Posted on 12/15/2003 6:58:48 PM PST by B-Chan
Ad Astra per Ardua: To The Stars Through Hard Work ___ A Plan For The American Conquest of Space by B-Chan
The one hundredth anniversary of powered flight is upon us. On 17 December, the world will celebrate the anniversary of the Wright brothers’ historic first flight at Kill Devil Hills on the Outer Banks of North Carolina. However, in addition to celebrating a monumental event from the past, America will look to the future on that date: a major policy speech on the future of the U.S. space program is expected to be delivered by President Bush. Although rumors about the many possible policy directions this speech may outline have been orbiting the Internet for weeks, no one really knows what the President is going to propose on that day. Will he advocate a Mars mission? A return to the moon? Or just more of the same old NASA thing?
As I said, nobody knows for sure. (Personally, I’m holding out for the Moon.) But before the Big Speech comes, I’d like to take this opportunity to present my own space program — a step-by-step analysis of the challenge of moving America and the human race into the heavens in a big way. I’m sure that my plan contains many flaws. So did the design of the Wright Flyer, the Soviets’ first Soyuz capsule, the Apollo 13 spacecraft, and the Shuttles Challenger and Columbia. Despite this fact, however, it is my belief that this plan, or something similar to it, is the way that the first true spacefaring civilization will approach the challenge of space.
The BitPig Space ProgramTechnology and psychology are the keys to space. Cheap access to space coupled with a settlement mindset will enable us to pioner the New Frontier as our forbears pioneered this continent. Advances in space transportation technology will eventually reduce the price of a capable spacecraft to something a well-financed family or group of settlers can afford; once we have our “cosmic Conestogas” and “space Studebakers”, the great, lifeless “desert” of the universe will open wide for our descendants, just as the prairies of the “Great American Desert” opened to our ancestors over a century ago. The riches and freedom of the solar system will then be free for the taking by those willing to run the risks and do the hard work of taming this new wilderness.Goal
To create markets for raw materials, commodities, manufactured goods, and services in space.Objections
1. Human populations create demand for raw materials, commodities, manufactured goods, and servicesTherefore, no market can exist on Earth for goods etc. produced in space.2. Wherever demand exists, markets will form, given the physical possibility of suppliers meeting the demand profitably.
3. Due to the laws of physics and current space travel technologies, the cost of extracting, producing, manufacturing and transporting raw materials, commodities, or finished goods from space-based suppliers to Earth-based buyers will always be higher than the cost of extracting, producing, manufacturing, and transporting the same goods on Earth.
4. Due to the higher costs involved, space-based suppliers will be unable to meet demands from Earth-based buyers profitably.
However
1. Human populations create demand for raw materials, commodities, manufactured goods, and servicesTherefore, no market can exist in Space for goods etc. produced on Earth.2. Wherever demand exists, markets will form, given the physical possibility of suppliers meeting the demand profitably.
3. Due to the laws of physics and current space travel technologies, the cost of extracting, producing, manufacturing and transporting raw materials, commodities, or finished goods from space-based suppliers to space-based buyers will always be lower than the cost of extracting, producing, manufacturing, and transporting the same goods from Earth to space.
4. Due to the higher costs involved, Earth-based suppliers will be unable to meet demands from space-based populations profitably.
Conclusion
1. Without viable populations in space, space-based markets will not form.Therefore, in order to achieve the Goal, viable populations in space must be created.
Proposal
1. The New Frontier Project. Create a government-backed long-term initiative to permanently settle the ”New Frontier” of space. Use historical metaphors ( Lewis and Clark, etc.) and appeals to the pioneer spirit of America to create public support for the program.All this done well, the Goal can be achieved in our lifetimes.2. Create and establish a Cabinet level U.S. Department of Space Exploration and Colonization (US/SPACE) to oversee and manage the New Frontier Project. Establish a uniformed United States Space Service consisting of an Exploration Command (“X-Com”), a Colonization Command (“C-Com”) and a United States Space Guard to oversee deep-space exploration, extraterrestrial colonial affairs, and space military activities respectively. Disestablish NASA and recreate it as an R&D operation similar to DARPA operating within US/SPACE.
