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Split this thing up into sausages that have some sort of spin bearings between them. Avoid the dissipation of energy as strain energy flexing this ring to spin it for gravity, which will require continuous spin propulsion to maintain, and which will cause heating from the energy dissipated as strain. That also avoids fatigue problems, which would limit you to very low stress levels, and make the required materials many times heavier.
Plus, we as a species are simply not ready to take on projects of this scale. Think small: perhaps some sort of orbiting facility, made out of components available or planned today. Then we might live to see one built. I put an example made out of B330's over in the O'Neill thread.
GW
GW Johnson
McGregor, Texas
"There is nothing as expensive as a dead crew, especially one dead from a bad management decision"
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One worry now is NASA is spending a lot of time on stations or in LEO while it could be focused on Moon colonization or Mars Direct. Reactors on Mars, colonies may soon be on the Moon and more than one nation is planning this trip? The Prate Sector like Space-X may be a big player while others hetre on newmars have criticized the 'Gateway' station saying more of a focus should be on Mars. There are risks but will China try to jump ahead of the USA / NASA because in a ways they are behind the long Russian and United States experience of long duration space flight and space is Dangerous, Colonisation is probably going to be difficult and dangerous, although advances in 3-d printing, farming and robotics should help. Each decade the fringe cosmological science or A.I an almost bio-machine thinking software or scifi concepts such as cloning or engineering of foods or science fiction concepts like 'Fusion' become closer to reality. The Chinese have already experimented with a little biopshere inside a Moon Rover, on Mars maybe you could use something like the Russian Space mirror the plan to iluminate a cold and dark part of Siberia. One day we might have robots on Mars or the Astroid belt, prototyping machines to make simple parts in space, then shipping parts to other places.
Here are some items making the news this week and today
NASA-China space race is about to go nuclear
https://thefrontierpost.com/nasa-china- … o-nuclear/
China Pursues Helium-3 on the Moon
https://www.spacedaily.com/reports/Chin … n_999.html
A new era of planetary exploration: what we discovered on the far side of the Moon
https://www.thespacereview.com/article/4294/1
The science events to watch for in 2022
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586- … _supported
NASA names 10 new astronaut candidates for future space missions
http://www.collectspace.com/news/news-1 … -2021.html
China’s quest for space power starts with moon dust
https://www.livemint.com/science/news/c … 04928.html
NASA funds three approaches to a commercial LEO space station
https://www.electronicsweekly.com/news/ … n-2021-12/
As for the original question of the thread I also think the Moon of Jupiter 'Europa' under its ice as one of the possible places man could live in the solar system. Also a long interesting discussion here http://newmars.com/forums/viewtopic.php?id=1870 'Earths Oceans Explored - but why not colonized'
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So the list contains even after 5 year just these:
LEO
Moon
Mars
Moons of Jupiter
maybe I missed some from the last post
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For SpaceNut ... thanks for bringing this topic from 2016 back into view.
I was glad to see O'Neill colonies in the mix, because they can go anywhere, so there is no limit to where people can live.
On the other hand, GW Johnson contributed a post on structural design of O'Neill cylinders, and I made a mental note to go back and study it.
SearchTerm:O'Neill colony structure design see GW Johnson earlier in this topic.
(th)
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Regarding O'Neil type space stations: One way of reducing fatigue problems is to use prestressed cables to carry the majority of the tensile forces. These could be internal to the hull, allowing them to be replaced without EVA after a calculated fatigue life. Suspension bridges use tensile cables in much the same way.
Regarding other locations: There are no strictly habitable environments for human life, anywhere else in the solar system. We can assess relative habilitability in terms of the ease with which humans can adapt to the natural environment and the ease with which technology and artificial energy can be used to produce habitable environments and provide air, food and liquid water. Habitability therefore depends on the environment, its resources and the tools and technology you bring with you.
Last edited by Calliban (2021-12-19 12:22:21)
"Plan and prepare for every possibility, and you will never act. It is nobler to have courage as we stumble into half the things we fear than to analyse every possible obstacle and begin nothing. Great things are achieved by embracing great dangers."
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Organic compounds on Ceres
https://www.spacedaily.com/reports/Orga … s_999.html
previous threads
http://newmars.com/forums/viewtopic.php?id=9110
Colonizing / terraforming small asteroids
Last edited by Mars_B4_Moon (2022-02-28 12:33:11)
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I'm glad to see this topic resurrected and discussed in the new world of possibilities brought about by the Starship.
My choice after Mars would be Callisto, since it does have a tenuous atmosphere of CO2, and is far enough from the Jovian radiation belts analogous to our own Van Allen belts to be safe for above ground activities--most of the time. Robert Zubrin discusses the issue of occasionally passing through a radiation plume of high energy at certain orbital points in it's passage around the parent planet.
