limited time missions to the surface of the Moon. Beyond testing the equipment designed to survive on the surface, priorities would be to start mining for any useful resources, from oxygen to metals and Helium3 of course, if there is any power plant on Earth we could sell it to. Most of the resources would be used on the Moon or sent back to Earth orbit, preferably using an increasing network of momentum exchange tethers, which would reduce the cost of two way cargo transfers along the Earth-Moon route.

If this infrastructure is set up, we will be ready to build our first Mars ship, it will be a large scale project with extensive in orbit construction and designed for settlement. Since we need to stay on the surface of Mars for about 2 years as a minimum, we could use parts of the spaceship to set up an initial base. The mission of the people (volunteers) would be to stay for this minimum of two years, then decide if they are still in a shape to stay for another two year period and so on. At every low energy route opportunity, we would send at least supplies for the colonists, or even better more of those Mars ships. While we have people on the surface, they should try to expand/improve the Base with in situ materials, radiation hardening the base would be a high priority and could be done by pouring Martian rocks on top of the base or digging an underground facility. Another important task would be setting up a greenhouse for oxygen/food production and mining water.

At this point the 15 Billion budget would get too tight to support all operations at the same time, so the space mirror/moon mining projects should better start bringing in some cash. This would also be the right time to start looking seriously for some Asteroid mining, since our knowledge of zero g construction would be advanced enough after all those years of EO assemblies.

This is basically one possible way to do it, though you can never know if someone will come up with a radically new type of propulsion for example. In that case, better Isp launchers would tend to reduce the importance of the Earth-Moon connection in this scheme.

X · 2007-05-29 20:05:05

Since I've no clue what any of this costs with money I'll just list what I'd do in order of priority and let folks argue if they want over whether or not I could accomplish it with my budget.

1. Map moving bodies with the potential to hit earth. Since I hear telescope time is pretty hard to comeby I'd probably build 4 observatories dedicated to this. One in each quarter sphere of the earth so as it could be done round the clock until done. Then I'd rent them out once that's done, and if they weren't making money I'd donate them to Auburn University.

2. I'd fund this Translife Project listed down the forum list.

3. Concurrent with this I'd develop a way to redirect said potential threats.

4. I'd build a large number of probes to explore the ice moons of the gas giants thought to have liquid water oceans under the ice. I'd start launching them once they were ready to go.

5. I'd begin development and testing of spinning bodies to generate a force equal to 1g as well as growing food on them at the light levels around Mars.

6. I'd try to move one of the potential threats into orbit around Venus out beyond the Roche limit. Even if it fails and hits the planet at least maybe it'd blow a little bit of the atmosphere off.

7. Once I felt certain we could place one in orbit without messing up I'd start moving them into Mars orbit beyond the Roche limit.

8. I'd work on building a spinning space station in orbit around Mars using the technologies developed in 5.

9. At this time I'd also begin investing in work to land on whatever happened to be the largest moon of Mars at that point as well as a way to gently move the moons together and bind them together.

10. The above craft would be fueled using fuel made from the Martian atmosphere which would be obtained using a rocket powered glider. The glider would launch from the space station and enter the upper atmosphere of Mars where it'd suck up atmosphere. Then it'd fire its rocket to get back into orbit and dock at the station station where the fuel would be produced.

11. Using Phobos, Deimos, and the new moons we'd begin constructing a single large moon around Mars.

Hopefully this could all work with the outcome being that Mars would have a moon large enough to nurse anything left of a molten core back to health or remake a molten core if its solidified if that's possible. At the same time it'd also remove the threat of potential impacts on earth. Any potential threats moved after Mars moon had reached an appropriate size could be directed so as to impact Mars or create a moon for Venus by a similar method.

12. I'm probably out fo money so I'll quit now.

noosfractal · 2007-05-30 00:16:05

At this point the 15 Billion budget would get too tight to support all operations at the same time, so the space mirror/moon mining projects should better start bringing in some cash.

Are there some good online references for space mirror projects?

I looked but couldn't find much. A couple of ideas at halfbakery

http://www.halfbakery.com/idea/Eliminate_20Night
http://www.halfbakery.com/idea/Space_20 … ar_20sands

Some climate related geoengineering.

