Category Archives: Moon Colonization

Civilization is one of the longest and most respected series in gaming. Sid Meiers original creation from 1991 has seen five major iterations and numerous spin-offs. The latest version, Civilization V, after two major expansions and various smaller additions, is damn near flawless. Where can Firaxis go next that would not be an unnecessary retread for the sake of cash-in iteration?

BANG! ZOOM! Straight [past] the moon!

Civilization: Beyond Earth is science fiction Civ, using the same basic framework that the series has developed over the last two and a half decades not to rewind the tape and play out history as we know it, but to project forward into humanitys future. We recently had the chance to play out the first 250 turns a few times, more than enough time to form some impressions of what that future looks like.

To boldly go. You begin where previous Civilizations left off if you won a science victory and took to the stars. 200 years in the future, multinational confederationssuch as the industrious Pan-Asian Cooperative or the espionage-savvy American Reclamation Corporationsend colonization missions to a newly-discovered exoplanet. These sponsors are analogous to the civilizations of previous entries, each with a unique bonus that should help guide your overall strategy.

You can further customize your mission by also choosing things like the type of people to send and what equipment they bring, which allows for finer degrees of specialization. Maybe you want to lean into Pan-Asias productivity bonus by bringing engineers for more productive cities and a worker so you can start improving the landscape immediately. Alternatively you could balance and support that bonus with a colony of culture-generating artists and a bigger stockpile of fungible energy, the de facto currency of the future.

Number One, set a course. Without a historical template for your fledgling civilization to follow, its on you to define your version of humanitys philosophy. The affinity system gives mechanical weight to your ideological choices. Researching particular technologies or making certain choices in quests add points to one of three affinities, which unlock a series of increasingly powerful bonuses as you achieve higher and higher levels of commitment. Each has its own victory quests in addition to the familiar options like capturing everyones capitals.

Related:A look at the flow of the early game inCivilization: Beyond Earth

Harmony is for Gaia-loving hippies that want to become one with their newfound home. It focuses on adapting your people to the environment, rather than the other way around. Its not all peace, love, and sunshine, though, since at higher levels of Harmony you call down the cataclysmic wrath of Shai-Hulud siege worms onto rival cities. Over time your units and buildings take on smooth, organic forms and natural colors that let everyone know youve truly gone native.

Supremacy is the affinity for Singularity believers that see technology as our salvation and wish to escape this anachronistic meatspace for a utopia of pure data. Technology is what got humanity this far, and so followers of Supremacy choose to lean into cybernetics as the path to a hybrid future of man plus machine that extends farther than either could alone. Your crude, colonial astronauts are gradually replaced by sleek robots that are as ruthless as they are efficient.

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Building, exploring and conquering for 250 turns in Civilization: Beyond Earth

Civilization is one of the longest and most respected series in gaming. Sid Meiers original creation from 1991 has seen five major iterations and numerous spin-offs. The latest version, Civilization V, after two major expansions and various smaller additions, is damn near flawless. Where can Firaxis go next that would not be an unnecessary retread for the sake of cash-in iteration?

BANG! ZOOM! Straight [past] the moon!

Civilization: Beyond Earth is science fiction Civ, using the same basic framework that the series has developed over the last two and a half decades not to rewind the tape and play out history as we know it, but to project forward into humanitys future. We recently had the chance to play out the first 250 turns a few times, more than enough time to form some impressions of what that future looks like.

To boldly go. You begin where previous Civilizations left off if you won a science victory and took to the stars. 200 years in the future, multinational confederationssuch as the industrious Pan-Asian Cooperative or the espionage-savvy American Reclamation Corporationsend colonization missions to a newly-discovered exoplanet. These sponsors are analogous to the civilizations of previous entries, each with a unique bonus that should help guide your overall strategy.

