Extreme Bugout Vehicle: Carry Your Survival Colony With You Anywhere

The Aeros rigid body airship uses a novel buoyancy management system to provide the ability to carry up to 66 tons of freight or passengers, with a range of 3,000 nautical miles, and the ability to land and take off vertically from any flat surface. Cruising speed is 110 knots, with better fuel economy than other aircraft with heavy lift capability.

The company has built a half-size prototype, and is working with the US FAA on legal-technical-regulatory aspects of the craft before building a full-sized version.

If the vehicle operates to specifications, it would be an ideal method of building an "instant community" in the middle of nowhere. Such a capacity would be invaluable to militaries, as well as to survivalists, colonists, "new nation activists," and others who wished to be able to quickly install a sophisticated infrastructure in a remote location using pre-fabricated and pre-packaged materials and equipment. Example: Intershelter Popup Dome Shelters are lightweight and assume compact form for shipping.

The airship should also allow for fairly quick and massive relief and re-supply in disaster situations.

Aeroscraft

The commercial models will have a cruising speed of 110 knots over a range of 3000 nautical miles.

“It is the speed that the market and customers need,’’ he [Aeros CEO Igor Pasternak] says.

One of the keys to the new platform is its buoyancy management system. This allows the weight of the vehicle to be adjusted to suit conditions and operational needs. It is completely different from a "blimp" or something like the Hindenburg which needed a hitching post. With the Aeroscraft, there is a gas envelope above a freight chamber which reduces the buoyancy until the craft is 50 feet above the ground. Then you land it as you would a helicopter.

“The concept of the operation is absolutely new. When it comes in for a landing, say 100 feet or 50 feet and it touches the ground, at this moment you become heavier than air,’’ he says.

“From the structure stand point, all of us are familiar with the Hindenburg and Zeppelin designs, continues Pasternak. “This is different. We built a space frame that sits inside of the vehicle and around the frame we built a rigid cell. The function of the rigid cell is to have it work with the aerodynamic laws. It’s a very simple approach. _Gizmag

The video below provides a graphic animation of the Aeros buoyancy management system, which allows the craft to land and take off vertically, and to pick up and deliver up to 66 tons of cargo or passengers from most locations -- regardless of how far it is to the nearest airport.

The military applications are apt to catch on, if the craft can operate at high enough altitudes out of range of most ground fire. Remote piloting capability would also be an ideal feature for military use.

This is an airship buoyancy concept that has been thrown around at the Al Fin Aerospace Institute for a number of years, but the Institute is not likely to submit any prior claims to the idea. ;-)

Most Humans Would Be Happy to Leave Mars to the Robots

The Mars Curiosity Rover robot is preparing to sample and analyse Martian soil. The nuclear powered robot is far more capable of a sophisticated analysis of Mars, than were previous solar powered robots.

As space robots become more sophisticated, more and more humans will begin to question the need to send human explorers into space. And yet it is difficult to deny the attraction of space to humans, and the instinctive desire to expand the horizons of human existence and productive activity. Humans need a challenge, and it is difficult to find many challenges more daunting than the exploration and colonisation of space.

Humans are slowly developing the skills they will need to conduct extended missions in space and on extraterrestrial bodies. Not only national space agencies, but international and private space enterprises are working to extend the reach of humans into space.

The US is the only nation to successfully operate missions on the surface of Mars. But China and Russia have launched a joint mission to explore the moons of Mars, and India is now looking at a mission to Mars itself. In addition, the EU and Japan have each conducted missions to extra-terrestrial space bodies, which demonstrates many of the same skills needed for a Mars mission, and China is intent on operating on the surface of Luna within this decade.

Most of these extraterrestrial missions have been -- or will be -- unmanned robotic missions. But there are ways in which robots can be used to facilitate human space exploration:

Once we have determined the site of the first Martian base, robots will provide logistical support through the transportation of supplies (fuel, oxygen, water, food, etc) and equipment from one place to another within this general area of operations. Robot size and strength will be dictated by the specifics of what it is to be transported, and general-purpose tractors may be used to tow specialized trailers for cargo, liquids, and so forth. Making repeated transits between specific points within the base area of operations will greatly ease the challenges of mobility and navigation, since we can create and follow improved "roads" and leverage navigation infrastructure such as beacons. Manipulation capabilities will be required only for loading and unloading cargo or transferring fuel. Eventually we will need "optionally manned" vehicles to transport humans as drivers or passengers. This suggests that we will need some unmanned ground vehicles with size at least comparable to an All Terrain Vehicle (ATV) or golf cart. The dune buggy sized Lunar Rover Vehicles (LRVs) successfully used on Apollo 15, 16, and 17 provide a good reference point.

Later, robots will be employed to perform physical work in support of the construction of the Mars base: site preparation, road clearing, drilling, excavation (NASA, 2009), manufacture of bricks and/or other materials, construction of structures, and assembly and installation of equipment. These robots will have to be strong, they will require much more power than basic exploration or transportation robots, and they will need the mobility to move about in the "construction zone." For excavation and similar heavy construction tasks a back-of-the-envelope calculation suggests that the obvious terrestrial models – a small Bobcat or forklift – might be overkill, since the excavation of 10x10x10 meters in 800 days (26 months) using 5 robots would require each unit to move only about 1/4 m3 of regolith per day. Well-defined heavy tasks that do not require precision (such as excavation) will be performed autonomously by teams of robotic vehicles working pretty much continuously, day and night. _Jnl Cosmology

Extending the concept of "robot" to include engineered biological organisms, it is likely that engineered microbes will be used to facilitate human habitation and colonisation of extraterrestrial bodies such as Mars.

While more adventurous and ambitious humans may chafe at the many delays hampering the move of humans off the surface of the cradle planet Earth, it is only realistic to accept the need for more advanced tools. We need better and more scalable robotics, we need better bio-engineering, we need better materials, better prototypers and replicators, better nanotechnological assemblers, better computation, and better power sources -- particularly of the nuclear variety.

