Space Infrastructure at the Dawn of of the 31st Century (speculation)

[Nibb31]

Platinum is used for two things right now: jewellery and catalytic converters for cars. I don't imagine that we will still be driving gas guzzlers in 50 years, so there goes most of the demand for platinum. As for jewellery, the volume is low and its value is related to it's rarity, so if you dump hundreds of tons on the market, the price collapses.

[AndrewBCrisp]

Space infrastructure in the next thousand years? Let's see...

I'll preface my projections with a few assumptions:

1. No Political or Ideological Predictions or Preferences: Technology tends to be politics/ideology independent, so it does not matter if capitalists or communists, Christians or Hindi, Americans or Japanese develop them. Plus, after a thousand years, as others have noted, any cultural influences present today will only be faintly discernable by 3000, and only by those interested in history or anthropology.

2. No Technological Singularity: This is pretty much a "You Win Everything, Game Over" scenario, and I suspect is not feasible in reality (I've heard a few SF authors call it "the Rapture of the nerds.") So we'll assume no ultra-intelligent AIs or viable transhumanist programs between now and 3000.

3. Survival is our starting driver: leaving politics out of it, I think our big push into space will be dominated by what Carl Sagan called "the most practical reason imaginable: staying alive." Considering that global warming will be kicking into high gear by the middle of this century, and that we're gradually tracking more and more dangerous asteroids, some nations and private organizations will likely try to stack the deck in favor of survival by building colonies or assembling an active asteroid defense.

With these basic limits put in place, let's move forward:

2015-2100: Reliable access to Earth Orbit and the Moon, both through semi-reusable launchers and reusable spaceplanes. Some expeditions to Mars and Venus, and at least one attempt to establish a colony at Mars - possibly more. After a repeat of the Chelyabinsk incident, perhaps scaled up, a concerted effort to establish a true Spaceguard program bears fruit, with a small fleet of asteroid-rendezvous vessels (gravity tugs, mass drivers, etc) being built and tested by the late 21st century.

2100-2200: Mars colonization and regular travel between Earth and Mars are a reality. Spaceguard continues to expand its presence in the solar system, developing the ability to intercept asteroids and comets further and further out. This technology also opens up asteroid mining and colonization. Starting with a Spaceguard outpost, Saturn becomes the key to the outer solar system (lots of volatiles for fuel and colonies, sufficiently high up in the Solar gravity well to allow for "cheap, fast" trajectories, minimal radiation belts - compared with Jupiter at least - and a view that can't be beat).

2200-2500: Humanity spreads out through the solar system, from large colonies at Mars and Saturn to small colonies in the Asteroid and Kuiper belts. Cyclers and fusion spacecraft are both in use, though cyclers are now going the way of the clipper ship. By the end of this period, one or more interstellar expeditions may be attempted, most likely by asteroid colonies refitted as generation-ships. Bussard ramscoops might also be attempted, though I expect they will be developed by whatever Great Powers exist in this time frame (probably nobody from Earth). Also, particle-beam and mass-beam propulsion networks may be developed. Mars terraforming, if feasible, will likely be underway. Venus is deemed infeasible for terraforming, both due to technology limits, and the simple fact that Venus will be roasted over the long term as the Sun continues to increase in brightness.

2500-3000: The colonization era for the Solar System peaks and ebbs, as all available territory is claimed and settled. There will likely be room for growth for many millenia to come, but from here on out every rock has a flag over it, so to speak. Beam-rider ships are the accepted method of travel between planets, as energy for the beams is plentiful (vast solar array networks in the Inner System, fusion array networks in the Outer System). While antimatter may be an option, it will either be a safe, mature technology or completely forbidden (very hard to store, very destructive - antimatter may be the 30th century's Nuclear Fission reactors in the public eye). By now, I expect some of those early interstellar expeditions will have reached their destinations and founded new colonies around other stars. If radio and laser contact was maintained, then beam-rider networks between the stars may be established allowing for "fast" interstellar travel between colonies. Hybrid beam-rider / Bussard ramscoops might provide fast options for establishing new colonies around more distant stars. Rough guess as to how far our influence might spread by 3000: 15-20 light-years, tops.

This is a rough "back of the envelope" prediction, and all errors are my own.

