Do we have all the technologies needed to afford building space cities and colonize Mars?

[txlibdem]

The following is a portion of an email I sent to the local high school science teacher, asking if the district had plans to compete in this year's NASA Space Settlement Contest ( http://settlement.arc.nasa.gov/Contest/ ). As I wrote the email I started to piece together some of the recent developments that might be of interest to someone participating in that contest. Then it hit me: I think we might just have all the pieces in place, or within 10 years time, to be able to afford building cities in space similar to those envisioned by Dr. Gerard K. O'Neill and/or to colonize Mars and the rest of the solar system.

As an aside, for those of you not familiar with Dr. O'Neill's work on the subject I recommend the google or buy his book "The High Frontier" etc.

...

Recently, I read about NASA's goal of developing a cheaper space launch technology using a MagLev track and a scramjet which will then launch a space-bound payload once it gets to 200,000 feet and Mach 10. It was in the December issue of Popular Science (nerd alert!). Here is a little info on it but the article was more informative:
http://www.popsci.com/technology/article/2010-09/nasas-next-gen-spacelaunch-system-could-launch-scramjets-massive-railgun

Another development with potential is telerobotics, such as the drones flying over Afghanistan but piloted by soldiers in Nevada.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4851765

Then I read about GM's robotic assistant for the space station,
http://www.tgdaily.com/space-features/49371-nasa-trains-humanoid-robot-for-space-station-duty

And finally, I read an article entitled, Could This Robot Build A House In A Day? Contour Crafting is the term they've coined.
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/02/16/business/realestate/main2487598.shtml
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3fhryxVAsa4&eurl%20= - excessive volume alert, turn your speakers down first...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=idTj5JXgoLs&feature=related

A different company is vying for a contract with NASA to build structures on the Moon with a robotic builder that uses a different technology.
3-D Printing Device Could Build Moon Base from Lunar Dust
http://www.space.com/businesstechnology/3-d-printer-moon-base-100416.html

...which led me to this story about using 3D printing to make a space station in orbit
http://www.space.com/businesstechnology/3d-space-printing-101111.html

Remote controlled robotic habitat building; think big or think small?
http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9176655/NASA_looking_to_six_legged_robot_to_build_human_outpost_on_Mars
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/10/081021190644.htm

So, my naturally inquisitive side kicked in and I wondered: have we reached the "tipping point" of converging technologies that would enable us to be able to afford to build space cities or to colonize Mars and the rest of the solar system? I remember a TV show called "Connections" that delved into the history of all the innovations required for a product or idea to have emerged, starting with a thing then working backwards through time, highlighting all the inventions and innovations that were required and inevitably led step by step to the things we have today. Those kind of wheels started turning in my head and I came to the conclusion that the answer just might be an unqualified YES. Of course Humans can do anything if money was no object but the cost effectiveness achieved by all these inventions has, I believe, finally enabled the space cities that I dreamed of as a teenager.

So, to summarize, we have:

• An inexpensive launch system that can put all the parts, equipment and raw materials into orbit without sending us to the poor house.
  
• Telerobitics and robot workers that will build the spaceships and space stations but are controlled from some guy in Las Vegas
  ... no humans in space building these things means lower costs and increased safety.
  
• Automated construction robots that will build the structures we mere Humans need to survive in hostile environments.
  
• 3D printing technology could even build an entire space station directly in orbit, or pieces of a very large station.
  
• Robotic vehicles that can navigate the terrain on the Moon and Mars to dig, push, move, carry and haul everything we need to build a complete city on Mars that is buried deep enough to be safe from the intense radiation yet contains all the things that Humans need to live: hydroponic gardens to grow food, parks and green spaces to keep people sane, labs, living spaces, entertainment, etc.
  
• Possibly, tiny robots could do the job if enough of them are tasked with working together on the task.
  
• The Vasimir plasma rocket could get us to mars in 39 days, greatly reducing the need to carry extra food and water just to make it to Mars, leaving more left over to supply the colony.
  
• Scientists are working on ways to use the natural resources that exist on Mars to build structures, make oxygen, and even make rocket fuel and water. Whatever we can find (or make) there is one less thing we'll have to fly there at great expense...
  

Thus my question to you? What do you think? Do we have all the tools needed to colonize space?

[spin]

1. Yes, the question is do we have the will ...

The current economic situation will be used as an excuse to almost all of our tax payer dollars on earth bound projects and very, very little on space exploration.