Nuclear reactors can produce copious amounts of heat and electrical power -- both of which will be needed for ambitious off-Earth projects. Perhaps the first missions in preparation for a human habitat on an extraterrestrial body might be the landing of self-assembling robots which will first build a permanent nuclear reactor, and then other critical machinery for assembling modular habitats and underlying infrastructure.

Once we are assured of ample power and process heat, the way will be open for most of the other things robots and microbes will need to do to facilitate human habitation.

Undersea Nuclear Reactors to Power Undersea Cities?

DCNS, the French state-controlled naval company, said it will work in partnership with French companies Areva, EDF, and the French Atomic Energy Commission to build small- and medium-sized underwater reactors to provide electricity to consumers....Radio France Internationale reported Wednesday.

The company said its Flexblue project, expected to enter the building phase in 2013, is in response to global energy challenges and renewed interest in nuclear power. _UPI

Video h/t NextBigFuture
Small, portable nuclear reactors that are made for placement under the sea, could be used for many porpoises purposes. Besides running power cables to land to serve terrestrial customers, such undersea reactors could also serve floating installations and seafloor industries -- even undersea cities.

Akin to the submarines that DCNS has been making for the French navy for 40 years, Flexblue is a cylindrical unit 100 metres in length and 12 to 15 metres in diameter. Inside would be a small nuclear power reactor and well as steam generators, turbines and a generator to produce 50 to 250 MWe.

The vision is for such a unit to be installed on the seabed under 60 to 100 metres of water, several kilometres from a centre of power demand such as a city, industrial base or remote community which it would serve via underwater cables.

A video released today depicts the unit's deployment under naval guard. It is transported to sea on a heavy lift ship which lowers itself to allow Flexblue to maneuvre under its own power. Descent occurs under the watch of divers before a cutaway view reveals four stories of plant within the hull. The structure is then covered by a net and power is transmitted by cable to shore. _WorldNuclearNews_via_NextBigFuture

WNN
Brazil is already planning for "undersea cities" as replacements for deep ocean offshore oil rigs:

The plan is to construct 'cities’ more than 2,000 metres under water, containing machines, giant pieces of equipment and robots that could inspect the systems being used to extract millions of barrels of oil. Many operations would be fully automated while others would be controlled by humans at a distance.

“Our target is that we won’t need platforms in ten years from now,” said Carlos Tadeu Fraga, executive manager of the Petrobras Research Centre.

Petrobras already owns virtual reality laboratories where engineers can inspect 3D images of oil fields. But now they want to take a further technological leap by installing floating rig equipment on the sea bed.

The machinery under the sea would be capable of separating oil, gas, water and sand, compressing substances and generating enough energy to keep the operation functioning.

As deep sea mineral mining and deep sea science and exploration joins deep sea oil & gas drilling, the need for self-powered seafloor installations will grow in urgency. Sealed nuclear reactors that can run between 20 and 50 years on a single fueling will provide the necessary energy security for such installations.

A few years ago, the Estonian Maritime Academy proposed the development and installation of a subsea nuclear reactor off the Estonian coast in the Baltic Sea, for provision of basic power to the country. US naval submarines have traversed the world's oceans for several decades, powered safely and reliably by small nuclear reactors, so the concept of undersea reactors is well proven.

The idea of nuclear powered undersea cities may seem like the stuff of science fiction, but show me a better way to power a post-apocalyptic undersea civilisation. And what better place to survive the great lefty-Luddite environmentalist-engineered dieoff of humans on the surface? Abundant electricity allows for producing freshwater via desalination, oxygen for breathing via electrolytic splitting of water, hydrogen for fuel cells and chemical processes, etc. Nuclear reactors produce plenty of heat, so there would be no reason to be cold, regardless of outside sea temperatures.

Last but not least, plentiful small modular nuclear reactors -- both on land and sea -- should put a quick end to all of the EROEI nonsense one hears batted around at peak energy religious websites. ;-)

Using Near Space as a Waystation to Orbit

Skycat via Brian Wang
The Lockheed P791 can provide an observational platform at 20,000 feet for 3 week time periods. It is similar to the Skycat hybrid aircraft, which due to its buoyancy is able to take off and land vertically and saves 75% of fuel costs over conventional aircraft.

Lockheed P791 via Brian Wang
At 20,000 feet, you would need a well-insulated pressurised cabin to survive. But who wants to stay at low altitudes like 20,000 feet for only 3 weeks, when they could be living high at 50,000 feet?

Flying City for 5,000 ResidentsStratospheric flying cities provide a novel living environment for scientists or adventurous vacationers willing to accept a bit more risk for more excitement.

High altitude stations such as the JP Aerospace Stratostation (or Dark Sky Station) will provide permanently manned transfer stations for those going farther up and out.

JP Aerospace Dark Sky Station PDF

JP Aerospace is developing the technology to fly a balloon or more accurately, their relative, the airship directly to orbit.

Flying an airship directly from the ground to orbit is not practical. An airship large enough to reach orbit would not survive the winds near the surface of the Earth. Conversely, an airship that could fly from the ground to upper atmosphere would not be light enough to reach space. The resulting configuration is a three-part architecture for using lighter-than-air vehicles to reach space.

The first part is an atmospheric airship. It will travel from the surface of the Earth to 140,000 feet. The vehicle is operated by a crew of three and can be configured for cargo or passengers. This airship is a hybrid vehicle using a combination of buoyancy and aerodynamic lift to fly. It is driven by propellers designed to operate in near vacuum.

The second part of the architecture is a suborbital space station. This is a permanent, crewed facility parked at 140,000 feet. These facilities, called Dark Sky Stations (DSS), act as the way stations to space. The DSS is the destination of the atmospheric airship and the departure port for the orbital airship. Initially, the DSS will be the construction facility for the large orbital vehicle.

The third part of the architecture is an airship/dynamic vehicle that flies directly to orbit. In order to utilize the few molecules of gas at extreme altitudes, this craft is big. The initial test vehicle is 6,000 feet (over a mile) long. The airship uses buoyancy to climb to 200,000 feet. From there it uses electric propulsion to slowly accelerate. As it accelerate it dynamically climbs. Over several days it reaches orbital velocity. _JPAerospace PDF

The large orbital airship pictured above is over 1 mile long, and takes several days to reach orbital velocity after departing the Dark Sky Station with its payload.

