5 years of thrusting? can you please stop now?

[Nuke]

id start a lunar colony robotically and only send humans after fuel, oxygen, water, power and possibly food reserves have been established. once there the primary jobs are farming, repairing stuff, and science. the crew would also bring their own escape solution should something go horribly wrong. once you got basic survival down comes mining, construction, and eventually permanent habitation. its completely doable. id use the same plan for mars, but that one would be launched from the moon, not earth.

[NGTOne]

id start a lunar colony robotically and only send humans after fuel, oxygen, water, power and possibly food reserves have been established. once there the primary jobs are farming, repairing stuff, and science. the crew would also bring their own escape solution should something go horribly wrong. once you got basic survival down comes mining, construction, and eventually permanent habitation. its completely doable. id use the same plan for mars, but that one would be launched from the moon, not earth.

A human crew might be necessary even at the beginning, to oversee construction and make repairs/correct mistakes (after all, you don't want your colonists to arrive to find a leaky colony, right?). But for this crew, return to Earth would have to be a real option - returning 3 robotics technicians is easier than 3 dozen colonists.

[Nuke]

i can see a couple human technicians being present to oversee robotic construction in the initial phases. its certainly easier to keep 2 or 3 crew alive for 6 months than 3 dozen people alive for a week. but bulk habitation would be delayed until there are guarantees for the long term survival (on the scale of years) and potentially evacuation of the colony. just having full tanks of oxygen/fuel/water on the ground will help that along. you might also have gradual colonization, for example sending in farmers to grow and preserve foodstuffs ahead of full blown colonization. i figure it would be something like this:

phase 1:

send robots and tankage to harvest and store raw lunar materials neccisary for colonization (water, fuel, oxygen) and prep the colony landing site.

phase 2:

bring in the primary colonization structure(s), vehicles and machinery and land them robotically.

phase 3:

bring in a small technical crew to oversee pressurization of the colony, implementation of radiation shielding from local materials (regolith for example) and secondary construction (most of the labor would be robotic, crew only provides technical oversite).

phase 4:

bring in the farming crew (this crew might be initially small with robotic labor) to produce foodstuffs for full blown colonization.

phase 5:

begin colonization, starting with essential personnel (leadership, technical, engineering, medical), mission critical personnel (scientists) and then finally general colonists (laborers).

what all this has to do with ion propulsion is beyond me.

Edited July 4, 2013 by Nuke

[Flixxbeatz]

Alright! Ion Maiden is now one step away from reality

[NGTOne]

what all this has to do with ion propulsion is beyond me.

Eh, mutating thread. I like your roadmap, though - however, some manufacturing capability would need to be set up right from the get-go (for instance, the production of steel for replacement components/new structures). A machine shop would also be necessary, for the fabrication of replacement/new components. The emphasis, after all, is on as little reliance on Earthbound supplies as possible. While the colony wouldn't be building spaceships for a while, at least they would be able to fix breakdowns and broken parts to a certain extent.

It might even be beneficial to construct a series of mining sites (automated or lightly crewed), to provide certain resources that may not be available at the main colony site (transported there for processing by truck or train or something).

[Nuke]

i could imagine other materials like lunacrete or lunar basalt sintering would produce neccisary materials to allow for additional structures to be built. ive seen plans for an automated solar powered sintering robot, which would produce modular bricks which could be used as building material almost right away (such a robot would probibly be landed for phase 1). lunacrete would be a bit more involved, but would allow for more complex construction. a metal foundry would probibly be the first extension to the colony, as it allows for the reinforcement of lunacrete structures, allowing larger buildings. since building materials are the heaviest to transport, manufacturing those on site is critical.

manufacture of structural metals like steel and aluminum is just the tip of the iceberg. then comes other metals neccisary for technology, copper, carbon, silicon, glass lead, and chemical production. once you got that you can do production of electronic components. when you start manufacturing space craft you will need more advanced materials like titanium and tungsten. for propulsion and power mining of uranium helium3 and whatever propellants you need. i can see mission launched entirely from the moon to recover space debris for salvage. you would have to build an entire industrial complex to make the colony 100% self sustaining and productive.

but i see it more as a progressive expansion of the colonies capabilities. initially it will need to be resupplied from earth and as the production capabilities of the colony increases the fewer supplies will be neccisary. by the time we do something like this we will likely have better launch systems, so the resupply aspects will be made less expensive (possibly to the point of allowing regular trade). would be nice to do it now, but i dont think its happening any time soon.

