Category Archives: Moon Colonization

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THE FUTURE OF LUNAR DEVELOPMENT

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In honor of Mandela Day, a "Peace Crater" in the Lunar Lake of Dreams has been dedicated to humanitarian and statesman Nelson Mandela. [Click here]

CONFIRMED WATER FOUND ON THE MOON: Critical to the hope of sustaining life on the Moon, researchers have now confirmed that water does exist on the Lunar surface. [Click here]

The renowned newsman Walter Cronkite has been honored with the naming of a crater in his honor adjacent to the 1969 landing site of Apollo 11, near craters previously named for astronauts Armstrong, Aldrin and Collins. [Click here]

Yasser Rehman, Tom Cruise's next-door neighbor (on the Moon, that is), is profiled in India's leading magazine as a budding Lunar entrepreneur. [Click here]

Luna Society votes unanimously to designate a Lunar crater for Michael Jackson (formerly Posidonius J) in honor of the legendary entertainer and prominent Moon property owner. [Click here]

The Lunar Embassy's Canadian franchisee, a fugitive wanted on fraud charges, is arrested outside a Las Vegas casino; had gambled with "moon owner" Dennis Hope in Las Vegas prior to disappearance.[Click here]

The organizers of the Kennedy II Lunar Exploration Project have announced that they will accept financial support from the Lunar Republic Society and its partners as part of a $3.5-billion effort toward a commercial mission to build settlements on the Moon. [Click here]

Nearly 40 years after the Apollo astronauts walked on the Moon's surface, the European Smart-1 space probe was launched to investigate the Lunar far side in a mission that could finally answer questions about the origin of Earth's closest neighbor. [Click here]

The head of the European Space Agency's Smart-1 Lunar mission says that human settlement of the Moon will be technologically possible within two decades if political roadblocks are cleared. [Click here]

The International Astronomical Union has announced that it will postpone designating Lunar craters to commemorate the fallen crew of the Space Shuttle Columbia (STS 107) for three years. [Click here]

The International Astronomical Union unanimously votes to vacate the designation of a crater named after a suspected Nazi war criminal following an inquiry by the Lunar Republic Society. [Clickhere]

The most comprehensive Lunar atlas ever released online to the public is now available to everyone. Get your first look ... and don't forget to pick up your full version on CD-ROM! [Clickhere]

Searching for information on lunar mineral resources? Looking for the history of lunar exploration? When's the next full moon? You'll find what your looking for, including maps, photographs, reference materials and links, in our extensive storehouse of lunar facts and figures! [Clickhere]

If it's Lunar, it's available from The Lunar Shops! The official retailer of the Luna Society offers books, globes, maps, posters ... even your own acre of land on the Moon. Whether you are into astronomy, science fiction or if you're simply seeking a great gift idea, a stroll down our aisles will lead to just what you are looking for! [Clickhere]

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Luna Society International - Official Website Of The Moon ...

It's official: There's water ice on the moon, and lots of it. When melted, the water could potentially be used to drink or to extract hydrogen for rocket fuel.

NASA's LCROSS probe discovered beds of water ice at the lunar south pole when it impacted the moon last month, mission scientists announced today. The findings confirm suspicions announced previously, and in a big way.

"Indeed, yes, we found water. And we didn't find just a little bit, we found a significant amount," Anthony Colaprete, LCROSS project scientist and principal investigator from NASA's Ames Research Center at Moffett Field, Calif.

The LCROSS probe impacted the lunar south pole at a crater called Cabeus on Oct. 9. The $79 million spacecraft, preceded by its Centaur rocket stage, hit the lunar surface in an effort to create a debris plume that could be analyzed by scientists for signs of water ice.

Those signs were visible in the data from spectrographic measurements (which measure light absorbed at different wavelengths, revealing different compounds) of the Centaur stage crater and the two-part debris plume the impact created. The signature of water was seen in both infrared and ultraviolet spectroscopic measurements.

"We see evidence for the water in two instruments," Colaprete said. "And that's what makes us really confident in our findings right now."

How much?

Based on the measurements, the team estimated about 100 kilograms of water in the view of their instruments ? the equivalent of about a dozen 2-gallon buckets ? in the area of the impact crater (about 66 feet, or 20 meters across) and the ejecta blanket (about 60 to 80 meters across), Colaprete said.

"I'm pretty impressed by the amount of water we saw in our little 20-meter crater," Colaprete said.

"What's really exciting is we've only hit one spot. It's kind of like when you're drilling for oil. Once you find it one place, there's a greater chance you'll find more nearby," said Peter Schultz, professor of geological sciences at Brown University and a co-investigator on the LCROSS mission.

This water finding doesn't mean that the moon is wet by Earth's standards, but is likely wetter than some of the driest deserts on Earth, Colaprete said. And even this small amount is valuable to possible future missions, said Michael Wargo, chief lunar scientist for Exploration Systems at NASA Headquarters.

Scientists have suspected that permanently shadowed craters at the south pole of the moon could be cold enough to keep water frozen at the surface based on detections of hydrogen by previous moon missions. Water has already been detected on the moon by a NASA-built instrument on board India's now defunct Chandrayaan-1 probe and other spacecraft, though it was in very small amounts and bound to the dirt and dust of the lunar surface.

Water wasn't the only compound seen in the debris plumes of the LCROSS impact.

"There's a lot of stuff in there," Colaprete said. What exactly those other compounds are hasn't yet been determined, but could include organic materials that would hint at comet impacts in the past.

More questions

The findings show that "the lunar poles are sort of record keepers" of lunar history and solar system history because these permanently-shadowed regions are very cold "and that means that they tend to trap and keep things that encounter them," said Greg Delory, a senior fellow at the Space Sciences Laboratory and Center for Integrative Planetary Sciences at the University of California, Berkeley. "So they have a story to tell about the history of the moon and the solar system climate."

"This is ice that's potentially been there for billions of years," said Doug Cooke, associate administrator at Exploration Systems Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington, D.C.

The confirmation that water exists on the moon isn't the end of the story though. One key question to answer is where the water came from. Several theories have been put forward to explain the origin of the water, including debris from comet impacts, interaction of the lunar surface with the solar wind, and even giant molecular clouds passing through the solar system, Delory said.

Scientists also want to examine the data further to figure out what state the water is in. Colaprete said that based on initial observations, it is likely water ice is interspersed between dirt particles on the lunar surface.

Some other questions scientists want to answer are what kinds of processes move, destroy and create the water on the surface and how long the water has been there, Delory said.

Link to Chandrayaan?

Scientists also are looking to see if there is any link between the water observed by LCROSS and that discovered by Chandrayaan-1.

"Their observation is entirely unique and complementary to what we did," Colaprete said. Scientists still need to work out whether the water observed by Chandrayaan-1 might be slowly migrating to the poles, or if it is unrelated.

Bottom line, the discovery completely changes scientists' view of the moon, Wargo said.

The discovery gives "a much bigger, potentially complicated picture for water on the moon" than what was thought even just a few months ago, he said. "This is not your father's moon; this is not a dead planetary body."

Let's go?

NASA plans to return astronauts to the moon by 2020 for extended missions on the lunar surface. Finding usable amounts of ice on the moon would be a boon for that effort since it could be a vital local resource to support a lunar base.

"Water really is one of the constituents of one of the most powerful rocket fuels, oxygen and hydrogen," Wargo said.

The water LCROSS detected "would be water you could drink, water like any other water," Colaprete said. "If you could clean it, it would be drinkable water."

The impact was observed by LCROSS's sister spacecraft, the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, as well as other space and ground-based telescopes.

The debris plume from the impacts was not seen right away and was only revealed a week after the impact, when mission scientists had had time to comb through the probe's data.

NASA launched LCROSS ? short for Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite ? and LRO in June.

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'Significant Amount' of Water Found on Moon - Space.com

Careful engineering and cost analysis shows we can build pleasant, self-sufficient dwelling places in space within the next two decades, solving many of Earth's problems.

New ideas are controversial when they challenge orthodoxy, but orthodoxy changes with time, often surprisingly fast. It is orthodox, for example, to believe that Earth is the only practical habitat for Man, and that the human race is close to its ultimate size limits. But I believe we have now reached the point where we can, if we so choose, build new habitats far more comfortable, productive and attractive than is most of Earth.

Although thoughts about migration into space are as old as science fiction, the technical basis for serious calculation did not exist until the late 1960's. In addition, a mental "hangup" the fixed idea of planets as colony sites appears to have trapped nearly everyone who has considered the problem, including, curiously enough, almost all science-fiction writers. In recent months I learned that the space pioneer Konstantin Tsiolkowsky, in his dreams of the future, was one of the first to escape that hangup.

By chance, and initially almost as a joke, I began some calculations on the problem in 1969, at first as an exercise for the most ambitious students in an introductory physics course. As sometimes happens in the hard sciences, what began as a joke had to be taken more seriously when the numbers began to come out right. There followed several years of frustrating attempts to get these studies published.

Friends advised that I take my ideas "to the people" in the form of physics lectures at universities. The positive response (especially from students) encouraged me to dig harder for the answers to questions about meteoroid damage, agricultural productivity, materials sources, economics and other topics. The results of that study indicate that

How can colonization take place? It is possible even with existing technology, if done in the most efficient ways. New methods are needed, but none goes beyond the range of present-day knowledge. The challenge is to bring the goal of space colonization into economic feasibility now, and the key is to treat the region beyond Earth not as a void but as a culture medium, rich in matter and energy. To live normally, people need energy, air, water, land and gravity. In space, solar energy is dependable and convenient to use; the Moon and asteroid belt can supply the needed materials, and rotational acceleration can substitute for Earth's gravity.