There are some interesting ideas in there. Light at nighttime, heat in winter, concentrated solar for industrial or energy generation, seems like weather control might be in there somewhere - may be hurricane intensity reduction as a first project.

Do the mirrors/shades have to be at GEO? How low mass can we make them? What's a low cost control method (mirrors don't have to move much to "turn off" but they still have to move)? What's a high accuracy control method ("pinpoint" delivery of energy)? If it were used to melt tar sands/oil shale would the local climate be unduly disturbed? 10 km radius? 100 km radius?

neviden · 2007-05-30 05:16:30

Since I've no clue what any of this costs with money I'll just list what I'd do in order of priority and let folks argue if they want over whether or not I could accomplish it with my budget.

Take a guess.

- If it looks small and simple just use: 1.000.000.000 $ should take care of it.
- If its more complicated use: 20.000.000.000 $ should be about right.
- If its major, than use: 100.000.000.000 $ would be a nice start.

You got 15 x 50 = 750 billion $ to play with. Anything that would bring profit would be good.

Fledi · 2007-05-30 18:18:53

Are there some good online references for space mirror projects?

I don't know if there are online references for mirrors, maybe try to search for the Moon distance measurement by using the mirrors on the Moon.
I write this because I searched up the presentation I've seen from one of the guys who developed the laser altimeter for Mars Global Surveyor (it's called MOLA).
There they say that at 400km distance the laser spot had a diameter of 160 metres, the beam had a divergence of 420 µrad, that should be an angle of 0.024°. By the way they measure the altitude by pointing a telescope with a view area of optimally also 160m at the same spot where the laser hits and send pulses and measure the time for the light to travel to the surface and back to the telescope.

Then in this presentation there is an interesting part about the Moon distance measurement. This is done with the mirrors left on the Moon by Apollo. In the document they state they used a laser in an Earth observatory with a beam divergence of 50µrad, leading to a spot diameter of 20km on the Moon surface, where the mirrors are.
Then say say the reflected beam had a diameter of 40km back on Earth. This can only be the case if the mirror reflected the beam very accurately, not adding to the divergence, which means it is far superior to that wall mirror I used this afternoon to see how much it spreads the light from the Sun, that can be assumed as parallel here (it was still fun lighting up all the neighbors walls and roofs ).
Anyway, if it would turn out it's still not possible to reflect Sunlight from GEO without significant divergence, we could probably directly convert the light to laser light with a set of central tubes (see wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laser)

There are some interesting ideas in there. Light at nighttime, heat in winter, concentrated solar for industrial or energy generation, seems like weather control might be in there somewhere - may be hurricane intensity reduction as a first project.

Definitely, if we can make that happen the possible uses are endless.

Do the mirrors/shades have to be at GEO? How low mass can we make them? What's a low cost control method (mirrors don't have to move much to "turn off" but they still have to move)? What's a high accuracy control method ("pinpoint" delivery of energy)? If it were used to melt tar sands/oil shale would the local climate be unduly disturbed? 10 km radius? 100 km radius?

I would place them in GEO because that way anything you would have at Earth would only need to be pointed towards the same spot all the time. LEO is a no go because you would have to move the mirrors very rapidly, could only light a spot for a few minutes at a time and the gravity gradient forces would probably just rip apart such a flimsy structure. And it would cause a lot of drag because of the huge surface area.

It could be made very lightweight, I remember reading a post somewhere on this forum about some sort of plastic mirrors (I think it was mylar) with a coat thickness of just 1 or 2 micrometers, which would mean a few gramms of weight per square meter, so a few tons for a square kilometer.

Since we get 1300W/m² from the Sun here at Earth, this would mean over a gigawatt reflected per square kilometer. It would need some supporting structure, just look up solar sails on that issue, they thought about a lot of possible ways to make their sails stable and were thinking about even bigger surface areas if memory serves. Also look for solar sails for methods to steer it.

