Space Colonization Thread

[Skroe]

Nations are an archaic entity that will likely dissolve in the next century or so.

Yeah... I wouldn't count on that.

Whoever lands on a body will stake some claim to what they can comfortably use - and to prevent a competition of resources others will be encouraged to land at other locations.

It won't be a scenario where the US puts a dude on Mars, and then claims all of Mars as property of the US.

Correct, however Non-American capability to get to these places will to lag to such a degree that the issue becomes moot.

I mean let's do the basic arthmetic for this. The current NASA plan for going to Mars, released this month, has the first mission launch in 2039 for a 2040 arrival. The second mission launches in 2043. The first mission will be composed of 11 SLS Block II launches (each probably about $800 million per launch before the cost of their payload, so let's call it $2 billion per launch) over a 2 year period starting in 2037 to construct the vehicle in orbit. The second mission in 2043 will require 9 SLS Block II launches over a 2 year period, starting in 2042. After that, missions will require between 5-7 SLS Block II launches in 18 month construction periods in orbit before a 6 month trip.

So we're looking at a few things here:

-The SLS Block II will have to be produced at an industrial rate. It currently takes about 36 months to build a Delta IV heavy. An SLS Block II is four times the size. You have to have a spaceflight industrial base churning out SLS-sized cores at about 6 per year in order to maintain a flight rate of one Mars mission launch every four years. Before payload cost (the things you're actually sending to Mars), that's roughly about $5 billion a year.

Russia cannot do that. China cannot do that. The ESA cannot do that. The US is able to JUST do that.

Furthermore in order to maintain Martian logistics, you'll need regular flights of something like the Falcon Heavy to Mars, every few months, indefinitely.

And that's just to get stuff into orbit. Landin on Mars is an incredible challenge, something only the US can do at the present.


China does engines badly. They've been working on better aerospace engines (of all types) for 30 years, but have comprehensively failed to produce anything comparable to Russia, much less what the US and Europe do. There is no reason to think this will change.

In principle, you're right. In practice, getting to Mars is well beyond the technical means of anyone except the United States, and will remain that way indefinitely.

It might be easiest if we hand ownership of Space to the UN, and then develop a common law of space exploitation. That would let us skip the entire sovereignty debate.

No. And don't ask again.

I'm sorry but the sorry truth is that the vast majority of the human race have absolutely nothing to contribute to space exploration. Europe does. That's pretyt much it. Belize's opinion on space is really not needed. What insights does Botswana have on Mars? What a joke.

My vision of Mars is, for a long period, it become at first an American territory, maybe eventually an American state. If independence is inevitable down the road, like the UK to America, we'll have given birth to something wonderful.

Discussed above. They would likely have total sovereignty over themselves.

Not for centuries. Under current models, the first Mars missions will have rotational crews of 6-9. After the first couple, we'll likely transition to "8-10 year missions" (instead of 3 year ones) It won't grow to be more than 50 people until well into the second decade of the 22nd century most likely. I don't see more than a few hundred on Mars until the 23rd century.

Until the population starts entering the low thousands and people start having children there (after it's been throughly researched by the authorities of course), everyone on Mars will be throughly vetted government employees or contractors.

The issue of governance will arise long, long into the future. Keep in mind, even with the United States, it was nearly three hundred years after the arrival of Columbus into the New World that the US became independent. And much of the rest didn't achieve full independence until the mid 19th and 20th centuries.

[GennGreymane]

I can imagine the space colonies fighting for self rule after some time

[Skroe]

I can imagine the space colonies fighting for self rule after some time

With what? Space Combat like we see in fiction will never happen.

Science Fiction dramatically undersells exactly how big space is, even within the solar system, even with great speeds and a lot of energy.

Even Jupiter, as funny as it sounds, is VERY far away. For the amount of mass you could send to the Moon or Mars, you're able to send hysterically little to Jupiter on the same rocket.

And from there, it gets harder.