Space exploration so far, like Antarctic exploration before it, has consisted of short-term scientific expeditions, wholly dependent for survival on supplies brought from home. If, in contrast, we use the matter and energy available in space to colonize and build, we can achieve great productivity of food and material goods. Then, in a time short enough to be useful, the exponential growth of colonies can reach the point at which the colonies can be of great benefit to the entire human race.

To show that we are technically able to begin such a development now, this discussion will be limited to the technology of the 1970's, assuming only those structural materials that already exist. Within a development that may span 100 years, this assumption is unrealistically conservative. We shall look at the individual space communities their structure and appearance and the activities possible for their inhabitants, their relation to the space around them, sources of food, travel between communities as well as to Earth, the economics of the colonies and plans for their growth. As is usual in physics, it is valuable to consider limiting cases; for this study, the limits are an eventual full-size space community on a scale established by the strength of materials, and a first model, for which cost estimates can reasonably be made. The goals of the proposal will be clearer if we first discuss the large community.

A cylindrical habitat

The geometry of each space community is fairly closely defined if all of the following conditions are required: normal gravity, normal day and night cycle, natural sunlight, an earthlike appearence, efficient use of solar power and of materials. The most effective geometry satisfying all of these conditions appears to be a pair of cylinders. The economics of efficient use of materials tends to limit their size to about four miles in diameter, and perhaps about 16 miles in length. (See figure 1.) In these cylinder pairs, the entire land area is devoted to living space, parkland and forest, with lakes, rivers, grass, trees, animals and birds, an environment like most attractive parts of Earth; agriculture is carried on elsewhere. The circumference is divided into alternating strips of land area "valleys") and window area ("solars"). The rotation period is two minutes, and the cylinder axes are always pointed toward the Sun.

Figure 1. Section of a space-community main cylinder (top). The circumference is divided into alternating strips of land area (valleys) and window area (solars). Although the space-community valleys offer new landscaping opportunities and architectural possibilities, it is reassuring to note that certain Earth features can be recreated: the side view of a cylinder end cap (bottom) includes a mountain profile taken from an aerial photograph of a section of the Grand Teton range in Wyoming.

Because the Moon is a rich source both of titanium and of aluminum, it is likely that these metals will be used extensively in the colonies. For conservatism, though, the calculation of the cylinder structure has been based on the use of steel cables, to form "longerons" (longitudinal members carrying the atmospheric forces on the end caps) and circumferential bands (carrying the atmospheric force and the spin-induced weights of the ground, of the longerons and of themselves). For details of this calculation and the assumptions it includes, see the box [below]. The steel cables are bunched to form a coarse mesh in the window areas. The bands there subtend a visual angle of 2.3 x10-4 radians, about equal to the diffraction limit for the sunlight-adapted human eye, and so are nearly invisible. The windows themselves are of glass or plastic, subdivided into small panels.

Steel structure

For the structure, steel cables are assumed to be formed into longerons (average thickness rL) and circular bands (average thickness rB). The value of rL required is

rL = Ro/2T

where R is the cylinder radius, o the atmospheric pressure and T the tension. For land density L and depth xL, and bands of density F, the total equivalent internal pressure pT is

pT = o + LxLg + FrBg + FrLg

To solve for pT we note that

rB = pTR/T

so that

pT = (o + gLxL + gFR/T)/(1 -gFR/T)

For an average soil depth of 150 cm, with an average density of 1.5 gm per cc,

po = gLxL = 1.23 x 105 newtons/m2

To arrive at a conservative value for T, we note that half a century ago, the working stress for suspension-bridge cables was 70,000 to 80,000 pounds per square inch [ref 1]. At that time, D. B. Steinman [ref 1] argued for the use of stresses over 100,000 psi. If we use 1920's steels, hardened to bring the yield point to 90% of the ultimate strength, and work at 75% of the yield point, the working stress can be 152,000 psi. If we take T as 150,000 psi and R as 3200 meters, the averaged surface mass density is 7.5 tons per square meter.

In the window (solar) areas, the longerons can be 0.8-meter cables in stacks of four at 14-meter intervals. The bands can be in the same arrangement, but with a 1.5-meter diameter, and the mesh transparency will then be 84%. Considerably larger values of R would result from the extensive use of titanium in the structure, together with a thinner layer of earth.

There is no sharp upper limit on the size of a space-community cylinder; with increasing size, though, a larger fraction of the total mass is in the form of supporting cables. The figure 3200 meters for radius R is somewhat arbitrary. Economy would favor a smaller size; use of high-strength materials, or a strong desire for an even more earthlike environment, would favor a larger. Independent of size, the apparent gravity is earth-normal, and the air composition as well as the atmospheric pressure are those of sea level on Earth. For R equal to 3200 meters, the atmospheric depth is that of an Earth location at 3300 meters above sea level, an altitude where the sky is blue and the climate habitable: At any radius r within the cylinder we have

p = poe-a(R2-r2)

where

a gpo/2Rpo = (1/2R)(1.2 x10-4/meter)

The length of a day in each community is controlled by opening and closing the main mirrors that rotate with the cylinders. The length of day then sets the average temperature and seasonal variation within the cylinder. Each cylinder can be thought of as a heat sink equivalent to 3 x108 tons of water; for complete heat exchange, the warnup rate in full daylight would be about 0.7 deg C per hour. As on Earth, the true warmup rate is higher because the ground more than a few centimeters below the surface does not follow the diurnal variation.

Bird and animal species that are endangered on Earth by agricultural and industrial chemical residues may find havens for growth in the space colonies, where insecticides are unnecessary, agricultural areas are physically separate from living areas, and industry has unlimited energy for recycling.

As we can see in figure 1, it is possible to recreate certain Earth features: the mountain profile is taken from an arieal photograph of a section of the Grand Teton range in Wyoming. The calculated cloud base heights as seen in the figure are typical of summer weather on Earth: For a dry adiabatic lapse rate of 3.1 deg per 300 meters and a dew-point lapse rate of 0.56 deg per 300 meters, relative humidity and a temperature range between zero and 32C, the cloud base heights range between 1100 and 1400 meters.

Environmental control

The agricultural areas are separate from the living areas, and each one has the best climate for the particular crop it is to grow. Gravity, atmosphere and insolation are earthlike in most agricultural cylinders, but there is no attempt there to simulate an earthlike appearence. Selected seeds in a sterile, isolated environment initiate growth, so that no insecticides or pesticides are needed. (The evolution time for infectious organism is long, and resterilization of a contaminated agricultural cylinder by heating would not be difficult.) All food can be fresh, because it is grown only 20 miles from the point of use. The agricultural cylinders can be evenly distributed in seasonal phase, so that at any given time several of them are at the right month for harvesting any desired crop.

Figure 2 shows side and end views of a space community as a complete ecosystem. The main mirrors are made of aluminum foil and are planar. Moving these mirrors varies the angle at which sunlight hits the valleys (controlling the diurnal cycle), and the Sun appears motionless in the sky, as it does on Earth. The solar power stations, which consist of paraboloidal mirrors, boiler tubes and conventional steam-turbine electric generators, can provide the community with sufficient power, easily up to ten times the power per person now used (10 kw) in highly industrialized regions [ref 2].For such energy-rich conditions (120 kw per person) the power needed for a cylinder housing 100,000 people is 12,000 megawatts: The solar power incident on a cylinder end cap is 36,000 megawatts, adequate if the thermal efficiency is 33%. Extra power plants near the agricultural ring would be needed for higher population density. Waste heat is sent into space by infrared radiators of low directionality.

Figure 2. Space community as a whole is seen in side (top) and end (bottom) views For the end view, 37 of the 72 agricultural cylinders in a ring are shown; the ring does not rotate as a whole. Note the lines of symmetry in both sections of the figure.

The communities are protected from cosmic rays by the depth of the atmosphere and by the land and steel supporting structure, the bands and longerons being distributed where visual transparency is unnecessary. Meteoroid damage should not be a serious danger. Most meteoroids are of cometary rather than asteroidal origin and are dust conglomerates, possibly bound by frozen gases [ref 3]; a typical meteoroid is more like a snowball than like a rock. Spacecraft sensors have collected abundant and consistent data on meteoroids in the range 10-6 to 1 gram, and the Apollo lunar seismic network is believed to have 100% detection efficiency for meteoroids [ref 4] above 10 kg: Data from these sources are consistent with a single distribution law.

The Prairie Network sky-camera data [ref 5], after substantial correction for assumed luminous efficiency, agree with data from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration for 10-gm meteoroids. The spacecraft and seismic data indicate a mean interval of about one-million years for a strike by a heavy (one ton) meteoroid on a space community of cross section 1000 square kilometers. Even such a strike should produce only local damage if the structure is well designed. For 100-gram meteoroids, the mean interval for a strike is about three years. From the combined viewpoints of frequency and of momentum carried, the size range from one to ten grams may need the most care in window design and repair methods. For total breakage of one window panel, Daniel Villani at Princeton has calculated a leakdown time of about 300 years. Meteoroid-damage control is, then, a matter of sensing and of regular minor repair rather than of sudden emergencies.

Axial rotation and transport

A key element in the design of the space colony is the coupling of two cylinders by a tension cable and a compression tower to form a system that has zero axial angular momentum and is therefore able to maintain its axis pointed toward the Sun without the use of thrusters. The force and torque diagram for this arrangement is seen in figure 3. To accelerate the cylinders up to the required rotational speed, static torque is transmitted through the compression framework that joins the two cylinders of a pair. For a spin-up time of three years, a constant 560,000 horsepower is needed; this is 3% of the generator capacity of a cylinder. After spinup, the same motors can provide maintenance power for frictional losses and for attitude control about the spin axis. Each cylinder's angular momentum is 1.5 x1018 kg2 rad per sec; the torque needed to precess this angular momentum once each year is 3 x1011 newton meters, corresponding to a constant force of 1200 tons on a 26-km lever arm.