You can further customize your mission by also choosing things like the type of people to send and what equipment they bring, which allows for finer degrees of specialization. Maybe you want to lean into Pan-Asias productivity bonus by bringing engineers for more productive cities and a worker so you can start improving the landscape immediately. Alternatively you could balance and support that bonus with a colony of culture-generating artists and a bigger stockpile of fungible energy, the de facto currency of the future.

Number One, set a course. Without a historical template for your fledgling civilization to follow, its on you to define your version of humanitys philosophy. The affinity system gives mechanical weight to your ideological choices. Researching particular technologies or making certain choices in quests add points to one of three affinities, which unlock a series of increasingly powerful bonuses as you achieve higher and higher levels of commitment. Each has its own victory quests in addition to the familiar options like capturing everyones capitals.

Related:A look at the flow of the early game inCivilization: Beyond Earth

Harmony is for Gaia-loving hippies that want to become one with their newfound home. It focuses on adapting your people to the environment, rather than the other way around. Its not all peace, love, and sunshine, though, since at higher levels of Harmony you call down the cataclysmic wrath of Shai-Hulud siege worms onto rival cities. Over time your units and buildings take on smooth, organic forms and natural colors that let everyone know youve truly gone native.

Supremacy is the affinity for Singularity believers that see technology as our salvation and wish to escape this anachronistic meatspace for a utopia of pure data. Technology is what got humanity this far, and so followers of Supremacy choose to lean into cybernetics as the path to a hybrid future of man plus machine that extends farther than either could alone. Your crude, colonial astronauts are gradually replaced by sleek robots that are as ruthless as they are efficient.

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How will your first 250 turns in Civilization: Beyond Earth shape up?

Early Sunday morning, SpaceX mission CRS-4 lifted off from Cape Canaveral towards the International Space Station, carrying with it the first 3D printer that will operate in zero gravity. When the astronauts aboard the ISS use the 3D printer, they will become the first humans to carry out off-world manufacturing.Its not quite the Moon- or Mars-based factory that weve always dreamed of, but its a very important first step towards manufacturing goods outside of Earths gravity, and thus the eventual colonization and industrialization of the Solar System.

The Dragon capsule, which launched aboard a Falcon 9 v1.1 rocket, is the fourth of SpaceXs minimum of 12 resupply missions to the ISS. It was carrying 4,885 pounds(2,215 kg) of cargo, including: the RapidScat instrument, which bounces microwaves off the ocean to measure wind speeds; the Kinetic Launcher for Orbital Payload Systems, for shooting mini satellites out into space; the Bone Densitometer (a reduction in bone density is one of the bigger risks of being an astronaut); and the first zero-gravity 3D printer.

Read: What is 3D printing?

The 3D printer, which is part of the 3D Printing in Zero-G Experiment, was created by Californian company Made In Space. I hadntheard of Made In Space before, but it seems like its a small startup that was created for the sole purpose of sending 3D printers into space. It sounds like the zero-gravity 3D printer is much the same as your usual on-Earth 3D printer though it has been ruggedized to survive launch pressures, and it went through rigorous safety checks to ensure it cant harm the astronauts aboard the ISS. In a conventional 3D printer, gravity is typically used to hold layers in place as theyre deposited but obviously the Made In Space 3D printer cant do that. (Sadly, the website doesnt say how its done.)

The first Made In Space 3D printer will use ABS thermoplastic to perform additive manufacturing using standard fused deposition modelling (FDM) i.e. building objects up layer by layer with molten plastic. The second 3D printer, which is due to go up to the ISS sometime in 2015, will be capable of higher temperature, stronger plastics and perhaps most interestingly, this second printer willbe an open platform that other companies and institutions can use, to carry out their own tests of 3D printing in spaaaaace.

The eventual plan is to install a 3D printer on the International Space Station that can manufacture new and replacement components on an as-needed basis. Additive manufacturing, as long as it actually works in zero-gravity, is perfect for such applications; its faster, more efficient, and simply much easier to make the parts that you need on the ISS (or Mars), rather than repeatedly defeating Earths gravity by burning millions of dollars of rocket fuel.

