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 Posted 11/19/2005 6:20 PM |
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Senior Member
Group: Forum Members
Active: 4/2/2006
Posts: 18 |
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I really have been neglecting my little forum sub-section. For which I have only myself to blame. Recently I have been thinking about the problems, and benefits of living in space rather than trying to colonise other planets that are at best passivly hostile to life (like mars).
The main thing people got wrong in predicting space colonisation has been life support, look at things like the biosphere project, a huge sealed glass house designed to see how humans survived in a sealed environment. they didn't, the entire system failed to the point they had to pump in oxygen in less than a year, had it been a space habitat, they'd all have had to evacuate, or die.
But once the workings of a sealed life support system can be ironed out the idea remains good.
There'd be good reasons for them, around earth are several large asteroids that at present are mild risks to all life, but could be ideal for mining.
Why bother trying to rebuild an entire planet when a few small bases and stations amoug asteroids can provide all the metal we'd need for the next few centuries at a fraction of the cost? A space colony has no gravity wells to worry about. take off and landing is the worst part of space travel. as far as I know no one's ever died in space so far, it's always been going up or coming down. A mars base would have to carry everything down to the serface, dig for the valuable minerals, and pay to lift the stuff back into space before sending it home. Mining an asteroid, the material would be near the serface, docking would be no harder than with a space station, and ther'd be almost no cost to lift cargo off and send it home.
So I say forget mars, lets go rock hopping instead!  "It thinks we're either a threat, food or a mate - it's gonna either kill us, eat us or hump us." |
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| Posted 11/20/2005 1:57 PM |
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Supreme Being
Group: Forum Members
Active: 11/26/2006
Posts: 321 |
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Well i think the main problem with that is just the small fear of aliens...ever since the first ever possible idea about another life it was feared by man, they feared the large saucer like ships that came down and took over the planet, well that didn't happen yet and no life has been found as of yet but still the chance that theres something out there is very big, thats one factor wy asteroid hunting isn't a good idea, another one is that the possible digging in a asteroid can change his course just a slight bit and it could crash into earth if its big enough...i could go on with possible theories but that wont be a good idea now, the main bit is, when man needs to move they will but man will be more advanced when that time arrives. 
StompyChar
stompychar-info.vze.com
Im a Dragon in Heart, a Dragon in Mind, i just look human. //StompyChar
These Feet are made for Stomping, Thats just what the'll do, One of these days these feet will Stomp allover you!. //StompyChar
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| Posted 11/20/2005 6:10 PM |
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Senior Member
Group: Forum Members
Active: 4/2/2006
Posts: 18 |
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Care would need to be taken to make sure the asteroid stayed stable it's true, but the same is true of any large orbital construction too.
The main problems remain life sopport in a sealed system and the psycological effects on humans lving in an artificial environment where going home would be costly and a rare opertunity.
One interesting theory I heard is that any isolated outpost/colony should actually be split into two separate groups in many cases furstration and friction between crew members can be reaved quickly and easily just by being able to leave and go somewhere else for a while. with two linked bases a person can get away from someone they don't want to see by transfering to the other of the two bases. The two bases also improve safty as each one can survive on it's own and aid it's twin should an accident befall it.
Only downside I can see would be if the two bases became at odds over something and could infact end up fighting each other instead of cooperating. This is a very real problem for Humanz, who will quite readily fight over almost anything."It thinks we're either a threat, food or a mate - it's gonna either kill us, eat us or hump us." |
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| Posted 11/20/2005 10:54 PM |
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Forum Moderator
Group: Forum Members
Active: 4/16/2008
Posts: 737 |
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Yeah. Lets send reptiles instead. 
But i agree so far with the sealed system problematic, although i DO think it is managable, if you dont try to create a working ecosystem, but rely on a big energy source to clean air and water. AND food. Unpleasant thought but the only choice. (as an ecosystem to sustain human life takes up way too much space (That is, mass = burden) and, as you pointed out, tends to not work).
Two thumbs up for crew seperation. The main astoreoid belt between mars and Jupiter is roughy four times as far as Mars though, and asteroids that pass close by earth usually leave the solar system and take many of years until they return. Both kinds of asterois hold the problem that one would be constandly exposed to the rather hazardous space radiation you dont get on planets, as their atmosphere and magnetic fields block or deflect most of it. Potentially profitable for mining with robots, perhaps. You also would most likely have to come up with artificial gravity to sustain human live for longer periods.
