Space Colony

[Deepwater6]

http://www.space.com/22229-space-station-colony-futuristic-technology.html

 

Some pretty wild ideas by the info-graphic link inside the article. Closing the life support loop will be a challenge, but I think the first hurdle to over come is the propulsion systems. To build and maintain a colony in space we can't rely on current systems.

 

I would hope that when one is built it has the ability to be fully self sufficient. Of course this would require large areas set aside for farming. Maybe some day in the far future we will build one advanced, and large enough to have livestock on board.

[moonguy]

I should think it would be easy to get a thousand or so people to live on a space colony if it were in Low Earth Orbit. Several years ago Space Systems/Loral was pitching a single-stage orbiter rocket, called Aquarius, that could have delivered itself and a one-ton payload to LEO. The propellant tanks (LO2, LH2 + a large He pressurization sphere) were large enough to provide substantial habitat volume. They were planning to supply the ISS by launching up to 100 of these a year. The launch costs were about $1-2 million per launch. That would probably be about $4 million today. Imagine a colony built up of LH2 tanks; 100 LO2 tanks and 100 He spheres combined in orbit for living and working areas. . .

[moonguy]

CORRECTION!!!! That was not a large Helium sphere on the Aquarius. . . It was Nitrogen. My apologies!

[CraigD]

I missed moonguy’s original post about SSL’s proposed Aquarius launch vehicle. I was a big fan of this proposed system when it was being widely publicized around 2001, then lost track of it. I see per astronautix.com that its study ended in 2006, so it seems NASA, the state of California, and nearly everybody else stopped tracking it, too.:(

 

Like most upper stage rockets, SSL’s proposed Aquarius was to be hydrogen fueled, so consisted mostly of a large liquid hydrogen (LH₂) tank. This is the tank that would be used as “wet workshop” type space station. The Aquarius was to have a compressed nitrogen gas tank, used for its simplified RCS, but it was to be the smallest of its 4 tanks, about a 2 m diameter sphere, which wouldn’t be much good for human habitation.

 

I should think it would be easy to get a thousand or so people to live on a space colony if it were in Low Earth Orbit. Several years ago Space Systems/Loral was pitching a single-stage orbiter rocket, called Aquarius, that could have delivered itself and a one-ton payload to LEO.

The Aquarius’s single stage was planned to be about 4 m outside diameter, containing a LH2 tank about 20 m long, for a volume about 43% that of Skylab’s 6.7 m by 14.6 m S-IV LH2 tank (which flew 1973-1979). Like all hydrogen-burning rockets, Aquarius’s liquid oxygen (LOX) tank was to be several times smaller than its LH2 tank, about 5 m long. On Skylab, the LOX tank was used a waste container – essentially a space septic tank. ;)

 

Skylab was intended to hold 3 people, so perhaps a single Aquarius would provide living space for on average 2. 100 missions were planned to deliver cargo to the ISS between perhaps 2005 and the present replacing the 37 Soyuz/Progress missions that were actually flown (A Progress delivers about 2600 kg, compared to the planned 1000 for Aquarius), so the containers for about 200 low-Earth orbit space colonists would have been essentially orbited for free.

 

While not “a thousand or so”, 200 is a lot of people in space.

 

The big cost, though, with present technology (which I’ll consider to be pre-2011-STS-cancelation technology, as in many practical ways, spaceflight technology has declined since then), is not delivering wet workshops, but the cargo to support them and the spacecraft. The ISS and its usually 6-person crew consumes about 20,800 kg of cargo a year, so even for a super-low cost system like Aquarius (which is about 1/5th as expensive as the most optimistic projects for SpaceX Falcon/Dragon missions, and about 1/10th that of Soyuz/Progress missions), the recurring cost of a colonist is about $3,500,000/year. Delivering 72 people to LEO was to have been the role of a specialized Space Shuttle module. The cost in 1997 US dollars was estimated at $3,500,000/person (real, post 1997 experience show this estimate, like nearly all for the Shuttle, to be understated, the actual being nearly double that), so given the planned capacity of 12 STS missions a year, could have delivered about 864 colonists a year at about the per/colonist cost of 1 year’s ongoing cost using a very thrifty Aquarius or similar cargo ship.

