UC Style space colonization

[Zor]

This thread has been in my mind for a long time.

The thread's idea is simple, Would it be practical to develop a large number of O'neill Island III Space Colonies on the Lagrange Points, as done in the Universal Century Gundam series?

Zor

[Dave]

I don't think it's practical. Possible, but not practical.

There arn't a whole lot of materials at the Lagrange points that I'm aware of, so you have to bring the materials with you, or drag in an asteroid and use that to construct it. Plus, what can the Island III export when it is completed? (You wanted it to be economically self sufficient or better, right?)

*Energy from the Sun
*Agriculture (given some import of organics for fertilizer)
*Manufacturing capabilities
*Tourist attraction
*Services (Fueling, Bandwidth, Computing power, Financial center, etc.)

Most if not all of these can be provided by asteroids or the Moon, with less cost of construction since the materials are available in situ.

I'd stick with the Moon or asteroids.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

I don't think it's practical. Possible, but not practical.

There arn't a whole lot of materials at the Lagrange points that I'm aware of, so you have to bring the materials with you, or drag in an asteroid and use that to construct it. Plus, what can the Island III export when it is completed? (You wanted it to be economically self sufficient or better, right?)

*Energy from the Sun
*Agriculture (given some import of organics for fertilizer)
*Manufacturing capabilities
*Tourist attraction
*Services (Fueling, Bandwidth, Computing power, Financial center, etc.)

Most if not all of these can be provided by asteroids or the Moon, with less cost of construction since the materials are available in situ.

I'd stick with the Moon or asteroids.

You just shunt asteroids into orbit for building materials, of course, and comets should be able to provide the organics. The material available in the asteroid field is so great that it's functionally unlimited.

I'm extremely opposed to Moon and Mars colonization because the gravity fields make moving between human habitations extremely difficult. Someone who has lived their entire life there cannot set foot on Earth, and that is going to cause extreme issues in terms of the inter-connected nature of the human race and lead to unpleasant developments, particularly as no-one will want to move there and the populations will suffer inbreeding.

In comparison, Dr. O'Neill's designs provide 1g of continuous gravity, and we don't have to spend thousands of years terraforming. 40 - 80 million capacity bi-coupled Island III cylinders can be built in a decade, and perhaps less. The science for these designs was systematically worked out, and quite reasonable.


The only planet in the solar system worth terraforming, IMO, is Venus, but we have to blow a substantial portion of the atmosphere off to reduce pressure first. Venus is perfectly habitable if it wasn't for the runaway Greenhouse effect it's suffered under.

I wonder how different our view of the solar system, how much investment we'd make into space travel, would be if that weren't the case?
It's interesting to think about what humanity would look like if Venus was sitting there tempting us, even if the planet was more or less Dune with a couple endorheic seas added for flavouring.

[Gil Hamilton]

You just shunt asteroids into orbit for building materials, of course, and comets should be able to provide the organics. The material available in the asteroid field is so great that it's functionally unlimited.

Why bother? Earth is right there and has all of that stuff readily available and practically prepackaged for you. Sure, it's at the bottom of a gravity well, but the energy to get it out of that gravity well is going to be significantly easier than redirecting comets and asteroids and parking them in a stable orbit around Earth. And alot quicker.

It could take decades to get a single comet to Earth and the amount of volatiles it has would (A) need heavy processing and (B) not in the same volume as you could get from Earth. So why bother?

I'm extremely opposed to Moon and Mars colonization because the gravity fields make moving between human habitations extremely difficult. Someone who has lived their entire life there cannot set foot on Earth, and that is going to cause extreme issues in terms of the inter-connected nature of the human race and lead to unpleasant developments, particularly as no-one will want to move there and the populations will suffer inbreeding.

That depends on how many people actually do settle there. It doesn't take THAT many families to establish enough genetic diversity to start a colony.

The problem with the Moon is that it has all the volatiles baked out it by its formation so it has the same weakness as orbitable colonies in that regard that it will be dependant on Earth. However, Mars is another story. It's cold, but contains vast amounts of completely untapped resources and all the volatiles you could want. There is no reason you couldn't put a self-sustaining colony on Mars. In fact, it would make for a good insurance policy in case something happens to Earth and your space colonies get cut off.

Yeah, they'll have problems going to Earth, but less so than Lunarians. It's conceivable for a very well in shape Martian could function on Earth, though they wouldn't be particularly strong. They'd have to get in really good cardiovascular shape though. They'd probably need some physical therapy, but they'd need it from the trip from Mars to Earth anyway.