The solution, of course, is private industry. There's money to be made in space. In fact, there's big bucks to be made on the moon.

Mining the Moon

Lab experiments suggest that future fusion reactors could use helium-3 gathered from the moon.

At the 21st century's start, few would have predicted that by 2007, a second race for the moon would be under way. Yet the signs are that this is now the case. Furthermore, in today's moon race, unlike the one that took place between the United States and the U.S.S.R. in the 1960s, a full roster of 21st-century global powers, including China and India, are competing.

Even more surprising is that one reason for much of the interest appears to be plans to mine helium-3--purportedly an ideal fuel for fusion reactors but almost unavailable on Earth--from the moon's surface. NASA's Vision for Space Exploration has U.S. astronauts scheduled to be back on the moon in 2020 and permanently staffing a base there by 2024. While the U.S. space agency has neither announced nor denied any desire to mine helium-3, it has nevertheless placed advocates of mining He3 in influential positions. For its part, Russia claims that the aim of any lunar program of its own--for what it's worth, the rocket corporation Energia recently started blustering, Soviet-style, that it will build a permanent moon base by 2015-2020--will be extracting He3.

The Chinese, too, apparently believe that helium-3 from the moon can enable fusion plants on Earth. This fall, the People's Republic expects to orbit a satellite around the moon and then land an unmanned vehicle there in 2011.
http://www.technologyreview.com/energy/19296/

How much did we spend to bail out the banks and Wall Street?

[txlibdem]

4. The will and making it a priority

You said a mouthful there. If we'd had the will to colonize space we would have done it already despite the cost (which would have been enormous BTW). There is a limit to how much any nation's economy could stand so it was waaaay out of the realm of the possible. Until now, maybe?

I definitely agree with your point about the resources that exist on the Moon. The soil on Mars can also be used to make oxygen, water, and rocket fuel, in addition to providing the raw materials to build the structures that Humans would live in on Mars.

Moon dust can also be used to form a concrete-like substance (when mixed with the right compound). That's in one of the links above. An automated construction robot (it looks like a 3d printer or a very big CNC machine if you've ever seen one of those) could build an entire city on the Moon or on Mars and, working in concert with robots controlled by Humans here on Earth, furnish it with everything Humans will need, including hydroponic farms to grow food and make oxygen, all the electronic stuff that people need, living quarters, airlocks, everything.

[muriel_volestrangler]

2. No; we can't afford to fix global warming, or the world water shortage

Hell, the USA can't afford to fix its own infrastructure, and it's supposedly still the richest nation in the world. And all that just needs technology that's been around for decades. All this 'build a moon colony from scratch' stuff is just idle dreaming.

[MineralMan]

3. +1

[txlibdem]

5. Thanks for your opinion

You make some good points about the budget. My OP steered clear of budget issues for that very reason: I didn't want to open that can of worms!
:hide:
All I asked was if we have the ability to do that, not if we can afford it + health care + social security + rebuild the falling down bridges and other age old infrastructure + switch away from dirty fuel sources onto clean renewable energy + whatever else. We both know that the only thing our bought-and-paid-for politicians can agree on is that we have plenty of money to bail out the banks and big corporations, and it's looking like they'll do their little kabuki dance and then agree that millionaires and billionaires need a tax cut. Don't poke my cynical side. It gets ugly in there! :-)

Talk about idle dreaming. It's beginning to look like the middle class expecting an unemployment check is just idle dreaming...

[muriel_volestrangler]

6. OK, I was over-focusing on 'afford' in your title

Yes, we may have the ability to do the stuff in space now. These new methods give us alternative paths to the old 'brute force' of huge rockets to get a tiny landing module on the moon. But the cost is still beyond the world for the next few decades, I think.

[txlibdem]

8. It all comes down to priorities

Right now the world's priorities are in making a few thousand people fantastically rich and screw the rest of us. Those aren't priorities I want to espouse, I'd rather live in denial for just a little bit longer.

What we could be doing, what we should be doing, and what we will end up doing because we're shackled to a Capitalist Ponzi Scheme System are so, so obviously three totally different things.

[spin]

7. It was very expensive for the Europeans to establish colonies in the New World ...

but it eventually turned out to be very profitable.

We just bailed out the banks and Wall Street. Many say that was a waste of money. We also bailed the automotive industry and many wonder if that was a wise idea or another waste of money.

Maybe we should have spent some of that money on establishing a colony on the moon. We might have got a better return on our investment.

