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[Rant] Why I dislike Space Enthusiasts; Even though I arguably am one?
Topic Started: Jan 15 2012, 11:14 AM (3,279 Views)
lamna
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Without a terraformed world or at least an very extensive colony, I'd not want to live in space. Nothing there I can't do here, and plenty here I can't do out there.

You'd need smaller efforts to make those possible, and they seem unlikely without some reason to do it. You'd need to convince at least one nation to invest in a decades long project, minimum. I don't see that happening when the reward is centuries away.

It would be a different story if Venus and Mars were like we thought they were in the first half of the 20th century, but they are horribly lethal and moderately lethal respectively.
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You misunderstand me. I didn't mean that they would want to live in space (possibly in an asteroid colony, but only an extensive one) - I meant that they wouldn't mind working in space. If it only takes an hour shuttle to get to your orbital factory and another hour to get down, it could be treated like any of the more specialized professions of Earth, and you wouldn't be losing the comfort of home (if a bit more expensive one, but with the price of gas nowadays... :whatever: ).
Edited by Zerraspace, Jan 19 2012, 01:29 PM.
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If there is money in it, someone will do it. People live in pressurised tanks for weeks so they can dive deep sea oil rigs, while others live solitary lives maintaining them above the surface.

But that supposes that there is something worth getting in space, which with current technology, there isn't. Why would you put a factory in orbit? Whatever you make you'd just need to drop down to earth anyway.
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lamna
Jan 19 2012, 02:25 AM
Probably because living in space isn't enough for most people to give up sunshine, ducks and air that isn't constantly being filtered.

If there were good economic reasons to do so, people would live in space, people will live just about anywhere for money. But not many people are going to go simply because it's in space. Other than science, there is no good reason for anyone to want to live on the moon, especially for your whole life.

It's just like Antarctica, no economy, no permanent residents. And space don't even have sheathbills.
They have sunshine on Mars. They have a sky too. Mars isn't just a far off light in the sky in the more, or even a planet we've observed through a telescope. Our rovers are extensions of ourselves, there is already a human presence on Mars. It's a place now, as Carl Sagan liked to say. You say people wouldn't want to give up life on Earth, but they would. They'd line up coast to coast for the chance to live on Mars.

Maybe I'm just overgeneralizing it and the rest of humanity isn't as pioneering as Americans are. For all our history we Americans have pushed our civilization to the very boundaries of our New World and now those boundaries lie on truly new worlds. I know many, many people who would jump at the chance to live on the moon or Mars or just in space.

EDIT: If the factory was in orbit then transportation would be quicker and cheaper. Just wait until the factory is over the place you need to deliver the wares to and let the Gravity Express take over.
Edited by Ànraich, Jan 19 2012, 02:15 PM.
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I thought I had brought this up earlier, but in the early days of the space race there were a few visionaries who considered industrial applications for the new frontier. Chief amongst these were metallurgy and medicine - without gravity purer alloys and mixes could be created than is possible on Earth, seeing as heavier and denser materials would not sink to the bottom of the blend and hence be distributed more evenly. Power production was also brought up - without the hindrance of Earth's atmosphere blocking sunlight and radiation, the full output of our sun could be put to use (or at least quite a bit more than would be generated down here) - but if we had the power to sustain spatial industries, I don't think we'd need an orbital power plant (not solar or microwave, at any rate). They never did bring up Parasky's point... ;)
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Parasky's saying what I tried to say earlier, but he's an admin and so made his point far more effectively. I'm just the guy who fights with JohnFaa a lot. :D
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I don't think T. Neo's going to accept the argument anyway, so I don't see what difference it makes... For that matter, I'm not sure I've ever even talked to JohnFaa. What's he like? :lol:
Edited by Zerraspace, Jan 19 2012, 03:23 PM.
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I'm not sure I've ever even talked to JohnFaa. What's he like?
Angry gay Portuguese atheist. Nice guy, kinda grumpy sometimes.

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Maybe I'm just overgeneralizing it and the rest of humanity isn't as pioneering as Americans are. For all our history we Americans have pushed our civilization to the very boundaries of our New World and now those boundaries lie on truly new worlds. I know many, many people who would jump at the chance to live on the moon or Mars or just in space.
Yeah, the British have never really expanded or explored much. I guess we don't understand.

If Mars was a verdant world, or even semi-habitable like Australia I'd be ready to go tame it and claim it for the crown. But it's not. It's dry and cold. We've got dry and cold right here. With penguins and oxygen to sweeten the deal.

I'd be moving inside forever so I could be a miner, crammed in with dozens of other people. Being able to bounce really well and say I live very far away from where humans started out is not enough to cancel that out.