The phase difference of seasons between the two cylinders permits "seasonal counterpoint," midsummer in one cylinder during midwinter in the other. Travel between the two requires no power and only nine minutes of time. They are only 90 km apart, and engineless vehicles can unlock from the outer surface of one cylinder at a preset time, move in free flight with the tangential velocity (180 meters per sec or 400 miles per hour) and lock on to the other cylinder at zero relative velocity.

Travel between communities can also be carried out with simple engineless vehicles, accelerated in a computed direction by a stationary cable-pulling electric motor and decelerated by an arresting cable at the destination. The "cable-car" vehicles for such free flight need no fuel, no complex maintenance nor a highly trained crew, and should be inexpensive. Vehicle speeds permit travel among a total population larger than that of Earth within flight times of seven hours. (I have here assumed communities spaced at 200-km intervals, so that the maximum dimension of a planar cluster housing 4 billion people is 29,000 km. For a vehicle with acceleration 1g and the required travel time of seven hours, the acceleration length is 66 km.) With no need for aerodynamic design, the vehicles can be far more roomy and comfortable than the typical earthbound commercial jet.

Life in the colonies

The key statements so far have been based on known facts, on calculations that can be checked and on technology whose costs can be estimated realistically. The discussion, however, would be sterile without some speculations that must, of course, be consistent with the known facts.

With an abundance of food and clean electrical energy, controlled climates and temperate weather, living conditions in the colonies should be much more pleasant than in most places on Earth. For the 20-mile distances of the cylinder interiors, bicycles and lowspeed electric vehicles are adequate. Fuel-burning cars, powered aircraft and combustion heating are not needed; therefore, no smog. For external travel, the simplicity of engineless, pilotless vehicles probably means that individuals and families will be easily able to afford private space vehicles for low-cost travel to far distant communities with diverse cultures and languages. The "recreational vehicles" of the colonial age are therefore likely to be simple spacecraft, consisting of well furnished pressure shells with little complexity beyond an oxygen supply and with much the same arrangement of kitchen facilities and living space as are found today in our travelling homes.

All Earth sports, as well as new ones, are possible in the communities. Skiing, sailing, mountain climbing (with the gravity decreasing linearly as the altitude increases) and soaring are examples. As an enthusiastic glider pilot, I have checked the question of thermal scales: The soaring pilots of the colonial age should find sufficient atmospheric instability to provide them with lift. At high altitudes, man-powered flight a nearly impossible dream on Earth becomes easy. A special, slowly rotating agricultural cylinder with water and fish can have gravity 10-2 or 10-3 times that on Earth for skin diving free of pressure-equalization problems. Noisy or polluting sports, such as auto racing, can easily be carried out in one of the cylinders of the external ring.

The self-sufficiency of space communities probably has a strong effect on government. A community of 200,000 people, eager to preserve its own culture and language, can even choose to remain largely isolated. Free, diverse social experimentation could thrive in such a protected, self-sufficient environment.

If we drop our limitation to present technology, the size of a community could be larger. One foreseeable development is the use of near-frictionless (for example, magnetic) bearings between a rotating cylinder and its supporting structure, which need not be spun. For eight tons per square meter of surface density and a tensile strength of 300,000 psi, R would be 16 km, the total area would 50,000 km2, and the population would be between five million (low density) and 700 million (the ecological limit, the maximum population that can be supported).

In Table 1 we see my estimate of the earliest possible schedule for space colonization, beginning with a model community in the late 1980's. From about the year 2014, I assume a doubling time of six years for the colonies; that is, the workforce of a "parent" colony could build a "daughter" colony within that time. In making these estimates I have calculated that the first model community would require a construction effort of 42 tons per man-year, comparable to the effort for large-scale bridge building on Earth. Full-size communities at high population density require 50 tons per man-year, and up to 5000 tons per man-year for low population density. For comparison, automated mining and shipping in Australia now reaches 200 tons per man-year averaged over a town [ref 6].

Model

Length (km)

Radius (m)

Period (sec)

Population*

Earliest estimated date

1

1

100

21

10,000

1988

2

3.2

320

36

100-200 x 103

1996

3

10

1000

63

0.2-2 x 106

2002

4

32

3200

114

0.2 - 20 x 106

2008

In the long run, space-colony construction is ideally suited to automation. A colony's structure consists mainly of cables, fittings and window panels of standard modular form in a pattern repeated thousands of times. The assembly takes place in a zerogravity environment free of the vagaries of weather. By the time that the colonies are evolving to low population density, therefore, I suspect that very few people will be involved in their construction. Most of the workforce will probably be occupied in architecture, landscaping, forestry, zoological planning, botany and other activities that are nonrepetitive and require a sense of art and beauty.

Our new options

It is important to realize the enormous power of the space-colonization technique. If we begin to use it soon enough, and if we employ it wisely, at least five of the most serious problems now facing the world can be solved without recourse to repression: bringing every human being up to a living standard now enjoyed only by the most fortunate; protecting the biosphere from damage caused by transportation and industrial pollution; finding high-quality living space for a world population that is doubling every 35 years; finding clean, practical energy sources; preventing overload of Earth's heat balance.

I hesitate somewhat to claim for space-colonization the ability to solve one other problem, one of the most agonizing of all: the pain and destruction caused by territorial wars. Cynics are sure that humanity will always choose savagery even when territorial pressures are much reduced. Certainly the maniacal wars of conquest have not been basically territorial. Yet I am more hopeful; I believe we have begun to learn a little bit in the past few decades. The history of the past 30 years suggests that warfare in the nuclear age is strongly, although not wholly, motivated by territorial conflicts; battles over limited, nonextendable pieces of land.

From the viewpoint of international arms control, two reasons for hope come to mind. We already have an international treaty banning nuclear weapons from space, and the colonies can obtain all the energy they could ever need from clean solar power, so the temptations presented by nuclear-reactor byproducts need not exist in the space communities.

To illustrate the power of space-colonization in a specific, calculable situation, we trace the evolution of a worst-case example: Suppose the present population-increase rate were to continue on Earth and in the space colonies. In that case the total human population would increase 20,000-fold in a little over 500 years. Space-colonization would absorb even so huge a growth, as we shall see from our calculations.

The total volume of material needed in a full-size community is 1.4 x109 cubic meters, and the material available in the asteroid belt (from which the later communities will be built) is estimated to be 4 x1017 cubic meters, about one twenty-five hundredth the volume of Earth. For a present world population of 3.9 x 109 people and a growth rate [ref 7] of 1.98% per year (the 1965-71 average), the asteroidal material would last 500 years, corresponding to a 20,000-fold population increase at low population density.

In figure 4, we see the development of this worst-case problem. To hasten the solution of that problem, the initial space community population density is taken as the ecological limit; the maximum number of people that can be supported with food grown within the communities, with conventional agriculture. Richard Bradfield has grown enough to feed 72 people per hectare by the techniques of double planting and multiple cropping, and with the use of cuttings for livestock feed. These results [ref 8], as published and also as described to me by Bradfield, were obtained in the Phillipines, which has only a nine-month growing season and less than ideal weather conditions. Calculations based on his figures, but assuming an ideal twelve-month season, indicate that the colonies should be able to support 143 people per hectare with a diet of 3000 calories, 52 grams of usable protein and 4.3 pounds of total food per person per day [ref 9]. Much of the protein would come from poultry and pork. The two main cylinders of Model 1 should then be able to support up to 10,800 people, and the corresponding ecological limit for a full-size community would be 20 million people. At this limit, all the colonists would have a high standard of living, but in apartment-house living conditions, looking out over farmland. For a community limit of 13-million people, the main cylinders could be kept free of agriculture.

By about 2050, then, figure 4 indicates that emigration to the colonies could reverse the rise in Earth's population, and that the acceleration of the solution could be dramatically fast: Within less than 30 years, Earth's population could be reduced from a peak of 16.5 billion people to whatever stable value is desired. I have suggested 1.2 billion as a possible optimum; it corresponds to the year 1910 in Earth history. The reduction in population density in the space communities could be equally rapid, and within another 40 years new construction could thin out the communities to a stable density of 1.43 people per hectare, about one hundredth of the ecological limit. The total land area in the colonies would then be more than three times that of Earth.

We can hope that, in contrast to this worst-case example, some progress toward zero population growth [ref 10] will be made in the next 75 years. Any such progress will hasten the solution, reduce Earth's population peak, and hasten the day when the population densities on Earth as well as in the colonies can be reduced to an optimum value.

Building the first colony

A responsible proposal to begin the construction of the first colony must be based on a demonstration, in some detail, of one workable plan with realistic cost estimates. I emphasize two points about any such plan: The details presented should be thought of simply as an existence proof of feasibility; and many variations are possible. The optimum design and course of action can only be decided on after study and consultation among experts in a number of fields.

The nominal values for the first model colony are taken as: construction force, 2000 people; population, 10,000; total mass, 500,000 tons. When the design and cost analysis are done in detail for the entire enterprise, the need to fit a budget may force some reduction in size. The initial estimates have been aimed at holding the cost equal to that of one project we have already carried through: Apollo. The choice of 10,000 as a target population ensures that, even with some reduction, Model 1 will be large enough to obtain economies of scale and to serve as an effective industrial base for the construction of Model 2. A much reduced colonization project would be little more than a renamed space station, perhaps able to maintain itself but incapable of building the larger models that are necessary if the program is ultimately to support itself. It is an essential feature of the colonization project that Earth should no longer have to support it after the first two or three stages.