[txlibdem]

9. Stephen Hawking says we're imperiling our very survival by staying on one planet

I agree with him on that. What if a rogue black hole or wayward neutron star or far flung brown dwarf careens through our solar system? What if we have another asteroid strike such as happened 65 million years ago, wiping out all life larger than a rat? What if a star goes nova, sending out a polar jet of radiation in our direction?

Budgets tend to pale into insignificance when we start talking about our very survival as a species, in my view.

Timetables can be debated, however. I don't think this is something we'll be able to do in 10 years and maybe not even in 20 years. I do think that we have all the tools and knowledge at hand to make it happen if and when we are ready and able.

[spin]

10. To me that's one of the best arguments for setting up a colony on the moon ...

or on Mars. We could also have a global nuclear war that would set us back to the middle ages.

Of course, the colony would have to be self sufficient.

[txlibdem]

11. Self sufficiency is a must

Only with access to the asteroids I think; regular supply ferries from the asteroid belt would provide whatever raw materials a colony would need, no matter where it is located.

Eventually, I hope we can establish colonies in other star systems. The rogue planetoid scenario or jet of radiation could destroy all life in this solar system so we should expand to as many other stars as we can.

[spin]

13. Agreed. Setting up colonies on the moon and Mars ...

are just baby steps. The galaxy awaits us. Our legacy should be spread among the stars.

Personally, I believe that we are in a testing phase. We have to master enough technology to get us to the stars and we must also develop the maturity to handle that technology without destroying ourselves.

[txlibdem]

14. Testing phase seems very apropos

IF we don't blow ourselves up with bombs, lasers, or whatever.
IF we don't poison our planet (and ourselves) with our pollution -- ref the Pacific Gyre, toxic waste, companies putting poison into baby's milk and yogurt, etc.
IF we don't burn so many fossil fuels that the ecological balance is tipped too far and we end up with an unlivable hell of a planet.
IF we don't fall prey to a new strain of disease that wipes us out -- one theory says the Dinos were nearly wiped out by disease long before the asteroid hit.
IF an asteroid does not hit the Earth again, just like the many large hits that have happened before, most notably 65 million years ago.
IF we survive all that but fail to colonize other planets with populations large enough to provide a sufficient genetic diversity (the minimum number of humans is 10,000 to avoid genetic disorders IIRC).


I can see that as a test of any new sentient species. Perhaps nobody else in the galaxy is going to care about your species until you have passed all these tests, become a space faring civilization, conquered poverty, disease, and divisiveness. Or if perhaps we are the first sentient species to evolve in this galaxy and the next race to come along probably will never know we were here, the galaxy is so vast and all evidence of our existence will be gone in less than a few hundred years, most evidence will be covered up by nature in less than 100 years -- that's a very tiny window to hit.

[Orsino]

25. We can afford to do nearly anything we really want.

We made up a couple of wars just so we could dump a trillion dollars into them.

And that's what we do for fun. Imagine what we'll do when we get down to work.

[Kennah]

27. I'd have to disagree

Collectively, Americans lack the WILL to address climate change, our aging and failing infrastructure, and our absurd "healthcare is a privilege" mind set.

We are so oil obsessed that we would rather wage two unjust wars, more to follow in the coming years, and instead give a paltry $287 million a year (on average between FY 2002 and 2009) to the NREL.
http://www.nrel.gov/overview/

On infrastructure, we appear to be dumber than even the Bugblatter Beast.

On healthcare, I think the Republican plan is union workhouses.

[txlibdem]

33. oil obsessed

We are so oil obsessed for one reason only: there are a group of wealthy individuals that make an obscene amount of money by keeping us addicted to oil. I agree with your description of the current wars as both unjust and meant only to service the oil industry and the military industrial complex. There are so many aspects of our nation that are at or near collapse right now, bridges and roads are only one of many areas where a singular focus on short term profit has proved disastrous for us all in the long run. That discussion deserves its own post, perhaps several in a series, and is outside of the scope of what I wanted to cover with this OP.

(note that I deliberately stayed away from the issue of cost and, especially, what other stuff we could have done with that money, just as the Bushies and now Obama Administration are staying away from talk of what all those hundreds of billions (some say $$$ TRILLIONS) wasted on our wars and what else we could have achieved with that money. I, likewise, stayed away from talk of our excessive global military presence, mostly in service of oil and other US business interests as well, particularly the fact that the US spends as much on the military as every other nation combined.)