[NGTOne]

i could imagine other materials like lunacrete or lunar basalt sintering would produce neccisary materials to allow for additional structures to be built. ive seen plans for an automated solar powered sintering robot, which would produce modular bricks which could be used as building material almost right away (such a robot would probibly be landed for phase 1). lunacrete would be a bit more involved, but would allow for more complex construction. a metal foundry would probibly be the first extension to the colony, as it allows for the reinforcement of lunacrete structures, allowing larger buildings. since building materials are the heaviest to transport, manufacturing those on site is critical.

manufacture of structural metals like steel and aluminum is just the tip of the iceberg. then comes other metals neccisary for technology, copper, carbon, silicon, glass lead, and chemical production. once you got that you can do production of electronic components. when you start manufacturing space craft you will need more advanced materials like titanium and tungsten. for propulsion and power mining of uranium helium3 and whatever propellants you need. i can see mission launched entirely from the moon to recover space debris for salvage. you would have to build an entire industrial complex to make the colony 100% self sustaining and productive.

but i see it more as a progressive expansion of the colonies capabilities. initially it will need to be resupplied from earth and as the production capabilities of the colony increases the fewer supplies will be neccisary. by the time we do something like this we will likely have better launch systems, so the resupply aspects will be made less expensive (possibly to the point of allowing regular trade). would be nice to do it now, but i dont think its happening any time soon.

OK, fair point, but I still advocate for more mining and processing equipment in the initial push - that way, the colonists will have some way of replacing at least SOME broken components right off the bat (for instance, a fan in an air recirculator). For instance, a small steel mill (along the lines of the backyard blast furnaces that Mao designed for his Great Leap Forward, with some modifications regarding fuel and proper training in their use) could be sent up with (or before) the first colonists, allowing manufacture of steel components right off the bat with a properly equipped machine/welding shop.

[zekes]

wel duh they're gonna test for five years, it's a low thrust engine, therefore it needs to stand up to long durations of power.

[Kerbface]

OK, fair point, but I still advocate for more mining and processing equipment in the initial push - that way, the colonists will have some way of replacing at least SOME broken components right off the bat (for instance, a fan in an air recirculator). For instance, a small steel mill (along the lines of the backyard blast furnaces that Mao designed for his Great Leap Forward, with some modifications regarding fuel and proper training in their use) could be sent up with (or before) the first colonists, allowing manufacture of steel components right off the bat with a properly equipped machine/welding shop.

Um... 3D printing. I'm pretty sure small metal parts are fairly simple to print with modern or at least near future printers.

[NGTOne]

Um... 3D printing. I'm pretty sure small metal parts are fairly simple to print with modern or at least near future printers.

You still need to get the metal from somewhere.

[Nuke]

pretty sure lunar regolith is loaded with iron powder. it just takes a magnet to extract it, and you immediately have a medium for a direct metal laser sintering machine. in its raw form, it probibly wont make the highest quality parts

(its just iron after all), but its a place to start. perhaps mix in some carbon powder for steel. real problem with a lunar foundry is adequate heat sources. burning fuel and oxygen would be wasteful. electric or microwave heating (i know for a fact you can smelt metal in a microwave oven) might work if you have a nuclear power source (or better yet an energy positive polywell). an electrode furnace would work if you could salvage space junk. you will need a reactor if you want to produce aluminum.

[NGTOne]

pretty sure lunar regolith is loaded with iron powder. it just takes a magnet to extract it, and you immediately have a medium for a direct metal laser sintering machine. in its raw form, it probibly wont make the highest quality parts

(its just iron after all), but its a place to start. perhaps mix in some carbon powder for steel. real problem with a lunar foundry is adequate heat sources. burning fuel and oxygen would be wasteful. electric or microwave heating (i know for a fact you can smelt metal in a microwave oven) might work if you have a nuclear power source (or better yet an energy positive polywell). an electrode furnace would work if you could salvage space junk. you will need a reactor if you want to produce aluminum.

Well, there you go - there's a lot of things you can make with just steel and aluminum. Sure, you'd still need to import electronics components and reactor fuel (barring the timely development of a viable H3 fusion reactor) from Earth, but you'd have the capacity to expand your colony and fabricate a goodly number of replacement components right off the bat, which would be a great benefit to expanding and maintaining a colony.

[rdfox]

OK, for those who are still wondering why we do robotic exploration, there are two simple reasons, both related to what a robotic probe (be it a flyby, an orbiter, a lander, or a rover) does NOT need.

1) A robot doesn't need life support. All it needs is a power supply (which the life support system for a crewed vessel would require anyway), and it's golden. That means you don't need to carry all those tons of consumables like oxygen and lithium hydroxide and such, or the "plumber's nightmare" of the environmental control system to make use of the consumables.

