Jump On Board the Private Space Train

From private space tourism to asteroid mining to the Google X Prize, there is a little something for almost every space enthusiast in the upcoming private space race to orbit, to the moon, to near-Earth asteroids, and even to Mars.

Here is a quick preview of coming attractions in private space enterprise, from Wired.

“When you give these Silicon Valley guys a billion dollars,” said astrophysicist Jonathan McDowell of Harvard, who tracks rocket launches, “Their first thought is ‘Cool, now I can have my own space program.’”

“I don’t expect them all to succeed, but I don’t expect them all to fail,” said space lawyer Michael Listner, founder of Space Law & Policy Solutions. Taken together, the companies’ ambitions underscore just how much times have changed. “About 10 years ago, if you presented one of these plans, people would have looked at you like you’re crazy. Now people can say, well it’s a little crazy, but considering what’s been done, it might be possible.”

Perhaps the most important factor was the trailblazing success of SpaceX, a commercial rocket business started by entrepreneur and PayPal founder Elon Musk. This year, the company conducted two launches to the International Space Station using their Falcon 9 vehicle, with the second mission bringing supplies and helping prove that SpaceX was on the path to ferrying astronauts.

The company is already planning their next rocket, the enormous Falcon Heavy, for launch in 2013 and recently won important contracts with the U.S. military to deliver hardware to space. With all these notches on his space belt, Musk is no doubt already eyeing the perfect ridge for his retirement home on Mars.

Falcon Heavy

Though not announced this year, SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy has been a hot topic as the company prepares to launch this new rocket in 2013. Once operational, the vehicle would be the most capable existing rocket, able to bring 120,000 pounds to low-Earth orbit for as little as $1,000 per pound. The closest current spacecraft is United Launch Alliance’s Delta rocket, which can take 50,000 pounds up at a cost of $6,000 per pound.

Falcon Heavy has a number of other companies hoping to ride on its success. Both Golden Spike and Mars One plan to use the vehicle in their operation while NASA and the military are also looking forward to its capabilities. The question for SpaceX is just how soon they can get the new rocket ready.

Golden Spike Company

The most recently unveiled audacious space venture is the Golden Spike Company, which wants to take people back to the moon by 2020. For the low, low price of $1.5 billion, Golden Spike will land a two-person crew on the lunar surface and safely return them. Given the expense, the company is targeting governments without large space programs that may be looking for a little international prestige.

Golden Spike has a team with technical chops, including planetary scientist and former NASA science administrator Alan Stern and former NASA flight director Gerry Griffin. The business hopes to make use of low-cost existing rockets as much as possible to cut down on their expenses and estimates the entire scheme could cost as little as $7 billion. All of the experts we asked praised the company’s mission architecture as fairly plausible.

Planetary Resources, Inc.

Asteroid mining is a staple of science-fiction, transplanting a familiar Earth-based activity to the new frontier of space. Many of the resources we dig up from underground on our planet were in fact laid down during an asteroid impact billions of years ago. So let’s cut out the middleman and simply mine riches from the skies.

Such is the thinking behind Planetary Resources, Inc., which revealed their asteroid mining plans in April. The company hopes to extract water and precious metals, such as platinum, in order to get a return on their investment. Shortly after the unveiling, the internet reached a fever pitch about Planetary Resources, with Jon Stewart even calling in astronomer Neil deGrasse Tyson just as a sanity check on the whole endeavor.

Planetary Resources' biggest strength comes from its financial backing, with founders Eric Anderson and Peter Diamandis veterans of both Silicon Valley and space technology. Other rich luminaries behind the company include Google CEO Larry Page, Microsoft chief architect Charles Simonyi, and even filmmaker James Cameron. The company’s goals are very long term, with simple plans to launch telescopes to identify and catalog near-Earth asteroids in the next few years, and the actual mining and resource extraction as much as 20 years away.

B612 Foundation

Nearly overshadowed by that other private asteroid business, the B612 Foundation’s announcement in June was nonetheless important. The nonprofit company hopes to raise money to launch an infrared telescope that will be ever vigilant for dangerous asteroids hurtling toward Earth. Though NASA is already watching for these potentially civilization destroying rocks, B612 said they would be able to more than double the near-Earth object catalog in their first month of observation.

The company has some good technical backers, including former Apollo astronaut Rusty Schweickart and former shuttle astronaut Ed Lu. As a nonprofit, B612’s approach most closely resembles a philanthropic foundation looking to build a new wing for a hospital. While donors are used to the idea of such charity on Earth, can B612 convince people that the same model works for a space telescope?