Made In Space, testing their 3D printer during a low-gravity test flight

Read:NASA picks Boeing and SpaceX to bring manned space travel back to the US

A 3D-printed metal J2-x rocket part, made by NASAs SLM cusing 3D printer.

3D printing with plastic is one thing, but the ultimate goal is to perform additive manufacturing with a whole range of materials most notably, aluminium, and other key metals used in aerospace applications. NASA has spent a lot of time over the last few years working on its additive manufacturing skills in 2012, it successfully 3D printed a metal rocket engine part. Im not sure if such 3D-printing-with-metal techniques, such as selective laser melting (SLM), could be carried out on the ISS due to safety and power requirements but I suspect theyre looking into it.

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SpaceX rocket carries the first ever zero-g 3D printer to the Space Station

Russia will start colonizing the Moon in 2030, Izvestia daily reported on Thursday. The daily has received a draft concept of Russian lunar program developed by enterprises of the Federal Space Agency (Roscosmos), a Russian Academy of Sciences institute and Moscow State University.

Notably, the draft concept envisages "creation of a lunar testing ground and a base for extraction of natural resources," the daily reported.

Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin said in an article published in Rossiiskaya Gazeta daily on April 11 that Russia's strategic goals in space exploration were linked to a broader presence on low Earth orbits, colonization of the Moon and launching exploration of Mars and other objects of the Solar System.

"Authors of the project do not rule out attracting private investors to lunar projects", and "first expeditions with cosmonauts' landing to create a permanent lunar base are planned in 2030," the daily reported.

It is needed to explore the Moon dynamically, the project authors recommended, because "leading space powers will explore and assign for themselves lunar territories suitable to provide future opportunities of practical use in the next 20-30 years."

"The Moon is a first step on the way to the deep space," chief scientific fellow of the Institute of Space Policy Ivan Moiseyev said. "Therefore, it is reasonable to use the Moon as a promising spaceport," he added. "As for extraction of mineral resources on the Moon, it is senseless to deliver them to the Earth, because even if diamonds are found there, it will be unprofitable to bring them here all the same," Moiseyev believes.

"But in any case it is possible to start with oxygen generation, as it exists on the Moon in many chemical compounds," the scientist noted.

Such large-scale projects as colonization of the Moon or Mars would hardly be funded from the state budget, corresponding member of the Russian Academy of Cosmonautics Andrei Ionin said.

"Planet exploration by people will be a prerogative of private companies," Ionin said.

"There are already many such projects now that envisage Mars colonization, production of mineral resources on asteroids and similar initiatives. It is difficult to imagine that some government will be prepared to spend trillions for creation of lunar bases, because they have a good deal of other, more vital tasks, including medicine, education, army," he added.

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Russia to begin Moon colonization in 2030

After decades of American space exploration, young people dont see it as a priority for the U.S. Thats the finding of a new poll conducted for Rare,a Cox Media Group website based in Washington, DC.

Fifty-two percent of young voters say the United States should not lead efforts to colonize other planets, while 32 percent say it should and a further 21 percent are unsure.

The question was asked as part of a first-of-its-kind Rare poll that surveyed only respondents under 40. The questions were tailored to chart trends in the opinions of younger voters.

>>Read all of Rare's under-40 poll results

There were some surprises in the results. Republicans, traditionally more inclined to talk about American national greatness than Democrats, were dead-set against colonization. Only 18 percent supported it, compared to 26 percent of Democrats and 33 percent of independents.

Still, some Republicans have held out, likeNewt Gingrichwho said during the 2012 presidential primary that the United States should establish a base on the moon.

Id like to have an American on the moon before the Chinese get there, he said.

Also surprisingly, the more educated a respondent was, the less likely he was to support space colonization. Only 24 percent of those with a bachelors degree and 27 percent of those with a masters degree supported living on other planets. Thirty-nine percent of those without a high school degree were supportive.