Anyway we could even cope with degradation by micrometeorites by changing the mirror surface while keeping the supporting structure underneath. One possible way would probably also be to use some liquid that doesn't vaporize at a high rate in vacuum, but I don't know if there is anything in the range we would need.

noosfractal · 2007-05-31 03:11:03

The beauty of space mirrors is that it is so simple. It’d be great to keep that simplicity if possible. I’d explore parabolic shapes before converting to laser I think. A 1 km diameter parabolic “dish” mirror at GEO would need a dish depth of 1.75 millimeters to focus at a spot on the Earth’s surface (multiply by the square of the diameter for larger dishes, e.g., 10 km dish requires a depth of 175 mm). Spin stabilized of course. I wonder if you could use centrifugal force to stretch something that creates the shape – may be a support strut that bends the right direction under stress.

You’re right, GEO is the go if possible (these are kinda largish structures). Even inclination is a hassle – but may be you’d have to deal with that anyway. Aiming control will be key.

For immediate applications, I don’t see how this guy …
http://www.stirlingenergy.com/
could turn down doubling his productivity. He has a 500 MW purchase agreement with California PUC beginning Jan 2009.

In general doubling the productivity of solar plants would make them competitive with hydro.

Disadvantages:
- daytime conditions at night in production area – but the sterling solar dishes are located in the middle of nowhere (and usually a desert nowhere) anyway because they are noisy
- stopped by clouds – but as a solar producer you are already dealing with this issue.
- any others … ?

I think it’s a business.

Fledi · 2007-05-31 10:24:02

I agree that we should only use lasers if it turns out there is now other way to keep the reflected light focused over a long distance.
But actually my idea was to use a structure that rotates about an axis that always keeps it reflecting the sunlight to the same spot on Earth, completing one rotation every 24 hours, while moving along its geostationary orbit.

Peak performance would be when the Sun is almost behind the Earth, so at the mid of the night, then we would have a short "mirror eclipse" until the Sun "comes out" on the other side of the Earth. At noon, when the Sun is at it's highest point as seen from the target area, reflection area would be about zero (without multiple reflection), then increasing again and so on.

This means that those Earth-based solar power generators would simply have to be pointed towards the mirror at dawn, then stay in this position until sunrise.
But it would also be easy to build structures specifically for these mirrors, because you wouldn't have to follow the movement of the light source as is the case with the Sun.

Clouds would be no problem for this system because of its flexibility, you could have several possible locations to point the mirrors at and could simply redirect the light on an alternative target if weather conditions became bad.

neviden · 2007-06-03 14:30:29

Would this be something like the RussianSpace mirror. The plan to iluminate Siberia..

Fledi · 2007-06-03 18:24:57

Yes, it's similar, only this one would be in GEO, always pointing at the same spot as long as it's needed.

How predictable, that environmentalists are also against this idea, it's something technically new and challenging after all.

Even in LEO it should be possible to only focus the beam to a spot when it's above a city, so that the wildlife wouldn't be disturbed.
But we'll need to improve our knowledge of extreme lightweight space structures first, no-one has ever tried to do anything of that kind on Earth, gravity and weather would make it impossible to build and keep structures that light on the ground.

Martian Republic · 2007-06-12 15:51:38

What if, you became a CEO of a company, that would get 15 Billion $ subsidy (adjusted for inflation) for the next 50 years. That money could be spent on anything, as long as it is connected with space. You could use any launcher or technologie that is already developed (no matter which country has it), could develop any new launcher, new propulsion technologies,..
You could do anything in space and any profit you made, you could reinvest. After 50 years, you would be on your own and would have to support everything without any new subsidies, only the profits from space operations.
What would you do? What problems do you see in plans made by others?

See if I could setup a government with an industrial base that could continue generating that credit after that fifty year period was over to continue to keep this process going of government credit. That second part of this would be an all out space program across the board working off that government with it industrial base on line and it internal credit system.

Let see what kind of response we get out of this.

Larry,

Fledi · 2007-06-13 16:30:44

Tell me when you make such a government, I would apply as a citizen.

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Re: What would you do if you got 15 Billion $ per year to spend?

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#9 2007-05-31 03:11:03

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#10 2007-05-31 10:24:02

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