Mars One

Getting people to Mars has long been a goal of the spaceflight community. While many thought it was the next logical step after the Apollo program, the United States has never been able to commit to the necessary funding for such a mission. But now a private company named Mars One has stepped in with their own audacious plan.

Announced in May, Mars One has an extremely aggressive goal: land a crew of four on the Red Planet by 2023. The company hopes to cut costs with a radical mission. They intend to send people on a one-way trip to set up a colony, with a new set of four settlers arriving every two years after the initial touchdown. Mars One said it intends to pay for the plan by creating “the biggest media spectacle in history” with a reality TV show that will follow the astronauts.

The Google Lunar X-Prize

Intended to stimulate new ideas for exploring the moon, the Google Lunar X-Prize was announced in 2007. The goal is for a small private team to land an autonomous rover on the lunar surface, travel about 1,000 feet, and beam back high-definition images and video. The first team to do so will win $20 million, and constellation prizes are offered for other tasks.

The prize’s deadline was originally meant to expire this year but after insufficient progress was made, the foundation extended their target date to the end of 2015. While more than 20 teams are still technically in the running, very few are where they need to be right now to claim the reward and accolades. Though 2015 seems a while away, this year and next are “really a make or break period for the teams left in the competition,” said journalist Jeff Foust.

Private Space Tourism

We live in the future! You may not have a personal jet pack but, if certain schemes pan out, you couldone day afford a few minutes of spaceflight. That at least is the goal of companies like Virgin Galactic, which has allied with Scaled Composites to build SpaceShipTwo, a passenger spaceplane that will take tourists 70 miles above the Earth for short flights.

Initially affordable only for the very rich, such a jaunt will set you back about $200,000 — that is, once Virgin Galactic actually gets their machine flying and ready. Though the business hoped to get off the ground years ago, they have constantly pushed back the date of their first flights. Virgin Galactic now hopes to be ready to carry passengers by the end of 2013.

_Wired

For all the neo-$billionaires of Silicon Valley and beyond, the best bet for them to become $trillionaires is to grab a piece of the virtually limitless resources of outer space, beyond the home planet.

But they had best hurry, before the kleptocrats and autocrats of the planetary governments and inter-governments decide to close that doorway to a more abundant and unlimited future.

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.

NASA's Mars Rover Curiosity Says: "F*CK You, Solar"

The latest NASA Mars rover, Curiosity, is a monster in comparison to earlier Mars explorer robots. Thus it has a monster-sized appetite for energy which solar power simply could not guarantee. Thus NASA Curiosity opted for nuclear power -- the smart choice for reliable energy.

The nuclear generator delivers both heat and 110 watts of steady electric power from an array of iridium capsules holding a ceramic form of plutonium dioxide. The heat is piped through the Curiosity carried by liquid Freon. Thermoelectric devices on the generator convert the heat into electricity with no moving parts. Idaho National Laboratory, which designed and tested the energy system, says it can operate for years. _TechnologyReview

Mars Curiosity via Wired

On 6 August, Nasa's Curiosity rover landed safely on the surface of Mars, following a terrifying landing sequence that involved a parachute and a rocket-powered skycrane.

Engineers at Nasa received a first photo from the rover -- showing its wheel through a dusty lens cap -- mere minutes after touchdown. Now, 24 hours later, more media of the dramatic landing sequence has emerged. _Wired.co.uk

More: Background on the design process for the software that controlled Curiosity's complex landing sequence

More: Idaho Samizdat Nuke Notes provides more useful information and links

VASIMR Plasma Rocket Quickest Trip to Mars

Long before fusion powered space propulsion becomes a reality, VASIMR plasma rockets should be carrying explorers to the orbit of Mars and beyond. The VASIMR holds the promise of shortening the Earth orbit to Mars orbit trip from 6 months down to 40 days.

A company founded by former NASA astronaut Franklin Chang-Diaz has been developing a new rocket engine that draws upon electric power and magnetic fields to channel superheated plasma out the back. That stream of plasma generates steady, efficient thrust that uses low amounts of propellant and builds up speed over time.

"People have known for a long time, even back in the '50s, that electric propulsion would be needed for serious exploration of Mars," said Tim Glover, director of development at the Ad Astra Rocket Company.

The rocket technology could drastically cut down the amount of time a spacecraft needs to send astronauts on Mars missions. Instead of half a year, a spacecraft could make the trip in just over a month using the engine and a large enough power source, according to an Ad Astra mission study. _Space_via_ColonyWorlds_via_NextBigFuture

ColonyWorlds
Long trips between planets require a lot of supplies -- just to get there -- and expose space travelers to potentially deadly space radiation. That is why better and faster methods for traveling between planets are needed. Here's the catch: in order to take advantage of the VASIMR's potential to shorten space trips, a very powerful energy source will be needed. As in 200 MW of power -- the power output of a small nuclear fission reactor.