Narrowing the focus to the central theme: can we colonize space given the newly developed technologies that I cite in the OP?

[Occulus]

12. We need to be able to mine the Belt before we can consider this.

The Earth does not have the necessary resources to support colonization of space or other planets without also mining the asteroid belt. We will also need a sufficiently fast way to get those resources to where they are needed, as well as a power source that can provide the electricity necessary to refine those resources, produce oxygen, etc. This will require a fusion reactor or much more efficient solar power generation methods than are currently available.

Ben Bova explores all of this in his novel "The Rock Rats", which I found to be a surprisingly realistic look at what all this might entail.

[txlibdem]

17. We would have to start with mining the moon and the asteroids for sure

Our Moon has large amounts of oxygen, silicon and metals, but little hydrogen, carbon, or nitrogen so we could get the majority of the material for building a space city and Mars colonies, etc., from mining the moon. The silicon could be processed on the moon to make solar cells and put together into solar panels using robotic arms, similar to how automobile assembly lines today are assisted by robotic welders and painting robots. In other words, build a factory and fabrication facility first then assemble the solar panels.

The asteroids will have to be mined for the other necessities of life like water, carbon, nitrogen, phosphorous, gold, etc.

Colonists on the Moon, space cities or Mars could then be 100% self-reliant, not dependent on any supplies delivered from Earth. That is the only way those colonies would be affordable or even worth doing.

[kestrel91316]

15. Nope. Our spare dollars need to go to fixing the mess we have made of Earth.

Until we start acting, as a species, like responsible adults, we have no business going anywhere else in the galaxy and fucking things up there, too.

[TheMadMonk]

16. Dollars spent in space would go a long way towards mittigating many...

...of our excesses here on Earth. A couple of small asteroids nudged into Earth orbit would allow for the cesation of most surface mining just for starters.

[kestrel91316]

18. And NOTHING could possibly go wrong with that plan.......

[txlibdem]

20. Something could go wrong with our current LACK OF HAVING A PLAN

The status quo will kill all life on this planet, of that there is no doubt. Having no plan is far worse than a failure or setback of a bold and forward thinking plan.

[TheMadMonk]

21. Define go wrong? Lose control and have the rock go "careening"...

...off into space at a literal snail's pace? Possible, barely, depending on how willing to abandon their investment the owners are. Have it fall down on your fine feathered scalp? Zero. No physically possible orbital manouever would ever place the rock on an intersection with the Earth in its orbit for an instant. That's what they have the big computers for.

Getting things down to the surface can be accomplished with perfect accuracy with nothing more complex than a tennis ball launcher, a couple of high tech bottle rockets and of course a good computer. Of course perfect accuracy makes it a very nice weapon as well as cargo delivery system, but irrelevant. Either we bloody well grow up, or there is no fucking point.

[Occulus]

22. Fine. Put it in orbit around the moon.

If it impacts, no biggie. And the moon would serve as a better mining platform anyway, since we would only have to adapt current techniques to 1/6 gravity instead of inventing new methods to mine in microgravity.

Hell- mine the moon while we're at it. We would need the resources anyway, and it could serve double duty as a base for perfecting extraterrestrial colonization technologies.

[txlibdem]

23. Re-orbiting the asteroids

That's all we would be doing, just slowing them down to the exact speed and at the exactly proper moment that they end up ensnared by either the Moon's orbit or the Earth's orbit. Calculate it wrong and you could, indeed, send the asteroid careening off into deep space, into the Sun or on a collision course with the Earth or Moon. But we'll put the ESA in charge of it and tell NASA to stick with their little rockets so there will be no danger of that happening.

I wondered about the question of whether it would be easier/cheaper to process the asteroid where it stands and only ship the raw materials we want back versus bringing the whole thing back "home" and messing with it there. If all we wanted were the metals for instance, could we (for instance) pulverize a section of the asteroid then use a powerful magnetic field to gather the metals into a cargo ship. Is it cheaper to ship only the right stuff versus the whole enchilada?

[txlibdem]

24. In support of your argument

Per the WikiPedia:

At 1997 prices, a relatively small metallic asteroid with a diameter of 1 mile (1.6 km) contains more than $20 trillion US dollars worth of industrial and precious metals.<1> In fact, all the gold, cobalt, iron, manganese, molybdenum, nickel, osmium, palladium, platinum, rhenium, rhodium and ruthenium that we now mine from the Earth's crust, and that are essential for economic and technological progress, came originally from the rain of asteroids that hit the Earth after the crust cooled.<2><3> This is because, while asteroids and the Earth congealed from the same starting materials, Earth's massive gravity pulled all such siderophilic (iron loving) elements into the planet's core during its molten youth more than four billion years ago. Initially, this left the (Earth's) crust utterly depleted of such valuable elements. Asteroid impacts re-infused the depleted crust with metals.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asteroid_mining

So, when you think about it, we've always been mining the asteroids.