 

The current price to deliver a person to the ISS on a Soyuz is on the order of $50,000,000. I think any space colonization must have a “bulk passenger” system at least similar in capability to the STS passenger module. (sources on the STS passenger module are hard-to-come by – section 4 and figure 6 in this Space Future page is the best I could find)

 

I’ll skip the details of how to make hundreds of discarded LH2 tanks into a space colony in LEO, and comment only briefly or whether this is the best “building material” or orbit for one: I think Bigelow Aerospace has a better approach with its “expandable” (a better marketing term, apparently, than “inflatable”) space station modules like their proposed 6-person BA 330 and 16-person BA 2100). To be proof against the catastrophe of not being able to maintain orbit due a disruption in propellant delivery or other maneuvering necessities, I think a higher orbit than LEO, though more costly, is justified. Also to be proof against this, I think an Earth-orbiting colony should use a propulsion system that can, properly maintained, run practically forever without refueling. My favorite system for this solar electric tether propulsion.

 

When people talk about “the cold equations”, they’re usually referring to the mechanics of spaceflight, but IMHO, the really cold equations for a space colony involve its business case. Successful business enterprises must make more money than is spent on them – have a positive ROI, in bizspeak. My optimistic estimates above suggest that a single space colonists will cost around $3,500,000/year. So the question is “what can a few hundred or thousand people in space do to make more than $3,500,000/year each?” The cold biz equations not only demand positive, but maximized ROI, so the harder question becomes “what can a few hundred or thousand people in space do to make more than $3,500,000/year each that they can’t do more cheaply on Earth?”

 

Here, I’m simply stumped, in no small part, I think, because I personally have only the slightest clue how to make $3,500,000+/year doing anything anywhere. Some people make money at this rate with entertainment products, so perhaps a space colony could do this. :shrug: A couple of ideas:

 

Reality/Sitcom/drama TV in Space

Revenues of the market-dominating TV shows Friends (1994-2004) and ER (1994-2009) peaked at $154,000,000 and $247,000,000/year (source: this 2002 NY Times article) so if a space colony could duplicate this success, they could support a population of nearly 100 using ISS + Aquarius-like logistics (ISSAL).

 

Space Sports

Televised sports might be the most lucrative entertainment products a space colony could produce. The NFL expects to sell the next year of its product to broadcaster for about $6,000,000,000, with plans increasing revenue to perhaps $25,000,000,000/year by 2027 (source this 2011 Wall Street Journal article, ). If a space colony could duplicated this success, it could support a population via ISSAL of about 1700 to as many as 7100.

 

This idea seems promising to me, because I can imagine games that couldn’t be played anywhere on Earth, only in the microgravity of space. The “battle room” games described in Orson Scot Card’s classic 1985 novel Ender's Game (and to be realized visually – and hopefully not ruinously - next month in a major movie) come to mind.

 

While “waste” in terms of sustaining the basic life support and engineering needs of a space colony, and for performing much science, if a sports arena is what makes the money that makes the colony possible, it’s practically its most critical piece. Although the battle room in Ender’s Game is a large air-filled space, this isn’t an essential requirement – using spacesuits, sports could be played in vacuum, or even on the exterior of the spacecraft or beyond, the only necessity being that high-quality video of it can be captured.

 

As entertainment history is littered with seemingly super-cool new sports that failed to make much money (eg: SlamBall, which appears to have only 4 US-broadcast seasons, 2002, 2003, 2007 and 2008, but still be being played, perhaps mostly in China), attracting investors would be a feat of salesmanship. Whether it would actually make money is beyond my ability to confidently guess.

 

Lottery

In 2009, people spent $50,400,000,000 on US state-sanctioned lotteries. If 12% of the people who play lotteries in the hope of winning money would play to win a “space vacation” (not a few minutes of sub-orbital microgravity and viewing promised by businesses like Virgin Galactic, but weeks experiencing what full-time colonists do, perhaps including a Luna visit), the colony would make enough to support 1700 colonists via ISSAL.

 

Buzz Aldrin has long advocated for a “space tourism lottery”, not specifically as a means of privately financing a space colony (Buzz has long advocate for continued strong government space program roles in spaceflight, rather than privatization at any cost), but to prevent space tourism from being available only to rich people, which he sees as detrimental to public support for space travel (see this page for more).

