Re: Space Travel will save the world

The fundamental cost driver for space travel is the cost of momentum.
Investment in improved engines that reduce the cost of imparting
momentum, results in lower cost, more capable space travel. Since the
velocity change to travel from the surface of the Earth to anywhere in
the solar system is relatively fixed, the effect of lowering the cost
of momentum, has the impact of lowering the cost of maintaining a mass
flow rate between the surface of the Earth and points across the solar
system.

Previously I detailed some of the rich history of space travel
development by humanity. In the first decade of the 20th century, far
ranging thinkers showed how humanity could tap into the unlimited
energy of matter, and achieve travel beyond the Earth.
Experimentalists in the first half of the 20th century reduced these
ideas to practice. The result was a series of innovations that
impacted all the peoples of Earth equally - this isn't surprising
since any technology that transcends the Earth, affects everyone on
the Earth equally.

The development arc from 1950 through 1964 was;

1) small - suborbital payloads - which resulted in nuclear tipped
ICBMs
this brought about a change in warfare, and the end of modern
industrial warfare

2) moderate - orbiting ayloads - which resulted in communications
satellites
this brought about global communications, global sensing, global
navigation

3) large - cislunar payloads -which resulted in Apollo lunar travel
this brought images of Earth from space, and the concepts of
Earth as a single place
giving rise to the environmental movement, and other similar
ideas


Since 1964 development of fundamental imrprovements were halted. This
came in part due to the ambivalence the US government and other
governments have toward rocket and nuclear development. On the one
hand all pay large lip service to research and development and
exploration of frontiers, on the other hand all fear the development
of low cost ICBMs and widespread use of advanced nuclear weapons. As
a result, all schemes to halt the spread of nuclear and missile
proliferation are at odds with schemes to advance low cost high
performance rocketry and space travel. All efforts to bring peace by
the ability to threaten with invasion or destruction, are at odds with
all efforts to establish independent colonies using advanced nuclear
and rocket technology far removed from any control regime. The USA
after all started as a rogue British Colony. There is no guarantee
that our space colonies would owe any allegience toward Earth. In
fact, given the range of outre ideas that were inflamed by our brief
epoch of lunar travel - the environmental movement and the Noetic
Institute - it is quite likely that any independent space colony would
develop notions that are quite at odds with their stay at home
brethren.

The present day war on Terror is a result of our continuing struggle
with these issues. During the Cold War we attempted to maintain peace
by maintaining a large disparity of income, and a large disparity of
capability between us and our prospective enemies. The successful
attacks of 9/11 was a failure of this approach. The poorest nation on
Earth successfully attacked the richest nation on Earth - despite
these disparities. This is a wakeup call that we need to address
motivation rather than capability in ending human conflict.

One approach to ending human conflict is ending frustration of human
desire by using industrial and scientific capacity to raise human
living standards world wide. This has the following proven benefit;

1) lowering reproductive rates - high living standards lower human
reproductive rates below replacement levels
2) lowering propsensity toward violence - high living standards
lower propensity toward violence
3) tame humans arise within a generation - there are distinct
generational differences between
species that are continually frustrated and those that are
raised in a responsive
environment - those not frustrated for a generation -
undergo genetic changes
that make them tame.

So, this gives us a method to approach the human propensity toward
violence, merely raise living standards sufficiently, and maintain
them high for sufficiently long periods, and humanity will change -
much as demonstrated by the silver foxes of Russia -

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

This was shown to exist in humans in the 1920s and 1950s with the
creation of a generation gap. Those frustrated by war, 'spoiled'
their offspring following the war, creating a large difference in
world outlook. This spoiling of children, and creating an
epistimology for peace, is one approach to creating and maintaining
world peace in the modern age;

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

The question, then, is how to achieve this?

The living standards enjoyed by the USA and our Cold War allies can
not be sustained by current levels of material production on Earth.
Increases in the use of energy, food, raw materials, of approximately
11x present outputs are needed. Furthermore, disposal of waste, and
its recycling, create further burderns, that make the living standards
required to achieve this goal of spoiling humanity for peace - seem
unattainable.

The only way out of this quandry is to look beyond the Earth for
energy and resources.

Solar energy arrives on Earth at a rate 171,000x greater than humanity
currently uses energy. The only difficulty is the cost of harvesting
it. The creation of an ultra-low-cost solar panel technology that is
highly efficient, is called for. A system that produces hydrogen and
oxygen from water and sunlight at a cost of $110 per ton of hydrogen
transforms our energy picture - and sets the stage for further
changes. The development arc is;

1) terrestrial solar hydrogen upgrading carbon
2) terrestrial solar hydrogen direct use
3) extra-terrestrial solar hydrogen - direct use
4) extra-terrestrial solar- direct beaming

At first we develop a very low cost, very efficient solar panel
technology. That technology produces hydrogen gas and oxygen gas from
water and sunlight. 30 billion tons of water produces 3.34 billion
tons of hydrogen using 190 billion MWh of DC solar energy. This much
hydrogen displaces all our fossil fuel use. With 550 MW per square
kilometer and an average of 1700 hours of insolation each year -we
require 110 trillion watts of peak solar panels covering 203,000 sq km
of desert lands. At $0.07 per peak watt including all balance of
systems cost, this infrastructure would $7.7 trillion to implement,
and generate $4.0 trillion per year in revenues - using 2007 energy
prices as a marker.