It's like I said before, this solar system, has a lot of bodies, but the worthwhile places to visit are, roughly in order

(1) Moon
(2) Mars
(3) Ganymede
(4) Callisto
(5) Titan

and that's pretty much it. Everywhere else are barren wastelands of uneconomical, water-ice rocks, tiny, or dangerously radioactive. This shouldn't be surprising. When colonizing the New World, it's not like cities just sprouted up anywhere. They usually sprouted up someplace that had ease of access for trade, were resource rich, or were strategically valuable.
Mars is much harder than the Moon, but every place after Mars is much harder than it. And much further away.

[Deleted]

Well, you know...

Instead of thinking about how we could terraform other planets or build habitable structures on other planets, how about we start terraforming Earth, and start building clean and habitable structures here? Because, people are living in fucking shacks and twig houses still, and dumbass people are spending hundreds of billions on building machines of war that are completely unnecessary and never see use.

But I mean sure keep dreaming about the Venusian or Martian "space colony" you'll never see in your lifetime, let alone ever get to visit.

[Techno-Druid]

Yeah... I wouldn't count on that.

Correct, however Non-American capability to get to these places will to lag to such a degree that the issue becomes moot.

I mean let's do the basic arthmetic for this. The current NASA plan for going to Mars, released this month, has the first mission launch in 2039 for a 2040 arrival. The second mission launches in 2043. The first mission will be composed of 11 SLS Block II launches (each probably about $800 million per launch before the cost of their payload, so let's call it $2 billion per launch) over a 2 year period starting in 2037 to construct the vehicle in orbit. The second mission in 2043 will require 9 SLS Block II launches over a 2 year period, starting in 2042. After that, missions will require between 5-7 SLS Block II launches in 18 month construction periods in orbit before a 6 month trip.

So we're looking at a few things here:

-The SLS Block II will have to be produced at an industrial rate. It currently takes about 36 months to build a Delta IV heavy. An SLS Block II is four times the size. You have to have a spaceflight industrial base churning out SLS-sized cores at about 6 per year in order to maintain a flight rate of one Mars mission launch every four years. Before payload cost (the things you're actually sending to Mars), that's roughly about $5 billion a year.

Russia cannot do that. China cannot do that. The ESA cannot do that. The US is able to JUST do that.

Furthermore in order to maintain Martian logistics, you'll need regular flights of something like the Falcon Heavy to Mars, every few months, indefinitely.

And that's just to get stuff into orbit. Landin on Mars is an incredible challenge, something only the US can do at the present.


China does engines badly. They've been working on better aerospace engines (of all types) for 30 years, but have comprehensively failed to produce anything comparable to Russia, much less what the US and Europe do. There is no reason to think this will change.

In principle, you're right. In practice, getting to Mars is well beyond the technical means of anyone except the United States, and will remain that way indefinitely.






No. And don't ask again.

I'm sorry but the sorry truth is that the vast majority of the human race have absolutely nothing to contribute to space exploration. Europe does. That's pretyt much it. Belize's opinion on space is really not needed. What insights does Botswana have on Mars? What a joke.

My vision of Mars is, for a long period, it become at first an American territory, maybe eventually an American state. If independence is inevitable down the road, like the UK to America, we'll have given birth to something wonderful.







Not for centuries. Under current models, the first Mars missions will have rotational crews of 6-9. After the first couple, we'll likely transition to "8-10 year missions" (instead of 3 year ones) It won't grow to be more than 50 people until well into the second decade of the 22nd century most likely. I don't see more than a few hundred on Mars until the 23rd century.

Until the population starts entering the low thousands and people start having children there (after it's been throughly researched by the authorities of course), everyone on Mars will be throughly vetted government employees or contractors.

The issue of governance will arise long, long into the future. Keep in mind, even with the United States, it was nearly three hundred years after the arrival of Columbus into the New World that the US became independent. And much of the rest didn't achieve full independence until the mid 19th and 20th centuries.

I'd put my money on private industries to colonize Mars like SpaceX.

[Skroe]

Well, you know...

Instead of thinking about how we could terraform other planets or build habitable structures on other planets, how about we start terraforming Earth, and start building clean and habitable structures here? Because, people are living in fucking shacks and twig houses still, and dumbass people are spending hundreds of billions on building machines of war that are completely unnecessary and never see use.