Since the recession, other polling shows voters have grown increasingly concerned about basic issues like the economy and jobs, while losing interest in less-personalissues likeclimate changeand the environment.

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Under-40 Poll: All aboard for the Mars colony?

Aerospace giant Boeing and newcomer SpaceX will share $6.8 billion in NASA contracts to build commercial space taxis to fly astronauts to and from the space station starting in 2017, ending reliance on Russia for access to low-Earth orbit and kick starting a new era of commercial space transportation, agency officials said Tuesday.

Artist's concept of the Boeing CST-100 and SpaceX Dragon V2 spacecraft. Credit: Boeing/SpaceX/Spaceflight Now Boeing will receive a $4.2 billion Commercial Crew Transportation Capability (CCtCAP) contract to continue development of the company's CST-100 capsule while SpaceX will receive $2.6 billion to press ahead with work to perfect its futuristic Dragon crew craft.

"Today's announcement sets the stage for what promises to be the most ambitious and exciting chapter in the history of NASA and human spaceflight," said NASA Administrator Charles Bolden.

"From day one, the Obama administration has made it very clear that the greatest nation on Earth should not be dependent on any other nation to get into space. ... Today we're one step closer to launching our astronauts from U.S. soil on American spacecraft and ending the nation's sole reliance on Russia by 2017."

Left out in the cold was defense contractor Sierra Nevada Corp., which is developing an innovative winged spaceplane known as the Dream Chaser that, unlike its competitors, is designed to glide to a runway landing like a mini space shuttle.

Company officials have said they hoped to continue development of Dream Chaser with or without NASA money, but the company's near-term plans are not yet known.

It also is not yet known whether Congress will appropriate enough money to fund the development of two spacecraft or whether NASA will be forced to down select to a single provider at some point down the road. But Bolden said he was confident Congress will provide the funding necessary to keep SpaceX and Boeing on track for maiden flights in the 2017 timeframe.

Congress has appropriated about $2 billion for the commercial crew program since 2011, about a billion dollars less than NASA requested. The agency hopes to get around $800 million for the program in its fiscal 2015 budget.

In any case, the space agency now plans to begin NASA-sanctioned flights carrying astronauts to the space station in 2017, using either the CST-100 or a Dragon V2. Or both, depending on how smoothly the development and certification process proceeds.

"Once NASA determines SpaceX and Boeing have met our requirements, the systems will be certified for NASA human spaceflight missions," said Kathy Lueders, manager of NASA's commercial crew program. "They will then conduct at least two and up to six missions under these contracts to deliver a crew of four to the International Space Station.

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Boeing, SpaceX share $6.8 billion crew contract

The SpaceX crewed Dragon capsule, designed by company founder Elon Musk to ferry astronauts to and from the International Space Station SpaceX

Last Updated Sep 16, 2014 5:34 PM EDT

Aerospace giant Boeing and newcomer SpaceX will share $6.8 billion in NASA contracts to build commercial space taxis to fly astronauts to and from the space station starting in 2017, ending reliance on Russia for access to low-Earth orbit and kick starting a new era of commercial space transportation, agency officials said Tuesday.

Boeing will receive a $4.2 billion Commercial Crew Transportation Capability (CCtCAP) contract to continue development of the company's CST-100 capsule while SpaceX will receive $2.6 billion to press ahead with work to perfect its futuristic Dragon crew craft.

"Today's announcement sets the stage for what promises to be the most ambitious and exciting chapter in the history of NASA and human spaceflight," said NASA Administrator Charles Bolden.

"From day one, the Obama administration has made it very clear that the greatest nation on Earth should not be dependent on any other nation to get into space. ... Today we're one step closer to launching our astronauts from U.S. soil on American spacecraft and ending the nation's sole reliance on Russia by 2017."

Left out in the cold was defense contractor Sierra Nevada Corp., which is developing an innovative winged spaceplane known as the Dream Chaser that, unlike its competitors, is designed to glide to a runway landing like a mini space shuttle.

