Colonising Space

Intro

One reason is survival. At the moment we have all our eggs in one basket here on Earth and if nothing else it will be an insurance policy for our species, and other life. It is also the next great step for life inhabiting a new environment and spreading itself ever wider - something it has been doing for the past 3.7 billion years.

The resources in space in terms of energy, material and places to live are effectively unlimited which will allow our civilisation to constantly expand while taking the burden off the Earth. Apart from anything colonising space will be a massive adventure. Freed from scarcity, Man tends to look for interesting challenges and ways to extend his horizons. Seeing as extending our civilization beyond our home planet and reaching into the stars will be one of the greatest adventures our species could ever undertake, why not do it?

Sections

Main Page > Colonising Space

Space resources

Resources within the solar system are mind-blowingly huge both in terms of energy and matter. There are planets, many moons and uncountable asteroids and comets.

In space the sun is always shining and there is no atmosphere to attenuates it glare. Solar power is the obvious way to go in, at least in the inner solar system. Either photo-voltaic for electrical power or solar furnaces for material processing.

Creating habitable places for people to live in this ultimately harsh environment is a matter of engineering – see advanced automation.

Space habitats

There are many places that we could locate these habitats, especially near Earth.

Other

Open design making space truly accessible

Making the colonisation of Space a truly global collaborative process is an amazing opportunity to bring people and cultures together. Not a project of any one nation but a project of humanity with contributions from everywhere. The culture of openness is also the perfect way to start the spread of life away from Earth - it is the right attitude and the best way for people to get the most out of each other.

It is not likely there is any other way it can be done on a significant scale. Doing it purely commercially is not the right basis for colonising Space and the lesser efficiency of that model over an open culture would likely only ever make it a niche activity with potential for conflict. It is due to the lack of commercial viability that no-one has left low-earth orbit since the Apollo program. But the Open culture does not need to revolve around conventional economics.

Ultimately the possibility of Space colonisation is a matter of energy, material, information and intelligence — and all four are in reality massively abundant. Creating the infrastructure for a space programme to the scale necessary for launching even a small fraction of the population into space is likely to require the existence of advanced automation.

Access to space

We now have access to space using rockets. However this is an expensive way to get into space (over $5000 per pound of material launched^[1]) and the failure rate is high. This severely limits what we can do in space: it is the main obstacle to space solar power, space tourism and large-scale space habitats. So far, we have only dipped our toes into space; if we want to really dive in, we need an efficient, reliable way of getting large amounts of material beyond the Earth's gravitational pull. While incremental improvements in rocket technology may suffice, several very different ways of getting off the planet have been proposed.

• Multi-stage rocket
• Aircraft piggy-back
• Scramjet  / rocket hybrid, such as the single stage to orbit  (SSTO) Skylon  launch vehicle
• Balloon platform.
• Space guns like HARP . Anything propelled upwards at a speed over 11.2 kilometers per second will escape Earth's gravitational pull and get into space. One of the most straightforward ways to reach this fantastic speed is by firing payloads out of the barrel of an enormous gun. This would provide a very cheap and practical way of putting materials in space, but the large g forces involved would make it unsuitable for humans or sensitive equipment.
• Linear motor assisted launch from high altitude terrain
• Space elevator . Picture a satellite tethered to the Earth — a large weight in geosynchronous orbit is attached by a strong, long, light cable to an anchor-point on the planet's surface. Robots could climb this cable, carrying payloads into space. This is expected to reduce the cost of transporting a pound of material into space to $100 ^[2], which would completely open up space to all kinds of new ventures. However, there are still many challenges to be overcome before a space elevator is viable: the robots that ascend the cable need a reliable power source, there are dangers of the cable being snapped by lightning strikes, asteroids or orbiting debris and there is doubt as to whether carbon nanotube cables can be made strong enough to withstand the tension generated by such an enormous structure.
• A launch loop  (illustrated here) is perhaps more feasible than a space elevator as it requires no new materials. It is essentially a conveyor belt to space. It consists of a loop of iron cable anchored on the surface of the Earth at one end, and at a height of 125km above the Earth at the other end. The loop passes through electromagnetic bearings at each end. These bearings spin the cable at high speeds, which creates a centrifugal force that lifts the cable up into an enormous loop, the top half of which is in space. Payloads can use magnets to attach themselves to the cable and ride it into space.

Links

• CosmosCode - "Open Source Software Development for Space Exploration" from NASA's Ames Research Center
• Anansi Spaceworks is at the early stages of attempting to use open source principles to develop space technology
• Going into space may be one of the best things we can do to save our world, and ourselves (Cosmos magazine)
• Open Luna - attempting open-source lunar expeditions, initially robotic-based
• OpenVirgle.net - sustainable living in space using free and open source technology.

See also: Space habitats