But I mean sure keep dreaming about the Venusian or Martian "space colony" you'll never see in your lifetime, let alone ever get to visit.

If you make it to 2040, you'll see the first landing on Mars.

Like this _is_ happening. The vehicles are being built. The roadmap is there. The ISS will be gone in 2024 to make budgetary room for it.

http://www.al.com/news/huntsville/in...em_gets_1.html

Attention workers on NASA's Space Launch System (SLS): You appear to be "go" for vacation liftoff this summer. Next year's federal budget now coming together in Washington looks like it will deliver another year of strong funding for the big new rocket.

The House Appropriations Committee this week approved a record $2 billion for SLS, which is being developed in Alabama at the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville. The full House must still give its approval and the budget aligned with the Senate's version.

Senate appropriators have sent a bill to the floor that gives SLS $2.15 billion next year. That's $150 million more than the rocket program got this year.

"This is the kind of commitment and investment America should be making to ensure our space program isn't falling behind the Chinese and other nations," said U.S. Rep. Robert Aderholt (R-Haleyville).

Both budgets show Congress is again rewriting President Obama's space priorities in the last year of his presidency. The White House had requested $1.3 billion for SLS in 2017 and a greater emphasis on Earth science. Overall, the White House wanted to cut NASA by $260 million in 2017.

In their vote this week, House appropriators also approved $1.35 billion for the Orion crew capsule program and funding for three space technology programs sought by Aderholt. Those programs are nuclear thermal propulsion, additive manufacturing (3D printing) and small launch vehicle development. All of those could be useful in a mission to Mars or elsewhere in the solar system.

"If America is not a trailblazer in science and exploration," Aderholt said, "then we will no doubt fall behind other countries. Our country should never surrender the spirit of Lewis and Clark, the Wright brothers, Earhart or Armstrong."

Furthermore we CAN do both. The US Federal Budget is $3.8 trillion a year. All US Government spending comes to $6.7 trillion per year. NASA is about $19.2 billion. The Military Space Program is another $20 billion give or take. We're talking about pennies on the dollar.

There will ALWAYS be pressing earthbound issues. NASA and Space Colonization doesn't exist at the expense of those.

And more to the point, it will be NASA doing it. It's our tax dollars. You're from Finland. Nobody cares what you want. You'll be buying seats, not doing it yourself.

[Yunru]

If you want people in space, you need a good reason to get them there.

If we for example find a liquid dark matter asteroids, that allow us to travel in faster than speed of light--- everyone will jump into a space race.

[Reeve]

If you want people in space, you need a good reason to get them there.

If we for example find a liquid dark matter asteroids, that allow us to travel in faster than speed of light--- everyone will jump into a space race.

Drill baby drill!

[Ripster42]

If you want people in space, you need a good reason to get them there.

If we for example find a liquid dark matter asteroids, that allow us to travel in faster than speed of light--- everyone will jump into a space race.

How about something like this.

[Skroe]

I'd put my money on private industries to colonize Mars like SpaceX.

For logistics yes. Not for the first mission.

I'm a massive believer in SpaceX and Elon Musk. But people are recklessly enthusastic and somewhat forgetful about SpaceX and Musk.

The Falcon Heavy is an impressive vehicle, but it is WELL out of the size and class needed for a Mars Mission. It is less than half the size of a SLS Block II in terms of launch mass, and even smaller in terms of volume. It is also about 4 years behind schedule. That's not a slam against the Falcon Heavy or SpaceX. Space is hard. But one cannot say SpaceX WILL hit it's launch targets with it's future rockets, when it's next, first Post-Falcon 9 rocket, has faced delays. Chances are, it, like every rocket ever, will face modest delays. That's reality. That's life. Furthermore the Raptor engine it needs is getting funded half by the air force and half by SpaceX, and won't fly until around 2024. 1 Raptor will replace 9 Merlin 1Ds on Falcon 9 cores, but it'll need a whole new rocket (the Mars Colonial Transporter) to be Super Heavy lift class. That's deep into the 2030s, at the earliest.