Ultimately, colonization could take place in the entire sphere, 3 x 1017 km2 in area, that surrounds the Sun at the distance we have evolved to prefer (the so-called "Dyson sphere"). For the first colony it is probably best to choose a particular point on that sphere, within easy range of both Earth and Moon, not so close as to be eclipsed often, and preferably stable against displacements in all three coordinates. The L4 and L5 Lagrange libration points satisfy all these conditions. They have the further advantage of forming only a very shallow effective-potential well [ref 11].

Earth, Moon, Sun and the colony form a restricted four-body gravitational problem, for which the full solution has only been worked out within the past several years [ref 12].The stable motion is a quasielliptical orbit, of large dimensions, about L5. The maximum excursions in arc and radius are several tenths of the Earth-Moon distance. On the stable orbit there is room for several thousand colonies; a long time will pass before colonization can fill so big an orbit.

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The Colonization of Space - Gerard K. O'Neill, Physics ...

spreading life throughout the solar system "I know that humans will colonize the solar system and one day go beyond." Mike Griffin, former NASA Administrator.

A billion years ago there was no life on land. In a phenomenal development, by 400 million years ago land life was well established. We are at the very beginning of a similar, perhaps even more important, development. Today Earth teems with life, but as far as we know, in the vast reaches of space there are only a handful of astronauts, a few plants and animals, and some bacteria and fungi; mostly on the International Space Station. We can change that. In the 1970's Princeton physicist Gerard O'Neill, with the help of NASA Ames Research Center and Stanford University, discovered that we can build gigantic spaceships, big enough to live in. These free-space settlements could be wonderful places to live; about the size of a California beach town and endowed with weightless recreation, fantastic views, freedom, elbow-room in spades, and great wealth. In time, we may see millions of free-space settlements in our solar system alone. Building them, particularly the first one, is a monumental challenge. If this sounds exciting, read on.

Arthur C. Clarke once wrote that new ideas pass through three periods:

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Space Settlement

A post at SFConsim-l leads me to revisit a trope I have commented about here before. Space colonization, as imagined in SF and 'nonfiction' space speculation, is surprise! a riff on the English colonization of America, an experience shared by Clarke and Heinlein, albeit from different perspectives. Historically sort of colonization was driven first and foremost by cheap land.

This should be no surprise, any more than the American colonial analogy itself. It is like hydraulics. Provide a cheaper place to live and people will drift toward it, sometimes even flood toward it.

And the heart of the nutshell, as Heinlein once put it, is that there is no cheap land in space because there is no land at all. Land doesn't just mean a solid planetary surface (those are dirt cheap). Land means habitat, and in space the only way to have any is to build it youself. Which makes it expensive, especially since you have to build it up front.

Water can be pumped uphill, and people can be pulled toward expensive places to live by compensating attractions, or pushed there by pressures. But it is not a 'natural' process, and it can easily be reversed, hence ghost towns in rugged, played-out mining regions.

The sort of colonization envisioned in the rocketpunk era, most explicitly in books like Farmer in the Sky, but implicit in the consensus future history of the genre, is just plain unlikely, almost desperately unlikely, this side of the remote future or the Singularity, whichever comes first.

This is not the only possible sort of colonization. People have traveled afar, often spending their adult lives in some remote clime with no intention to settle there, marry, and raise a family, hoping instead to make their fortune and return home. The ones who don't make their fortune may end up staying, but that was not the plan.

Political colonialism often follows this pattern. The British colonized India, but I've never heard that any significant number of Britons settled there. (Human nature being what it is they did leave an Anglo-Indian population behind.)

A similar pattern has been common for trading outposts through the ages, whenever travel times have been prolonged. Even today, with one day global travel, people live abroad for years or even decades as expatriates, not emigrants. This, I believe, is a far more plausible scenario for the long term human presence in space than classic colonization. (And human nature being what it is, a mixed population will leave someone behind.)

Meta to this discussion and not all that meta is the delicate cohabitation of 'nonfiction' space speculation and science fiction. Space colonization has been driven first and foremost by story logic. For a broad range of story possibilities we want settings with a broad range of human experience. For this we want complete human communities, which means colonization in something like the classic SF sense.

But who are we trying to kid? Science fiction, particularly hard SF, is not known for engaging the whole range of human experience. This is no knock on it; all the branches of Romance are selective. The truth is that we want space colonies so that they can rebel against Earth, form an Empire, and generally play out History with a capital H, with lots of explosions and other cool stuff along the way.

I've suggested before on this blog that you can, in fact, get quite a lot of History without classical colonies. But another thing to keep in mind is that story logic doesn't necessarily drive real history. We may have an active spacefaring future that involves practically none of the story tropes of the rocketpunk era.

As a loose analogy, robotic diving on shipwrecks has done away with all those old underwater story tropes about divers trapped in a collapsing wreck, or bad guys cutting the air hose, but it has not at all done away with the somber magic of shipwrecks themselves, something the makers of 'Titanic' used to effect.

On the other hand, Hollywood has made two popular and critically acclaimed historical period pieces about actual space travel, and the stories are both an awful lot like rocketpunk.

Bryan:

There is another model of colonization you failed to mention - forced re-location. Worked for Australia, and to a lesser extent in other regions of the world. Expanding population pressures, or a desire to establish off-world colonies to ensure a countries continuance, could conceivably lead to some form of forced colonisation.

Given the prohibitive cost of space travel (now & for the foreseeable future) I find it unlikely that there would be any return of those kinds of colonists; or for that matter, the colonists in the scenarios you paint.

Ian_M:

The Grand Banks attracted European fishing boats before Newfoundland attracted European colonists. Antarctica is no worse than Fort MacMurray in the winter: Workers would flock to that continent if we ever discovered viable oil reserves there. If you want to know where people are willing to live, just follow the money (Money draining out of the region is the root cause of people draining out of North America's Empty Quarter).

There are almost certainly large-scale 'deposits' of valuable ore in the asteroids. But is it worth sending up a thousand mining drones, a machine shop, five technicians, and their life support? Are the ore deposits in orbits that don't need too much fuel to get to? Is boron mined under these conditions competitive with boron mined in Turkey?

There's lots of energy available in space, and we seem to be slowly approaching the point where space collectors will be competitive with ground-based collectors. But there aren't a lot of moving parts on solar collectors, so technicians will be thin 'on the ground'.

The plausible mid-future looks more and more like human space as a series of automated mining platforms and research bases, visited by rotating crews of technicians and scientists. The closest thing to colonists are the crews working the cyclers, but even they work on 2-3 year contracts before going home to Earth.

It's very much like the ocean. People work there, they pass through it, but no one really lives there even if they love it.

Citizen Joe:

That model is more of the slave colony model. Although probably more of a commune rather than slavery. The point is that the workers aren't doing it for pay. In fact, on a colony, money (Earth money) has no real meaning. You can't eat it, and it has a really crappy Isp. So everyone has to do the best they can or everyone dies. That means the colony works to be self sufficient so that it can continue to survive. That does not explain the willingness to put up the initial expenditures to found the colony.

Initial funding could be part of a research or political fund. But without some sort of financial gain coming back, there's no reason for corporate investment. Corporate involvement could come from government contracts to maintain communication networks or repair facilities. Ultimately there needs to be some sort of financial return.

I personally like the idea of Helium-3 as the new gold. Assuming the development of He-3 Fusion, particularly the He3-He3 fusion model which throws protons for direct energy conversion rather than neutrons like other forms of fusion. The idea would be that Terrans don't want to pollute the only habitable world known, but still have an insatiable need for power. Thus the development of clean fusion. While there are meager amounts of He3 on Earth and some is available on the moon, He-3 is also the decay product of Tritium (which can be used as a nuclear battery). That decay is mildly radio active, but the production of of Tritium from Deuterium is a fairly radioactive intense process. If you can handle those processes in space, and then ship back the pure He3, that gives a rationale for exploration and continued existence of colonies in space.

Ferrell:

One thing no one has mentioned yet is political colonists...those people willing to spend their life savings to travel to the most remote regions to get away from what they consider an intolerable government, or to wait out the end of the world; I don't see why , at some point in the near future, that those groups don't go off-planet to set up their colonies.

Another scenario; a long term scientific or industrial outpost attracts some would-be entrepreneur to set up shop to supply the outpost with some 'luxury' goods or services with the plan to make him rich and then return home...only he doesn't and he (and his family), are forced to remain permanently. Others, hearing about this guy, decide to try to succeed where the first one failed...the impromptu colony grows in fits and starts until, quiet by accident, you have a real city-state that no one planned, it just grew. Of course, then someone feels the need to have to figure out what to do about them...

Rick Robinson:

I am very partial to the ocean analogy. People have gone to sea for thousands of years; it has been central to a lot of cultures, but no one lives there.

Think of Earth as an island, and in the sea around it are only tidal outcroppings like Rockall or coral structures like the Great Barrier Reef. There's every reason to explore these places, and perhaps exploit them economically, but they are not much suited for habitation.

Forced colonization is sort of the counterpoint to what Ferrell raised, 'Pilgrim' colonization. Both are politically motivated.

But both of these require relatively cheap land, again in the sense of productive habitat, even if not appealing land. The point of penal 'transportation' is that it is cheaper to dump your petty criminals out of sight and out of mind than to keep them in jail. (And less upsetting to Englightenment sensibilities than hanging them all.)

