Life in Outer Space
for fun, energy, profit.
Kerbal Space Program (KSP)
See our Saint Ann’s “Crash Course in Kerbal Rocket Flight” web page.
The game is incredible and used to have free demo: now $39(?) from kerbalspaceprogram.com. (Note: The contract for the big 2020 KSP update has been canceled and the development team was fired, so I'm not sure how progress is going...)
Links Galore
NASA's Perserverance lander is flying to Mars landed Feb 2021, and there's a Mars lander from China and a Mars orbiter from UAE.
NASA & SpaceX are launched a four astronaut crew to ISS in late 2020.
Intrepid Aircraft carrier musuem has space shuttle Enterprise (walkaround), youtube channel, activities online,
NASA's Year of Education 2018!
Al Globus (Orbital Space Settlement info including NASA’s 1975 study) .
NASA .
This page is itself at http://tinyurl.com/spacol -- isn't that easy?
(Old links that might not work: my delicious.com ‘space’ links, and RSS feeds: Human Space Flight - Sightings for New York (Satellite Sighting Schedule, including International Space Station, for New York City), SPACE.com (Space news))
Pie in the Sky?
Could some of that limitless solar energy in outer space be safely beamed down to Earth, making us less hungry for oil, and less reliant on gas-burning cars and coal-burning power plants? Could we mine and manufacture iron, steel, aluminum, etc. in space instead of on our fragile planet? (See IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change).) [Besides, on Earth we receive only one billionth of the energy that our sun is sending out.] It would be a tremendous boost for health, environment, prosperity, sustainability, you name it, if these things could happen…
In February 2007 I finished reading T.A. Heppenheimer’s 1977 book Colonies in Space, a lively book that suggests that space colonies could build solar collectors in space, using minerals from the moon, and using microwaves to send down (cheap?) energy. This book has inspired me to read more (especially Gerard K. O’Neill’s 1989 The High Frontier, Harrison Schmitt’s 2006 Return to the Moon, and Charles Cockell’s 2006 Space on Earth: Saving Our World by Seeking Others) and to start planning a high school seminar about Space Colonies, which asks whether space colonies are a possible, desirable investment in the future, while exploring some of the following topics.
--Mike Roam, Chairman of Computer Department at Saint Ann’s School, Brooklyn, New York.
Princeton physics professor Gerard K. O’Neill (1927-1992) did early space colony analysis (see his book The High Frontier, and the NASA studies (big pdf files) in 1975 and 1977) looking at energy, cost, and physics, asking the open-ended and unusual question, “Is the surface of a planet really the right place for an expanding technological civilization?” O’Neill helped found the Space Studies Institute, and made it part way through NASA's astronaut selection process.
Tests & Equipment
Learn the basics of rockets and space travel.
The International Space Station (3D model) is an ongoing real-life test of life support, construction, long term health, and solar energy in space. (ISS overview, BBC, sightings). Various groups and nations are studying space-based solar collectors (NASA & Obama?) and microwave energy transmission [older article]. Submarines have been another way in which people have learned how to run life support systems in closed quarters. Nanotechnology, computers, and robots will undoubtedly play a huge part. (Hear speech with question and answer session by MIT’s Rodney Brooks (itunes free podcast), mentioning asteroids as a source of platinum (crucial for fuel cells for clean-burning hydrogen) and Nasa’s Mars rover robots. (I was fortunate enough to meet Steven Squyres, NASA’s “Athena Science Payload Principal Investigator”, who encouraged me to keep teaching young people about robots and science.)
Alternatives; CivIV & CivV
The Civilization IV & Civ V games, with their “manage a country” role-playing: the “Beyond the Sword” extension has “Final Frontier” civ-in-space scenario, there was a (now cancelled) “civ in space” scenario/modification …perhaps we could find or design another, or look into Galactic Civilizations. In CivIV the player is always choosing between alternatives while budgeting limited food, money, resources: in real life, are there better solutions (to climate change, environmental issues, war, poverty, illness) than space colonies?
Fusion power? (ITER: home, FAQ, fusion, arsTechnica article, wikipedia with strong pro & con)
New government policies?
New human behavior? (Limit population growth? Change consumerism? (Pol Pot and Unabomber made particularly ugly attempts to rein in technology.) Reduce resource use? Learn to get along peacefully and healthfully?)
Are space colonies just a technical “solution” to a behavior and population problem?
More Info (including cultural/political critique of the game’s “myths”)
Space Colony Design Contests
There are annual space colony (also see NASA) and settlement design contests for high school students. (Mike’s brother Dan was commissioned by NASA to illustrate the 2006 winner “Vademecum”, shown above.) Here’s a basic space-exploration tutorial from 1961.
I found the following on “hobbyspace.com/Models/index.html#deepCold”: ”With the free version of Trimble’s “Sketchup” (formerly from google), you can create your own photorealistic textured 3D models. (These can be used in Google Earth.) Examples of SketchUp models are available in the 3D Warehouse. You can create, for example, spaceships.”