 

Note that I use “ISSAL”, meaning “International Space Station resupply using Aquarius-like low-cost cargo spacecraft”, throughout the above. All of the finance math changes if this assumption does, so engineering innovations that permits a space colony to be more self-sufficient than the ISS – better recycling, onboard agriculture, more closed H₂O / O₂ / CO₂ systems, and perhaps “skimming” replacement gasses from the Earth’s atmosphere – could dramatically improve them.

[moonguy]

As usual your post has a lot of good perspectives on the Aquarius Colony idea. There are a number of particular points that should be detailed for perspective. . .

Skylab had a total ‘working’ volume of 330 m3. The Aquarius’ Liquid Hydrogen tank alone was 23 meters long by 4 meters in diameter. It had a volume of 272.2 m3, or about 82% of Skylab’s. When you add the volumes of the gaseous Hydrogen tank (33.6 m3) and the 8.4-meter long LO2 tank (88.7 m3) the total working volume is 394 m3, exceeding Skylab’s by 64 m3. As a visualization, the LO2 tank alone presents more habitable volume than the two decks of the Space Shuttle crew module combined. Yet NASA was totally comfortable with seven-person crews flying missions up to two weeks on Shuttle. If you consider just one LH2 tank/module as a bunkroom only, like a Pullman car way back when, with three tiers of bunks to each side of its centerline, you get 110 bunk spaces. Only nine modules would be needed to accommodate 1000 people. Though that better describes a space station of the type Von Braun had in mind where crews had temporary tours of duty and private space was not considered so important.

It should be noted that the 100 module figure only defined the modules in the habitat ‘ring’. Also, that was not ‘100 flights to supply the ISS’ as a program. That was the expected production/launch rate per year for the rocket as stated in the company’s business plan. Most of those would go to support ISS, but they expected other customers as well.

The rationale behind the use of Aquarius is that the standard mission profile puts the rocket into a stable, if temporary, orbit. It is almost like having a small (23-ton) space station launch itself into orbit. The Bigelow modules you mentioned still need a separate launch vehicle and they also need retrieval in order to be integrated with other modules. In that sense, they are no improvement over Aquarius tankage. Also, I doubt these modules can be built for the $4 Million cost of the Aquarius.

I agree with your suggestion about several revenue streams being possible. From a business point of view, this colony would be applicable to an orbital hotel. We have already seen people spend real bucks for short stays on space stations that were in no way designed for ‘tourist’ applications. Aquarius colony could offer more and accommodate more people. Another revenue stream would come from modules being rented out to NASA. If the colony is designed along a Mars gravity level, it would be a natural for training Mars-bound astronauts.

Space Systems/Loral estimated a development cost for Aquarius of about $200 Million, which included construction of a factory and purchase of a barge fleet to launch the rocket.

Transportation costs are a concern, but if you review concepts such as the ‘Phoenix’ system developed by Gary Hudson and others in the 1980’s, the prospects are not so dismal. They had projected development costs for Phoenix that were about $600 million in today’s dollars. By comparison, Boeing’s 777 aircraft was developed for about $4 Billion in the 1990’s and was considered high risk due to its innovative technologies. This suggests to me that if there is a place for such a system to fly to, there can be sufficient grounds to execute loans for development of a Phoenix-type system. Aquarius can provide that ‘place’ sooner, faster and at less expense than any other option.

Edited October 5, 2013 by moonguy

[tkron31]

Reality Show: Mars One just recently closed a deal with the same company that does Big Brother. Can be done though I'm still not sure how much Mars One is going to get out of it.

Merchandising: Modest success here. I recommend getting somebody like Zazzle involved for the bulk discounts that can make it attractive to ordinary retailers. I imagine huge racks of Mars One hoodies at my local mall.

Lottery: I've heard of Buzz Aldrin's lottery idea too, but I also remember that he mentioned that there were legalities involved. (Read: Red tape that can cut into your profits.)

Space Sports: It would be interesting to see what soccer in microgravity would look like. And the first interplanetary Olympics.