[pokerfan]

29. always been mining the asteroids

in the same that a man could be considered to be fishing by waiting for fish to jump in his boat. :) Reading further...

In 2004, the world production of iron ore exceeded a billion metric tons.<4> In comparison, a comparatively small M-type asteroid with a mean diameter of 1 km could contain more than two billion metric tons of iron-nickel ore,<5> or two to three times the annual production for 2004. The asteroid 16 Psyche is believed to contain 1.7×1019 kg of nickel-iron, which could supply the 2004 world production requirement for several million years. A small portion of the extracted material would also contain precious metals.

More here: http://www.spacefuture.com/archive/the_technical_and_economic_feasibility_of_mining_the_near_earth_asteriods.shtml">The Technical and Economic Feasibility of Mining the Near-Earth Asteroids

[Odin2005]

19. And here comes the misanthropic BS!

:eyes:

[Kennah]

26. No! It was much cheaper ...

... to bring George W. Bush here.

[Ganja Ninja]

28. It all sound good on paper.

Most of it is just on paper.

[Ready4Change]

30. Do you mean 'to ALLOW building space cities...'

Are you asking about economics, or tech?

Technology-wise, I think we are at the point that we can take some more 'baby steps.' By that I mean we know what is needed to give things some tries, and see what works well and what doesn't. Just the PROCESS of designing the ISS was a learning process. And now that it's up there, we are learning more. Simple things, like toilets, air quality and noise control issues, have raised their heads, while more worrisome issues like power from the solar arrays have gone comparatively smoothly.

In my mind, we need more than the ISS at this point. I'm not a fan of a Mars mission itself, but I am a HUGE proponent of some of the infrastructure we might put into place to make such missions viable. For example, a space platform meant to handle interplanetary vehicles would be a huge boon. Starting such a mission from orbit is much easier than launching it directly from the Earths surface.

We have the technology for these things. No question.

Economics-wise, I don't think we are there. I don't mean the MONEY isn't there. But the competing interests in how to use that money are winning out at this point. Space exploration is only getting a trickle of funding right now, compared to the behemoth of Defense. And other issues have merit as well. We humans, as a species/creature, are too focused and fractured over our internal affairs for our own good. While we argue over the equivalent of what to order for dinner, there's an iceberg growing larger in our windows. For our long term survival we need to spread out from this single rock in space, and ultimately we need to spread out from this island/solar system.

But for now, we should at least take more baby steps.

[txlibdem]

34. That's a valid question: afford or allow?

I guess one might say "enable" perhaps as well. Yeah, I meant to ask if we can finally do it without totally bankrupting our nation or taking all funds from the other important government programs in order to do it. Let's say that, immediately after the Apollo space program, we had followed Werner Von Braun's vision of making huge space stations that create artificial gravity by spinning (sound physics there). We could have done it but the costs would have been astronomical (no pun intended) and if done right, the way it must be done in order to provide both gravity and safety (shielding from solar storms,et.) to the personnel on these space station(s), and it would surely have bankrupted the nation. I don't want to do space at all if we have to give up on the other very important priorities: universal health care for all persons, top notch education for all students regardless of which neighborhood they live, rebuilding our infrastructure to world class standards and beyond, moving forward with great urgency to get off of oil/coal and other fossil fuels and transition to renewables and nuclear power as the only components of our energy mix, increasing spending on research & development to ensure that we do not fall behind again, etc.

My question was more along the lines of: can we colonize space and not neglect the other important things that government should and must do?

I am inclined to say, Yes we can. It won't be a cake walk to squeeze it into the budget. It won't happen at all when the administration is more focused on tax giveaways to the millionaires, of course.

[Demstud]

31. I recall the Biodome being a failure

Have we been successful building a contained self sustaining human ecosystem here on Earth since then?

[Motown_Johnny]

32. Yes, we could do it but it wouldn't be worth it

Unmanned exploration makes much more sense for the foreseeable future


We would spend so much time, energy and money just trying to keep people alive the hard science would suffer.