Displacing only coal, natural gas, and residual oil used in stationary
power plants with hydrogen at first, and using additional hydrogen and
oxygen to create gasoline, diesel fuel, and jet fuel, from these
sources, permits us to increase the amount of liquid fuels on Earth by
375% - even while oil production and natural gas production and coal
production decline by 4% per year - while using only 60 trilion watts
of solar panels covering only 100,000 sq km of land.

Focusing on the USA for a minute, replacing the USA's 1.1 billion tons
of coal each year with 177 million tons of hydrogen, and hten using an
additional 113 million tons of hydorgen to create 8 billion barrels of
liquid fuels from that coal - requires only 190 million tons of
hydrogen per year - and requires only 11,600 square kilometers of
solar panels in the Sonoma Desert regions of the USA.

Since the USA consumes 6.8 billion barrels of oil per year, and
imports 5.2 billion barrels of oil per year, the addition of 8 billion
barrels of native production - without any increase in coal use -
means the USA is self sufficient in oil, and exports an a dditoinal
2.8 billion barrels per year - allowing USA to control oil pricing.

A similar analysis of natural gas production, and conversion to liquid
fuels, and a comparable analysis of residual oil and its upgrading
using solar hydrogen to liquid fuels, adds another 2.0 billion barrels
per year to our productive capacity - by adding 4,000 sq km of solar
panels to the total above.

The creation of a heavy lift reusable launcher capable of placing 500
metric tons into GEO - allows the creation of a large inflatable
concentrating mirror that powers a free electron laser system of very
high efficiency - which illuminates existing terrestrial solar arrays
with band gap matched light in the IR portion of the spectrum - to
produce 800 MW of effective output per sq km of solar collector, 8766
hours per year - delivering 7.5x the effective output of the
terrestrial solar array - a total of 8.5x unassisted array. Thus
24,000 sq km of solar panels - assisted by solar power satellites -
provide sufficient output to provide for all the world's energy needs
in the form of hydrogen exports to augment synfuel exports - all
within the continental USA.

Continued expansion of powersat capability provides ultimately direct
beaming of energy to end users on Earth on demand - ending the
dominance of hydrogen.

A network of 660 satellites in 30 orbital planes - connected by open
optical lasers, with phased array anntennae to paint stationary cells
on the ground - provide broadband wireless worldwide. The development
of tele-robotic and tele-presence capabilities through this channel
allow the USA to build large manufacturing sites within the USA, and
use labor from throughout the world - augmenting our strength derived
from oil exporting.

Miniature nuclear pulse units - adapted to propel vehicles throughout
the solar system, have the capacity to send expeditions to the
Asteroid belt and beyond - to recover rich asteroids and return them
to Earth orbit. Once on Earth orbit, large solar powered tele-
robotic mines, smelting plants, fabrication plants - are orbited. The
same technology of remotely operated factories operates in space
giving work to all, and the products created on orbit rain down in GPS
guided capsules that soft land directly in response to end user
requests.

Using this massive productive capacity to produce objects in space,
allows the low cost construction of pressure vessels on orbit. These
are used to house farms, forests and eventually people. The
production of a ring of space farms that send food on demand in
minutes to anyone anywhere on Earth is a good thing. Ditto for the
production of fiber - paper products, wood products, and so forth.
All beyond Earth's biosphere, all without the pollution of terrestrial
production.

The Earth becomes at this point - a large residential area and nature
preserve.

MEMs based rockets - chemically powered, and electrically/photonically
powered from space lasers - create highly reliable, safe, easy to use,
quiet, propulsive skins. Millions of 'PROPELS' - similar to pixels
in a TV screen - provide thrust effects on demand - with very low
mass. Powered by rocket fuels, and laser energy beamed from orbiting
powersats - they transform the transportation industries of Earth.
Ranging in size from a #10 envelope to a super tanker - these
automated low cost ballistic missile systems makes of the Earth a
single village that anyone can span in less than an hour. As this
capacity develops, humanity also has the capacity to achieve orbit
routinely at low cost. Combined with the capacity to make large
numbers of large pressure vessels complete with their own internal
ecologies - gives rise to the space home movement - reducing
population levels on Earth - while improving living conditions for
everyone off-world.

A propulsive element propel - consists of three orthogonally situated
MEMs based nozzles with their vector sum forming a normal to a
propulsive skin. By varying the mass flow rate through each of the
three nozzles, a continuously varying thrust vector may be applied to
that point on the surface. Millions of elements operating
simultaneously produce a wide range of propulsive effects.


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