Of course, once small fusion reactors are perfected, they are likely to replace the fission reactors onboard spacecraft. On planetary outposts themselves, fission reactors are likely to find many uses, given the rapid development in small fission reactors by many different companies around the world.

Finding fuel for fission and fusion reactors in space is likely to be one of dozens of extremely lucrative occupations for mineral prospectors and refiners. Finding abundant water supplies will no doubt be another. The first human trillionaires may well be space prospectors. Or perhaps space prostitutes -- whoever can get there and set up the proper scale of enterprise the soonest. Once adventurous space-going humans break free of Earth's gravity well and Earth's political ball and chain, extreme prosperity is quite likely to pop up with increasing frequency.

H/T Brian Wang

Thoughts on Fusion Power for Space Travel

BrianWang
Brian Wang presents a wealth of materials dealing with the use of fusion power for propelling spacecraft. A sufficiently light and compact nuclear fusion reactor -- such as a dense plasma focus reactor -- would provide an excellent source of power and propulsion for intermediate-range solar system missions. As the technology improved, humans could even begin thinking of longer missions -- to the Oort clouds and beyond.
ADVANCES IN DENSE PLASMA FOR FUSION POWER AND SPACE PROPULSION, with George Miley, Ph.D.
Al Fin Energy provided a group of dense plasma focus videos in a short online film festival, to provide a quick introduction to the basic concepts. Abundant, clean energy is one thing. An unlimited passport to the local universe is something else again.

200 km Inflatable Tower to the Edge of Space

Update 9 June 09: From Brian Wang -- The Space Elevator Climbing and Beaming Competition will be held next month, 14 - 16 July 2009, at Edwards AFB in the California Mojave desert. I wonder if it is too late for the York University team below to enter?

The team [York University] envisages assembling the structure from a series of modules constructed from Kevlar-polyethylene composite tubes made rigid by inflating them with a lightweight gas such as helium. To test the idea, they built a 7-metre scale model made up of six modules (see image). Each module was built out of three laminated polyethylene tubes 8 centimetres in diameter, mounted around circular spacers and inflated with air. _NewScientist

An inflatable tower 200 km in height could provide rapid transit service to the edge of space. Electromagnetic accelerator propulsion integrated into the tower would propel the "space train" on its routine daily journey to the edge of the atmosphere. From that vantage point, human expansion into the greater universe could be catapulted via several different means.

To stay upright and withstand winds, full-scale structures would require gyroscopes and active stabilisation systems in each module. The team modelled a 15-kilometre tower made up of 100 modules, each one 150 metres tall and 230 metres in diameter, built from inflatable tubes 2 metres across. Quine estimates it would weigh about 800,000 tonnes when pressurised - around twice the weight of the world's largest supertanker.

"Twenty kilometres up is about as dark as outer space. You can see about 600 kilometres in any direction," Quine says. Tourists could get a view almost like that from space, but without the difficulties of coping with zero gravity. He calculates the tower could be extended up to low Earth orbit at 200 kilometres.

The tower does a similar job to the much-vaunted space elevator. But while the elevator envisages using ribbons woven from superstrong nanotubes - a material that is as yet non-existent - the tower would use materials that are already available. And should something go wrong with the tower, failure of a few modules would not cause the whole structure to collapse. _NewScientist

All that is needed to jump-start the movement of humans into permanent space industries and settlements is a low cost portal to the edge of space. From there the normal human instincts of exploration, expansion, and development would take over. The fact that a single asteroid can be worth trillions of dollars for its mineral value alone, would be enough to fuel a new gold rush.

The new age of space exploration will introduce an element of hope into the human psyche that has been sadly lacking recently. Humans need the idea of an open future, to avoid the malaise and societal implosion that is beginning to set in around the developed world.

A huge tower of this type would provide many possibilities for energy supplies, tourist and industrial operations, residential spaces, and commercial enterprises of all kinds. The space operations would create an order of magnitude commercial expansion beyond that. Just for starters.

The space elevator concept has stalled, somewhat, due to the lack of any current materials capable of sustaining the stresses involved. This new approach is exactly what is needed to get the conceptual gears of space access moving again.

Brian Wang has more at Nextbigfuture

A Skeptical Look at Space Colonisation

Science Fiction author Charles Stross has thrown a bucket of cold water over the enthusiasm of would-be space travelers and colonisers. In his article "The High Frontier, Redux, Stross explains the incredible challenges that space colonisation presents to Earth dwellers. Stross concludes that the problems are simply too great to take the idea of space colonies seriously, at this time.