In comparison, Dr. O'Neill's designs provide 1g of continuous gravity, and we don't have to spend thousands of years terraforming. 40 - 80 million capacity bi-coupled Island III cylinders can be built in a decade, and perhaps less. The science for these designs was systematically worked out, and quite reasonable.

Actually, I'm thinking you are under estimating the engineering problems of making a space station that unbelievably huge. Try making them without Magic Bullet Minovsky Physics and you'll see what I mean.

Besides, most people who've looked into the issue think that Mars can be made somewhat livable, if kind of chilly, in around five hundred years, rather than several thousand. Even then, there isn't much point. Why bother terraforming the place?

The only planet in the solar system worth terraforming, IMO, is Venus, but we have to blow a substantial portion of the atmosphere off to reduce pressure first. Venus is perfectly habitable if it wasn't for the runaway Greenhouse effect it's suffered under.

This qualifies as the underestatement of the year, saying "Well, it would be great if it weren't Hell!". Venus isn't a mere fixer-upper. Frankly, isn't worth it. It would be an engineering nightmare to live there at all, let alone terraform it. Mars is a much better bet in that regard, since it is considerably less lethal and doesn't require as much work to get a working colony off the ground.

I wonder how different our view of the solar system, how much investment we'd make into space travel, would be if that weren't the case?
It's interesting to think about what humanity would look like if Venus was sitting there tempting us, even if the planet was more or less Dune with a couple endorheic seas added for flavouring.

That's actually an interesting question. What if Venus was somewhat like the conceptions that people used to have about it, even as late as the 1950s? I actually would suspect that it would spur our space programs.

[Junghalli]

Venus is perfectly habitable if it wasn't for the runaway Greenhouse effect it's suffered under.

You're overlooking another rather serious problem with Venus: it has a day/night cycle more than 200 Earth days long. Even if you managed to fix the atmosphere you're looking at a planet with more than a hundred days of continuous light and darkness per rotation. Think about the kind of noon and midnight temperatures a planet like that is going to have.

It's interesting to think about what humanity would look like if Venus was sitting there tempting us, even if the planet was more or less Dune with a couple endorheic seas added for flavouring.

As with a habitable Mars, space program would undoubtedly be a lot farther along. A habitable planet makes a much more attractive colonization prospect than, well, anything we've got in our solar system. Nature or God really shafted us by making the other planet in our sun's life zone (Mars) too small.

[Jadeite]

Perhaps the day/night cycle of Venus could be fixed with large enough orbital shades and reflective mirrors?

[Dave]

You just shunt asteroids into orbit for building materials, of course, and comets should be able to provide the organics.

Well, yes, I thought of that, but I hadn't considered the benefit, nay, near-necessity of a 1G environment. Thank you.

Why bother? Earth is right there and has all of that stuff readily available and practically prepackaged for you. Sure, it's at the bottom of a gravity well, but the energy to get it out of that gravity well is going to be significantly easier than redirecting comets and asteroids and parking them in a stable orbit around Earth. And alot quicker.

Ok, so it is cheaper to lift off from Earth than it is to move an asteroid. But Earth to LEO would be ~$US 3215/kg, using the SpaceX Falcon 9 Heavy for a lifter ($90M launch, 28,000 kg payload), which is still pretty expensive (and is untested). And who says you have to move the asteroid? Find one in a usable orbit, and just stick with that. Sure, you can't fly home whenever you want, but space emergency's tend to have binary results (dead or A-OK) anyway, and very little in the way of assistance (especially when delayed by Holman transfer orbits) will change that, I suspect.


RE: Venus.

Terraforming Venus would be a royal pain.

Wikipediaoffers the idea of floating colonies. (O2 and N2 are less dense than CO2, and the cities could float at 50km altitude, where temperature range is 0-50C and roughly 1 atm pressure)

I don't know how well that would work, or the practicality of it (especially economically), but the floating cities get cheap carbon and oxygen. Diamond for a building material? If grown to form (seed diamond and carbon deposition), that might work well.

[Gil Hamilton]

Ok, so it is cheaper to lift off from Earth than it is to move an asteroid. But Earth to LEO would be ~$US 3215/kg, using the SpaceX Falcon 9 Heavy for a lifter ($90M launch, 28,000 kg payload), which is still pretty expensive (and is untested). And who says you have to move the asteroid? Find one in a usable orbit, and just stick with that. Sure, you can't fly home whenever you want, but space emergency's tend to have binary results (dead or A-OK) anyway, and very little in the way of assistance (especially when delayed by Holman transfer orbits) will change that, I suspect.