[Rakaydos]

Should developing Earth require more minerals than it has, we might get them from asteroids. Finding, studying, returning, and landing these enormous stones would be so hard as to necessitate some combination of new technologies and epic, brute-force efforts. Consider for example a traditional NERVA-powered tug, which would need about six kilometers-per-second delta-V and mass eighty-six tons just to retrieve a one-ton asteroid. For five hundred million dollars, a block II SLS could lift it to low earth orbit. Recovering the investment would require, for further example, about a kilogram of platinum. The enormous cost of launch and recovery would make on-site refining and orbital refueling of mining rigs imperative: one one-ton payload of pure platinum would be worth only forty-million dollars.

A break-even payload therefore would 12.5 tons. If the engine massed thirty-five and the gear five, then the inbound trip would require about twenty tons of propellant. Moving about fifty tons of mass into the asteroid belt (no payload) would require about sixty tons of propellant. The overall non-payload-mass would be about one-hundred-ten tons--a respectable ~1/10 payload fraction. Refueling in low-earth-orbit would enable even greater payloads by permitting every SLS launch to be propellant alone. Were the refueling tanks' mass fraction a handy 1/13, the refueled tug would have 40 tons dry mass and 160 tons wet mass, granting an empty delta-V of over nine thousaaaaand (~10km/s). Forty-seven tons could be used to bring the tug to the belt, leaving seventy-three to move up to about thirty-six tons of platinum home, thereby tripling revenue and generating a per-trip profit of about a billion dollars.

The necessary investment for commercial production is beyond me. If the tug and mining equipment cost half a billion each, establishing and maintaining the company another billion, and two launches done before first revenue, then it would be five-billion dollars. With constant platinum prices and a one-year setup and launch every year, the business would pay for itself in eight years. So, who's ready to make some money?

-Duxwing

Wait, are you running these numbers assuming a round trip to the asteroid belt? Because all the asteroid-mining proposals I've seen rely on Earth-crossing asteroids like the ones coded into KSP.

[Accelerando]

Did I say it was pointless? My point was that in 1000 years, people's mentalities and preoccupations will be totally unrecognizable to us. Humanity will have evolved into something completely different from anything we know. So yes, space travel might turn out to be irrelevant to them and a technological dead end. Why would my made-up predictions be any more unrealistic than somebody else's?

Whether or not you say it explicitly, pretty much the only input I've ever, or at least most often, seen you give in speculative threads is to shoot down others' suggestions with your notion(s) that, among others, we can't predict the future and culture might change our ideals so radically as to invalidate our notions of progress, and/or that space travel is hard, so people will always turn their money to things that achieve greater immediate benefit, or something else to that effect. Every now and then you rattle off a glib factoid(s) that supports your point at the expense of everyone else's thoughts on the matter, or produce something to ridicule others' opinions, like that bit about platinum prices and jewelery, or those scans of turn-of-the-century future predictions.

Are your thoughts more unrealistic? Is there anything "factually" wrong with them? Maybe not, but from what I've seen you're rarely one to leave your audience richer rather than poorer in the exchange of ideas. It certainly doesn't sell your point very well, and it's not exactly what I'd call constructive criticism.

Anyway, I don't really have anything topical to add to the thread myself; I just want to point this out because as much as it's a good thing to respect other peoples' opinions and take them into account, as Newt mentions, people also might be resisting differing opinions because they're presented in a way that's meant to (or at least does a very good job of) demolish/ing their enthusiasm rather than enrich/ing their understanding.

Turning this over to the on-topic-ers, now.

Edited January 15, 2015 by Accelerando

[Duxwing]

Platinum is used for two things right now: jewellery and catalytic converters for cars. I don't imagine that we will still be driving gas guzzlers in 50 years, so there goes most of the demand for platinum. As for jewellery, the volume is low and its value is related to it's rarity, so if you dump hundreds of tons on the market, the price collapses.

Wikipedia disagrees: "In the laboratory, platinum wire is used for electrodes; platinum pans and supports are used in thermogravimetric analysis because of the stringent requirements of chemical inertness upon heating to high temperatures (~1000 °C). Platinum is used as an alloying agent for various metal products, including fine wires, noncorrosive laboratory containers, medical instruments, dental prostheses, electrical contacts, and thermocouples. Platinum-cobalt, an alloy of roughly three parts platinum and one part cobalt, is used to make relatively strong permanent magnets.[25] Platinum-based anodes are used in ships, pipelines, and steel piers."

And you are assuming demand will remain constant. It might grow with supply (like demand for digital music with the iPod) and thereby maintain price. Obviously, supplying enough platinum would reduce its price, but everything orbiting is precious. SLS payload, for example, costs about 3.8 million dollars per ton. Cheap space travelers would rather buy propellant in space, even for 3.5 million dollars per ton, than lift it from Earth's gravity well. Also, a mining company could reduce propellant costs or increase payloads by mining itself propellant.