Other approaches to space which pass through "near space" include the space elevator, an inflatable space tower, Josh Hall's 100 km tall space pier (pictured above), the highly imaginative "Bridge to Space" described in Mike Comb's fictional account, suborbital flights, and sub-orbital ++, among other ideas.

Most of the same competencies and precautions required to survive in orbital space are also required for life in the stratosphere. Precautions against very low atmospheric pressure and high radiation levels will be mandatory. Only competent persons need apply for working positions.

One advantage of a stratospheric habitat is that a person in an insulated pressure suit (with a parachute) can simply jump away from the structure for an invigorating free fall to the surface, with a fair to good possiblity of survival. Attempting the same thing from an orbiting habitat without a re-entry pod would certainly be fatal.

Humans have been slow to establish a permanent presence in space. There are many reasons for this hesitancy -- including economic costs and health risks -- but eventually these barely advanced apes will find a way to answer the siren's call, and thus safeguard the future of the race -- or whatever it is to evolve into.

Mega-Project Deep Beneath the Earth: Sub-Alpine Tunnelling

In the drilling of the tunnels, workers relied on eight gigantic, 3,000-ton tunnel drilling machines simultaneously. "An exceptional logistical plan" was necessary, says Thewes. An 800-meter-long shaft was drilled vertically into the mountain, for example, so that workers could begin working in the middle of the tunnel. _Spiegel

Source

Eight workers died in the building of these two massive twin 57 km long tunnels. Each tunnel is 10 metres in diameter. The total length of tunnels drilled -- including side tunnels -- is 153 km. The work had to contend with some 90 different geologic problem zones, so perhaps the project is lucky not to have lost more men than it did.

After years of work deep under the surface of the earth, drilling on the Gotthard Base Tunnel is set to be completed on Friday. It will be years before the first trains roll through the 57-kilometer-long tunnel, but given the difficulties workers have encountered, it is a wonder they have come this far.

They are both celebrated as wonders of mankind's ingenuity and engineering expertise: the Panama Canal and the Suez Canal, deep pathways slicing through the surface of the earth for the benefit of global trade.

On Friday, a third such wonder will take a decisive step toward completion. Only 1.8 meters (just under six feet) of rock stand in the way of the Gotthard Base Tunnel from becoming the longest tunnel in the world. On Friday afternoon, the gigantic drilling machine Sissi is scheduled to break through that final barrier far below the peaks of the Alps. Accompanied by a subterranean celebration and live coverage from the world's media, the breakthrough is a significant milepost on the road to completion for Europe's largest infrastructure project.

"Technically, it is an absolutely eye-popping project," Kurosch Thuro, a tunnel construction expert from the Munich Technical University, told SPIEGEL ONLINE. His colleague Markus Thewes from the Ruhr University in Bochum says "the Swiss have set the bar so high that no one will easily be able to clear it." _Spiegel

Subterranean construction projects such as this are likely to become more important with time. It is important that we learn to build and drill deeply into the rock. Such experience will come in handy in the next ice age -- when vast underground nuclear fueled colonies may be necessary for some parts of the world.

Of course, once humans enter the environment of outer-space in a serious way, we will need to learn to engineer construction under the moon's surface, under the surface of Mars, and deep inside various asteroids and outer moons. We will need all the under-surface drilling and building experience we can get.

Energy and the Wealth & Poverty of Nations

Image Source via Robert Hargraves

Energy is the crucial factor which determines how well a people can live. In fact, the availability of energy also determines how many people can live comfortably in a given area. Leftists in the faux environmental movement want to shut down energy so as to eliminate at least 90% of the humans currently living on Earth.

Giving society cheap, abundant energy ... would be the equivalent of giving an idiot child a machine gun. - Paul Ehrlich, ``An Ecologist's Perspective on Nuclear Power'', May/June 1978 issue of Federation of American Scientists Public Issue Report

If you ask me, it'd be a little short of disastrous for us to discover a source of clean, cheap, abundant energy because of what we would do with it. We ought to be looking for energy sources that are adequate for our needs, but that won't give us the excesses of concentrated energy with which we could do mischief to the earth or to each other."
—Amory Lovins, The Mother Earth - Plowboy Interview, Nov/Dec 1977, p. 22 _YVY_via_SeekerBlog

ImageSource

The map above is a look at world poverty by nation. The image below is a graphic look at global electric power production by region and nation. The comparison is stark.

ImageSource

With an abundant and relatively inexpensive source of energy, the Earth could comfortably support ten times the current human population of Earth -- living in health and prosperity. But such a large population would want to utilise the third dimension for both living and agricultural space. If they had the energy, it would be simple.

The political left, of course, is taking the opposite tack of energy starvation. Choking off energy supplies will force a rapid and drastic population shrinkage across the third world -- via famine, sickness, war -- and across the developed world via a further dropping of already-low birthrates.

It is clear that Mr. Obama is taking the low road of energy starvation at this particular crossroads. It is the easy and mindless choice, thus it is the one he chooses.

The best choice is to breed a tougher breed of human -- a pioneer breed who is eager to take up the challenge of the vast spaces beyond the current limits of human habitation and expansion. More on that topic later.

Live and Breathe Underwater Indefinitely In Personal Sub or Habitat

Once you get your hands on your personal submarine, you will probably want to be able to stay submerged for long periods of time -- especially if something unpleasant awaits you at the surface. You will first need to power your sub with a super-safe and efficient small nuclear reactor. Such a reactor could power your craft while submerged for years without re-surfacing.

But you will also require clean air -- free of built-up exhaled CO2. CO2 from expired air will build up in a sub or underwater habitat if not scrubbed regularly. That is where a collaboration between Bath University chemical engineers and Duke University mechanical engineers may be very helpful indeed. Their idea promises to allow subs to stay submerged for as long as the power and food supply hold out. In involves the use of "Dixon Rings" (see below) packed in a column.