I find that Titan habitation to be pretty fanciful at this stage, due to the fantastically low surface temperatures involved.
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Thanks to Mars_B4_Moon for bringing these old topic back to life.
Tom Kalbus was active before my time here, so I only find out about his range of creative thinking when one of the ancient topics is brought back.
I ** really ** liked this suggestion, because it seems to me quite do-able, and it compares to RobertDyck's large ship.
I haven't checked the math, but the proposal for a Stanford torus around Ceres looks reasonable. RobertDyck's Large Ship will rotate once in 20 seconds, and the Tom Kalbus ring around Ceres would provide 1 full G at a rotation rate of 22 minutes. The Coriolis effects should be quite small.
The same concept could be applied at the Moon, or any of the smaller bodies, if there are enough citizens who want 1 G for some reason.
Terraformer wrote:Well, I'm glad they didn't mention by would-be adoptive homeworld of Ceres, because I don't want competition, though I think it would be in the top 5. Abundant water ice, no radiation belts, close enough that you can still use solar power, they've discovered ammonia there so you can fertilise crops, the gravity is low enough that a space elevator isn't particularly difficult to engineer... the gravity is low, but you can construct rotating habitats for that. I'd put Ceres in 2nd or 3rd place, with Mars in top position (well, after Earth, obviously).
Well Ceres is a dwarf planet 945 kilometers (587 miles) in diameter. What if we built a ring around its equator? Lets make the ring 100 meters wide, and if we rotate it at 2152.589632280152 meters per second or 22.986306145880191858179839941061 minutes for a rotation, we'd have 1 gravity on its inner surface. Normally it would be quite challenging to build a Stamford Torus that big, but we have Ceres to anchor the ring against. We just build a track, anchor it firmly to the crust. This would be equal to 4813.886901 miles per hour! Ceres at its worst is 2.9773 AU from the Sun which means we need almost 9 times the collecting area for Solar energy, we should double that and make it 20 because Ceres rotates once every 9 hours. We would power he settlement with Fuel cells in the dark and rely on Solar energy to make the fuel and power the settlement during the short 4.5 hour day. The living space would be 100 meters times 2968.8050576423546103471979971991 kilometers, that would be 296880505.76423546103471979971991 square meters, that would be 73,360.48 US acres of real estate We could house 4 times as many if we distribute one quarter acre per person, that would be 293,440 people!
acres
I think Mr. Kalbus got a bit carried away with his precision. Rounding to the nearest unit would have been fine for this venue.
(th)
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The Chances of Finding Alien Life on Jupiter’s Moon Europa Just Shot Way Up
https://www.yahoo.com/news/chances-find … 05231.html
Eureka! Scientists Believe Jupiter Moon Europa Could Sustain Life
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These Upcoming Missions to Deep Space Have Us Stoked About the Future
https://gizmodo.com/big-upcoming-deep-s … 1850164273
From trips to Venus and Jupiter to investigations of asteroids and methane-soaked moons, the future of space exploration looks incredibly bright.
Europa Clipper mission, JUICE, the Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer , Japan’s Martian Moon eXploration (MMX) , Lucy mission to Jupiter’s Trojan asteroids ,Psyche, a mission to a metallic world, Hera mission to re-visit Dimorphos, A Dragonfly on Saturn moon’s Titan, The Rosalind Franklin Mars rover, The Mars Sample Return mission, Three missions to Venus.
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Of all the possibilities stated in the OP, I mentally eliminated Venus as a colonization goal because of the sulfuric acid atmosphere.
We'll go to the Moon because it's close. We'll get to Mars because there's Elon Musk pushing us along and Robert Zubrin cheerleading as well as planning. Additionally, it does have enough gravity to probably mitigate bone loss and other physically debilitating illnesses. I also like Ceres, and Callisto as a dark horse candidate. Titan is too far away for colonization it the foreseeable future. I know that Titan has resources but extremely low temperatures which offset many of the "advantages." Ganymede is attractive but has radiation issues.
Added as a P.S.: We probably know more about Mars than we do about any of the other possible destinations; hence we're further along in going there.
Last edited by Oldfart1939 (2023-03-02 22:01:22)
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In the 1950's, some physicists and engineers at General Atomics were doing work for USAF on nuclear explosion propulsion. The USAF concept was for some sort of orbital bomber, but the General Atomics team wanted to build spaceships for deep space travel. Rather like Von Braun wanting to go to the moon while the Wehrmacht that employed him wanted a V-2.
The General Atomics bunch came up with a spaceship design big enough for a large crew, and for near 1 gee artificial gravity by rifle bullet spin. It was powered by thousands of fractional-to-low-kiloton devices of 1950's fission technology. The flight plan called for a round-trip 3-year voyage to Saturn and back, stopping off along the way at the moon and Mars.