Tourism: Feasible, but needs existing infrastructure (read: billions of dollars and a few decades of research and development) and the "natives" who have already colonized could well turn out to be a cranky bunch.

[Murga]

QuoteLottery

In 2009, people spent $50,400,000,000 on US state-sanctioned lotteries. If 12% of the people who play lotteries in the hope of winning money would play to win a “space vacation” (not a few minutes of sub-orbital microgravity and viewing promised by businesses like Virgin Galactic, but weeks experiencing what full-time colonists do, perhaps including a Luna visit), the colony would make enough to support 1700 colonists via ISSAL.

 

Buzz Aldrin has long advocated for a “space tourism lottery”, not specifically as a means of privately financing a space colony (Buzz has long advocate for continued strong government space program roles in spaceflight, rather than privatization at any cost), but to prevent space tourism from being available only to rich people, which he sees as detrimental to public support for space travel (see this page for more).

 

It was tried in 1990 by Jim Davidson, et al. Some goofball high official in NASA went ballistic [pun on us] and had the whole group falsely arrested. True, USSR was still operating in feeble life support. If they had just waited a couple years later, it may have come to much less grief. The communist card would not have been so potent. And if they had operated from another state than Texas, which gleans billions from Houston operations.

 

They were thrown into a notorious city jail where 'lunch' was in paper bags harshly slid or kicked under the rails on the floor contaminated by human excrement and vomit. Their 'lawyer' offered a plea bargain of a year in prison, suggesting to take it, IIRC. Jim immediately fired the retained lawyer. Quite a lot of colorful press ensued, including a modest Time Magazine article.

 

http://indomitus.net/sts.html

[Eclipse Now]

There was a claim that heat cannot radiate away from space stations or Mars colonies fast enough to allow large industrial centres to grow. This is false. Goatguy (from Next Big Future) replies:

“I recommend you find time to look into Black Body Radiation sometime, son. The premise - “can't get rid of heat in space like you can with an atmosphere” - isn't factual at all. In the emptiness of space, actual experiments have been done with blackened flat plates of aluminum. 3% albedo (very black). In full sunlight, without other dissipation, the plates will get to a near uniform 270°K or so.

The reason is, is that the emptiness of space has a thermal temperature of about 3°K, very close to absolute zero. All the 1,360 watts per square meter of the plate's illumination (which is a lot!) is as you surmise, converted to heat. But the hot plate also now radiates in the infrared. The balance point is at 330°K or about the temperature of hot tea.

With that existential crisis and conspiracy removed, you can see how any and all power generating systems and power consumption systems slough off their heat in space: blackbody radiation.

NOTE: even the analogy the site makes of a Thermos bottle isn't very accurate: If you recall, both the wall of the inner bottle and the wall of the outer retaining bottle/shell are coated with highly reflective silver/barium layers. Why? To make them particularly good infrared reflectors, and rather poor black-body radiators. So, while the hot stuff on the inside of the Thermos might be radiating furiously in the infrared, the inner walls radiate that back at the source. Cuts thermal losses more even than the vacuum itself.

Again, not to be too snarky - but really you should check out how thermodynamics works. We'll find it quite easy to get rid of the heat-of-energy-consumption, once we establish ourselves on any outer orb. Count on it.”

 

http://nextbigfuture.com/2014/08/elon-musk-timeline-and-extrapolation-of.html#comment-1552079575

Edited August 22, 2014 by Eclipse Now

[Allanah]

I do think we will see space colonies in the future. I'm not sure my generation or my kids generation will be alive but I think it is something that WILL eventually happen. I'd love to be alive to see space colonies become reality, though.

[ErlyRisa]

What would help the best,, is to find a Cave/cavern on Mars, with a stream of water. All problems would be solved quite quickly. eg. Movie: Total Recall.

[Murga]

What would help the best,, is to find a Cave/cavern on Mars, with a stream of water. All problems would be solved quite quickly. eg. Movie: Total Recall.

 Uh, unless caves were sealed the water would have to be frozen.  A lake is possible if covered with ice (providing pressure to be beyond the triple point, iirc).  Movies do not follow Chales Law, etc.   The advantage of lava caves are that the openings tend to be easy to close, just two ends and the rest by very hot temperatures can be sealed, especially in near total vacuums.  Mars is a fairly good vacuum, our Moon being much better.