Sea water and ship air are circulated in counter-current fashion, allowing the seawater to absorb the CO2 in the ship's air.

Based on technology developed in 1948, Dixon rings consist of a fine wire mesh folded into a ring of approximately 3mm in size. The space in the wire mesh provides an extended surface area for the absorption of the CO2.

Many rings are packed into a column, through which gas and liquid flow in a counter-current direction. The combination of salt water and Dixon rings form a compact gas scrubbing unit, which removes CO2 from a closed-circuit breathing environment before safely discharging it into the sea.

Using this system, chemicals to absorb CO2 will no longer be needed in the submersible environment and time spent on the sea bed could be extended.

Prof Kolaczkowski said: ‘Chemical engineers are excited about using Dixon rings in applications where gaseous or volatile species are transferred between gas and liquid phases, and where the device needs to be compact.

‘With the Computational Fluid Dynamic modelling skills at S and C Thermofluids, we will make rapid progress with developing novel and compact gas scrubbers. The removal of carbon dioxide from exhaled air is a great application. There will be many more possibilities to consider.’

Dr Lew Nuckols of Duke University said: ‘An estimated 90 per cent of human-produced carbon dioxide is absorbed by oceans. The research at Bath, in partnership with us, could revolutionise techniques to remove metabolically produced carbon dioxide from subsea operations.’ _Engineer

When perfected, this technology will make permanent seafloor habitats and colonies possible. Eventually, similar technology may even allow for rebreathers that allow humans to swim free underwater for long periods of time, without coming back inside the habitat for air.

Of course you may also want to learn to grow CO2 utilising plants or algae insider your sub or habitat, which can also perform part of the job of CO2 scrubbing. Saltwater plants may do best. Since you will need a lot of food for an extended underwater stay, learning to grow plants in your undersea living space is not such a bad idea anyway.


Dixon rings are used in other separation processes as well -- such as the separation of heavy water from ordinary water.

3 Days to the End of the World: Where Do You Go?

You might want to consider making early reservations to the Doomsday Bunker nearest you. Take a virtual tour through a prototype Doomsday Bunker in the video above. These shelters can supposedly be built to hold up to 4,000 each. A network of dozens of such shelters is said to be planned by California company Vivos.

A doomsday bunker envisioned by California company Vivos can offer you, your family, and 4,000 other people the chance to escape the end of the world in a network of 20 underground shelters. Surely even the skeptics can't resist the allure of scary music played over scenes of comfortable underground habitation, as NPR's All Tech Considered reports.
The company claims to be a privately-funded venture with no religious affiliations, except perhaps to the gods of commerce. It certainly takes an agnostic view by listing all the possible reasons why you might want to pony up and help build those $10 million bunkers, including predictions by Nostradamus, the Mayans, the Hopi, and the Bible.

...Vivos goes all out by promising a survival shelter stocked with power generation, water wells, filtration systems, sewage disposal, a year's supply of food, security devices and medical equipment.
Of course, you'll need all that if you believe disaster may strike at any moment because of a polar shift, super volcano eruptions, solar flares, nuclear war, and "even the return of Planet X (known as Niburu or Nemesis)," Vivos cheerfully states. _Popsci

It's an idea whose time may have come. To be safe, you may want to reserve space in multiple deluxe Vivos bunkers. Depending on the catastrophe, some of your choices may be downright inaccessible. A look at the early stages of Vivos below:

Colonising the Arctic: Ample Fuels Under the Ice

EES.LANL.GOV
Methane hydrates are found worldwide in large quantities -- under the seabed, under the arctic tundra, and in other parts unknown. Intensive research has led to increasingly feasible methods of harvesting these frozen methane hydrates -- which when added to huge new terrestrial natural gas finds will increase methane supplies worldwide significantly.

the U.S. Department of Energy's Methane Hydrate Research and Development Program has made considerable progress in the past five years toward understanding and developing methane hydrate as a possible energy resource.

"DOE's program and programs in the national and international research community provide increasing confidence from a technical standpoint that some commercial production of methane from methane hydrate could be achieved in the United States before 2025," said Charles Paull, chair of the committee that wrote the report, and senior scientist, Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute in California. "With global energy demand projected to increase, unconventional resources such as methane hydrate become important to consider as part of the future U.S. energy portfolio and could help provide more energy security for the United States."

Methane hydrate, a solid composed of methane and water, occurs in abundance on the world's continental margins and in permafrost regions, such as in the Gulf of Mexico and Alaska's North Slope. Although the total global volume of methane in methane hydrate is still debated, estimates yield s that are significant compared with the global supplies of conventional natural gas. The existence of such a large and untapped energy resource has provided a strong global incentive to determine how methane might be produced from methane hydrate safely, economically, and in an environmentally sensible way. _SD

Significant challenges to safe harvesting of frozen methane hydrates remain, and must be overcome before economic use of these massive deposits can become commonplace.

Significant challenges to the use of algal fuels also remain to be tackled, but that doesn't stop some researchers from predicting that algal fuels will be available commercially within 5 years! University of Arizona researchers believe that their new photobioreactor -- dubbed "Accordion" -- will help to accelerate commercial development of algal fuels significantly.

Above cross-posted to Al Fin Energy

Which brings us to the topic of colonising the Arctic (and perhaps the Antarctic?). In the frozen wastelands of the great north, one finds ample supplies of oxygen, nitrogen, and water (frozen and thawed alternatively). Carbon sources are typically scarce, as are energy sources. But if viable methods of harvesting methane hydrates are developed, both carbon and energy may suddenly become plentiful. Power, heat, and carbon for synthesis of materials is suddenly available, which opens the door to long term settlement.

Global warming catastrophe is not in the cards, so predictions of a sudden warming of the Arctic appear to be par for the course for climate hysterics. That being the case, it is up to cold climate pioneers to open the vast "wasteland" of the north (and south?).

Conditions in the far north and far south are near-equivalent of ice age conditions. It might be good practise for the not so distant future, to learn survival in a glacial age.