Stross's pessimism is a useful counter-point to much of the "gee-whiz futurism"--unrealistic fantasies of space and the astounding future. There is nothing easy about the idea of creating a future of abundant possibilities. It will not happen by magic. And a lot of people are going to die trying to achieve what seems to many to be unachievable and to others, simply our destiny.

The basic argument by Stross in a nutshell is that space travel is:

1. Too hard
2. Takes too long
3. Takes too much energy
4. Too Dangerous
5. Involves distances that are too enormous
   

Underlying it all is the belief that human beings are just too lazy, too poor, and probably too stupid to do something that hard. And Stross is right about most of it. Most people are too lazy, too poor, and too stupid to even think about stepping up to a challenge that huge.

Most of the near-term space exploration of the solar system will have to be done by robot explorers. When humans are ready to start mining the moon, the asteroids, Mars etc., it is likely that robot miners will do most of the heavy prospecting, lifting, assaying, and processing. Humans will not become a significant presence in space until cheaper ways are devised for boosting people into space, and supporting them once there.

It is a long way from a Virgin Galactic space tourist flight--"look at me, I'm in suborbital space!" -- to a permanent Lunar, Martian, or asteroidal presence, for profitable mining, construction, and long term living.

But the very difficulty of the task is what attracts the gamblers of the world to a high stakes proposition like commercial space. Problems exist to be solved. Anyone who looks at it any differently should stick to science fiction.

H/T Gorillamask

Four-Star System Composed of Two Binary Twins

Four stars--two sets of binaries orbit each other in one system. These stars are each about half the mass of sol, and each are only 500 million years old--compared to about 4.5 billion years for Sol.As in the drawing, the two pairs orbit their mutual center of mass at a distance roughly that of Jupiter's orbit around Sol.

Up to half of all observable star systems are binaries. Systems with three or more stars are more rare. But there is a lot about star system formation that humans do not know.

In fact, there is much about our own star, Sol, that we do not know.

Speaking of Sol, Danny Boyle's science fiction extravaganza "Sunshine" has just become available in stores. I intend to add it to my collection fairly promptly. Just like the movie Idiocracy, the movie Sunshine was barely marketed to the public before release. And like Idiocracy, Sunshine is likely to become a cult classic.

Why Is There Nothing Instead of Something?

While scanning the spectral emissions of the universe, astronomers must ask themselves that question. Why is there no evidence of anything beyond a raw, untamed cosmos? Earth's solar system is only 5 billion years old, whereas the universe appears to be 15 billion years old, give or take 5 billion. Where are all the old, wise civilisations of intelligent beings that evolved in other galaxies? The universe does, after all, have a long history that precedes us.

Centauri Dreams blog's Paul Gilster wonders the same thing.

We’re beginning to learn that planets are abundant around stars in our region of the disk, with the encouraging expectation that habitats for evolving lifeforms must be widespread. But maybe there are natural caps other than technological suicide that could end a civilization’s dreams.

You can’t help pondering this when you run into the recent news about a long duration gamma-ray burst (GRB) that took astronomers by surprise. GRBs are normally thought to flag the death of a massive star, but in this case the burst seems to come out of nowhere. What caused the event in a region of space where the nearest galaxy is 88,000 light years away? [ed: see photo above--the long tail of the Tadpole Galaxy. Some such tails--the result of galactic collisions--are too faint to see]

...Of course, where gamma-ray bursts are concerned, the farther away, the better. But there are other interesting sources of trouble besides GRBs. Consider 3C321....Both these galaxies, according to Chandra X-ray Observatory data, contain supermassive black holes, but the larger galaxy shows a jet that seems to be pointed right at the smaller. That could make things interesting indeed at the receiving end

Centauri Dreams

Gamma ray bursts (GRBs) are highly focused events of generally short duration--usually no more than a few seconds, but occasionally lasting minutes. If you are not directly in the path of a GRB in that time period, you are probably safe from its furious energies. But if you are in the path of the jet of an active galactic nucleus, as is the companion galaxy described above, you may be in for a long and deadly bombardment of lethal energy.

There is protection in numbers, even for star systems, however. The same way that the solar wind of our star protects us from extra-solar radiation, the "galactic wind" from the Milky Way Galaxy protects its member star systems from extra-galactic radiation. But there is a limit to its protection, and a sufficiently powerful extragalactic jet--or an intra-galactic jet within 500 light years of earth aimed in our direction--could mean lights out for our own very young civilisation. Some scientists believe that at least some of earth's large extinctions were triggered by the solar system's eccentric orbit out of the plane of the galactic disc every 62 million years.