A robot can be sent there and worked until it stops working, then abandoned, whereas a human would PROBABLY want to come back home at the end of the mission. This means that the robot doesn't need to carry the tons and tons of equipment and supplies needed for a return to Earth unless it's a sample-return mission from the outset. (Even then, it can use a tiny version, since the sample is going to be maybe a couple of kilograms, tops.)

Both of these vastly reduce the size of the payload required, and thus the size of the booster required to get the necessary delta-V. Remember, while the Apollo moon landings required a beast the size of a Saturn V to launch them, the Surveyor robotic lunar landings of 1965-67 did were able to use a Titan II with a Centaur upper stage for TLI... much smaller and less expensive than the Saturn. (There's also further weight savings due to other things, like how a robot probe can be designed to not care if it experiences 14g in the final phases of ascent, or how radiation shielding is only required on the electronics, or how a robot probe doesn't need a launch escape system, but the two I mentioned are the primary sources of weight savings.)

A man can do a *better* job of the science, but the cost of sending a human is prohibitive compared to that of a robot.

[NGTOne]

OK, for those who are still wondering why we do robotic exploration, there are two simple reasons, both related to what a robotic probe (be it a flyby, an orbiter, a lander, or a rover) does NOT need.

1) A robot doesn't need life support. All it needs is a power supply (which the life support system for a crewed vessel would require anyway), and it's golden. That means you don't need to carry all those tons of consumables like oxygen and lithium hydroxide and such, or the "plumber's nightmare" of the environmental control system to make use of the consumables.

A robot can be sent there and worked until it stops working, then abandoned, whereas a human would PROBABLY want to come back home at the end of the mission. This means that the robot doesn't need to carry the tons and tons of equipment and supplies needed for a return to Earth unless it's a sample-return mission from the outset. (Even then, it can use a tiny version, since the sample is going to be maybe a couple of kilograms, tops.)

Both of these vastly reduce the size of the payload required, and thus the size of the booster required to get the necessary delta-V. Remember, while the Apollo moon landings required a beast the size of a Saturn V to launch them, the Surveyor robotic lunar landings of 1965-67 did were able to use a Titan II with a Centaur upper stage for TLI... much smaller and less expensive than the Saturn. (There's also further weight savings due to other things, like how a robot probe can be designed to not care if it experiences 14g in the final phases of ascent, or how radiation shielding is only required on the electronics, or how a robot probe doesn't need a launch escape system, but the two I mentioned are the primary sources of weight savings.)

A man can do a *better* job of the science, but the cost of sending a human is prohibitive compared to that of a robot.

It's not just ABOUT the science, though - it's about the inevitable expansion of humanity. The same argument could have been made 500 years ago, with regards to the Americas - it was expensive and risky to send people there (a dangerous ocean crossing, hostile environment, and often unfriendly natives). But people WERE sent, in the interest of exploration and progress and expansion. Eventually, we have to do the same thing, but upwards rather than sideways. Humanity's expansion into space is inevitable - the real question is when it will happen, not if.

[m4v]

It's not just ABOUT the science, though - it's about the inevitable expansion of humanity. (...) Humanity's expansion into space is inevitable - the real question is when it will happen, not if.

And now, that is bull****. Sorry, but when I see bull**** I have to call it so.

Whenever we go to space or not depends of humanity sorting out the problems we have in our home planet, a colony in Mars isn't going to survive without Earth, so we must keep Earth nice and cosy and for that I did like to see our resources committed to finding alternatives to fossil fuels and countering climate change so we don't trigger a runaway greenhouse effect that will f*ck us all over. I'm all for going to space, but I'm against in wasting gargantuan amounts of money in pointless space projects when it could be used for secure our future in Earth.

Maybe you like to drive while looking at the horizon, but I would rather keep the eyes in the road so we don't hit anything before we reach our destination.

[NGTOne]

And now, that is bull****. Sorry, but when I see bull**** I have to call it so.

Whenever we go to space or not depends of humanity sorting out the problems we have in our home planet, a colony in Mars isn't going to survive without Earth, so we must keep Earth nice and cosy and for that I did like to see our resources committed to finding alternatives to fossil fuels and countering climate change so we don't trigger a runaway greenhouse effect that will f*ck us all over. I'm all for going to space, but I'm against in wasting gargantuan amounts of money in pointless space projects when it could be used for secure our future in Earth.

Maybe you like to drive while looking at the horizon, but I would rather keep the eyes in the road so we don't hit anything before we reach our destination.