Outer Space Colony for Geosynchronous Orbit

The space colony Asten, named after the Egyptian god of balance is 1.6 kilometer-high structure made up of a series of habitation rings stuck in the shape of a cylinder. The entire structure rotates on its axis, simulating Earth-like gravity for its inhabitants. _NewLaunches

Image SourceThe design for this space colony comes from Eric Yam, high school student from Toronto. Eric was a co-winner of the 2009 NASA Space Settlement Contest.

"He basically built a Utopia from scratch," said math and physics teacher Gillian Evans, staff advisor on the project.

Yam's innovative design, built as a series of stacked rings resembling a cylinder, would house a self-sustaining colony of 10,000 people and up to 300 visitors, including paying tourists, in the year 2050.

A hotel section would include a panoramic outer gallery with transparent walls, perfect for watching the earth, moon and stars.

Yam called his design Asten, another name for the Egyptian god Thoth, master of divine and physical law.

A pdf of the design can be viewed at: http://www.tdsb.on.ca/wwwdocuments/about_us/media_room/docs/ASTEN.pdf _Star

Seasteading Institute Project: Engineering

I have been informed by Patri Friedman of The Seasteading Institute, that detailed engineering information about TSI's "Clubstead" project is available at the TSI website. The Clubstead project is a scaled-down seastead for 270 people (200 guests and 70 staff) meant to serve as a hotel and casino. It would also serve as a "proof of concept" of the underlying design platform.Looking over the engineering designs and specs for Clubstead at TSI, I see that there is a great deal to admire about the design -- details which you could not, of course, detect from the design contest winners pictured here previously. As you can see in the drawing above, the cantilevered portion of the seastead platform is supported by support cables. You can also see the outline of strong horizontal steel trusses that connect the four steel columns that support the structure.

You can download the engineering reports in PDF format as a single file or individually from links at this location. The graphics showing the assembly of the platform and columns, along with the ballasting and de-ballasting of the columns in final assembly, are worth checking out, once you download the PDF file.

Although this design is for a much smaller seastead than would actually serve as a micro-nation, it would serve as a test platform for some of its unique ideas. In short, Patri Friedman and his group have made a good beginning in exploring some of the potential approaches to seastead engineering. With the financial backing of Peter Thiel and other contributors, they should be able to proceed to more testing. The PR promotional aspects of TSI are also important for the overall movement.

Now, without having seen the engineering specs, my first impression of the TSI platform was not favourable. After looking over the specs, I can see that many vital details that I thought neglected, were considered after all. Not all, but quite a few. Even so, the Clubstead design would likely not survive a full year in the Pacific Northwestern open waters. And you would not expect it to be able to do so, as an untested design.

Modifications that are made to the design with further testing should make Clubstead more seaworthy, and resistant to the unexpected problems that inevitably occur, courtesy of Mr. Murphy. As larger and larger scale models are tested against harsher and harsher conditions, the computer model will be proved or falsified. The full scale Clubstead itself will necessarily be tested in milder waters over a period of time, before the ocean ocean is dared.

Then, if the Clubstead -- which is itself a scaled down seastead -- is able to withstand the rigours of the open sea, the lessons learned from Clubstead can be applied to the design and construction of newer versions of the same and larger scale.

The Seasteading Institute has always had the support of the Al Fin blogs. Thanks again to Patri Friedman for spearheading this important movement.

Creating a New World Takes More Than Words

Image SourceIf you observe modern politicians, academics, intellectuals, and activists long enough, you will get the impression that these loud talkers believe they can change the world with their words alone. They may be right -- in terms of destructive change. But to construct a better world, we will need a better class of activist -- one who can creatively and competently design and build a better world from the nuts and bolts up.

Patri Friedman of the Seasteading Institute may be one of this new breed. He speaks today at the Cato Institute in Washington DC, and provides the lead essay in the current issue of Cato Unbound.

Folk activism broadly corrupts political movements. It leads activists to do too much talking, debating, and proselytizing, and not enough real-world action. We build coalitions of voters to attempt to influence or replace tribal political and intellectual leaders rather than changing system-wide incentives.

...If we are ever going to move beyond philosophizing on barstool and blogs to change the power structures of the world, we must accept that power equilibria have considerable inertia. We cannot shift them with hope and outrage alone — we need carefully calculated action.

...the first steps toward settling a frontier are to come up with a new idea, spread it, and build a coalition of people ready to live it — the same procedure and instinct as folk activism. The difference is the strategy of actually implementing the vision with the number of people one can reasonably enroll, rather than one which requires millions to agree before it can be put into practice.

...Seasteading is my proposal to open the oceans as a new frontier,[6] where we can build new city-states to experiment with new institutions. This dramatically lowers the barrier to entry for forming a new government, because expensive though ocean platforms are, they are still cheap compared to winning a war, an election, or a revolution. A lower barrier to entry means more small-scale experimentation. Also, the unique nature of the fluid ocean surface means that cities can be built in a modular fashion where entire buildings can be detached and floated away. This unprecedented physical mobility will give us the ability to leave a country without leaving our home, increasing competition between governments.

This plan is one of immediate action, not hope or debate. It makes use of the people we have now rather than trying to convert the masses, and avoids entrenched interests by moving to the frontier. Most importantly, it increases jurisdictional competition. It will not just create one new country, but rather an entire ecosystem of countries competing and innovating to attract citizens. Like any market, the process of trial and error will generate solutions we can’t even imagine — but that we know will be better for customers. _CatoUnbound

Read the essay in its entirety at CatoUnbound. Patri includes several excellent reference links in his sources.

It is easy to see that the frontier opportunities that remain: the oceans, the atmosphere, outer space .... will all require a greater degree of personal competence and commitment to colonise than the parts of Earth that are already settled. Persons must be highly motivated to even contemplate moving from safe and secure homes and communities to the wild hazards of the oceans or space.