The problem for colonization by dissidents is that, for at least the midfuture, only very wealthy groups could afford it, and the very wealthy are rarely dissidents. 🙂

The Pilgrims were a very typical dissident group in being predominantly middle class. For story purposes, in settings where you have FTL and habitable planets, these are the sorts of people who could plausibly charter a transport starship and head off to some newly surveyed planet.

This gets back to the meta point. There are a lot of things that work fine as SF literary tropes, but you really have to make a couple of magical assumptions, like FTL, to use them.

Within the constraints of hard SF, though, you probably should find other workarounds.

Ian_M:

I tried to plot out a plausible scenario where a small group of ideologically-motivated colonists set up shop in the Jupiter or Saturn moon systems. It just doesn't work. Any launch-cost and travel-time scenario that favoured the colonists also made it easy for larger or better funded groups to get there first.

The closest I came up with was a five-years to Saturn travel-time with Saturnian resources just sufficient to support the colony but not enough to attract megacorp or government attention. But then any reasonable life-support scenario I came up with had the colony dying out in less than a decade.

Ideological colonies will probably follow economic colonies. First the real estate will be developed, then the religious/social loons will move in. The Puritan Great Migration came after King James dumped cash into the Massachusetts colony to build up the economy.

Z:

Nice work, as always, and I think most of the points hold water. That being said, I still think there is room for some good old fashioned colonization- if only sometimes, and just barely.

You make a good point that colonization has at least in part been driven by cheap land, and land = habitat. My major addendum would be that habitat is a sliding scale Las Vegas or Anchorage are not in climates that one would dare call human habitat compared to say, Costa Rica, but the technology of the day air conditioning, for instance ended up moving the habitat line, and suddenly the middle of Nevada or Alaska looked very cheap. Io or Ceres might be forever condemned to be a "rock," but someplace like Mars where plants will grow in the dirt and the air (if pumped up to 0.7psi) and the natural lighting, with a decent probability of tappable aquifers, and gravity sufficient to prevent bone loss, it starts to look more like "land" equatorial Mars might make for better farmland than quite a few chunks of Earth. Given that indoor and "vertical" agriculture with what amounts to nearly-closed loops are already starting to look cost-effective and environmentally friendly in the present era, and solar panels and nukes are urgently needed to take up the load on Earth, it may be that every city on Earth is packed with off-the-shelf technology that doesn't look much different from a space colony.

I think the legal realities involved also mess with some of the Antarctica analogies. Antarctica is a scientific and tourism enclave by law, not just convenience mineral exploitation is off limits till treaty review in 2048. Other planets might fall into similar legal zones, but space is big...

The transit times and costs might also open a window for colonies. In Antarctica, the logical window to stay is one season, with Australia and the rest of the world a couple days transit away. If a Martian government/corporation/whatever is sending people onboard a low cost cycler, the trip is six months and the local stay is launch window to launch window, or 18 months, and the trip isn't cheap and the trips will be coed I find it wholly conceivable that a couple that was of the "right stuff" to volunteer to go might look at those intervals, or a couple of them, as time worth starting a family in, and with a chronic labor shortage meaning high wages, it might not seem so bad to stay. 11 kids have been born in Antarctica, and there are a couple schools so people can bring their kids with them...

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Interstellar Colonization - Atomic Rockets

Saturns largest moon Titan is one of several candidates for possible future colonization of the outer Solar System.

According to Cassini data from 2008, Titan has hundreds of times more liquid hydrocarbons than all the known oil and natural gas reserves on Earth. These hydrocarbons rain from the sky and collect in vast deposits that form lakes and dunes.[1] "Titan is just covered in carbon-bearing materialit's a giant factory of organic chemicals", said Ralph Lorenz, who leads the study of Titan based on radar data from Cassini. This vast carbon inventory is an important window into the geology and climate history of Titan. Several hundred lakes and seas have been observed, with several dozen estimated to contain more hydrocarbon liquid than Earth's oil and gas reserves. The dark dunes that run along the equator contain a volume of organics several hundred times larger than Earth's coal reserves.[2]

Radar images obtained on July 21, 2006 appear to show lakes of liquid hydrocarbon (such as methane and ethane) in Titan's northern latitudes. This is the first discovery of currently existing lakes beyond Earth.[3] The lakes range in size from about a kilometer in width to one hundred kilometers across.

On March 13, 2007, Jet Propulsion Laboratory announced that it found strong evidence of seas of methane and ethane in the northern hemisphere. At least one of these is larger than any of the Great Lakes in North America.[4]

The American aerospace engineer and author Robert Zubrin identified Saturn as the most important and valuable of the four gas giants in the Solar System, because of its relative proximity, low radiation, and excellent system of moons. He also named Titan as the most important moon on which to establish a base to develop the resources of the Saturn system.[5]

Dr. Robert Zubrin has pointed out that Titan possesses an abundance of all the elements necessary to support life, saying "In certain ways, Titan is the most hospitable extraterrestrial world within our solar system for human colonization." [6] The atmosphere contains plentiful nitrogen and methane, and strong evidence indicates that liquid methane exists on the surface. Evidence also indicates the presence of liquid water and ammonia under the surface, which are delivered to the surface by volcanic activity. Water can easily be used to generate breathable oxygen and nitrogen is ideal to add buffer gas partial pressure to breathable air (it forms about 78% of Earth's atmosphere).[7] Nitrogen, methane and ammonia can all be used to produce fertilizer for growing food.

Additionally, Titan has an atmospheric pressure one and a half times that of Earth. This means that the interior air pressure of landing craft and habitats could be set equal or close to the exterior pressure,[citation needed] reducing the difficulty and complexity of structural engineering for landing craft and habitats compared with low or zero pressure environments such as on the Moon, Mars, or the asteroids. The thick atmosphere would also make radiation a non-issue, unlike on the Moon, Mars, or the asteroids. While Titan's atmosphere does contain trace amounts of hydrogen cyanide, in the event that an astronaut's respiration system is breached, the concentration would not inflict more than a slight headache.[citation needed] A greater danger is that the gases of the atmosphere can generate an explosive mixture with oxygen,[citation needed] which requires special measures in the event that a leak occurs in a habitable module or a spacesuit.

Titan has a surface gravity of 0.138 g, slightly less than that of the Moon. Managing long-term effects of low gravity on human health would therefore be a significant issue for long-term occupation of Titan, more so than on Mars. These effects are still an active field of study. They can include symptoms such as loss of bone density, loss of muscle density, and a weakened immune system. Astronauts in Earth orbit have remained in microgravity for up to a year or more at a time. Effective countermeasures for the negative effects of low gravity are well-established, particularly an aggressive regime of daily physical exercise or weighted clothing. The variation in the negative effects of low gravity as a function of different levels of low gravity are not known, since all research in this area is restricted to humans in zero gravity. The same goes for the potential effects of low gravity on fetal and pediatric development. It has been hypothesized that children born and raised in low gravity such as on Titan would not be well adapted for life under the higher gravity of Earth.[8]

The temperature on Titan is about 94 K (179 C, or 290.2 F), so insulation and heat generation and management would be significant concerns. Although the air pressure at Titan's surface is about 1.5 times that of Earth at sea level, because of the colder temperature the density of the air is closer to 4.5 times that of Earth sea level. At this density, temperature shifts over time and between one locale and another would be far smaller than comparable types of temperature changes present on Earth. The corresponding narrow range of temperature variation reduces the difficulties in structural engineering.

Relative thickness of the atmosphere combined with extreme cold makes additional troubles for human habitation. Unlike in a vacuum, the high atmospheric density makes thermoinsulation a significant engineering problem.

The very high ratio of atmospheric density to surface gravity also greatly reduces the wingspan needed for an aircraft to maintain lift, so much so that a human would be able to strap on wings and easily fly through the atmosphere.[6] However, due to Titan's extremely low temperatures, heating of a flight-bound vehicle becomes a key obstacle.[9]

Continue reading here:
Colonization of Titan - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Because we are planetary creatures, when most people think about space colonization they usually envision homes on Mars or perhaps Earth's moon. Colonization of those bodies is in fact much less desirable than orbital colonization, even though Mars and the Moon are the only practical solid bodies suitable for colonization in the solar system, at least for the next few centuries. Venus is far too hot. Mercury is too hot during the day and too cold at night, as the days and nights are so long. Jupiter, Saturn, Neptune, and Uranus have no solid surface. Pluto is very far away. Comets and asteroids have too little gravity for a surface colony, although some have suggested that an asteroid could be hollowed out. This is actually a variant of an orbital colony.

That leaves Mars and the Moon. However, both bodies are greatly inferior to orbital space colonies in every way except for access to materials. This advantage is important but not critical; lunar and asteroid mines can provide orbital colonies with everything they need. Mars has all the materials needed for colonization: oxygen, water, metals, carbon, silicon, and nitrogen. You can even generate rocket propellant from the atmosphere. The Moon has almost everything needed, the exceptions being carbon and nitrogen; water is only available at the poles, if at all. Orbit, by contrast, has literally nothing - a few atoms per cubic centimeter at best. How can you build enormous orbital colonies if there is nothing there?

Fortunately, Near Earth Objects (NEOs, which include asteroids and comets with orbits near Earth's) have water, metals, carbon, and silicon -- everything we need except possibly nitrogen. NEOs are very accessible from Earth, some are easier to get to than our moon. NEOs can be mined and the materials transported to early orbital colonies near Earth. The Moon can also supply metals, silicon, and oxygen in large quantities. While developing the transportation will be a challenge, colonies on Mars and the Moon will also face significant transportation problems.