Yes, a colony on another world would be dependent on Earth - for a time. But the colonization efforts in the Americas were no different. And there were just as many political issues then are there are now. I maintain that it is not a matter of if, but when. I doubt it'll be a government agency that's ultimately responsible, though.

[Kryten]

Colonisation efforts in the Americas initially survived just fine without any support (how many supply convoys did you think Cortez received?) and returned enormous sums of money. People expecting that to recur was exactly why there were disasters like Roanoke. There are no cities to plunder or natives to enslave on mars.

[Nuke]

the only reason i see to send humans at all is permanent settlement (or to test our capabilities to do so). you can send them for a publicity stunt or a political penis measuring contest (apollo program). but the robots have told us more about the solar system than any astronaut. in the 60s the human was really the only way to reliably conduct science in space, robotics really didnt kick off till the 70s when computers started getting really small, light and many orders of magnitude faster than what apollo had to work with.

colonization really isnt about science its about infrastructure, and that will be done jointly by robotics and humans as ive already discribed. this gives us a base of production and exploration outside of the gravity well, which is holding us back right now (for both human and robotic missions).

[Mr.Hazard]

id start a lunar colony robotically and only send humans after fuel, oxygen, water, power and possibly food reserves have been established. once there the primary jobs are farming, repairing stuff, and science. the crew would also bring their own escape solution should something go horribly wrong. once you got basic survival down comes mining, construction, and eventually permanent habitation. its completely doable. id use the same plan for mars, but that one would be launched from the moon, not earth.

people say theres helium 3 on the moon, so if you bring some sort of mining equipment and refinery you can create fuel for reuseable fusion engines.

helium 3 can also be used in fusionreactors on the moon to power the base on the moon.

if you send enough modules to the moon you'll most likely manage to power stuff and refuel spacecrafts in lunar orbit for longer journeys to other planets.

[m4v]

Yes, a colony on another world would be dependent on Earth - for a time. But the colonization efforts in the Americas were no different. And there were just as many political issues then are there are now. I maintain that it is not a matter of if, but when. I doubt it'll be a government agency that's ultimately responsible, though.

I can't believe you're comparing colonising Mars with the Americas conquest, because first things first, it wasn't a colonization, it was a conquest, there was already people living in the Americas before Columbus got there. And even so, in the Americas there was water, air and food readily available, in Mars what you have?

There's no precedent or anything like colonizing another planet in human history, don't take space colonization as granted.

[NGTOne]

I can't believe you're comparing colonising Mars with the Americas conquest, because first things first, it wasn't a colonization, it was a conquest, there was already people living in the Americas before Columbus got there. And even so, in the Americas there was water, air and food readily available, in Mars what you have?

There's no precedent or anything like colonizing another planet in human history, don't take space colonization as granted.

I'm not taking it as utterly granted - yes, there are significant differences. However, consider it another way:

The human race possesses enough nuclear hardware to turn the surface of the Earth to ash a thousand times over. What purpose could this armament POSSIBLY serve? The last ACTUALLY USEFUL application of nuclear weapons was expediting the end of WW2, and the greater interdependence of our world via trade and commerce all but guarantees that WW3 will never occur. So, then, why not let the missiles rust away to nothing in their silos, a silent monument to a stupid moment in human history? Divert the money going towards the maintenance of those missiles (and the development of new ones) into a space exploration initiative, either public or private? I don't particularly care about the motivations for manned space exploration - it can be profit, species survival, political saber-rattling, that part DOESN'T ACTUALLY MATTER. What matters is a human presence in space, to ensure our survival and growth as a species. I firmly believe that someday, someone is going to come along, and wonder what the HELL we were all smoking, staying on our own planet and ignoring the world around us. We, as a species, have "Never-left-my-home-village" syndrome, and I think it's about damn time we grew out of that. There's an enormous universe out there, full of riches and (pardon the pun) free space, just waiting to be taken and put to use.

[nyrath]

You had chemical engines able to send humans to Mars 50 years ago as well. The issue with doing it isn't ISP, thrust, radioactivity, any of those. It's money. No bucks, no buck rogers.

why do you want bigger rockets? for send people to Mars and to do what? to pick some rocks and plant a flag? We aren't kerbals, I would much rather see money go to unmanned craft that can do the same science than a manned one at a fraction of the cost.

m4V the quote Kryten alluded to is more commonly: No Buck Rogers, No Bucks. Meaning taxpayers are far more enthusiastic giving money to NASA for manned space flight as opposed to some unmanned space probe. Translation: yes, you get more science bang for your buck with robot probes as opposed to manned missions, but that is bitter consolation if you cannot get any taxpayer funding for your robot probe.