Dreaming and talking are one thing -- doing is qualitatively different. People who are competent and bold enough to "do" are becoming quite rare in modern, pampered societies of psychological neotenates. The ability to act adroitly and in a timely manner is being bred and indoctrinated out of ever-smaller young generations of westerners.

Friedman's discussion of democracy's failures is extremely pertinent to the problems that free-thinking individuals face. Democracies are essentially helpless when faced with the significant problems of the present and near-future. Anyone who allows himself to become too wrapped up in the democracy without understanding that a "discontinuity" may be required, will be unable to adapt to the exigent change of phase.

Learn to do, not just talk.

H/T Seasteading Institute

Seastead Movement Marches On to Cato

Patri Friedman of the Seasteading Institute will speak at the Cato Institute in DC on Tuesday April 7. The event is open to the public free of charge, and will be webcast live -- see link above for details. Doug Bandow and Arnold Kling of the Cato Institute will add comments at the event.

Seasteading is the colonisation of the seas by full-time residents. New technology is making a prosperous life on the sea possible for a wide range of individuals. The Seasteading Institute is dedicated to the development of the seasteading idea, and to the promotion of its practical realisation.

Thanks to Chris Moody at Cato for the update.

Can You Build A Seastead to Withstand Class V?

* Category 1 -- Winds 74-95 mph
* Category 2 -- Winds 96-110 mph
* Category 3 -- Winds 111-130 mph
* Category 4 -- Winds 131-155 mph
* Category 5 -- Winds over 155 mph _Source

Hurricane waves are not the only wave danger to a seastead. Rogue waves and other types of storm waves can sometimes capsize large ships without warning. An open-ocean seastead will be exposed to constant destructive forces from the elements. The map above from Sea Friends shows common wave heights in meters.

Water waves can store or dissipate much energy. Like other waves (alternating electric currents, e.g.), a wave's energy is proportional to the square of its height (potential). Thus a 3m high wave has 3x3=9 times more energy than a 1m high wave. When fine-weather waves of about 1m height pound on the beach, they dissipate an average of 10kW (ten one-bar heaters) per metre of beach or the power of a small car at full throttle, every five metres. (Ref Douglas L Inman in Oceanography, the last frontier, 1974). Attempts to harness the energy from waves have failed because they require large structures over large areas and these structures should be capable of surviving storm conditions with energies hundreds of times larger than they were designed to capture. _SeaFriends

Tsunamis are not a significant hazard to seasteads:

Many people think of the tsunami as the most fearsome wave, but that's a landlubber's perspective. Generally driven by earthquakes, tsunamis are often unnoticeable in the deep ocean, where they have extremely long wavelengths and low wave heights (several meters at most, usually much less).

As this wave reaches a continental shelf, it piles up, becoming shorter and higher. Only then will it resemble the monsters of legend -

....Scientists used to dismiss...tales of unusually large [[Rogue ]] waves as mere folklore, like monsters or mermaids. But with the proliferation of oil and gas platforms, some of which record wave data, accumulated observations have finally led to mainstream acceptance of this seafaring "myth" [Lawton2001]. And recent data from the European Space Agency's ERS satellites has not only re-confirmed the existence of these waves, but indicated that they may be fairly common. Researchers with the MaxWave project computer-analyzed satellite photos from a three-week period in 2001 during which two ships were hit by 30m rogues. They found "ten individual giant waves around the globe above 25 metres in height." [ESA2004].

These rogue waves are the real dangers in open water. Towering above their neighbors, they are unstable and break quickly, thus containing tremendous power. They sometimes come unexpectedly from a different direction than the prevailing swell, which adds to the surprise and danger. Rogues have been known to ravage coastlines as well, sometimes coming out of calm seas to sweep away unsuspecting victims. Emergency services have warned beachgoers in some areas to be aware of this danger [RogueWarning]. _Seasteading Book

The circular array breakwater illustrated above is described better at Brian Wang's site. It is designed to protect a structure from a "tsunami", but might also protect from more practical and realistic wave hazards as well.The triangular shaped floating breakwater above was designed a hundred years ago or so, to simulate coastal underwater terrain that causes waves to break on shore. A floating ring surrounding a seastead, with a similar cross-sectional area, would provide protection against some wave hazard, providing the breakwater could be properly secured in relation to the seastead.The floating flat plate breakwater above is capable of reducing the height of waves passing over it. It was designed to protect coastal aquaculture projects. It would also have to be well-secured in relation to structures it is meant to protect.

A seastead will want to utilise wave energy via transduction from cyclical mechanical energy to other forms of energy--such as electrical, hydraulic, pneumatic, constant rotational mechanical, linear mechanical, heat, etc. When energy from waves exceeds the ability of a seastead's energy conversion systems, a fallback to dissipation and deflection of the energies is necessary. For example, the hull of a ship performs mostly deflection (with minimal dissipation), to maximise progress through the water. A fixed breakwater along shore performs mainly dissipation, along with deflection. Such breakwaters are made of significant mass, and built to withstand incredible energies. Floating breakwaters must be much less dense and massive, requiring more ingenuity on the part of designers, if the structures are to hold up over time.

You wish to build what is essentially a floating barrier reef around your seastead which is capable of drastically reducing wave hazard while generating energy, and not presenting a hazard to the seastead in and of itself (by breaking its mooring).

Do you have any ideas? The seastead itself may very well be built of pre-stressed concrete, capable of withstanding significant wave and wind stress along with wide temperature extremes. Such construction is being developed for offshore oil and gas drilling, and for large offshore cryogenic storage containers (PDF). Such structures will be very tough, but they will last much longer if protected from both constant day in day out pounding of waves, as well as the more extreme storm and rogue waves.

What material will you use to build your floating breakwater? Bucky Fuller suggested a multi-layered membranous structure filled with seawater, with internal baffles that allowed moving seawater to dissipate large amounts of energy against itself--inside the breakwater. Using seawater itself as part of the structure of a floating breakwater is resourceful, and devising internal channels that cause moving currents of seawater to oppose each other, dissipating wave energy, is also clever. Even if the exact design is not copied, the ideas involved may prove seminal.