I still don't see how Mars is better than Antarctica with a trampoline.
Edited by lamna, Jan 19 2012, 04:22 PM.
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Hmm, I'd jump at the chance to emigrate to anywhere beyond Earth...so long as I had the option to come back. I think a good model would be to ship people to the colony for a few years and then give them the opportunity to return to Earth. I wonder what percentage would choose to stay?

Lamna, I think you might enjoy life in an O'Neill cylinder. All the amenities of home plus zero gravity fun (human powered flight, anyone?). With multiple space colonies As Gerard K. O'Neill originally envisioned, you'd have the opportunity to visit other worlds when your own got boring.
Edited by Spugpow, Jan 19 2012, 06:32 PM.
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Given the power issues facing our vessel it may be desirable to lower the mass of the MCV (say to one-tenth, something more resembling the space shuttle), but for the moment let’s assume the same ship – dry mass of 1000 tons with cargo capacity of 8000 tons. Accelerating at 1 milligee with 20% efficiency, the mass ratio is 1.08 (much of the fusion energy is lost as X-rays, and while this may be reclaimed through use of a gas laser, I’ll assume the MCV has no such capability). 720 tons of fuel will be required for the return journey and about 84.6 tons for the approach, ending with a total of 824.6 tons (let’s say the ship can hold 850 tons in case of emergencies). The combined fuel costs $1.571 million dollars, and another $187 million to lift.

The time to reach the asteroid is now 232.4 days (I really wanted it under six months, but as is I can hardly pay for the propellant), and the power required for operation is roughly 3.29 tW, with 2.632 tW lost as heat. Following your example values, the spherical engine must have a radius 17.68 meters, and if 0.1 mm thick, would weigh about 4 tons, with 6.7 gW remaining that must still be dealt with. Would the required radiators then be small enough to fit within the 1000 ton mass (and where is David Brin’s refrigeration laser when you need one)?


Firstly, I think the refrigeration laser is supposed to be impossible. Breaks thermodynamics or somesuch.

A thrust requirement of 96 600 newtons is far more reasonable, but that's still, if I calculated correctly, roughly 650 gigawatts of thrust power and ~2.6 terawatts of waste heat.

Assuming a radius of 17.7 meters (our calculations roughly coincide here), or diameter of over 35 meters, a hemispherical engine bell would mass a few kilograms over 2 tons. Of course this still does not include the various other hardware required, supports, etc.

The calculation for figuring out the area of radiators is as follows:

A = P / (e * k * T^4)

Where;

A = area
P = power radiated
e = emissivity of radiator
k = Stefan's constant (5.67e-8)
T = temperature of radiator

Let's assume 1300 kelvin operating temperature, and an emissivity of 0.99. This gives us an area of 41 791 m^2. Since the radiator is roughly two-sized, and radiates from both sides, the effective area required is 20900 m^2. Assuming a square radiator, this will be something like 145*145 meters large. If you split the radiator in two (i.e. one on either side of the ship), it would be two roughly 100 meter squares.

20 900 m^2 of 0.2mm (accounting for two sheets between which coolant could flow) thick molybdenum would mass over 40 tons, not including any piping, reinforcement, associated structures, etc, that would be required.

Of course, there's another issue: as coolant flows through the radiator, and gets cooler (and thus it radiates less efficiently). This is why you'll often see spacecraft concepts with V-shaped radiator arrays, with multiple 'loops' or panels. The first loops are the smallest and hottest, the next are cooler and larger, and the next cooler and larger still, etc.

The cancelled Jupiter Icy Moons Orbiter is a good example of this. The nuclear reactor is at the end of the pointy bit, the bit at the back is where the engines/instrumentation/etc is:

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So in a real system, your radiators will likely be larger- and heavier. It is especially important when you consider that due to the T^4 part of the equation, a small change in temperature can have a major effect.

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if we use a material with a higher melting point (say graphite or diamond, which reach 4000 Kelvin), we could shrink the hemisphere even further. There’s also the possibility of accelerating only in short bursts, saving us some fuel and giving time for components to cool down.


The problem is that there's more to a material than its melting point. I chose molybdenum because a molybdenum alloy was intended to be the material from which the Daedalus starship's engine bell would be constructed. Something also has to be structurally sound at those temperatures, for example. Diamond for example is brittle. Graphite has a low albedo- you want the highest albedo you can possibly get. You also want a material that is quite conductive, to remove heat with coolant.

Pulsed power is a very real possibility, I think. With an IC fusion drive, you're already working with pulses. I have always been aiming for passenger (or at least manned) vehicles, so I've wanted to keep the pulse rates high- over 200, 300 Hz. Which is really high, I believe in the end I was speculating about multiple "chambers" firing in sequence to get that sort of pulse rate. You don't have passengers aboard, and you don't need a crew either... so the pulse rate could be much lower (you'd still need dampeners/etc to reduce the strain on the rest of the structure though, probably).