While the universe is clearly a hostile place without the help of alien intelligences, we should consider that our dominant vision of wise, long-lived, peaceful elder races may be a bit uninformed--if not naive. We may be surrounded by evidence of scores of intelligent civilisations, and not know it--as in this online story by David Brin. Sometimes, ignorance is bliss.

So, although our noisy existence in this corner of an unexceptional galaxy would seem to have gone undetected by outsiders--so far--that may actually be a good thing, for all we know. It might simply be better for us, as a baby civilisation, to just watch and learn for a while. Explore our local neighborhood, send out robotic probes, extend our observational range as far out and back as we can. What we discover cannot help but surprise us.

At the same time, we should look into placing some of our eggs into other, well padded baskets.

Hat tip Advanced Nano.

Exploration and Development in Space: Men vs. Robots

How will the actual movement of humans into space eventually play out? Will humans develop a rocket version of the Conestoga Wagon, or the Mayflower? Or will humans even play a part in the next century of space development, when robots may make far more sense for initial exploration?

Nanotechnology and autonomous robotics research should make it possible for robots to do preliminary exploration and data collection. Orbital probes and planetary explorers are only first steps. Next, microbots and robots using nanotech assembly need to be able to prepare planetary surfaces for human habitation and work.

In the long run, it will be humans working along with robots, that will allow the fastest movement of humans into space.

A previous Al Fin posting dealt with the choice between war and exploration, for societies with excess populations needing food and resources. Both war and exploration push the envelope of science and technology, and technology developed for one may often be used for the other. This current posting is inspired by a comment, by Will Brown, on the previous posting.

Here is a fascinating look at using self replicating technology dropped onto the lunar surface to create a lunar factory out of lunar materials.

Robert Zubrin--author of many books and articles on space exploration--presents his preferred direction of future projects here.

Future robot explorers will be diverse and often counter-intuitive to many. Some will flitter through atmospheres, like butterflies. Some will hop around like grasshoppers. Some will swim like fish. They will possess mass spectrometers on micro-chips, and micro-actuators for drilling and sampling. Some will be self-replicating for a pre-set time period, to cover more ground.

We cannot do it without robots. We cannot do it quickly without self-replicating nano-technology. We cannot do it easily without improved machine "cognition".

It is easy to fixate on the robotics, the nanotechnology, or the machine cognition, and forget about the important thing--the growth and expansion of human knowledge, wisdom, and potency. The long term advance of more wise, knowledgeable, and competent into the extra-terrestrial realm.

So let's send out the flocks of autonomous and self-replicating robots, then not waste any time following behind.

Carnival of Space #12 and Water in Space

The Carnival of Space #12 is hosted at Music of the Spheres blog. I have been quite impressed at the high caliber of postings that have been consistently appearing on the COS.

Centauri Dreams blog has an intriguing post on the possibility that the Kuiper Belt objects may possess more liquid water than all the water on Earth.

Wherever humans go, they will need a reliable source of water--for drinking, for making fuel, for making oxygen to breathe, and for crops--even if grown aeroponically--the most efficient means of growing crops known, water-wise.

If the lunar pole craters contain water, that would make the moon a good staging area for further advance--given its lower gravity than Earth's. If Mars contains as much water as expected, then that planet would be a good staging area for the asteroid belt and the gas giant moons. If the Kuiper Belt and the Oort Cloud are as rich as it appears they may be, they would be a good staging area for going beyond the solar system to the neighboring star systems.

Humans need to learn to live in extra-terrestrial environments, sustainably. While we can take excellent care of our home planet, we will never be perfectly safe from existential risks. So while we continue to make this planet safer and cleaner, we must also make our move outward.

Generation Seed Ships for Colonising Space

Unless science discovers a workable faster than light drive in the next century or two, it is likely that humans will attempt to launch generation ships to cross the interstellar gulf between star systems. On a generation ship, a voyage between star systems may take several millenia. For the many generations growing up, living, and dying aboard these ships, the destination becomes secondary to the journey itself.

Centauri Dreams blog discusses this issue, using a Michael Anissimov posting as a launch pad:

Noting Marshall Savage’s projection that the asteroid belt could theoretically house 7,500 trillion people if exploited in its entirety (this is drawn from the latter’s The Millennial Project), Anissimov goes on to ponder the motivations for space exploration itself. Here’s one relevant bit:

Why expand into space? For many, the answers are blatantly obvious, but the easiest is that the alternatives are limiting the human freedom to reproduce, or mass murder, both of which are morally unacceptable. Population growth is not inherently antithetical to a love of the environment - in fact, by expanding outwards into the cosmos in all directions, we’ll be able to seed every star system with every species of plant and animal imaginable. The genetic diversity of the embryonic home planet will seem tiny by comparison.