I mention that because it has long been obvious to many, that the initial places to go are the moon and Mars. Both, not a choice between them. What is new is the realization that these icy moons around Jupiter and Saturn could also be viable places to go.
The moon is mostly but maybe not entirely devoid of resources, but it is close, and offers a challenging environment for learning how to live in harsh places, plus it offers a safe place to test really energetic propulsion without any air and water to pollute or neighbors to annoy. And its backside offers a view of the universe without light or radio pollution. The unique closeness of the moon is why it is an excellent training ground for learning how to live in harsh places: when something doesn't work right, you can just go home to Earth quickly. No other destination offers that "way out".
Mars has turned out to be less Earthlike than was thought in the 1950's. It is actually rather harsh, but there are resources there from which to make propellants and life support supplies, given adequate electrical power. There may well be other useful resources there, we just don't really know yet. But the odds would seem to favor that. Low gravity may or may not be a significant health risk factor (the odds favor it being sufficient to mitigate), and radiation is reduced somewhat compared to out-in-space. So that really is the next place to go, once you learn how to live in harsh places.
The icy moons of Jupiter and Saturn (and maybe further out) would seem to offer resources of volatiles, although with rather serious low gravity and radiation health risks. You learn how to deal with those in part by attempting to live on the moon. Which is exactly why it's a plan going to all these places, and not a choice of this one or that one.
The asteroids would seem to be low-gravity-well-attractive for mining minerals and some metals, but maybe not so much volatiles. Only the large ones seem to have any volatiles, the others are dry. Even the comets have turned out to be a lot drier than we ever thought before. The carbonaceous chondrite type C's appear to be loose rubble piles bound only by exceedingly-weak gravity. We have yet to characterize the properties of the type S stony ones. The type M metallics are rare but seem to have nickel and iron in something that might be rather monolithic in properties. Asteroids generally will likely require some sort of space habitats to house the crews that mine them. Only a few are big enough to try to live inside of.
GW
Last edited by GW Johnson (2023-03-03 11:05:14)
GW Johnson
McGregor, Texas
"There is nothing as expensive as a dead crew, especially one dead from a bad management decision"
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Exploration of Callisto, Ganymede and Europa from ESA and NASA.
Juice is Fully Deployed. It’s Now in its Final Form, Ready to Meet Jupiter’s Moons in 2031
https://www.universetoday.com/161607/ju … s-in-2031/
The RIME unit is deemed as “mission critical” since its purpose is to map underneath the icy crusts of Jupiter’s three icy worlds: Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto.
“It’s been an exhausting but very exciting six weeks,” said Angela Dietz, who is the deputy spacecraft operations manager for the Juice mission. “We have faced and overcome various challenges to get Juice into the right shape for getting the best science out of its trip to Jupiter.”
a discussion orbiters in the 'Jupiters Realms' thread, Clipper and Juice
https://web.archive.org/web/20230410113 … nchKit.pdf
Juice will carry ten state-of-the-art instruments, including the most powerful remote sensing, geophysical and in situ payloads ever flown to the outer Solar System.
Nine of the instruments are led by European partners, and one by NASA. Juice also includes an experiment called PRIDE, which will perform precise measurements using radio telescopes on Earth.
EUROPA
Surface: young, active
Juice flybys: 2
Juice’s closest approach: 400 kmGANYMEDE
Surface: varying, offering a geological record spanning billions
of years
Juice flybys: 12
Juice’s closest approach: 400 km during flybys, 500 km
whilst in orbit (potentially aiming for 200 km)CALLISTO
Surface: oldest in Solar System, heavily cratered
and inactive, remnant of the early Jovian system
Juice flybys: 21
Juice’s closest approach: 200 km
Timeline vid
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qfH0nnzOvS8
Juice will have Power 850 watts from a solar panel ~85 m2 (910 sq ft) and Clipper 600 watts.
NASA's Clipper, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, launch in October 2024 (planned) Rocket SpaceX Falcon Heavy from Kennedy Space Center Florida, it will generate 600 W from solar panels. The alternative Nuclear power source has already been demonstrated in the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) mission, it was decided that the solar array was the less expensive option to power the spacecraft. Shielding from Jupiter's harsh radiation belt will be provided by a radiation vault with 0.3 inches (7.6 mm) thick aluminum alloy walls, which will enclose the spacecraft electronics. To maximize the effectiveness of this shielding, the electronics will also be nested in the core of the spacecraft for additional radiation protection.
https://europa.nasa.gov/spacecraft/meet-europa-clipper/
,
https://web.archive.org/web/20210204070 … pdate.html
Now we just need to do it in space!
https://twitter.com/EuropaClipper/statu … 5171677186
Learn more about how our magnetometer will help us peer into the secrets of Jupiter’s moon Europa
Last edited by Mars_B4_Moon (2023-05-28 07:40:25)
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