With a lower pulse rate, it could help improve things thermally, but I have no idea how or how much. Look up Project Orion for more details, it might be useful info. It won't save propellant though- to thrust at a certain specific impulse, you will need to burn a certain amount of fuel.

And I see no reason why it is not feasible to run things with lower flight rates. There are plenty of industries with long lead times, low service rates, etc. If things are worked out annually, it shouldn't really matter. It's certainly better than using spacecraft that are either simply not feasible, or incredibly expensive.

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Alternate propulsion schemes result in mass ratios too high for my liking (I’m tempted to choose solar sails, but there is the matter of sail size and how to move towards the sun) – including VASIMIR. That being said, it does interest me for a different reason. As far as I can see it simply involves ionizing, heating and directing propellant with a magnetic field, steps reminiscent of the fusion drive. Could the two systems be coupled (say, having the propellant fused within a magnetic field only to be ionized by its own radiation, or the heat transmitted with the ejected material)?


The idea is that you bypass the fusion drive and use microwaves to heat the propellant, then expel it out of a magnetic field. you use solar panels or a nuclear reactor to provide the electric power.

If you use fusion it'd probably be best just to cut to the chase and use it directly, either the fusion products alone or the fusion products to heat propellant.

More propellant shouldn't really be a problem, especially if the total system/recurring costs are low.

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By the way, calculating the costs of an official space program is apparently a lot more complex than simply factoring in expenses, as this article points out. If we really want to establish a presence of Earth, it seems it’s going to have to be private.


Factoring in expenses is a whole lot better way of... factoring in expenses, than just saying "bah humbug, we can't do it, let's just assume some nebulous figure". That said, it can of course get quite complex... but the basic concepts are fairly easy to understand.

It is important to realise that there are various different things that are included both in "cost" and in "price";

1. Fixed costs (overheads, etc).
2. Marginal costs (cost per flight, for example cost of building a set of hardware, actually preparing it for launch, launching it, the propellants, etc).
3. Payload integration costs/other services- payload integration can be a large part of the cost- in the tens of millions.

This is why the cost for the hardware of a vehicle, or even the cost to launch a vehicle, can be so far removed from a launch price for a certain mission.

It's also important to note that surprisingly little of government space programs are actually done by the government. They are actually done by contractors; the shuttle was not built by NASA, but by Rockwell (which merged with Boeing). Likewise the external fuel tank was manufactured by Martin Marietta (later Lockheed Martin). The launch operations were done by contractors, too- see United Space Alliance. Even development of things like STS was done not entirely by NASA, but in cooperation with contractors.

Of course in this case it would have to be done privately. It will also have to turn a profit. That's very difficult.

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I don't see large populations living elsewhere in the solar system - not before advanced terraforming, or a very advanced asteroid base anyway - but there's still potential for space-based industry, particularly if it's close to Earth or automated. With cheaper means of lifting off passengers and cargo, I don't see too many who would mind being up there, knowing that they're only hours away from home (the sight of the Earth from their workplace may be comfort enough).


Terraforming is astronomically expensive. Nigh impossible to get a return on investment.

I really like the idea of terraforming (it's something that captivates me), but the math is terrifying. I haven't tried to analyse what the economics of it could be, but just the pure logistics of it is terrifying.

The same goes for 'advanced asteroid bases', they're less expensive, but they'd also be smaller and there'd be less reason for them to exist.

I can see space based manufacturing picking up, but I can't help thinking that it would be almost entirely automated (and that those who would work in space would not commute daily or even monthly, but work in shifts of months at a time). The problem is a product for which there is a demand, that requires in-space manufacturing. I do not know of such a product, I would love to discover it...

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It would be a different story if Venus and Mars were like we thought they were in the first half of the 20th century, but they are horribly lethal and moderately lethal respectively.


Exactly.

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Maybe I'm just overgeneralizing it and the rest of humanity isn't as pioneering as Americans are. For all our history we Americans have pushed our civilization to the very boundaries of our New World and now those boundaries lie on truly new worlds.


Just because what you say sounds very good and evokes strong emotions doesn't mean it necessarily has anything to do with reality.

I thought people in the US were stereotyped as lazy couch potatoes? Or are you too worried about real life and immediate, real concerns than "pioneering boundaries on new worlds"?

If the USA had to vote, right now, on establishing a colony on Mars- and spending, actually spending hundreds of billions of dollars to make that a reality (right out of the taxpayer's pockets), would they vote in favour, or against? I am not asking this of the space enthusiasts or Star Trek fans in the US, but the entire US- or at least the voting population.