Company officials have said they hoped to continue development of Dream Chaser with or without NASA money, but the company's near-term plans are not yet known.

It also is not yet known whether Congress will appropriate enough money to fund the development of two spacecraft or whether NASA will be forced to down select to a single provider at some point down the road. But Bolden said he was confident Congress will provide the funding necessary to keep SpaceX and Boeing on track for maiden flights in the 2017 timeframe.

Congress has appropriated about $2 billion for the commercial crew program since 2011, about a billion dollars less than NASA requested. The agency hopes to get around $800 million for the program in its fiscal 2015 budget.

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Boeing, SpaceX to team with NASA on space taxis

The collective space vision of all the worlds countries at the moment seems to be Mars, Mars, Mars. The U.S. has two operational rovers on the planet; a NASA probe called MAVEN and an Indian Mars orbiter will both arrive in Mars orbit later this month; and European, Chinese and additional NASA missions are in the works. Meanwhile Mars One is in the process of selecting candidates for the first-ever Martian colony, and NASAs heavy launch vehicle is being developed specifically to launch human missions into deep space, with Mars as one of the prime potential destinations.

But is the Red Planet really the best target for a human colony, or should we look somewhere else? Should we pick a world closer to Earth, namely the moon? Or a world with a surface gravity close to Earths, namely Venus?

To explore this issue, lets be clear about why wed want an off-world colony in the first place. Its not because it would be cool to have people on multiple worlds (although it would). Its not because Earth is becoming overpopulated with humans (although it is). Its because off-world colonies would improve the chances of human civilization surviving in the event of a planetary disaster on Earth. Examining things from this perspective, lets consider what an off-world colony would need, and see how those requirements mesh with different locations.

First, lets take a look at what the mooted Mars settlement schemes are offering. The Red Planet has an atmosphere containing carbon dioxide, which can be converted into fuel while also supporting plants that can make food and oxygen. These features could allow Martian colonists to be self-sufficient. They could live in pressurized habitats underground most of the time, to protect against space radiation, and grow food within pressurized domes at the planets surface.

Over decades, continued expansion in that vein could achieve something called paraterraforming. This means creation of an Earthlike environment on the Mars surface that could include not only farms but also parks, forests, and lakes, all enclosed to maintain adequate air pressure. (The natural Martian atmosphere exerts a pressure of only 7 millibars at the planets surface equivalent to being at an altitude of 21 miles on Earth!)

Mars colony illustration. Credit: NASA

Furthermore, in addition to adequate pressure, wed need a specific mixture of gases: enough oxygen to support human life, plus nitrogen to dilute the oxygen to avoid fires and to allow microbes to support plant life. While the small spacecraft in which astronauts fly today carry food and oxygen as consumables and use a simply chemical method to remove carbon dioxide from the air, this type of life-support system will not swing on a colony. As on Earth, air, water, and food will have to come through carbon, nitrogen, and water cycles.

While it would cost a ton of money to build, paraterraforming sections of Mars with a sample of Earths biosphere inside pressure domes, caves, and underground caverns is something that we could achieve within years of arrival of the first equipment. Moving beyond paraterraforming is a more ambitious goal that could require centuries, and thats full-scale terraforming. This means engineering the planet enough to support humans and other Earth life without domes and other enclosed structures.

Terraforming Mars would require that the atmosphere be thickened and enriched with nitrogen and oxygen while the average temperature of the planet must be increased substantially. To get started, terraformers might seed the world with certain microorganisms to increase the amount of methane in the Martian air, because methane is a much stronger greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. They also would seed dark plants and algae across the surface, thereby darkening the planet so that it absorbs more sunlight.

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Forget Mars. Here's Where We Should Build Our First Off-World Colonies

Before humans start living in space on a regular basis, there's a lot of basic science and political agendas that need to advance. We talked to scientists and experts about the fundamental things they think we should do right now, if we want to have a space colony in the next 100 years.