Werner von Braun, Carl Sagan & Gerard O'Neill

http://theforvm.org/diary/bill-white/werner-von-braun-carl-sagan-gerard-oneill

In a paradigm Tumlinson dreamed up, the space world fractures into three groups: Saganites, O’Neillians and von Braunians.

Saganites, named for astronomer Carl Sagan (1934 - 1996), are the philosophers and voyeurs of the cosmos, intent on low-impact exploration that promotes a sense of wonder. They consider the universe an extension of Earth, and want space explorers to be politically correct pacifists and environmentalists.

O’Neillians take their name from Princeton physicist Gerard O’Neill (1927 - 1992), who imagined city-size colonies in space contained on vast, rotating platforms (think of the space station in 2001: A Space Odyssey, with its spinning rings and artificial gravity). Getting people out of here en masse was the thingâ€â€not to kiss Earth good-bye in the rearview mirror, but to give it a chance, by consuming extraterrestrial rather than terrestrial resources. (An O’Neillian motto, riding a bumper sticker of his day, read: “Save Earth: Develop Space.â€Â)

Von Braunians are, strictly speaking, the old guard, named for the V-2 and Saturn rocket-meister Wernher von Braun (1912 - 1977). Von Braunians advocate a centralized approach: large expensive projects like the ones NASA undertakes, projects that ordinary people can be proud of but not participate in.

In a nutshell: Saganites say, Look but don’t touch; O’Neillians, Do it yourself; von Braunians, We’ll do it for you.

Saganites are about indulging our sense of awe. They believe all space races we can imagine now are just tune-ups for the real eventâ€â€which will happen when we discover, through SETI, or planet-hunting interferometry probes, evidence of probable intelligent life. Saganites would like to see humanity develop international space treaties, to view space as a common resource.

O’Neillians are about free enterprise, manifest destiny and everyone’s right to a piece of the private-entry-to-LEO pie. They believe space is fair game for development.

Von Braunians are about national prestigeâ€â€NASA’s very reason for being, and surely the biggest single driver of space-faring to date. When Kennedy announced Americans would be first to the Moon, when Nixon signed off on the space shuttle program, when Reagan OK’d the space stationâ€â€they were all serving up old Wernher, wrapped in Old Glory.

Edited July 5, 2013 by nyrath

[Kryten]

That's the way around I meant it; I wasn't advocating crewed flights, just trying to point out pinning the blame on environmentalists is bit wrong-headed. You get the same with orion; people moan about people not wanting fallout, but then don't think about how much a 10,000 tons spacecraft is actually going to cost...

[metaphor]

And now, that is bull****. Sorry, but when I see bull**** I have to call it so.

Whenever we go to space or not depends of humanity sorting out the problems we have in our home planet, a colony in Mars isn't going to survive without Earth, so we must keep Earth nice and cosy and for that I did like to see our resources committed to finding alternatives to fossil fuels and countering climate change so we don't trigger a runaway greenhouse effect that will f*ck us all over. I'm all for going to space, but I'm against in wasting gargantuan amounts of money in pointless space projects when it could be used for secure our future in Earth.

Maybe you like to drive while looking at the horizon, but I would rather keep the eyes in the road so we don't hit anything before we reach our destination.

It would not be gargantuan amounts of money. NASA's human spaceflight budget is about $6 billion a year. That's less than the cost of an average 2 weeks of the Iraq war. The cost for NASA developing a capability to land humans on Mars and return them to Earth is about $100 billion over ~20 years, with each mission after the first costing maybe $5-10 billion (example source). That $100 billion is equal to 1/3 of ExxonMobil's revenue in a single year. The estimate for a large permanent Moon base is maybe $400 billion over 20 years. That's about half of what the US military spends in a single year. And since the US spends more on space than all other countries combined, the world spaceflight budget is even lower as a percentage of GDP (less than 0.1%).

The point is, we would not go broke by supporting human spaceflight (and robotic spaceflight too). What we should be doing is spending more money on science in general to solve the Earth's problems, but we can definitely afford to spend more on space exploration at the same time.

[Nuke]

people say theres helium 3 on the moon, so if you bring some sort of mining equipment and refinery you can create fuel for reuseable fusion engines.

helium 3 can also be used in fusionreactors on the moon to power the base on the moon.

if you send enough modules to the moon you'll most likely manage to power stuff and refuel spacecrafts in lunar orbit for longer journeys to other planets.

i kinda think he3 fusion is overrated. p-b11 fusion is better because more abundant fuel supply. both are aneutronic. but these are second generation fusion concepts. get first generation d-d and d-t reactors working first.