Re: Space based VLBI - next steps beyond Hubble

I disagree with the comment that space colonization will not save
Earth in the short term. The same technology that allows us to
support large numbers of people off-world, will allow us to support
large numbers of people on THIS world, without destroying our
environment.

I tried to show that with the shipping numbers culled from the world's
trading system. Our industry currently ships about 1 on per person
per year on this planet over the oceans - not including oil and coal.
Americans use about 4 tons per person per year not including oil and
coal. Millionaires use about 20tons per person per year not including
oil and coal.

Our experience with nuclear submarines, and antarctica, ISS, the space
shuttle, and Mir, as well as Skylab, suggest that off-world you add
air and water and food to these totals, and add one ton per person per
year.

Now Peter Glaser first proposed solar power satellites to provide
energy on Earth back in 1968.

Glaser, Peter E.. "Power from the Sun: Its Future". Science Magazine,
22 November 1968 Vol 162, Issue 3856, Pages 857-861.

Glaser, Peter E.. "METHOD AND APPARATUS FOR CONVERTING SOLAR RADIATION
TO ELECTRICAL POWER". United States Patent 3,781,647 December 25,
1973.

I have developed this concept a little further using some of my own
innovations to reduce terrestrial reciever costs by adapting solar
panel arrays to work as recievers, by reducing total mass on orbit
using thin film concentrators, and increasing system utility by
creating synthetic hydrocarbons, and hydrogen fuel from water as well
as electricity using the energy captured.

To those who say this undercuts the need to build a large human
presence beyond Earth, I reply this makes it economical for private
sector to invest heavily in post-Nova class (1,000 ton to LEO) fully
reusable multi-stage launchers. It also taps into the $4 trillion and
growing energy market for planet Earth while reducing and eventually
eliminating air pollution, and creating a strong basis for industrial
growth worldwide.

Even so we can do far far more than merely gather solar energy in
space.

In 1969 Gerard O'Neill taught a course in large vacuum chamber
design. O'Neill designed vacuum chambers that were miles in extent
for FermiLab, CERN and SSC. To make things interesting for his
students, following the moon landing, O'Neill reversed the signs on
the pressure equations and asked his students to solve the structural
requirements for large pressure vessels in space. Several
architectures were proposed by his students, and many felt that living
in space would be desireable. He created a continuing study group and
first published his findings in Physics Today in 1974, which created
quite a stir. He eventually wrote a book on the subject High
Frontiers.

Residential use of large pressure vessels on orbit is a low value
application. Higher value applications exist. These include,
encasing asteroids to assist in easy mining of materials in bulk,
processing materials in bulk on orbit in zero or micro gravity (little
or no spin) as well as growing food fiber and medicines on orbit in
quite modest pressure vessels built in large number from materials on
orbit.

In 1968, again during the Apollo era, MIT professor, L.A. Klieman led
a group of aerospace engineering students in the study of deflecting
the asteroid Icarus.

http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1969Icar...10..447T

The group showed that it was possible to impart significant and highly
controllable velocity inputs to the asteroid using a variation of the
nuclear pulse technique - i.e. evaporating a well defined layer of
asteroidal material causing it to be deflagrated and ejected in a well
defined direction at high speed.

While most of the application of this technique in the modern context
has focused on avoiding another KT boundary event for humans, a more
interesting, compelling and near term use for this technology is to
CAPTURE rich asteroids and bring them into orbit around Earth.

Why bring them into Earth orbit. Two reasons;

proximity to market
proximity to labor

Within 1/5th light second of Earth, real time telerobotics is
feasible.

http://robonaut.jsc.nasa.gov/
http://www.honda.com/asimo/?ef_id=1097:3:s_9790a13693414ec32f4f3d99a8976d9c_841609828:EwRz7tB6B2YAAE59EYUAAAAE:20080419160816

For less cost than a space suit, and with Honda's Asimo, for less cost
than an automobile, a human being living anywhere on Earth may work
anywhere else at any job.

This includes MEO.

We are all familiar with GPS missile and bomb guidance technology that
can bring a warhead within inches of its desired target even JDAM
enabled dumb bombs. A variant of this same technology may be used to
precisely deliver to customers worldwide, products made on orbit and
launched by solar powered electromagnetic cannon or rail gun from an
orbiting satellite.

Finally in 1957 Stanislaw Ulam developed the idea of nuclear pulse
propulsion. Modern versions can be entirely free of fissionable
materials according to a now declassified 1968 air-force study. Even
so, I can imagine no higher better use for our weapons grade uranium
and plutonium than to enact an enhanced nuclear non proliferation
treaty, and convert all our inventory of nuclear weapons and nuclear
weapons stockpiles, into non-threatening fusion impulse unit triggers
to sustain an intense period of interplanetary expansion - sustained
by more advanced fission free units flying the same spacecraft.

The important thing to realize, is that;

these technologies are well defined and within our grasp today
they have immediate economic benefit
they have immediate environmental benefit
they have immediate geopolitical benefit.

So, with these ideas in mind, I submit that its not colonies on Mars
or the Moon that will save Earth short term, but it is moving our
industrial base off world and supporting Earth's burgeoning population
with off-world resources that will save Earth short term.

Here is a program that I am working on;

1) develop low-cost solar panel technology and use it to make
synthetic hydrocarbons.
2) build a nova-class reusable launcher to orbit a comsat network
providing global wireless internet
3) establish banking and telerobotic services for US based factorie
and mines
4) build 'super' nova-class reusable launcher to orbit powersat
network creating wireless powernet
5) beam bandgap matched laser energy to existing solar panel arrays
increasing output 16x
6) use spare capacity to put city on the moon and mars, and explore
outer solar system
7) develop nuclear pulse spacecraft to expand moon and mars
population
8) adapt nuclear pulse technology to capture rich small bodies,
bringing them to MEO
9) use nuclear pulse spacecraft to loft telerobotic factories to
captured small bodies
10) build up space based infrastructure
a) mines
b) smelting/processing
c) industrial goods
d) products
e) farms (food)
f) forests (fiber)
g) space homes
h) mobile space homes
i) grounded space homes (moon and mars)
11) adapt powersats for near solar surface operation
beam energy across the solar system to where its needed
12) laser powered MEMs based propulsive skins (spaceship in every
garage)

and so on and so forth..

At the point the mass flow rates increase to about 1% of the Earth's
atmosphere, the clear development arc breaks up into multiple flows of
equal value, as off-world development becomes as complex logistically
as any development on Earth.

The point is, that within 15 years - if we had the will to do so -we
could transform life on Earth creating on this world two billion high
quality homes spread across the Earth's entire surface wherever people
wanted to live, supported and connected by personal ballistic
transport, and off world infrastructure - all within a vast nature
preserve.

My game plan is to get this all done before I turn 75.

After that, who knows what we might do next?

The sad thing is, we could have done this already, and avoided much of
the turmoil and strife of the past 40 years.


.

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