3. Establish a space legal regime.. Legislatively establish the U.S. Extraterrestrial Territories on the Moon and other planetary bodies; extend legal jurisdiction to these Territories, backed by U.S. courts.
4. Raise private capital backed by public revenues (e.g. “U.S. Space Bonds”) for initial investments in space transport technology, colonization infrastructure, R&D, and military activities.
5. Create congressionally-chartered private colonization corporations (e.g. “The United States South Lunar Company”); begin recruitment of employees and shareholders to emigrate to the colonies.
6. Create sources of public and private capital to allow start-up space businesses to purchase equipment and labor. Grant tax credits and guaranteed contracts to resource extraction, manufacturing, shipping, and service corporations willing to invest in space operations.
7. Invest heavy federal and private funding into R&D. Make technological advances in space techhnology available to private space industries free of charge.
(Excerpt) Read more at cheapdisposable.com ...
The fundamental problem is living at the bottom of a 30,000 ft/s gravity well.
With rockets, this will always lead to $10K per pound, FOB LEO. OK, maybe some genius will get it to $1K per pound.
It isn't ever going to be ~$1 per pound...unless.
Unless we stop relying on rockets. As I have proposed, stop developing new rockets. Keep using the ones we have. Embark upon (say) a 50-year, $500-billion project to build a space elevator or "Skyhook". Once one of those is up, the Solar System is ours.
IMHO (as a 28-year aerospace engineer) this is the only hope humanity has of getting off this rock.
--Boris
That's a myth propagated by NASA,Boeing,LockMart etc.
Uh, thanks.
Please note that I said nothing about using rockets to get out of Earth’s gravity well. In my opinion, the “space Conestogas” will be space-only ships that will depart for the frontier from a “railhead” in orbit — in other words, from a space elevator. I am an enthusiast of the various proposed space elevator projects; in fact, I think these will be the key to space.
One mistake the backers of these projects make, however, is their use of the term “elevator”; I think that a better metaphor for such a technology is that quintessentially American institution, the railroad. By thinking of the space elevator as a vertical railroad, we replace the somewhat scary idea of riding a gigantic elevator into the blackness with the stirring image of a gaily-painted Iron Horse chug-chugging its way across the beautiful landscape of the West. People generally dislike elevators, but everybody loves trains!
Just as the great railrods of the 19th Century opened the frontier to settlement, I believe that by creating a “railway to the stars”, we could enable settlers to transport their goods and families to a spaceport in geosynnchronous orbit — a sort of Independence, Missouri of space. There, the settlers could load themselves and their tools onto spacecraft built in a nearby shipyard (or on the Moon, or at L4 or L5) and set off for their claim among the moons, planets, and asteroids.
(Since these ships would not have to be built for atmospheric entry, they could be built out of lightweight materials like aluminum, carbon fiber, or even cellulose —wood and paper! — and powered by low-thrust, continuous-operation engines — ion thrusters, VASIMIR plasma rockets, or even magnetohydrodynamic or solar sails. Such “paper spaceships” could be built from prefab modular components, making them much cheaper to own and operate than comparable heavy, Earth-built spacecraft.)
A side benefit to space railroad/space elevator research is the gain in industrial techniques for producing and using carbon nonotubes on a large scale. These tiny fibers would have a host of uses other than for space travel. For example, the same fibers proposed for use in the space elevator project would easily be strong enough to hold up huge structures on Earth — something along the lines of a trans-Atlantic suspension bridge connecting Europe and America, say. It might be smart to build railroad suspension bridges between the continents using the carbon nanotubes first as a kind of practice for building the railroad to orbit. Not only would we gain valuable experience in building megastructures using nanomaterials, but the revenues generated from a wordwide network of high-speed rail lines might very well be sufficient to finance the construction of several space elevators. (The global railnet could later be connected to the space railroads, enabling travelers to board trains in their hometowns and ride all the way to orbit!)
“Attention, passengers: the Pacific & Orbital Railways‘ ‘Twenty-First Century LImited’ Express to EarthPort and Independence Staton is now boarding on Platform Seven! All aboooooard!”
Prove this remarkable assertion.
--Boris
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