Space Colonization Options (Orbiting Stations, planets/moons)

"What to do with bodies on a Mars colony does have to be addressed though."

Hmm. Solent Red. Turning the dead into delicious crackers.

 

In a roundabout way. Most people are going to find cannibalism unacceptable, even if a new world calls for new mores.
There's probably not going to be enough people dying in the early decades of a settlement to make some kind of regular provision for it either. It's possible to imagine some kind of water burial catchment tank that would support an aquaculture system but I have trouble seeing that happening too. the first dead on Mars will probably just be dried out mummies under rock cairns until someone figures out a better idea.

The more I imagine life in the early decades on Mars, its a worst-case scenario. It's grim. They'll have to rewrite a lot of medical texts for injuries they have not experienced before (what does internal bleeding in low g do?), it's still not sure either the tubal-pregnancies is going to be a problem, bone density loss, depression, alcoholism (someone's going to start making booze as soon as they start making algae). added to the fact with no real marketable product to sell back to earth, the whole thing is subject to the whim of the super rich who are still able to get goods and new settlers imported in. It has to become self sustaining really damned fast if there is no business model.

The business model might be staring everone right in the face: Phobos makes a great mining opportunity, a great transfer station to the outer solar system, with a gravity well down below for off-duty periods. It might be better to see a Mars settlement as more of a Mars-Phobos settlement. I don't think you can not include Phobos in those plans.

well that's Mars. I don't feel Lunar or orbial habitats need be bleak like that.

 

I don't really see the point of getting out of this gravity well, only to settle in another gravity well 38% as deep when there are lots of more easily exploitable asteroids. The Moon is an acceptable choice of location if water is accessible there. Mars does have water, certainly, but then so does Ceres. Got to think of the Δv budget. Need protection from radiation - burrow into the rock. Need gravity - spin the rock.

 

I think people have just trained themselves into a Mars obsession, going back to the 19th century. The Viking landings showed a world that almost but not quite looked like we could walk around. It seems Terrestrial, but in reality it is not. I agree. I would go so far to say that Mars is probably one of the WORST locations for human settlement. The moon, orbital SBSP stations, Ceres, NEA's, Venusian clouds, Jovian icy moons, Titan all sound better, and some of them have a real economic reason.

The good that comes out of it is people like Musk who are Zubrinites underneath it all, have not given up on trying to make their goal happen, and that infrastructure will work most anywhere, and probably better.

 

Yup, That was my idea as well, find a neat nickel iron asteroid so you've got plenty of building materials and then create living spaces etc and spin that rock until you have your preferred 1g.

 

True. There is no reason to go on to another planet if there is no good reason to be there except to say HEY! I'm here!
Better would be spining orbital habitats in Earth Orbit, or in the asteroid field, and thats for mining.
Think of Gundam, there was overpopulation, and the Earth was dying, so they build litterally hundreds of orbital colonys ONeil Island 3's mostly, and have billions of people in them. Some are born, live, and die without setting foot on Earth.
And thats Alot better than living on Mars. Your at 38% gravity, and theres nothing to be done about it, Still need radiation, space suits, etc. Pointless.

 

A Lagrange Point can only support so many stations, and the gravitational stability is usually large enough for one large space station at best. That's one large O'Neil Cylinder. It's best to spread yourself about the various Lagrange Points of all the major planets in the Star System.

There are plenty of spots to park your Space Station and minimize energy spent to maintain it's relative fixed location.
There are 5x Lagrange Points for every major Star-Planet combo and Planet-Moon combo.
That provides plenty of locations to choose from and plenty of O'Neil Cylinders to setup.

Especially if each one is as people dense as my nested cylinders idea.

Small tiny moons that aren't strong enough to generate local gravity should be harvested for raw materials along with the various local asteroids to make local Space Stations.

You don't have to live on said planet, just be within said Space Station parked in relative stable orbit at their Lagrange Points.

Then use the local planets for resource harvesting and local trade.

 

All depends if there self sufficient. Sure you would have the air, water, maybe even crops taken care of, but would you still need rare earth metals? Other things from Earth? If there entirely sufficient, then you could conceivably put the colony islands anywhere in system, Earth moon Lagrange, Earth Sun Lagrange, etc. But if they need anything from Earth in any meaningful quantity, they have to stay nearby to Earth.
In the Gundam universe, all Earth/moon lagrange points are occupied. Even at 20 miles long by 5 wide, in gravity pairs, you could put a number of stations at each Lagrange point. Even 10 at each point gives you 50 stations.

 

It would take an incredible amount of construction at a LaGrange point for that to be true. It would have to significantly alter the mass ratio between the parent gravity wells. If you've reached that capability in your species, you're beyond that being a problem.

long term there's solar orbit as well, or a Cruithne type horseshoe orbit.

I can't see people queuing up to live in a space favela unless they had absolutely no other option. New trends may emerge but as societies become affluent, the birth rate seems to approach negative. Underpopulation may be more of a problem.