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I know many, many people who would jump at the chance to live on the moon or Mars or just in space.


How much is many, many?

And where is the actual survey, of people who would be willing to spend the money, who would actually want to live off of Earth? That is what we need here. Not "I know this guy who would want to do it", or "I would do it", or "people would line up coast to coast". Real figures are immensely helpful here.

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If the factory was in orbit then transportation would be quicker and cheaper. Just wait until the factory is over the place you need to deliver the wares to and let the Gravity Express take over.


If the factory was in orbit, it'd be an utter and total nightmare. There is so much infrastructure here on Earth that we don't even think twice about. It simply does not exist in space.

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I thought I had brought this up earlier, but in the early days of the space race there were a few visionaries who considered industrial applications for the new frontier. Chief amongst these were metallurgy and medicine - without gravity purer alloys and mixes could be created than is possible on Earth, seeing as heavier and denser materials would not sink to the bottom of the blend and hence be distributed more evenly. Power production was also brought up - without the hindrance of Earth's atmosphere blocking sunlight and radiation, the full output of our sun could be put to use (or at least quite a bit more than would be generated down here) - but if we had the power to sustain spatial industries, I don't think we'd need an orbital power plant (not solar or microwave, at any rate).


Well, that's nice. Just because it was thought up by visionaries doesn't mean it has any validity though.

Shuttle and ISS were supposed to perform research into what could be done in microgravity that could have industrial applications. Mir did this too. After many decades, no "killer app" has been discovered.

Space solar power is interesting, but the major argument is that it'll always be cheaper on the ground. Currently launch costs make it unviable, and it could also have environmental issues (see Kessler syndrome).

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I don't think T. Neo's going to accept the argument anyway, so I don't see what difference it makes...


Of course I'm not going to accept Parasky's argument; I don't believe in it, I don't think it makes sense. Or at the very least, I have not been shown enough evidence to be assured of its validity. No offence, but it's all emotions and rhetoric. The physical substance is lacking.

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Hmm, I'd jump at the chance to emigrate to anywhere beyond Earth...so long as I had the option to come back. I think a good model would be to ship people to the colony for a few years and then give them the opportunity to return to Earth. I wonder what percentage would choose to stay?


That would be an interesting possibility.

Also, perhaps the key would be to take a bunch of people who would jump at the chance to emigrate to say, Mars, and put them in a high fidelity simulation in-situ in some seriously crappy environment (think those Mars on Earth research stations like they have on Devon Island) for three months, and then asking them whether they'd want to live the rest of their lives in those conditions.

(I believe there was a poll on either the NASAspaceflight forums or the Selenian Boondocks blog (or both) that was vaguely similar, i.e. would you go to Mars if the available privacy were similar to a subway car, would you go to Mars if the life expectancy were 5 years from arrival, would you go to Mars if the gender ratio were skewed, etc.)

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Lamna, I think you might enjoy life in an O'Neill cylinder. All the amenities of home plus zero gravity fun (human powered flight, anyone?). With multiple space colonies As Gerard K. O'Neill originally envisioned, you'd have the opportunity to visit other worlds when your own got boring.


O'Neill cylinders would be awesome. Unfortunately they don't exist. They're not out there waiting to be conquered, they have to be built first.

Also, the idealised versions (the ones you see in illustrations, etc), could be far removed from an actual colony- which could be cramped, strapped for resources, dirty, lacking in amenities, etc...
Edited by T.Neo, Jan 19 2012, 06:41 PM.
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lamna
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Lamna, I think you might enjoy life in an O'Neill cylinder. All the amenities of home plus zero gravity fun (human powered flight, anyone?). With multiple space colonies As Gerard K. O'Neill originally envisioned, you'd have the opportunity to visit other worlds when your own got boring.

Are you kidding? Those things are deathtraps! One day you're going about your business and BAM! Zeon invades! Or the Titans gas you! Or Haman Karn smashes you into Dublin!

What's the reward? I might I have Newtype kids? I'll stay where I am with the earth elite thank you very much. Damned spacenoids.
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Plus they are full of people bugging you. Slimy guys asking you "What do you want?", damned purple Drazi, creepy telepaths. It's not worth it.
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More seriously, a massive space colony would be like living in Hong Kong. Nice for a while, but not for me. I need countryside. That's a personal thing though. I have heard that some people like cities.
Edited by lamna, Jan 19 2012, 06:57 PM.
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I need countryside.


You can have that in an O'Neill cylinder too, it's just that it will result in a lower population density, which leads to what some may regard as a less efficient use of the colony. In addition, it may have economic drawbacks.
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