Marina suggested the moving asteroids and comets, in the post I was responding to. I know it's expensive to send things up Earth's gravity well, but I would think that it's even more prohibitively expensive to fly out to the asteroid belt, mine material, and send it back, let alone shipping the asteroid back FIRST and then mining it.

[CmdrWilkens]

Ok, so it is cheaper to lift off from Earth than it is to move an asteroid. But Earth to LEO would be ~$US 3215/kg, using the SpaceX Falcon 9 Heavy for a lifter ($90M launch, 28,000 kg payload), which is still pretty expensive (and is untested). And who says you have to move the asteroid? Find one in a usable orbit, and just stick with that. Sure, you can't fly home whenever you want, but space emergency's tend to have binary results (dead or A-OK) anyway, and very little in the way of assistance (especially when delayed by Holman transfer orbits) will change that, I suspect.

Marina suggested the moving asteroids and comets, in the post I was responding to. I know it's expensive to send things up Earth's gravity well, but I would think that it's even more prohibitively expensive to fly out to the asteroid belt, mine material, and send it back, let alone shipping the asteroid back FIRST and then mining it.

The material cost on a weight basis I couldn't say but the time basis certainly argues in favor of using the existing materials on earth. WE are tlaking upwards of 18 months for a delivery roundtrip. Were we to go truly crazy and have temporary mining facilities in place set to divert asteroids we are still looking at 9-12 months from the time an order is received to even begin processing paticular raw materials or (alternatively) selecting and diverting an appropriately configured asteroid.

[Dave]

I was really talking about building on the asteroid. I say, ditch the Island 3 altogether and build your base on or in the asteroid.

Or, if you want, you could build the Island 3 ten km away in the same orbit as the asteroid, and use the 'roid to provide the material. You don't need to bring the asteroid to the Island. Bring the Island to the asteroid (or I should say, build the thing at the asteroid.)

[Dave]

It requires about the same if not less delta-v to get from the asteroid belt to Earth orbit as it does to get to Earth orbit from the ground, and it can be done far more gradually than the huge burst required to overcome gravity.

Sure, the delta-v is the same, but the mass of an asteroid is MUCH greater than that of a earth-launched payload. Thus more force is required to produce the same acceleration rate to cause the delta-v.

Granted, as you say, it is possible to accelerate over a greater time, but patience never seems to be a virtue among corporations or the general public. If you wanted funding for this, you're going to have to look really hard.

[...]metal in a single near earth asteroid[...]

.. you know, I always had NEOs in the back of my mind when I wrote, but I never actually said it. I was never talking about the Belt, I was talking about using NEOs for materials. *facepalm*

Yes, energy would be an excellent export for an Island III, but other Island IIIs won't need it, (unless they are under construction), the Moon probably won't need it, and so that leaves Earth. But how do you get energy through the atmosphere, without causing environmental damage? That was always the problem I heard about with beamed power. Or am I misinformed?

Question: Destructionator, you say that the environmental/ecosystem studies had not been completed at the time. Have they finished and published the results yet?

[Gil Hamilton]

Doctor O'Neill's and the NASA studies in the 70's into this subject were peer reviewed and generally considered feasible. They used no magic physics (neither did Gundam for their habitats, by the way. Minovsky physics is for their power generators, radio jammers, and beam weapons.)

It was feasible in the 70s to land three men in a tin can on the Moon with the Biggest Rocket Ever. Building something bigger than Babylon 5 in orbit is a different matter (even landing 3 men on the moon in a tin can is currently unfeasible for the US government, we don't have the infrastructure anymore).

And as for the UC Gundam not using magic physics to build them, I would like to rebutt by saying BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA! Seriously, do you really think that their super powerful Magic... er... Minovsky space drives and power generation didn't come directly into play in building those O'Neill colonies?

[Gullible Jones]

Doctor O'Neill's and the NASA studies in the 70's into this subject were peer reviewed and generally considered feasible. They used no magic physics (neither did Gundam for their habitats, by the way. Minovsky physics is for their power generators, radio jammers, and beam weapons.)

It was feasible in the 70s to land three men in a tin can on the Moon with the Biggest Rocket Ever, let alone build something bigger than Babylon 5 in orbit (even landing 3 men on the moon in a tin can is currently unfeasible for the US government, we don't have the infrastructure anymore).