 

Does how many objects can remain stationary depend on volume of space available for gravitational stability, or on mass of objects in said space or both?

How is a nice suburban multi-story home or a high-rise apartment a "Favela"?

Are your standards for urban living so different from mines?

 

Yeah, that's an n-body problem rather than a 3-body one. I expect it's a conflict between gravitational self-attraction within the swarm and tidal forces disrupting the swarm from outside. Over time, loosely bound members of the swarm will likely get ejected through close encounters. It sounds like the system would be chaotic and sensitively dependent on the initial configuration. Numerical methods of analysis could be used but even those might be so sensitive to small variations in the starting conditions that accurate prediction becomes impossible beyond a certain point. I don't have Universe Sandbox but it might be useful to see qualitatively the sorts of interactions that could happen.

 

So it might be easier just to have one large Space Colony sitting there instead of a bunch of smaller O'Neill type Space Colonies.

e.g. Macross Frontier's Island 1

That's Macross 7's Island 1 for scale reference.

Yes Macross Frontier's Island 1 is HUGE, a literal main city and it's suburban area around it.

 

My understanding of this type of math is quite 3rd grade. So I have no idea how many angels can fit on a pinhead.

Some might go willingly if conditions are better than they have on Earth but yes, probably have to forcibly export humanity at that point.
But then you have politics, which colony is better, would they be nationalistic? Tribes? War between them?
That island 1 frontier is 15 km long. And has artificial gravity. 5 million in the city. Say about the size of manhatten island. Island 3 are bigger.

 

I don't think there would be war between Humans / UFP members.

Nationalistic in the sense of City Pride, but we're still part of a greater collective whole.

If there's going to be war, it would be with non UFP state actors or pirates or external terrorists.

 

Sports can handle that. Otherwise considering what wars have been caused over in the past, scarcity of resources primarily, that's not really a problem. I suppose there's still the possibility of idealistic or religious extremism but that tends to dissipate with education and a better economic situation.

 

Would there be more.. Affluent colonies.. like Elysium?
Maybe Slums like one colony has 200,000 population and nice things where another has 2 million population stuffed in there almost to life support limits, living in "government housing" type of apartments.
Then you'll also have crime, poor like "down bellow" in B5 , mafia types. All the fun things that Earth currently and fore the foreseeable future have.

 

I am not saying its a perfect book, but O'Neil's High Frontier is pretty good reading on the subject of what would make a decent living arrangement. Even the first station, Island One would have been pretty nice living. With the resources to build those basically being lunar regolith launched cheaply from the moon, there was no premium on space, no reason to keep people cramped up in tiny spaces with no sky. There's no shortage of building material or location. On the flip side, I think Andy Weir's "Artemis" does a great job of showing what a moon colony might look like where things started with optimism, but just sort of reached a road block. Artemis is not a dystopia, far from it, but it shows what can happen when space settlement loses its impetus.

Obviously in some desperate scenario "We've got to move the entire population off of the earth in 50 years cause it's doomed" is a little different, but even there a cramped stinking environment isn't going to be acceptable or needed for long.

to my mind the kind of thing that might really start to be a wealth premium would be antiques and other items from earth expensive to obtain and maintain. a teak wedding band might be worth more than one of gold and diamond. Being a cat person in an orbital habitat might not be as easy as on earth. And pets. You might have the right to as much O2 as you can breathe, but a cat person might have to be able to afford those seven cats.

On the other hand, again in a non-emergency scenario, if you have a job in an orbital habitat and are lucky enough to live up there, you might do quite well being able to air-bnb (where the air ain't free) your apartment while you are out on long term assignments in the belt, to earthers on vacation, for instance.

 

One of the things I was thinking of would be how to possibly return a sample from Ouamuamua or any high speed object passing through our system. A standard mission is probably not do-able…but imagine this. HLLVs assemble two large crafts. One is sent to actually scout the object…and drill a sample.

The sample is placed on an atl-atl like arm.

The second craft hits the first on the other side…slinging the sample back. The Excalibur artillery shell has electronics that survive the blast.

Here…there is no useless attempt at slowing.

Thoughts?

 

But how can a Lagrange Point and space with gravity be used together?

Could a station be centered in the middle of the Lagrange Point with spoke like structures extending out from a hub surrounding the station and into space with gravity that would then rotate freely around the central hub?

Basically, gravity would turn the arms or brushes on a generator that then produces electricity.


Something had better be done, because within 100k, the Earth will be mostly void of life due to the caldera under Yellowstone erupting.

 

Spin Gravity on a space station is a bit different from traditional gravity due to mass of a planet.

Yes, it can rotate around the hub.

No, you have to spend energy to spin, but when you're out in space, you have plenty of Solar Panel options to help generate energy and kick start any larger reactors like a fusion reactor.

I'm sure somebody will figure out a solution to deal with that Cladera, maybe even a way to gradually relieve the pressure.