That is a very good point.Our very own solar system possesses resources that would allow humans to build a prolific base of operations for launching into the interstellar spaces. The best way to go beyond the asteroid belt and the Oort/Kuiper regions, is to build a sustainable/expandable infrastructure in those very regions first.

The best raw material for a generation ship is an asteroid or comet. The inertia/mass would be large for initial acceleration out of the system, but the raw materials would be indispensable for the long voyage outward. Tunneling into the interior of the asteroid/comet provides a protected living and working environment. Aeroponics would provide a good method of growing crops. Nuclear energy would be the most logical method of propulsion and energy supply--fusion if available.

Here is more on:

Colony Ships

Interstellar Travel

Space Colonisation

And why the surface of a planet may not be the best place for humans to evolve further.

For more mind expanding thoughts on expanding human existence, check out the latest postings at Accelerating Future and Advanced Nanotechnology blogs. Both Michael and Brian have posted some extraordinarily thoughtful posts recently.

Space Mining and Carnival #11

Space Carnival #11 is up at Space for Commerce blog.

It is another fine collection of space postings, but my favourite is this posting on asteroid mining from the fine space blog, Colony Worlds.

With most of these invaluable asteroids tens of millions of miles away from the nearest colony world, asteroid miners will find themselves heavily dependent upon supplies for food and water. Their isolation will also make them prime candidates for space pirates, not to mention feuding powers from Earth, Mars and the Jovian systems.

Unless these outposts are protected by a space fleet, they may soon find their boring schedule filled with being invaded by unwelcome guests.

Another danger of asteroid miners will be radiation. Since most (if not all) asteroids lack a magnetic field, asteroid outposts will be at the mercy of the Sun's wrath, not to mention cosmic rays from abroad. Although outposts will probably have magnetic shields surrounding their bases, this does not guarantee that the rocks that they mine upon are free from being radioactive.

....asteroid miners also face the dangers of micrometeorites piercing holes through their suits and stations, or (even worse) encountering a meteor shower from an incoming comet.

Future outposts will probably have to rely upon the eyes (and scientific "ears") of astronomers to warn them of the dangers of nearby comets, although they may have to "take a gamble" when dealing with incoming space pebbles as armor may prove useless against these solar bullets.

But despite the fact that these dangers surround future asteroid miners, there presence in our star system will be desperately needed. Asteroids have the potential of supplying invaluable resources, and the purity of metals could be worth up to $500,000 a ton.

In fact, it is possible for an asteroid mining venture to net US $21 trillion or more from a single asteroid. The terrestrial value of mineral resources contained in the asteroids is incalculable. Compared to the payback, the expense of mounting a commercial venture fades to insignificance--after the payback, that is.

When will we see asteroid mining start? Well, it will only become viable once the human-presence commercial in-orbit economy takes off. Only then will there be a market. And that can only happen after NASA ceases acting as a near-monopolist launch provider and thwarter of competition, and reverts to being a customer instead.

A developing in-space economy will build the technical capability to access NEAs, almost automatically. And regardless of the legal arguments about mineral claims in outer space, once the first resource recovery mission is successful, what's the bets on a surge in interest similar to the dotcom-boom and biotech-boom?

The first successful venturers will develop immense proprietary knowledge, and make a mint. And some as-yet unidentified (but almost certainly already discovered) NEAs will be the company-making mines of the 21st century.

Source

In fact, most of the expensive ventures that Luddites are always whining about--orbiting solar platforms, moon bases, Mars missions, space stations, etc., become instantly affordable with "pocket change" once asteroids start sending their wealth earthward.

People such as Paul Allen, Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, and other high rolling tycoons may have just caught a whiff of the possibilities.

Most politicians are relatively clueless, however--which may be a good thing. While the nations of Earth might warrant a healthy tax chunk of some of the profits from space mining and enterprise, there is not a nation on Earth that should control all of space and all space assets.

So far, the only Earth nation that has demonstrated space weapons intent and capability is China--with its irresponsible kinetic kill of one of its obsolete satellites having created dangerous space debris in orbit. The US has many projects and plans for using space as part of coordinated defense. Military spy satellites themselves are vital to US defense plans. Russia, like China, would like to control space, and no doubt would, if it could.