Umm what? We bloody well do have the infrastructure.

[Gil Hamilton]

Umm what? We bloody well do have the infrastructure.

Not at the second, we don't. It would take a few years of infrastructure building for NASA to be ready to launch another manned moon mission.

[Illuminatus Primus]

Ok, so it is cheaper to lift off from Earth than it is to move an asteroid. But Earth to LEO would be ~$US 3215/kg, using the SpaceX Falcon 9 Heavy for a lifter ($90M launch, 28,000 kg payload), which is still pretty expensive (and is untested). And who says you have to move the asteroid? Find one in a usable orbit, and just stick with that. Sure, you can't fly home whenever you want, but space emergency's tend to have binary results (dead or A-OK) anyway, and very little in the way of assistance (especially when delayed by Holman transfer orbits) will change that, I suspect.

Marina suggested the moving asteroids and comets, in the post I was responding to. I know it's expensive to send things up Earth's gravity well, but I would think that it's even more prohibitively expensive to fly out to the asteroid belt, mine material, and send it back, let alone shipping the asteroid back FIRST and then mining it.

Why? Set up mining, throw useless slag and material off while you mine it with a rudimentary mass driver. The reactive force will push the asteroid into a new, desirable trajectory. Much easier to move asteroids down a gravity well toward Earth than to move the same weight of material up and off. Not to mention we're simply going to run out of some strategic resources for practical purposes (such as copper), and we'll need to get them from metallic asteroids.

[VF5SS]

And as for the UC Gundam not using magic physics to build them, I would like to rebutt by saying BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA! Seriously, do you really think that their super powerful Magic... er... Minovsky space drives and power generation didn't come directly into play in building those O'Neill colonies?

The first Minovsky compact fusion reactor was developed several decades after all the Sides were built. Don't be an ass.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

Ok, so it is cheaper to lift off from Earth than it is to move an asteroid. But Earth to LEO would be ~$US 3215/kg, using the SpaceX Falcon 9 Heavy for a lifter ($90M launch, 28,000 kg payload), which is still pretty expensive (and is untested). And who says you have to move the asteroid? Find one in a usable orbit, and just stick with that. Sure, you can't fly home whenever you want, but space emergency's tend to have binary results (dead or A-OK) anyway, and very little in the way of assistance (especially when delayed by Holman transfer orbits) will change that, I suspect.

Marina suggested the moving asteroids and comets, in the post I was responding to. I know it's expensive to send things up Earth's gravity well, but I would think that it's even more prohibitively expensive to fly out to the asteroid belt, mine material, and send it back, let alone shipping the asteroid back FIRST and then mining it.

First of all, regarding your earlier post, and the engineering problems of space stations of that size--we had the materials science technology so that we could build them in the 1970s. Fullstop. So the engineering problems simply aren't an issue.

As for the second issue, generally the idea is to attach a really slow burning ion-engine to an asteroid powered by a fission reactor and let it coast on in to Earth orbit. We won't be grabbing from the belt or the Oort cloud, obviously not, but the near-earth orbiting Asteroids and Comets which approach the orbit of Earth. There are MORE than enough of those to sustain orbital civilization for quite some time.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

Two nitpicks: the estimated capacity for the cylinder pair as I recall it was closer to 20-40 million, but it was a conservative number (the real limit is still an open question due to the ecosystem research being incomplete), so it may well be able to do more. The construction time of a decade assumes that the space infrastructure is also in place, which was estimated to take another 10-20 years to research, design, and implement.

Once the first ones are operational, the time plummets with each step, as there is an existing experienced workforce, the technology is fully developed, and the materials are ready to go.

I was thinking of the closed Vivarium type with those figures, which seems like it would be easier to engineer in some respects than the original cylinder. It has the advantage of greatly reducing the amount of plexiglass you need, and arguably much improving safety. And, obviously, doubling the population.

[Cyborg Stan]

Hmmm... does anyone know if the combination of thin foils/films and vapor deposition would be useful? I was thinking that you first get up something that could make up large amounts of thin metal sheets, which can be used to reflect light onto a slowly spinning asteroid, eventually melting it and using the centrifuge-like action to help seperate the elements.

In addition, the same sheets can be used as a starting point for construction. Simply arrange/fold/bend the foil into the right shape, and then vaporize a bunch of metal inside of it. Wait for it to cool off, and you've got the base of a structure.