So right now and with humans: No. Right now with robots: perhaps. But unlikely to be profitable (speaking ressources as well).
Apart from that, if the harvested material is only shipped to space stations in earth orbit and the time a single load takes back to earth does not matter once a constant flow is established, such an enterprise might end up profitable.
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Blue anthroraptor, Iconeer
Resident anthrosaur
(Linking the Faibanx muck map here hoping that helps google find it properly: http://download.lavadomefive.com/members/blue/map/main.html ) |
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| Posted 11/22/2005 9:25 PM |
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Supreme Being
Group: Forum Members
Active: 3/22/2011
Posts: 152 |
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To account for the radiation problem, I think measures would have to be station-based. Sure, on Earth there's sunscreen, but that only works in combination with the atmosphere, which deals with a lot, I mean a lot of radiation... unless you wanted all of your staff to constantly be wearing those bulky rad-suits all of the time.
The alternative to getting irradiated and dying of cancer a lot (assuming the station(s) would be in Earth's system... Sol, or whatever it's called) would be to find a star that doesn't emit as many harmful particles and waves. I know that this would be hard to do, but there are many different types of starts, many of which (it seems), we don't even know about yet. It might be possible to find one that is safe for people, so that drastic countermeasures would not have to be taken against radiation.
One method that struck me on how to deal with the radiation problem, (if we were near, say, our Sun), would be to have layers of tubing or an extra shell around what I imagine are like terraria, and pressurize it/them with the same type of protective substances found on Earth (O3,H2O, etc.)
The gravity problem is a little harder to address. The physics of gravity are simplistic and complex at the same time... so, actually producing real and substantial amounts of gravity without using lotsa matter seems hard. One way to simulate it is to have constant kinetic energy keeping things down. Whether this is plausible/possible is left up to your power constraints. Basically, if you have enough energy, you could have the station (or part of it), spinning at such a speed that objects would be held down by the sheer centrifugal force.
If you don't want the gravity problems of a station, or the increased orbital stability problems of a station, then you can just find a moon (or other cosmically stable object) that didn't have much of an atmosphere. Then, taking off and landing would just be a matter of not hitting the ground when you land, rather than a matter of trying not to die in the Thousands© of Degrees™ not to mention landing.
Food, water, and air... those are also kind of problematic. Space doesn't have very much of any of those. Depending on what kind of asteroids you had access to, you might be able to get oxygen from oxidized metals (Doom 3 style). If we decided to get REALLY fancy, we could just convert rocks and stuff that we found into stuff we wanted in a nuclear fashion... but that would take some time, and lotsa particle accelerationizationingajing®.
Stations... provided we found a way to deal with radiation, gravity, and food and water properly, space stations would seem pretty ideal. Then after that, all we'd need would be jump drives and Silons and stuff... then we'd be set.
Something more important than Patch's sentiments: SAVE the goddamned INTERNET! |
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| Posted 11/26/2005 3:52 PM |
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Senior Member
Group: Forum Members
Active: 4/2/2006
Posts: 18 |
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The solution to radiatuon screening is a lot more simple than trying to make an artificial atmosphere. The earth's atmosphere filters out most harmfu radiation, but it takes around 40+ miles of it. Radiation abosrbancy is directly linked to density. Water is a far better radiation shield than air, which is why when you see pictures of fission reactors they are almost always underwater in a tank. One of the main barriers to early life leaving the oceans was how to cope with the radiation levels on the exposed surface without the water's shielding.
Concrete or lead are even denser than water, and are considerably better and stopping radiation than water, and massivly more effective than air.
The simplest solution for an asteroid mining base to keep the radiation at bay is simply to dig under the surface. a few feet of rock would be suficient to stop almost all the harmful solar radiation and lower what was left to a sustainable level (I didn't say "safe", radiation levels on earth aren't "safe", as anyone who's heard of skin cancer should know. But the levels are close enough to safe for people to live with).
While the digging in phase is going on workers can be protected by metal surface buildings covered in a layer of loose surface debrits (picture a rock igloo). As for an artificial space habitat like a stanford torus or Bernal sphere simply coating the outer hull with furnace slag and other mining debrits from the colony's own factorys should build up a layer of shielding quickly, though the early years may require rad suits during solar flares and such untill the slag shield is ready.
(The collony's windows face AWAY from the sun and large mirrors bounce light, but not harmful radiation, back into the collonists)"It thinks we're either a threat, food or a mate - it's gonna either kill us, eat us or hump us." |
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