As Robert Zubrin suggests in The Case for Mars (Zubrin and Wagner, 1996), small groups of Martian explorers can carry select supplies (hydrogen, uranium, food, etc.) and make rocket fuel, water, oxygen, and other necessities from the Martian atmosphere. However, to truly colonize Mars will require extensive ground transportation systems to get the right materials to the right place at the right time. These systems will be difficult and expensive to build, particularly considering the long resupply times from Earth.

While Mars has an edge in material availability, orbital colonies have many important advantages over the Moon and Mars. These include:

None of this means that colonizing the Moon or Mars is impossible, of course. It is simply that this option is less desirable, and is more likely to come along after orbital colonization has been firmly established. This essential point has escaped many space advocates, perhaps because we are accustomed to living on a planetary surface. It's difficult to imagine living inside a giant spacecraft and even harder to take the concept seriously: but we should. It has profound implications for the future course of our National and International space programs.

This book is about orbital space colonization, but lunar and Martian colonization have able advocates. For a beautiful vision of lunar colonies, see Chapter Four of The Millenial Project: Colonizing the Galaxy in Eight Easy Steps (Savage, 1992). For Martian colonization, read The Case for Mars: the Plan to Settle the Red Planet and Why We Must (Zubrin and Wagner, 1996). Zubrin is an entertaining speaker, and a convincing and forceful advocate for Mars exploration and colonization. He presents a powerful vision, which this book echoes, of humanity colonizing the solar system. Zubrin puts Mars front and center, but there is good reason to believe that orbital colonies should take that honor.

There is a saying "Amateur soldiers think about tactics, professionals think about supply," perhaps because the well-fed army with plenty of ammunition tends to win. Fast and effective transportation to and from Earth is critical to the establishment and development of any space settlement. People will need to go back and forth frequently and in large numbers. Although bulk materials (steel, concrete, and water or their equivalents) are best mined and processed in space, colonies will need computer chips, specialty components, and other products from Earth.

Early colonies will not be able to make everything they need and inevitably will require frequent resupplying. Building the first colony will necessitate moving people, materials, parts, food, and water to and from the work site. Critical tools and parts will be forgotten or break, and need to be supplied by Earth as quickly as possible. This will be far easier for a colony in Earth orbit than for either the Moon or Mars.

To land on the Moon, plant a flag, hit a few golf balls, and dig up some rocks required no resupply. Raising a family and building a life off-world will. In this department, orbital colonies are the clear first choice as the early ones can be built much closer to Earth. Subsequent colonies can go further and further afield in small, manageable steps. Furthermore, rendezvous with an orbital colony will require less fuel and can be aborted at any time. Landing on the Moon or Mars is more challenging than docking with an orbital colony, requires more fuel, and carries much higher risk to the travelers.

The Apollo missions took approximately three days to get to the Moon; travel times to Mars are currently over six months. Even with advanced propulsion, travel times to Mars will be measured in weeks. Travel from Earth to planetary orbit is measured in minutes, although time to get to a higher, space-colony orbit and rendezvous will probably be at least a few hours.

With current transportation to Mars, launch opportunities come only once every two years. If you need something from Earth it may take years to get it. For a colony in Earth orbit, it may be possible to obtain key items in a day or so. This is equivalent to the difference between an ox-drawn cart and Federal Express. How many businesses ship their materials by Clipper ship rather than Airborne Express? There's a reason for their choice, and that same logic says we should colonize orbit before the Moon or Mars.

Resupply isn't a make-or-break issue for Martian colonization, but the greater difficulty of resupply and travel will generate an endless series of problems, each of which will require time, energy, money, and attention to solve. The great Prussian military thinker, Carl von Clauswitz, noted that armies aren't usually stopped by the equivalent of a brick wall, but rather by an endless accumulation of small problems - equipment stuck in the mud, sick soldiers, food problems, and desertion. He called this phenomenon friction. Although we note some near-killer problems for early Martian and Lunar colonization, most of the issues amount to much less friction for orbital colonization. Each problem by itself seems manageable, but put them together in their thousands and the case for orbital colonies first, the Moon and Mars later, becomes undeniable.

In orbit there is no night, clouds, or atmosphere. As a result, the amount of solar energy available per unit surface area in Earth orbit is approximately seven times that of the Earth's surface. Further, space solar energy is 100 percent reliable and predictable. Near-Earth orbits may occasionally pass behind the planet, reducing or eliminating solar power production for a few minutes, but these times can be precisely predicted months in advance. Solar power can supply all the energy we need for orbital colonies in the inner solar system.

Almost all Earth-orbiting satellites use solar energy; only a few military satellites have used nuclear power. For space colonies we need far more power, requiring much larger solar collectors. Space solar power can be generated by solar cells on large panels as with current satellites, or by concentrators that focus sunlight on a fluid, perhaps water, which is vaporized and used to turn turbines. Turbines are used today by hydroelectric plants to generate electricity, and are well understood. Turbines are more efficient than today's solar cells, but they also have moving parts and high temperature liquids, both of which tend to cause breakdowns and accidents.

Both panels and concentrator/turbine systems can probably work, and different orbital colonies may use different systems. Understand though that orbital colonies can have ample solar-generated electrical energy 24/7 so long as sufficiently sized solar panels or appropriate concentrator-turbine systems can be built. This is a matter of building what we already understand in much greater quantities - which gives us the much sought after economies of scale. Economies of scale simply means that if you do the same thing over and over, you get good at it.

By contrast, the moon has two-week nights when no solar power is available (except at the poles). Storing two weeks worth of power is a major headache. The only ways around this are nuclear or orbital solar-powered satellites that transmit power to the Moon's surface. There doesn't seem to be much, if any, uranium on the Moon, so fuel for fission reactors would have to be imported from Earth. This adds a risk of launch accidents that could spread nuclear fuel into our biosphere.

Spacecraft bound for the outer solar system (e.g. Jupiter or Saturn) carry nuclear power plants now. Good containment is possible, and there's not much risk from the occasional probe, but launching the large amounts of fuel necessary for a lunar colony would almost certainly involve an accident at some point. The risk of inattention or mistakes is much greater for hundreds of launches per year than with one every decade. Colonizing the Moon with nuclear fuel shipped from Earth will also be expensive, and we can probably rule it out as a practical approach to generating large amounts of power. That leaves local sources.

Helium-3, a special form of helium that suitable for advanced fusion reactors, is available on the Moon. However, in spite of many decades of effort and billions of dollars, no one has ever built a commercially viable fusion reactor, or even come close.The other approach to lunar power is solar power satellites. In this case, we build large satellites to generate electricity and place them in orbit around the Moon. The energy is then transmitted to the lunar surface during the two-week night. This is no different from the large solar power systems needed for orbital colonies, except that you also need to transmit the power to the Moon and build a system to collect it. Thus, lunar colonization has energy disadvantages in comparison to orbital colonization. There is a bit more friction.

The energy situation for Mars is far worse. Mars is much further from the Sun than Earth so the available solar energy is less (approximately 43 percent). Mars is 1.524 times further from the Sun than Earth. Since the amount of solar power available is inversely proportional to the square of the distance from the Sun, solar power satellites near Mars must be 2.29 times larger than those near Earth for the same power output. As a result, solar panels on or near Mars would have to be quite large. Further, Mars has a night and significant dust storms. Even between dust storms, dirt will accumulate on solar panels and need to be cleaned off, although robots to perform this chore can undoubtedly be built; just a little more friction.

In practice, Martian colonies will require nuclear power and/or solar power satellites. If there is any nuclear fuel on Mars, we don't know where it is or how much is available. If nuclear fuel must be sent from Earth, it suffers from all the same issues as the Moon, plus will take significantly longer to deliver. If a source of easily processed nuclear fuel can be found on Mars there might be some hope, but processing and use of nuclear fuel is not an easy proposition. Large-scale nuclear energy production on Mars is likely to be very difficult for the foreseeable future. Even with the red planet's distance from the Sun, solar power satellites might be easier. Energy problems make Mars far less attractive for early settlement, though once solar power satellite technology is well established by orbital colonization, it could be used for Martian colonization.

Anything in Earth orbit can have excellent communication with Earth. In fact, much of our communications are carried by orbiting satellites already. Telephone, Internet, radio, and television signals are passed through satellites in everyday operations around the world. Any orbiting colony within a few thousand kilometers of Earth will be able to hook directly into Earth's communication system. All modes of communication, including the telephone, will work pretty much as if you were in Chicago or London.

Because the Moon is approximately a quarter of a million miles from Earth and wireless communication travels at 300 kilometers (186,000 miles) per second, colonies on the Moon will suffer at least a three-second round trip communication delay with Earth. This makes telephone conversations awkward, though email, television, radio, and instant messaging should work pretty much as they do here from the consumer's perspective.

Mars is a different story. The red planet is so far away that the delay between sending a signal to Mars and receiving a reply is at least six to forty minutes, depending on the planet's relative positions at that time. Instant messengers will chafe at the delay and telephone conversation is impossible. The distance will require significantly larger antennas and energy than communications between Earth and an orbital colony. This problem isn't a concept killer, but it is another headache for Martian colonies, adding just a little more friction.

Space colonization is, at its core, a real estate business. The value of real estate is determined by many things, including "the view." In my hometown, a rundown house on a tiny lot with an ocean view sells for well over a million dollars. The same house a few blocks further inland is worth less than half that. Any space settlement will have a magnificant view of the stars at night, with the exception of Mars during a dust storm. Any settlement on the Moon or Mars will have a view of an unchanging, starkly beautiful, dead-as-a-doornail, rock strewn surface. However, settlements in Earth orbit will have one of the most stunning views in our solar system - the living, ever-changing Earth1. Anyone who has climbed a tall mountain knows what it feels like to be on top of the world, drinking in the vast panorama spread below. The view and feeling from orbit dwarfs that. Significantly. After all, the highest mountain on Earth is approximately eight kilometers (five miles). The lowest reasonably stable Earth orbit is approximately 160 kilometers (100 miles).