Bringing no return propellant would reduce outbound propellant to thirty-three tons per trip, reducing of refueling launches from one every trip to one every four trips, enormously reducing costs. Further, mineral payload would be limited only by how much propellant the tug could take from the mines, enormously increasing revenue. Last, the tug could periodically return propellant instead of minerals, completely replacing Earth-based refueling and its enormous costs. Bringing even more propellant would enable orbital propellant vending. The market is rich!

Wait, are you running these numbers assuming a round trip to the asteroid belt? Because all the asteroid-mining proposals I've seen rely on Earth-crossing asteroids like the ones coded into KSP.

I am assuming a round trip to the asteroid belt. I am assuming it because it would enable mining only the richest asteroids, some whereof might be pure platinum.

-Duxwing

[Frozen_Heart]

The market is rich!

The setup cost is also extremely high. No one has been prepared to take the risk yet.

I suspect it can be done though. Just takes someone crazy to kick start it all...

[Rakaydos]

The setup cost is also extremely high. No one has been prepared to take the risk yet.

I suspect it can be done though. Just takes someone crazy to kick start it all...

Actually, someone is crazy enough. Unfortunately, their first survey probe was hitchhiking on the Orbital Sciences rocket that exploded.

[78stonewobble]

Again, this thread is going afield. It is supposed to focus entirely on SPACE INFRASTRUCTURE of the future, with our CURRENT understanding of physics.

10 Venus Cyclers and 14 Mars cyclers as large space stations with permanant populations to support the transient populations... feasable?

Preumably possible, how large?

I know space elevators is beyond our materials science, but how about O'Neill type spacestations?

[Duxwing]

Actually, someone is crazy enough. Unfortunately, their first survey probe was hitchhiking on the Orbital Sciences rocket that exploded.

Time for another survey probe!

--

A two-billion dollar loan should cover initial expenses. The first billion would be spent to establish the company and develop the tug and mining rig. The second billion would be spent on two launches, the first with the two craft, the second with propellant for the first payload trip. The business would become very profitable after a few years.

-Duxwing

Edited January 16, 2015 by Duxwing

[Rakaydos]

Time for another survey probe!

--

A two-billion dollar loan should cover initial expenses. The first billion would be spent to establish the company and develop the tug and mining rig. The second billion would be spent on two launches, the first with the two craft, the second with propellant for the first payload trip. The business would become very profitable after a few years.

-Duxwing

http://www.planetaryresources.com/

[cicatrix]

31-st century WOW! A whole thousand years! I don't think we can even begin to comprehend what technology would be like then.

Still, I can predict something with some degree of certainty. Provided the mankind manages not to destroy its own civilization during these years I think the most fundamental changes we cannot foresee (or accept) would be the changes in human organism (or what would have left of it). There are two main directions we WILL change in - cyborgization and genetic enhancement. Even if we wouldn't be able yet to transfer consciousness into machine and/or different body (organism) we nevertheless will be fairly close to this. Also there would be AIs. I'm sure that AI will also change the mankind in a way we cannot even comprehend now. There will also be hybrids - a merger of AI/human mind, or bio-cyborgs or whatever.

This, of course will have a tremendous impact on space exploration - cyborgs will be able to integrate with machinery in such sophisticated ways that you wouldn't be able to tell machine from a man and vice verse.

If we would handle consciousness transfer then a travel to Mars, for example will be a 30 minute radio transmission of you instead of several months of travel. Even if this wouldn't be possible then, those who desire so would be able to transform themselves as they would see fit - a cyborg would modify itself (well, him- or herself if this would still matter then) to add propulsion or whatever is needed. A mutant (pardon me for not being politically correct) - would grow spore jets or something...

Even our ethics will change to a degree that we might consider AIs, Cyborgs or ... well, 'genetically enhanced' persons equal.

Anyway, my point is - do not expect modern technology or even more advanced equivalents to be used in space exploration in 1000 years.

[Duxwing]

http://www.planetaryresources.com/

Wow! Nice! Dirt-cheap-platinum, here we come!

-Duxwing

[Warduk]

Actual rockets = 20th century technology + 17th century science.

I do not expect travel to Mars or space mining are economically viable with current technology AND science, the amount of machinery (weight) necessary is enormous.

Edited January 17, 2015 by Warduk