This is not a trivial project. One must first understand the forces one is up against, before one can plan rationally. In the open sea, the wind and wave energy can be not only unimaginably intense, but also relentless. Open water seasteading, like the next level, is not for the easily intimidated, nor for the careless.

A reminder: 1st Seasteading Conference October 10, 2008

Fission Reactor for Permanent Lunar Base

Solar energy works well while the sun is shining. But on the moon, the sun shines roughly 14 and a half days on and 14 and a half days off. During those dark days, the moon base will still need power. Nuclear fission can provide consistent baseload power, day in and day out--even if your day is 28 Earth days long.

The first design concept by Sunpower Inc., of Athens, Ohio, uses two opposed piston engines coupled to alternators that produce 6 kilowatts each, or a total of 12 kilowatts of power. The second contract with Barber Nichols Inc. of Arvada, Colo., is for development of a closed Brayton cycle engine that uses a high speed turbine and compressor coupled to a rotary alternator that also generates 12 kilowatts of power.

"Development and testing of the power conversion unit will be a key factor in demonstrating the readiness of fission surface power technology and provide NASA with viable and cost-effective options for nuclear power on the moon and Mars," said Don Palac, manager for Glenn's Fission Surface Power Project.

After a one year design and analysis phase, a single contractor will be selected to build and test a prototype power conversion unit. When complete, the power conversion unit will be integrated with the other technology demonstration unit's major components....

....A nuclear reactor used in space is much different than Earth-based systems. There are no large concrete cooling towers, and the reactor is about the size of an office trash can. The energy produced from a space reactor is also much smaller but more than adequate for the projected power needs of a lunar outpost.

Testing of the non-nuclear system is expected to take place at Glenn in 2012 or 2013. These tests will help verify system performance projections, develop safe and reliable control methods, gain valuable operating experience, and reduce technology and programmatic risks. This technology demonstration is being conducted as part of NASA's Exploration Technology Development Program. _SD

Nuclear reactors for extreme Earth colonies--such as the polar regions, permanent open ocean colonies, and undersea colonies--would be easier to design and build, and so more economical. Reactors such as Hyperion's, or other small modular reactors, are either already developed or well along the development path.

Seasteading Book: Updated on New Website

Image Source

The new Seasteading Book is updated and enlarged, on the new Seasteading.org website. The old Seasteading Book by the same authors is still online for comparison. The entire web-book is a work in progress by authors who clearly care very deeply about their topic. The authors have put a great deal of thought and research into this free online e-book.

Like Marshall Savage, I tend to see seasteads as preliminary rites of passage and tests of competence. The long term goal for most restless visionaries has always been the vast expanse and richness of space. Unfortunately, humans are not that far evolved from our tree dwelling cousins. It is not clear that entire self-sustaining societies of humans can be serious and competent enough to survive--to thrive--outside Earth's atmosphere.

That is why we need to demonstrate to ourselves that we can survive and prosper on the high seas, in polar habitats, and in undersea habitats. All of these settlements require a higher level of design competency and daily vigilance and competence, than most ordinary cities and towns that house most humans. If we cannot survive virtually anywhere on such a life-friendly planet as Earth, what is it within ourselves that tells us we can survive far away from the resources of Earth?

For those concerned about surviving the next apocalypse--whatever your apocalypse of choice--the new seasteading book contains a lot of useful material about all-purpose needs for communities in general. If you can create a sustainable community on the high seas, you can probably create a sustainable community almost anywhere else on the planet.

Seasteading on Pykrete, and Other Novel Uses

Image Source

I first learned about the material called Pykrete while reading the blog "Colonize Antarctica." Pykrete is a mixture of wood fibre and ice, a combination that is very hard, very tough, floats, and is very slow to melt. Structures built of Pykrete would be ideal in a polar environment, such as a polar city pictured above.

2 Million Ton Pykrete Aircraft Carrier In WW2
More exotic uses of Pykrete would be to build a large ship, a floating island city, or floating arcology. Pykrete was made famous by wealthy industrialist and financier eccentric, Geoffrey Pike. Sir Winston Churchill was one of the earliest promoters of using Pykrete for building large ships in WWII. The hull for a giant Pykrete aircraft carrier would have been 40 feet thick or more, and almost impossible to penetrate with the torpedoes of the day. Even without refrigeration, such thick Pykrete walls would have taken years to melt in a temperate climate. The video below demonstrates the ballistic resistance of a 14% wood fibre Pykrete. A 50% fibre Pykrete would be much tougher, and slower to melt.

A modern Pykrete seastead would incorporate built-in refrigeration to keep the walls frozen even in tropical seas. A floating breakwater made of Pykrete would keep a more fragile inner-seastead safe from rogue waves and the pounding of normal storm swell. Besides the interior refrigeration tubing, the exterior walls of the Pykrete would need to be insulated via highly reflective/insulating coating materials.

The walls could be built hundreds of feet thick, if necessary, and in any conceivable shape. The fibre content could vary from as little as 14% to as much as 50% or more, for greater toughness. It would be necessary to experiment with coating materials for maximum longevity and minimum energy cost for refrigeration--even in tropical waters.

What we are talking about, is a custom-built, reinforced iceberg, of incredible strength and toughness. In a polar environment, the structure should last almost indefinitely, with minimal loss to melting and sublimation. In a temperate environment, a large Pykrete structure could last for decades or more, with minimal shading, insulation, and interior refrigeration.

A large Pykrete castle on land--with battlements, turrets, an inner keep, and drawbridge, could be quite affordable if built during a very cold winter. Pykrete structures with foundations that extended down into permafrost should also enjoy good longevity.

Antarctic Colony Update: Colonize Antarctica

Antarctic Bases: Map Courtesy of 70South

The new blog, Colonize Antarctica, has some recent postings dealing with housing and building materials for the extreme frigid environment of Antarctica.

Building anything in Antarctica is difficult. The lack of conventional resources such as timber and the remoteness of the continent alone make traditional construction a challenge. This post aims to outline alternative methods of construction that may produce buildings suitable for an Antarctic colony.