Musk is no fool. Between pushing back the Falcon Heavy to focus on the Falcon 9 Full Thrust, and getting the Air Force to co-fund the Raptor, he's focusing the company on getting a secure, reliable, money pipeline, that is, government national security payloads and telecom companies. But the reality is that this is the priority for him, over Mars, right now, because it ensures SpaceX's financial viability.

The Folks saying that SpaceX will out-rocket the SLS by 2030 are the same folks who were saying the Chinese would return to the Moon by 2018. They're getting excited about new development and giving new players a pass on all the typical shitty things that happen in spaceflight, while holding that record of shittiness against NASA.

Elon Musk himself says that the Falcon (Heavy) is no replacement for the SLS. It's a compliment for it. SpaceX will play an essential role in sustaining a Mars colony economically. But the first mission? NASA has been working on the SLS in one form or another, since 2005 (as the Ares I and Ares V), and Orion since then too. If anyone else started today - and nobody else is - it would take at least a decade, likely more - to get to the point NASA is at now. Going to Mars was always going to be a multi-decade afair. In the 2000s and 2010s we built the rocket. In the 2020s and 2030s we'll build the space transfer vehicles and habs. It spreads the funding out over 25 years.

Sure, we could send people to Mars in about year, if we really had to. You could do it with Atlas Vs, Falcons and Delta IVs. We could have done it with ISS components, the Space Shuttle building the Mars Transit Vehicle, and a propulsion stage. But there is a difference between doing it now and doing right.

[Puupi]

It's like I said before, this solar system, has a lot of bodies, but the worthwhile places to visit are, roughly in order

(1) Moon
(2) Mars
(3) Ganymede
(4) Callisto
(5) Titan

What about Europa?!

[Skroe]

What about Europa?!

The surface of Europa has 540 rem of radiation per day. Astronauts are allowed 25 rems per year.

540 rems will be fatal. Anyone visiting the surface not surrounded by ice, water or lead would be sick in about 2 hours and dead in about 3 days.

Europa is deep in Jupiter's radiation belts. It'll be visited by robots but likely never people. Even the probe headed there in 2022 (the Europa Clipper) will actually be orbiting Jupiter, rather than Europa, in order to swing outside of the radition belts and prolong the mission length. If it orbited Europa, the radiation would fry it's components and solar panels pretty quickly.

The Europa lander that is going with it? Get ready for a $2 billion, 3 day mission, not 12 years like on Mars.

[Gamdwelf]

The surface of Europa has 540 rem of radiation per day. Astronauts are allowed 25 rems per year.

540 rems will be fatal. Anyone visiting the surface not surrounded by ice, water or lead would be sick in about 2 hours and dead in about 3 days.

Europa is deep in Jupiter's radiation belts. It'll be visited by robots but likely never people. Even the probe headed there in 2022 (the Europa Clipper) will actually be orbiting Jupiter, rather than Europa, in order to swing outside of the radition belts and prolong the mission length. If it orbited Europa, the radiation would fry it's components and solar panels pretty quickly.

The Europa lander that is going with it? Get ready for a $2 billion, 3 day mission, not 12 years like on Mars.

Underwater Rover more likely than manned visits though since it might be the next best shot for life to have developed on its own.

[GennGreymane]

With what? Space Combat like we see in fiction will never happen.

Science Fiction dramatically undersells exactly how big space is, even within the solar system, even with great speeds and a lot of energy.

Even Jupiter, as funny as it sounds, is VERY far away. For the amount of mass you could send to the Moon or Mars, you're able to send hysterically little to Jupiter on the same rocket.

And from there, it gets harder.

It's like I said before, this solar system, has a lot of bodies, but the worthwhile places to visit are, roughly in order

(1) Moon
(2) Mars
(3) Ganymede
(4) Callisto
(5) Titan

and that's pretty much it. Everywhere else are barren wastelands of uneconomical, water-ice rocks, tiny, or dangerously radioactive. This shouldn't be surprising. When colonizing the New World, it's not like cities just sprouted up anywhere. They usually sprouted up someplace that had ease of access for trade, were resource rich, or were strategically valuable.
Mars is much harder than the Moon, but every place after Mars is much harder than it. And much further away.

Could be with space combat, could be through resolution, revolt, protest, etc.