The next few decades will be critical, in determining whether the future of space will be free to enterprising individuals and groups, or closed by nation-states with the military clout to lock everyone else on Earth.

Carnival of Space #6: ISDC in Dallas

For those who could not attend the International Space Development Conference (ISDC) in Dallas earlier this month, this weeks Carnival of Space gives a good overview.

Here is another ISDC wrapup.

Anyone truly interested in the future of space development, exploration, tourism, and colonisation should take the trouble to attend one of the yearly space conferences sponsored by one of the several national and international space organisations. You can make connections with others involved in space, and learn a lot of new things before most other people.

It is worth the time.

Mining Space--A Gold Rush that Never Ends

Cheaper space launch opens the door to the mining of space objects for useful materials.

In 2004, the world production of iron ore exceeded 1,000 million metric tons[1]. In comparison, a comparatively small M-type asteroid with a mean diameter of 1 km could contain more than 2,000 million metric tons of iron-nickel ore[2], or two to three times the annual production for 2004. The asteroid 16 Psyche is believed to contain 1.7×1019 kg of iron-nickel, which could supply the 2004 world production requirement for several million years. A small portion of the extracted material would also contain precious metals....

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Most people think in a small and limited scope. This leaves them completely unprepared for the changes that are coming.

Who will benefit from the exploitation of space? Information on this area has made plain that the costs of initial start-up and initial maintenance are beyond the capability of the non industrialized nations and can only be undertaken by nations with large developed economic infrastructures, specifically the European Union, The U.S., possibly Russia and Japan. Each of these has positive and negative factors which will determine how large a share of space industry and mining they will control. The U.S. has several advantages. First of all the previously mentioned public and private commitment to space research. Secondly a great deal of governmental research has gone into space "Space ventures require investments beyond the capacity of the private sector. Already the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has spent more then $200 billion (in current dollars), much of it to create the infrastructure needed to exploit space." (Osborne 45) Like any momentous undertaking a planning stage is required, thanks to some far-sighted policy makers a fair amount of planning has already been accomplished.

Source

Because of the huge potential payoff from any invention that makes the riches of space more accessible to human developers, there is no shortage of people who make extraordinary claims for their inventions. But even if such inventions do not pan out, a more sober analysis suggests that no more than a few decades will pass before the space revolution will be fully in play.

Modern news media is far too short-sighted and unintelligent/uninspired to alert their clients to these immensely important possibilities. Media controllers are far too interested in trying to swing the next political elections to take the time to understand the huge and powerful forces that are likely to throw them and their antiquated industry on the junkheap of history.

There is no need for the rest of us to be so myopic.

Hubble Deep Field Video

Hat tip deep astronomy blog

Lasso the Moon

Humans should seriously consider returning to the moon to establish a permanent base--particularly if there is water (ice) buried under polar craters.

Very nice promotional video by NASA.
Hat tip KySat

Bigger than You Imagine? Bigger than You CAN Imagine!

The origin of life on Earth is a mystery shrouded in time. But the ebb and flow of life--the mass extinction events and rapid speciation periods over the eons--may very well be related to extraterrestrial forces.

Two years ago, scientists at the University of California, Berkeley found the marine fossil record shows that biodiversity—the number of different species alive on the planet—increases and decreases on a 62-million-year cycle. At least two of the Earth’s great mass extinctions—the Permian extinction 250 million years ago and the Ordovician extinction about 450 million years ago—correspond with peaks of this cycle, which can’t be explained by evolutionary theory.

Now, a team of researchers at the University of Kansas (KU) have come up with an out-of-this-world explanation. Their idea hinges upon the fact that, appearances aside, stars are not fixed in space. They move around, sometimes rushing headlong through galaxies, or approaching close enough to one another for brief cosmic trysts.

In particular, our Sun moves toward and away from the Milky Way’s center, and also up and down through the galactic plane. One complete up-and-down cycle takes 64 million years— suspiciously similar to Earth’s biodiversity cycle.

....Scientists know the Milky Way is being gravitationally pulled toward a massive cluster of galaxies, called the Virgo Cluster, located about 50 million light years away. Adrian Melott and his colleague Mikhail Medvedev, both KU researchers, speculate that as the Milky Way hurdles towards the Virgo Cluster, it generates a so-called bow shock in front of it that is similar to the shock wave created by a supersonic jet.

“Our solar system has a shock wave around it, and it produces a good quantity of the cosmic rays that hit the Earth. Why shouldn’t the galaxy have a shock wave, too?” Melott said.
The galactic bow shock is only present on the north side of the Milky Way’s galactic plane, because that is the side facing the Virgo Cluster as it moves through space, and it would cause superheated gas and cosmic rays to stream behind it, the researchers say. Normally, our galaxy’s magnetic field shields our solar system from this “galactic wind.” But every 64 million years, the solar system’s cyclical travels take it above the galactic plane.

