Archive for Space Exploration
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Living In The Asteroid Belt – part 6 – Lifestyle
INTRODUCTION GEOGRAPHY AND GEOLOGY GETTING THERE MINING HABITATS LIFESTYLE Resources Empty space is free (once you get there) Energy is almost free from photovoltaic collectors Valuable volatile gases and metals are easily available from asteroid mining Building materials will be cheap and plentiful from asteroid mining Computing/Com/Nav net An information rich environment built on state […]
Living In The Asteroid Belt – part 5 – Habitats
Previous articles in this series: 1-INTRODUCTION 2-GEOGRAPHY AND GEOLOGY 3-GETTING THERE 4-MINING HABITATS Choices – are limited by a need for rotational symmetry so that the habitat can turn steadily to create artificial gravity. All of these shapes are designed to provide living space on the inside surface with rotational force pushing everything “down” toward […]
Living In The Asteroid Belt – part 4 – Mining
Previous articles in this series: 1-INTRODUCTION 2-GEOGRAPHY AND GEOLOGY 3-GETTING THERE MINING Value: Volatiles are the frozen gases found in the asteroid rocks, including oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen and more. These will be the most valuable substances mined because they will be needed for air and water and fuel. Precious metals will be the second most […]
Living In The Asteroid Belt – part 3 – Getting There
Previous articles in this series: 1-INTRODUCTION 2-GEOGRAPHY AND GEOLOGY GETTING THERE Rockets that use chemical reaction thrust in both solid form and liquid form have been the only option for many years. But they require a massive amount of thrust requiring large fuel tanks and limiting payloads. Historically, they have been expensive and discarded after […]
Living In The Asteroid Belt – part 2 – Geography and Geology
Living In The Asteroid Belt – part 1 – Introduction was the previous article in this series. GEOGRAPHY AND GEOLOGY Geography The inner planets of our Solar System are Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars. By convention, the orbital distance of the Earth from the Sun has been established as 1 Astronomical Unit (AU). The orbit […]
Living In The Asteroid Belt – part 1 – Introduction
INTRODUCTION The first question to be answered about this topic is why we should live in the asteroid belt instead of on planets. The main answer is simply that once we have found a way to climb up out of the gravity well that has trapped us here on this planet for so long, we […]
The Space Elevator Concept
Design Your Own Space Elevator – [youtube.com] The Universe Documentary – Space Elevator and Carbon Nanotubes – [youtube.com] The Space Elevator – no longer Science Fiction – [youtube.com] An Elevator to Space: Markus Landgraf at TEDxRheinMain – [youtube.com] The Physics of Space Elevators – [youtube.com] (this includes the concept of a space launch from an […]
Bootstrap Resources in Space
Since it is not practical to lift from Earth into space all of the construction materials necessary to build living structures (habitats), they must be extracted/mined from sources already existing in space. Stepping Stones: Economic Analysis of Space Transportation Supplied From NEO Resources ABSTRACT The Stepping Stones economic analysis of space transportation supplied from near-Earth […]
The Great Filter (Drake/Fermi)
The Drake Equation provides us a means to predict how likely it is that intelligent civilizations may exist. The L-Factor in the Drake Equation represents the length of an intelligent civilization. This is the most significant single factor in the equation. The L-Factor Limits Contact With ET Aliens The Length of a Civilization should be […]
LUNAR – an extension of humanity
The single greatest extension of the human race so far has been the U.S. space program that culminated in reaching the Moon in 1969. The Apollo program ended in 1972. This short film is an animation of actual NASA photographs that portray the Moon landing effort.