[ErlyRisa]

 Uh, unless caves were sealed the water would have to be frozen.  A lake is possible if covered with ice (providing pressure to be beyond the triple point, iirc).  Movies do not follow Chales Law, etc.   The advantage of lava caves are that the openings tend to be easy to close, just two ends and the rest by very hot temperatures can be sealed, especially in near total vacuums.  Mars is a fairly good vacuum, our Moon being much better.

 

I just think it would be cool if there was a prebuilt pizza oven ready to melt up an atmosphere ready to go. (Like in the Movie), but if there isn't then colonisation would be easier (full/long term) if you just walled up a cave and pressurised that as a dwelling. What would be great is if there were N C O H ready to be released from the rock.

 

So far missions to mars have only explored very little: and unlike the Moon, it ain't flat. So there is actually something to find on Mars like there are great places to find on Earth.

[Murga]

 unlike the Moon, it [Mars] ain't flat. So there is actually something to find on Mars like there are great places to find on Earth.

 

 

Just for the record, the moon has mountains as tall as 5  miles or more high, measured from the immediate surounding plain.  Apollo 15 surveyed the area around Hadley Rille, a collapsed lava tube at the base of close to that height mountains.  The difference is that with micrometeors hitting the lunar surface for billions of years, unlike Mars where the surface is quite young and the air thick enough to burn up the smaller ones, our Moon's surface is rounded similar to that of recenbt post glacial moraines on Earth.  Mars has rugged cliffs much more photgenic than the Moon, it is true.

[ErlyRisa]

Just for the record, the moon has mountains as tall as 5  miles or more high, measured from the immediate surounding plain.  Apollo 15 surveyed the area around Hadley Rille, a collapsed lava tube at the base of close to that height mountains.  The difference is that with micrometeors hitting the lunar surface for billions of years, unlike Mars where the surface is quite young and the air thick enough to burn up the smaller ones, our Moon's surface is rounded similar to that of recenbt post glacial moraines on Earth.  Mars has rugged cliffs much more photgenic than the Moon, it is true.

 

Your scales are out of whack...the moon i a desert in comparison to Mars. Mars is an evolved body with features, the moon is a sculpted rock.

[Eclogite]

Whoa! You asserted that the moon was flat - post #12.

 

Murga rightly pointed out that the moon has a considerable topography. Only the maria are comparatively flat. The degree of evolution of the two bodies has nothing to do with whether or not the moon is flat: it isn't. Agreed?

[Racoon]

Without water the whole topic is null and void. 

 

Very difficult to bring water.. Maybe there could be advancement in recycling urine and feces.

Sounds gross, but its the only realistic way at this point.

 

of course CraigD makes excellent statements regarding realities.

Edited October 22, 2014 by Racoon

[Murga]

Without water the whole topic is null and void. 

 

Very difficult to bring water.. Maybe there could be advancement in recycling urine and feces.

Sounds gross, but its the only realistic way at this point.

 Not at all unusual.  We do it on Earth all the time.  Still in China and places put human sewage as a fertilizer for vegetable crops.  Safe enough if using trees, but the other is sick unless you are starving.  Before WWII in western hotels in Japan, like Frank Lloyd Wright's Imperial Hotel used hydroponic grown vegetables at their own farms to ensure no so called "night soil" crops found their way into the menu.

 

If you mean have it decay a bit, then not at all gross.  It happens all the time in the US, especially in areas of irrigation and limited water sources.  Once a proponent handed Jimmy Carter, the US president then, a glass of water straight from the sewage treatment plant.  He declined to drink it, to the disappointment of the staff. 

 

Actually water is fairly plentiful in solar orbit.  This is because of Carbonaceous varieties being the majority type of the main belts, especially on the outer ones.  Water clays lock in considerable amounts of water, just waiting to be baked out.  On the moon, either the poles or mining the soil for solar wind hydrogen (the oxygen is far easier to get from rocks, making up about 20% of the moon by weight iirc).  Although not weighty per kg of moon soil, the hydrogen only needs 1/9th the amount of water by mass.  8/9ths is Oxygen.  An acre of soil to 3 inches would yield many gallons I have read