“When we emerge out of the disk, we have less protection, so we become exposed to many more cosmic rays,” Melott told SPACE.com.

Source

It is politically correct in the media and on campus to say that only human activity can affect life on earth. It is a type of blindness to the universe that only good doctrinaire orthodoxies can manage.

Persons with more intelligent perspective maintain a broader outlook when seeking causes for important phenomena. Unfortunately, human beings do not typically live long enough to acquire the type of broad outlook that is required to solve large mysteries. Humans are congenitally small minded. That will not change until humans can acquire longer life, higher intelligence, and far better educational methods and tools.

In the meantime, those who can look farther--if only for short distances and periods of time--should enjoy the view.

Space News

Humans want to know if intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe. Although early hopes were pinned on Venus and Mars, those planets appear to be empty of intelligent life. So we are looking farther afield.

In the near future, with the launch of NASA’s Kepler Mission in 2008, we’ll have the tools to seek evidence of Earth-size planets in the habitable zone of distant stars.

The search for life beyond Earth is the search for a good place to live, a habitable planet, in orbit about a long-lived star where life may arise and evolve. The first place we looked was at stars like our own Sun, a middle-sized, middle-aged star. G-Stars like the Sun are stable for about 10 billion years, which is a good long time for planets to form, and life to evolve

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Future space telescopes may be able to detect an Earth twin. Astronomers have already found evidence of water on an extrasolar planet.

Japan is planning an expansive series of space missions. China and Russia both consider space development vital to their strategic interests.

Space missions to study earth systems are becoming more important, with questions about nuclear proliferation and climate change--among others--being susceptible to observation from space. A planned April 25th launch on a Pegasus rocket aims to send a satellite to observe high atmospheric clouds. AIM--aeronomy of ice in the mesosphere--plans to look at mysterious mesospheric clouds that may be related to earth's climate.

Many space enthusiasts are pinning their hopes on Space Tourism, to stimulate the movement of humans into space. Many wealthy individuals have visited the ISS aboard Russian launch vehicles, and Bill Gates may do the same. Of course, Paul Allen has invested in Burt Rutan's launch company, and Jeff Bezos of Amazon.com is backing his own launch company in west Texas. Several other billionaires are also involved in space enterprises.

Earth governments cannot afford to pay for all the entitlements owed to future generations, much less subsidize human settlements in space. If that is ever to occur, private investment will lead the way, looking to make a profit.

Global Warming Threatens to Drown the Planet Mars Under 36 Feet of Water

New radar measurements of the Martian South Pole Ice Cap indicates that enough ice exists there to cover the entire Martian surface under 36 feet of water, were the ice to melt.

This new estimate comes from mapping the thickness of the ice. The Mars Express orbiter's radar instrument has made more than 300 virtual slices through layered deposits covering the pole to map the ice. The radar sees through icy layers to the lower boundary, which is as deep as 2.3 miles below the surface.

"The south polar layered deposits of Mars cover an area bigger than Texas. The amount of water they contain has been estimated before, but never with the level of confidence this radar makes possible," said Jeffrey Plaut of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), Pasadena Calif. Plaut is co-principal investigator for the radar and lead author of a new report on these findings published in the March 15 online edition of the journal Science.

The instrument, named the Mars Advanced Radar for Subsurface and Ionospheric Sounding (MARSIS), also is mapping the thickness of similar layered deposits at the north pole of Mars.

"Our radar is doing its job extremely well," said Giovanni Picardi, a professor at the University of Rome "La Sapienza," and principal investigator for the instrument.

Source

Those who follow the work of Robert Zubrin will immediately see the significance of this finding. If these latest measurements are accurate, the prospects for people like Zubrin, the Mars Foundation, the Mars Society, and other groups who aspire to settle the red planet, have gotten measurably better.

Beginning with that amount of water, settlers could build ambitious colonies and industrial plants--and establish Mars as a springboard to the asteroids and the outer solar system. Given the additional capabilities of molecular manufacturing, such space-going pioneers, adventurers, and swashbuckling entrepreneurs could easily reach the moons of Jupiter, then Saturn, within as little as a single generation after establishing a permanent Mars outpost.

Of course, better space launch and propulsion technologies would catapult humans farther and deeper into space, much more quickly. Regardless, the massive quantities of water on Mars cannot help but act as a powerful magnet for humans with the ambition and adventurous spirit to reach further.