'Nough said.

All of life has evolved under the force of Earth's gravity. The strength of that force, which we call 1g, plays a major role in the way our bodies work. We understand some of these effects, but it is quite likely that there are important unknown gravitational functions in living creatures. For example, we understand that gravity is crucial to development and maintenance of human bone and muscle, but we have only a vague idea of the exact mechanisms behind the effects we observe in adults. We have absolutely no data on the effect of low-g on children and, consequently, only the vaguest notion of the consequences of alternate gravity levels on a child's development.

This is a real problem for colonization of the Moon and Mars, as neither has anything resembling 1g. Mars' gravity measures approximately one-third that of Earth, and the Moon's is even less, around one-seventh. Nonetheless, it may turn out that children can grow up on Mars with perfectly functional bodies, for Mars. It is certain that anyone raised on Mars will have great difficulty visiting Earth.

For example, I weigh about 160 pounds. My muscles and bones are adapted to carrying that load. If I went to a more massive planet with 3g at the surface, the equivalent of moving from Mars to Earth, I would weigh 480 pounds and would probably spend all my time flat on my back, assuming my heart and lungs didn't immediately fail under the load. A child born and raised on the Moon or Mars will never live on Earth, and even a short visit would be an excruciating ordeal. Attending college on Earth will be out of the question. For me this is a concept killer. Some parents may accept raising children who can never live on Earth. I'm not one of them.

A large orbital space colony can, by contrast, have nearly any pseudo-gravity desired. While orbital colonies will have far too little mass to have appreciable real gravity, something that feels like gravity and should have almost the same biological effect can be created. Real gravity is the attraction of all matter - stuff you can touch - for all other matter. The amount of attraction increases as the amount of matter increases (the amount of matter is called the mass). Earth is very large, has a lot of mass, and exerts significant gravitational force on us. We can create something that feels a lot like this force by spinning our colonies. This force, called pseudo-gravity, is the same force you feel when the car you are riding in takes a sharp turn at high speed. Your body tries to go straight but runs into the door, which is turning and pushes on your arm. Similarly, as an orbital space colony turns, the inside of the colony pushes on the feet of the inhabitants forcing them to go around. This force feels a great deal like gravity, although it isn't. What's important to note in this discussion is that the amount of this force can be controlled and that, for reasonable colony sizes and rotation rates, the force can be about 1g. For example, a 450-meter diameter colony that rotates at two rpm (rotations per minute) provides 1g at the rim.

This is crucial. It means that children raised in an orbital space colony can be strong enough to visit Earth and still walk, run, climb, jump, and attend college. Moving to an orbital space colony from a strength perspective will not be a one-way ticket for adults or children. Even someone born and raised in a 1g orbital space colony (meaning a colony rotating fast enough to produce 1g of pseudo-gravity on the inside of the rim) would be physically strong enough to move to Earth without hardship. By contrast, being raised on Mars or the Moon almost certainly precludes visiting Earth, at least if you want to walk. Even for adults, living on Mars or the Moon for a few decades would make return to Earth a painful ordeal. Long-term Lunar and Martian residents would, at best, be wheelchair bound on Earth.

Since orbital colonies can be sized and spun to create different pseudo-gravity levels, it will be possible to gradually experiment with lower pseudo-gravity levels. For example, a colony at 0.9g or 0.8g is feasible and possibly desirable for those who have lived many generations in orbit. Eventually, one might even see colonies with pseudo-gravity levels comparable to Mars and the Moon. If this does not create significant problems, then Lunar and Martian colonization can proceed.

There is one potentially serious gravitational problem for raising children in 1g orbital colonies. If the kids consistently stay on the inside of the rim (where they feel 1g) everything is fine, but how likely is that when you can go to the center for weightless play? Parents are going to have a tough time keeping their kids in the high pseudo-gravity sections when there is so much fun to be had in the center. On the other hand, this is a great problem to have, since the parents get to play too.

While all space colonies in the first few generations will almost certainly provide 1g of pseudo-gravity on the inside of the rim, pseudo-gravity is not gravity. It works differently. For example, when you jump up off of Earth, gravity pulls on you so that you accelerate downward until you land. When you jump up from the inside of the rim of an orbital space colony, there is no pull on you. In particular, if you climb to the center of the colony and jump off, there is nothing pulling you to the rim. You will float freely forever, or at least until it's time for lunch and Mom makes you come home.

If you've ever seen video of astronauts playing in 0g, you know that weightlessness is fun2. Acrobatics, sports, and dance go to a new level when the constraints of gravity are removed. It's not going to be easy to keep the kids in the 1g areas enough to satisfy Mom and Dad that their bones will be strong enough for a visit to Disneyland. If you've ever jumped off a diving board, you've been weightless. It's the feeling you have after jumping and before you hit the water. Any jump gives you that same feeling, as does "catching air" on a skateboard or snowboard. While you're airborne, you are weightless and all kinds of things become possible - just watch Olympic diving. Somersaults, twists, jack-knifes and more. But on Earth, you can only get that feeling for a fleeting second. In orbit, you have it for hours on end, and you don't need years of training.

Flying is easy, just strap on some wings and flap. Controlling exactly where you go may be trickier, and nets to keep the clueless from flying into the rim will be necessary. That's hard to do, because the rim isn't actually pulling you toward it as Earth does, but accidents aren't impossible. Some people live in the mountains to ski, others buy a house next to a golf course, surfers live near the ocean, and some will want to live on orbital space colonies for the 0g sports, dance, and just plain foolin' around.

Of course, the Moon and Mars, with their lower gravity levels will have their fun, too. Robert Heinlein, the great science fiction writer, and others have suggested that on the Moon people will be able to fly like birds by attaching wings to their arms. It's a lot harder than the weightless flight of an orbital colony, but flying on the Moon should be possible for those with good upper body strength. However, the Moon does have real gravity and you'd better know what you're doing.

Unfortunately, you can only fly inside of buildings in space (the vacuum outside precludes breathing) so size matters. Although Marshall Savage has a neat design for large Lunar colonies using entire craters (Savage, 1992), early Lunar and Martian colonies, if built before large-scale orbital colonization occurs, are almost certain to be small, cramped affairs with little room to fly, figuratively or literally. By contrast, for fundamental reasons orbital colonies will be large and roomy.

Everyone will spend almost all of their time indoors when living in a space colony, regardless of its location. It is impossible for an unprotected human to survive outside for more than a few seconds. While it will be possible to go outside in a spacesuit, the high levels of radiation will require everyone to stay inside almost all of the time. This is not as horrible as it sounds. In southern states, many people spend nearly the entire summer indoors, dashing from air-conditioned building to air-conditioned car and back. The same holds for people in very cold climates, at least in the winter. Fortunately, at least for orbital colonies, inside will be big.

Building large colonies on the Moon or Mars will be a complex endeavor. Although gravity is much less than on Earth, it is still pulling everything toward the ground and all the challenges of building large structures will remain. By contrast, orbital colonies will be built in weightlessness. Space shuttle astronauts moved multi-ton satellites by hand in weightlessness, although they did have to be careful. It's impossible to "drop" anything, if you let go things just float. It's no more dangerous working on the "top" of the colony than on the "bottom," at least before it is spun to generate pseudo-gravity. In general, building large things is simply easier in orbit than on any planet or moon other than Earth . Here, we have a breathable atmosphere, radiation protection, and a vast infrastructure that makes construction easier than in the space environment, at least in today's pre-space colonization culture.

To get 1g of pseudo-gravity, orbital space colonies will have to be much larger, and thereby nicer to live in, than lunar or Martian colonies. To get 1g by rotation you either need to spin very fast or have a large diameter. Two revolutions per minute (RPM) seems to be the limit one might want to live in, although higher rates are acceptable for temporary working environments like Mars missions. Two RMP implies a 450-meter diameter. A 450-meter diameter implies that an orbital colony must be well over a kilometer (almost a mile actually) around the rim.

It is unlikely in the extreme that the first lunar or Martian colony will be kilometer-scale, as starting smaller is easier. This leads to one of the few friction-style disadvantages orbital colonies have compared with the Moon and Mars: Orbital colonies have to be big, and big things are generally harder to build than small things. Of course, it's one thing to live in a small house on the prairie. It's quite another to live and raise a family in a cramped building without being able to go outside. The kids are going to drive you nuts. Even the first orbital colonies will be very large, and that's probably a good thing.

Getting to the first colonies is going to be an expensive proposition, so space colonization, unlike European colonization of the Americas, won't be driven by huddled masses. The pioneers of space will be engineers and technicians. They will want their MTV - and a very nice place to live. Fortunately, space colonies can deliver what we want and, in the long run, allow true independence as well.

A mature space colony, whether in orbit or on the Moon or Mars, can be extremely independent, at least in the long term. With first-class recycling plus a bit of asteroid dirt from time to time to make up losses, it should be possible to build space colonies that can live completely independently for very large periods of time; decades if not centuries or more.

On Earth we all share the same air and water. Plants, animals, bacteria, and viruses move freely around the planet, and nobody is much farther than 20,000 kilometers (12,000 miles - a day on a typical commercial jet) away from anyone else. By contrast, each space colony will have its own separate air and water and quite a bit of control over what species exist in the colony. If someone screws up the environment of one colony, it will have little or no direct impact on other settlements.