Most of the structures built in Antarctica today are not well enough designed to serve a permanent colony. One fundamental flaw is they are built above ground and thus are subject to the forces of the wind and extreme cold. In addition to this most structures leak out heat through windows and doorways further increasing the energy required to heat them.

The easiest way to combat this would be to build structures underground. The permafrost in Antarctica would provide a temperature stable environment year round. I have been unable to locate reliable sub-surface temperate data for Antarctic permafrost at various depths. So, for the following example I will use estimates. If anyone has that temperature data please send it in or post it in the comments section here.___Colonize Antarctica

Using a custom designed mix of fibrous cement with a high insulation value may be a viable option for Antarctic construction. Some of the most well known mixes such as the ill fated Asbestos filled Fibro and the lesser known Papercrete likely wouldn't preform well in Antarctica. However, using a different fibrous material, such as hemp fibers combined with other insulating material may yield stronger and more well insulated structures. Standard rebar reinforced concrete could be used for load bearing walls and support columns.

Hemp fibers could be initially imported and later grown locally in large underground hydroponics bays. If a small cement factory could also be established, that would reduce the reliance on imports and make a partially self-sufficient Antarctic construction industry.

Fibrous cement is an amazingly versatile material and can be used for building everything from insulating shells for underground tunnels, interior walls, water pipes, to furniture and even novelty items. Certain mixes of fibrous cement can even be worked and sculpted like clay. Blocks or bricks can be poured in standardized sizes. Custom sized blocked can also be produced fairly easily. Entire walls can be poured into place if need be.
____Colonize Antarctica

There is more detail in the two articles linked above, on building methods and materials. Obviously, Antarctica is an unforgiving environment. Even with the best of planning, things can still go wrong--sometimes fatally wrong. There is little margin for error.
Other than undersea habitats, there is no other fixed habitat on Earth that offers the type of challenges that polar habitats offer. There is no better preparation for the type of vigilance required to survive in space, than living in an extreme Earth environment habitat or colony.

For humans to provide their own best chance of long-term survival, they must learn to live in extreme environments. It is a rite of passage--a necessary pathway to the future.

If You Were to Colonise Antarctica, How Would You Do It?

Antarctica is as challenging an environment for a sustainable human colony as any land on Earth. The beautiful video above, revealing Antarctica in all four seasons, comes via Colonize Antarctica, a new website.

In yesterday's posting, Colonize Antarctica looked at energy supplies for the proposed colony. In my opinion, the list provided was much too short.

Geothermal and wind are certainly both good choices. Nuclear fission power--particularly newer, safer, cleaner modular designs would seem to be custom made for an Antarctic colony. Certainly if anything comes of Bussard's electrostatic confinement fusion project, such a device might very well serve as the nucleus of a well-rounded power system.

Remember, there is no sunlight for at least 4 months out of the year. It gets very cold in Antarctica--despite what Al Gore and James Hansen might have you believe. If you lose power in Antarctic winter, you are human popsicle. How would you start?
;-)

Moonbase 2020? Google Wants to Help

Popular Science ran a feature last month entitled "The Green Side of the Moon." I recommend checking out the animated overview and tour of the "Green Moonbase." The six steps to "lunar living" according to the feature are:

1. Find a big crater
2. Go solar
3. Inflate your bedroom
4. Go fishing
5. Urinate often
6. Reuse everything

The animation will explain everything. The design for this moonbase was created by a group attending the summerlong Space Studies Program at the International Space University in Strasbourg, France.

An inflatable moonbase prototype has already been sent to Antarctica for testing. A sustainable moonbase must give its builders and operators an economic reason to keep it running. Such as moon mining. Among the lunar resources which may make lunar habitats viable, include the isotope Helium 3. Helium 3 is considered a safe fuel for nuclear fusion--once it becomes technically feasible. He3:He3 fusion is nonradioactive, and produces protons rather than neutrons, which can be contained with electromagnetic fields.

Another potential lunar resource is lunar ice. Lunar ice would be more than worth its weight in gold, serving as a life support resource, a source of fuel, and much more. Lunar soil and rock could serve as building material and raw material for construction of machinery, piping, photovoltaics, etc. With nano-assemblers, the options would be broad.

Contestants are lining up to compete for the Google Lunar X Prize, which illustrates the desperate need for private funding and innovation in space development.

The Google Lunar X Prize calls on entrepreneurs, engineers, and visionaries from around the world "to return us to the lunar surface and explore this environment for the benefit of all humanity," as Peter H. Diamandis, chairman and CEO of the X Prize Foundation, put it last September when the GLXP was announced. Part of the mission underlying the GLXP is to "encourage and foster competition and lower cost of space travel" with a philosophy of open access, individual participation, and recognition of the importance of communicating planetary exploration to the public.

The moon....is a stepping stone to the rest of the solar system; [it] provides a natural storehouse of minerals and resources, including oxygen and perhaps water; [it] offers a platform for astronomical observation; and, as a remnant of ancient Earth created from a collision between a planet-sized object and the early Earth, the Moon can inform us about Earth's geological past.

The moon is much more than that, of course. A sustainable and profitable moonbase would represent one of the first off-planet rites of passage for humans. It is a huge natural resource that--if exploitable--would provide humans with much of the education they need to create a permanent off-Earth presence.

While large space stations in La Grange orbits provide more logical "stepping stones" to the rest of the solar system, permanent lunar outposts and colonies demonstrate humanity's determination to move out and occupy more of its solar system legacy. The psychological boost from that would be incalculable.

Of course there is a lot of work to be done to make sure the approaches taken are feasible and sustainable. The Google Lunar X Prize is only the beginning. But it is a good beginning, and should point the way for the next steps that need to be taken by private interests.

Government agencies such as NASA have become both corrupt and unimaginative--straying into non-space areas such as the insane politics of global warming etc. Private business understands how to focus on the bottom line--economic sustainability. Government too often serves as a welfare program for career bureaucrats. That such bureaucrats too often turn into public clowns--such as James Hansen--is regrettable but to be expected.