Interstellar Mayflower, art by Stephan Martiniere

NASA astronomer Amy Mainzer, who studies Near Earth Objects at JPL, says our number one priority has to be here on our home planet.

She told io9 that it's a pretty inhospitable universe out there, so our space colonies will probably never replace home:

From my perspective, the most important thing we can do to be prepared for any activity far in the future is try not to wipe out life here. Indiscriminate environmental destruction and the practice of rendering entire species extinct cannot continue if we want to have a long-term future either in space or on Earth. As an astronomer, I spend a lot of time thinking about other places than Earth, and they are not particularly hospitable. It's pretty clear that the vast majority of humanity will stay here. Therefore, I'd say that the defining challenge of the next hundred years is to come to grips with creating a sustainable future here, as a minimum precursor to building a sustainable future anywhere else.

Ariel Waldman is a committee member of the National Academy of Sciences' Committee on Human Spaceflight, and she told us about that group's latest thinking on how we'd develop a human colony on Mars in the next century. The group recently presented a hefty plan for human space missions to the U.S. government, and Waldman told us that the upshot is that we absolutely need to change NASA's direction now if we want a space colony in the twenty-first century.

In an email, Waldman outlined what the Committee on Human Spaceflight found out, and what they suggest we do about it her answer covers everything from mission planning, to funding and the technologies we need to focus on most:

If the nation decides to begin a space colony outside of low Earth orbit, you need to talk about changing the way NASA does business. Currently, NASA engages in a capabilities-based and/or "flexible path" approach in which technologies are developed with no specific set of missions in mind. Future missions are then selected/favored based on what you can do with the technologies. I am a committee member of the National Academy of Sciences' Committee on Human Spaceflight, and we recently produced a report recommending that NASA switch to a "pathways" approach. A pathways approach would outline a horizon goal along with a very specific set of stepping stones along the way. This would allow for continuity of technology development, the minimization of dead-end technologies that don't contribute to the next step along the pathway, and more efficiency. You can see in the ARM-to-Mars pathway versus the Moon-to-Mars pathway (see figures below) how different pathways can utilize more/less feed-forward technologies.

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8 Things We Can Do Now to Build a Space Colony This Century

The official website for the Gundam G no Reconguista (Gundam: Reconguista in G) anime announced on Friday that the singer-composer unit GARNiDELiA (The irregular at magic high school second opening) will perform the series' opening theme song. The song will ship on a single CD on October 29 in Japan, for a limited time with Gundam: Reconguista in G packaging.

The first three episodes were compiled in a special early edition for screenings in 13 theaters in Japan from August 23 to September 5. This edition will also be streamed from the d anime store service in Japan from September 8 to September 30. Finally, the anime will premiere on television on October 2.

The website outlines the story:

Humanity's prosperity, which ushered in a new era known as Regild Century (R.C.), was believed to endure alongside the global peace.

It is the year R.C.1014.

The Capital Tower is an orbital elevator that rose above the Earth's surface and linked Earth and space. As the conduit of the Photon Battery energy source to the surface, it is regarded as sacred.

Beruri Zenamu is in the middle of training for the Capital Guard (established to protect the Capital Tower), when the tower is attacked by G-Serufu a highly maneuverable mobile suit with technology that is not from any known country.

Beruri, who joins the battle in the maintenance mobile suit Rekuten, successfully captures the G-Serufu. However, Beruri feels something for the space pirate girl named Aiida Reihanton who piloted the G-Serufu. It is the same feeling he has for G-Serufu, even though he supposedly never seen it before. The G-Serufu, which should only be operable under specific conditions, is somehow started up by Beruri.

The objective of Aiida and the space pirates who attacked the Capital Tower, and the fate followed by Beruri who was chosen by G-Serufu, will lead to truths that will shake the entire Regild Century era.

The staff includes:

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GARNiDELiA Performs Gundam: Reconguista in G's Opening Song