Further, Mars and the Moon are smaller than Earth. Those colonists will be living fairly close together despite personal desire. Orbital colonies can be tens of millions of miles apart. Given the apparently bottomless animosity of some groups, this may occasionally be a positive thing. When my kids fight, I tell them to go to their rooms. If orbital space colonies fight, we can tell them to go to opposite sides of the Sun.

When Europeans colonized the "new world," which of course was quite well known to the locals, the new territory was a couple of times greater than the area of Europe. Now, the surface area of the Moon and Mars combined is a bit more than half the land area of Earth. By contrast, consuming the single largest asteroid (Ceres) gives us enough materials to build orbital space colonies with 1g living area equal to over two hundred times the surface area of Earth, land area that didn't even exist before colonization. Orbital space colonization will undoubtedly be the greatest expansion of life ever.

This enormous area becomes available because of fundamental geometry. On planets you live on the outside of a solid sphere. Because planets are three-dimensional solid objects, they have a lot of mass. By contrast, orbital colonies are hollow. Most of the materials are in the exterior shell for radiation protection.

Since we should size the radiation protection to be about the same as that provided by Earth's atmosphere, the mass of orbital colonies with living area equal to the Earth's surface is about the mass of the Earth's air! The Earth's atmosphere weighs far less than the Earth of course. This is why a relatively small body like Ceres can supply materials for living area hundreds of times that of our home planet.

Furthermore, this living area can be spread throughout the entire solar system. Orbital colonies near Jupiter can be essentially identical to orbital colonies around Earth, the main difference being that near Jupiter colonies will likely require a nuclear power source and improved shielding for radiation. The asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter is a particularly attractive location for orbital colonies, as ample materials are available. There have even been proposals to colonize the Oort Cloud (Schmidt and Zubrin, 1996), a vast region of icy comets extending nearly halfway to the closest star. An orbital colony in the Oort Cloud would require nuclear power, but otherwise should have all the amenities and advantages of orbital colonies in high Earth orbit.

This has tremendous implications. The Earth holds about six billion people at present, and is considered very crowded. However, most of our planet's surface is nearly uninhabited, with only a few hundred urban areas and a few rural areas that are actually crowded. The oceans, of course, have almost no one on them. The frozen wastes of Alaska, Canada, and Siberia have extremely small populations, as do the vast deserts of Africa, the Middle East, central Asia, the western United States, and Australia. By contrast, all of an orbital colony's area can be more-or-less any way we want it, from the temperature to the rainfall. Thus, it is reasonable to expect that orbital space colonies can support a population of a trillion or more human beings living in excellent conditions.

Growth is crucial to long term survival. As a general rule, life is either growing or shrinking -- it doesn't hold still. Nevertheless, thinking about survival a thousand years hence is unlikely to loosen the large purse strings necessary to accomplish space colonization. For that, we need to make money.

The final advantage for orbital colonies over Mars and the Moon is major. It's the economy, stupid. There is nothing that Mars can supply Earth with economically, for the same reasons that there are no economical mines or factories in Antarctica. Both are too far away and operations in those conditions are difficult. The Moon might support tourism and perhaps provide helium-3 for future fusion reactors, but both markets will be difficult to service. By contrast, orbital colonies can service Earth's tourism, energy, and exotic-materials markets as well as repair satellites.

There is already a small orbital tourist market. Two wealthy individuals have paid the Russians approximately $20 million apiece to visit the International Space Station (ISS). Space Adventures Ltd. (www.spaceadventures.com) arranged these trips, and claims to have a contract to send two more. There are also a number of companies developing suborbital rockets to take tourists on short (about fifteen-minute) rides into space for approximately $100,000 per trip. As we will learn, orbital tourism is a promising approach to the first profit-generating steps toward orbital space colonization.

Continuous solar energy coupled with experience in building large structures will allow colonies to build and maintain enormous solar power satellites. These can be used to transmit energy to Earth. As already discussed, there is ample, reliable solar energy in orbit, and collecting it in large quantities primarily involves scaling up the space solar energy systems we have today.

This energy can be delivered to Earth by microwave beams tuned to pass through the atmosphere with little energy loss. Although the receiving antennas on the ground will be quite large, they should be able to let enough sunlight through for agriculture on the same land. Space solar power operations will consume nothing on Earth and generate no waste materials, although development and launch will involve some pollution. In particular, no greenhouse gasses or nuclear waste will be produced. The only operational terrestrial environmental impact will be the heat generated by transmission losses and using the electricity.

Solar power satellites are financially impractical if launched from Earth, but if built in space using extraterrestrial resources by an orbital space colony, they may eventually be profitable. By contrast, Mars has no opportunity to supply Earth with energy. The Moon has some helium-3 that may be useful for advanced forms of fusion power, but we have spent billions of dollars on fusion research, and have yet to produce more power than consumed much less produced power economically.

New, exotic materials can fetch very high prices. A variety of techniques are used to develop new materials, including controlling pressure, temperature, gas composition, and so forth. Gravity affects material properties since heavy particles sink and light ones rise in fluids during material processing.

In an orbital colony it is possible to control pseudo-gravity during processing. In principle this should allow the development of novel materials, some of which may be quite valuable. To date, the space program has failed to find a 'killer-app' material, a material so useful it justifies the entire space program. But the total number of orbital materials experiments has been small and very few materials experts have been to orbit conducting these investigations.

It's reasonable to expect that, given a much more substantial effort, valuable materials will be discovered that can only be produced in orbit, or that can be produced more economically once a substantial orbital infrastructure is in place. By comparison, both the Moon and Mars have fixed gravity at the surface and are much less likely to be suitable for exotic materials production. In addition, Mars, as always, is too far away to service Earth materials markets economically, especially in competition with orbital colonies exploiting NEO materials.

The best place to live on Mars is not nearly as nice as the most miserable part of Siberia. Mars is far colder; you can't go outside, and it's a months-long rocket ride if you want a Hawaiian vacation. The Moon is even colder. By contrast, orbital colonies have unique and desirable properties, particularly 0g recreation and great views. Building and maintaining orbital colonies should be quite a bit easier than similar sized homesteads on the Moon or Mars. They are better positioned to provide goods and services to Earth to contribute to the tremendous cost of space colonization. For these reasons, orbital colonies will almost certainly come first, with lunar and Martian colonization later. Perhaps much later. The sooner we recognize this and orient our space programs accordingly, the better.

[1] See earth.jsc.nasa.gov/sseop/efs for a fine collection of views of Earth from space.

[2] See http://www.nas.nasa.gov/About/Education/SpaceSettlement/Video/ for mpeg and Quicktime videos of astronauts playing in weightlessness.

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Where Should We Build Space Colonies?

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One of the major environmental concerns of our time is the increasing consumption of Earth's resources to sustain our way of life. As more and more nations make the climb up from agricultural to industrial nations, their standard of life will improve, which will mean that more and more people will be competing for the same resources. While NASA spinoffs and other inventions can allow us to be more thrifty with Earth's resources, we nevertheless must come to grips with the problem that humanity is currently limited to one planet.

Space colonies could be the answer to this problem, if we can solve the medical problems posed by microgravity (also called weightlessness) and the high levels of radiation to which the astronauts would be exposed after leaving the protection of the Earth's atmosphere. The colonists would mine the Moon and the minor planets and build beamed power satellites that would supplement or even replace power plants on the Earth. The colonists could also take adavantage of the plentiful raw materials, unlimited solar power, vaccuum, and microgravity in other ways to create products that we cannot while inside the cocoon of Earth's atmosphere and gravity. In addition to potentially replacing our current Earth-polluting industries, these colonies may also help our environment in other ways. Since the colonists would inhabit completely isolated manmade environments, they would refine our knowledge of the Earth's ecology.

This vision, which was purely science fiction for years and years, caught the imagination of the public in the Seventies, leading to the establishment of the organization known today as the National Space Society. You may also find useful resources in our pages on the International Space Station, Asteroids, Comets, Meteors, and Near-Earth Objects, The Future of Space Exploration, and Nuclear Power in Outer Space.

All items are available at the Headquarters Library, except as noted. NASA Headquarters employees and contractors: Call x0168 or email Library@hq.nasa.gov for information on borrowing or in-library use of any of these items. Members of the public: Contact your local library for the availability of these items. NASA Headquarters employees can request additional materials or research on this topic. The Library welcomes your comments or suggestions about this webpage.

Last Updated: March 2012

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Space Colonization - NASA Headquarters | NASA

Walkthrough written by Cool Bite andSlanted Fish Pictures by PopBuddies &Stealth Komodo

The first step is to arrive on Lunar Colony Island via the blimp.Run all the way to the right and go to Mission Control. Enter the Poptropica Academy for Space Exploration building (PASE a parody of NASA). Talk to the old guy. Then a flight director will come in and ask you to find something for the astronauts stomach.

Exit the building and go back left to where you came from (Cape Carpenter on the Map). The astronauts table now only has a lone bottle of Ginger Ale for you to take.

Now go back right to Mission Control and head straight to the elevator. Push the down button and the elevator will quickly arrive in front of you. Hop on and push the up button and up, up, up you go to the spaceship.

Theres a sick astronaut in the spaceship. Give him the Ginger Ale, and hell feel better. He leaves the ship and locks you in. Pick up the mic on the right and flight director will talk to you. You dont know how to fly a spaceship, but dont worry, hell give you instructions. Sit tight cause this is gonna be a bumpy ride!

You first have to adjust the booster rockets. Set each to 4,150 pounds of thrust.Fuel tank 1 running low. When it reaches 5%, activate fuel tank 2 and release fuel tank 1.

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Lunar Colony Island Guide Poptropica Help Blog :: cheats ...