Buckminster Fuller, 2 who spent much of his life dreaming up technical projects that he hoped would improve life for all people. His 1981 book Critical Path ( summary) talks about planning for the future: what things (e.g. design, build & test rockets) have to be done to make other things (e.g. solar panels in space) possible in order to help solve problems (e.g. people fighting over limited energy resources)? Online (video interview with Fuller, 1974). “Future by Design” interview with Jacque Fresco
Ecological modeling for life support
Biosphere struggled in its early attempt to build a self-contained ecosystem. “Stella” is Systems Analysis software for modeling of systems such as financial investments, or world population/hunger/resource trends. There are a variety of analyses and models that try to look at the big picture of population growth versus food and resource supply. “Club of Rome” and “Malthusian” models vs. alternatives that make different (sometimes optimistic) assumptions about the use of alternative resources and high technology.
There is a lively range of disagreement and common interest between environmentalists and space exploration advocates (some say outer space is “pristine” and to be protected while others say it is apparently dead and ready to provide resources for life): overview, while astrobiologist Charles Cockell’s 2006 book “Space on Earth” (review) argues that they have shared goals (survival of many species) and should get along. (Cockell is chair of the Earth and Space Foundation, and was founding president of the Mars Club.)
Former astronaut-geologist and former Senator Harrison Schmitt has a recent book out (2006) called “Return to the Moon” which argues that the moon’s surface (“regolith”) is rich with Helium-3 which would be helpful for a clean kind of fusion energy machine.
Singularity
Ray Kurzweil’s 2 forecast of a rapidly approaching technological “singularity” 2: not just a breakthrough but an escalating collection of breakthroughs in genetics, genomics, artificial intelligence 2, robotics, nano-technology, energy, “trans-human” implants, etc. There might be a chance to look into Stephen Wolfram’s “New Kind of Science” (which Kurzweil seems to underestimate).
Art
Neil Young 2 in his song “After the Gold Rush” sings “Well I dreamed I saw the silver spaceships lyin’ in the yellow haze of the sun; there were children crying and colors flying all around the chosen ones; all in a dream, all in dream, the loading had begun; flying mother nature’s silver seed to a new home in the sun,”
Joni Mitchell 2 in “Woodstock” sings “We are stardust, we are golden, And we got to get ourselves back to the garden...”
Musician “St. Vincent” (Annie Clark) makes “Space Oddities” music set list for moon settlers. (She was on SNL also.)
Debate and Tough Questions
I’d love to see or build some kind of argument web: an “argument map” visual chart of pro and con arguments, show-stoppers, counter-arguments, counter-counter-arguments, experts, citations, emotions.
“Why are we putting money into space exploration when there are so many things that need to be fixed here on Earth? Aren’t space colonies just a childish delusion distracting from all the things that need to be done (on Earth)? Is this the best way to help earth environment? Is it necessary and sufficient?” [Maybe the biggest thing we need to do is reduce oil-burning pollution on Earth? And prepare “lifeboats” in case of catastrophic Earth impact?]
“Shouldn’t people just reduce their population and learn to live within the limits of the renewable resources on Earth?” [And how are you going to convince all of them to do this?]
“Shouldn’t space should be left pristine and uncontaminated?” [or dusty and dead?]
“Won’t space colonies be noisy, dirty, ugly, smelly, cramped?” [Not necessarily: artist’s wishful rendering.]
“Would anybody want to live in a tin can?”
“Couldn’t robots go do all the work?” [Rod Brooks mentions the limits to both tele-operation and robot autonomy.]
“Won’t space colonies have the temporary (lacking-in-history) cheap feel of a shopping mall or highway strip mall?” [Venice was new once, too; a mess of pilings between islands.]
“Don’t nations with oil supplies (cheap energy) get spoiled, bribing their people with energy rather than freedom and human rights?” (The assertion of Thomas Friedman as his “First Law of Petropolitics”.)
“What about space pirates? (See nytimes article 2015 about the lawlessness of the high seas on Earth.)
“What about asteroids, oxygen leaks, aliens?”
In a 24-feb-2008 interview on “The Space Show” Don Beattie (formerly of NASA) says that Don Rapp (1, 2), (formerly of JPL) has done some detailed studies, and Harrison Schmitt’s plans to mine the moon are based on overly optimistic scenarios regarding the reliability and expense of moon-mining equipment, as well as aiming at digging up Helium-3 for fusion reactors that don’t exist yet. Don Rapp appeared on “The Space Show” on 18-apr-2008.
Many more replies and counter-arguments are at the Space Settlement FAQ.
Energy
What are some of the possible benefits of cheap, clean, safe energy? Maybe sea-water desalinization plants for people without fresh water, for one thing? Create the wealth and education for all that usually leads to lowered reproduction rates? Stop burning coal and oil? Build more Cancer-research hospitals?
What are some of the possible problems of cheap energy? Super weapons? Space Weapons? Abuses of human rights?
Star brightness magnitude:
(not talking about Lindsay Lohan)
Sun: -27
Moon: -12
Venus: -4
ISS brightest: -4.6 (quite visible at -2.7 in NYC)
Mars & Jupiter: -2.9
Ursa Major and Polaris: 2 (note: positive).
Also see old Info Page for Mike's Space Colonies Seminar