[FPSPACE] (no subject)

[Jens Kieffer-Olsen]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: fpspace-bounces at friends-partners.org 
> On Behalf Of Keith Gottschalk
> Sent: Wednesday, August 18, 2004 12:19 AM
> To: fpspace at friends-partners.org
> Subject: [FPSPACE] (no subject)
> 
> The debate between Dwayne & others raises at least two of the 
> really big issues. I have long struggled as to how one puts 
> these into words, but this debate has triggered some thoughts off.
> 
> 1. One whole clutch of assumptions used by one strand of 
> space flight lobbyists, who advocate space colonization, 
> strikes me as being even more of an economics anachronism 
> than neo-Malthusianism, which is one reading of the "Club of 
> Rome" 1970s literature. I think the correct economics 
> terminology is extensive development v. intensive development.
> 
>      This is aggravated by some US popularizers who 
> mechanistically extrapolate into the future & into space the 
> US grand colonial experience of 18th-19th century "winning of 
> the west"; pioneers "homesteading the west". So this time, 
> without the moral complication of native Americans, we have 
> proposals for the homesteading of Mars etc.

 Terraforming Mars is a realistic and noble goal for all
 space afficionados. Naturally Americans draw a parallel
 to winning the West. The great difference is that winning
 Mars is a long-term goal, not a short-term goal like settling
 Oregon. Give it a half millennium at least :-)

>        And by no means only Americans. Some issues of 
> Spaceflight had a feature near the back page which was 
> usually their most embarassing feature. (Let me add 
> Spaceflight is my monthly favourite read, eagerly looked 
> forward to like a ration of chocolate :)   It was where 
> mostly youngsters were invited "to think out aloud".
> 
>        Start by considering the most elementary facts of 
> engineering and accountancy. To rocket engineers and 
> budgeteers, the cruellest of all taskmasters is mass. Each 
> gram returned to earth from the Moon or Mars might require a 
> kg. launched from Earth. Distances are vast, with travelling 
> times of decades for return trips even within our solar system.
> 
> 	Therefore surely the most likely and the most feasible 
> items for interplanetary trade and interstellar trade between 
> space colonies is software and similar intellectual property, 
> which is as virtually massless as photons and can be 
> transported at the speed of light?
> 
> 	Surely the most unlikely & least feasible items for 
> interplanetary trade are those of the highest mass, such as 
> metals, minerals & building materials? Yet almost every 
> advocate of interplanetary trade seems to be fixated on 
> mining asteroids etc. 

 True, mining asteroids for use elsewhere in outer space is
 a boon, while dumping minerals on Earth is stupido. Bear in
 mind that despite the mineral wealth of Greenland, not a
 single mine operates there to-day due to the associated costs
 of extraction. Even though there is not a single terrorist
 to worry about in Greenland!

> 	Take the world's largest oil tanker built to date. For 
> part of its career it was one megaton. What is the cost of 
> transporting one megaton of oil, or titanium, or 
> molybedenium* from an asteroid to LEO? In SSMEs? In mass of 
> propellants?  In $?  
> 
> 	Yes, I'm aware of the counter-intuitive point that it 
> costs less delta V to transport from Martian moons or some 
> asteroids to LEO, than from Cape Canaveral to LEO.  On the 
> other side of the equation, don't forget to factor in the 
> cost of transporting up from Earth either all those SSMEs / 
> nuclear-ion engines, or the factory and workforce to build 
> them on site.  I suspect the break-even point must require at 
> least the largest of the three sizes of orbiting cities 
> O'Neill proposed, or a whole series of them.
> 
> 	But another point those with this argument fail to see 
> is the continued advance of technology. Faced with the bill 
> for mining, smelting & transporting one million tonnes of 
> molybedenium from an asteroid, would we not substitute 
> holmium or niobium or whatever?  Would orbiting solar power 
> stations be built not by a workforce occupying 20 000 strong 
> O'Neil colonies, but by future robots? Remember why MOL was 
> scrapped three decades ago. Not to mention that anything you 
> can import from an asteroid you can mine from the Antarctica, 
> or filter from seawater, at less cost.
> 
> 	Also. I am also surprised how many people do not seem 
> aware that "a hydrogen economy" is a net consumer of energy, 
> not an electricity producer. It is simply fancy batteries, 
> until battery technology improves.
> 
> 2. 	I can guess at the reasons why some persons clutch at 
> the above arguments like straws. How do you motivate 
> increased spaceflight budgets in the absence of both treasure 
> chest arguments, and the absence of cold war beat-the-demon arguments?
> 
> If your argument for spaceflight is only scientific research, 
> you will remain on a civilian research budget, that is about 
> one-hundredth of the Pentagon's budget. If there is no 
> treasure chest in space, bang goes any free market arguments 
> above comsats & LEO space tourists.
> 
>      Arguments about needing to emigrate from Earth when the 
> sun enters its red giant phase four billion years from now 
> are unlikely to galvanize Govts. Into immediate action. Even 
> though we know four billion years is scant time to appoint a 
> committee to write a report to refer to a sub-committee to 
> refer back to..  :)  :)
> And by that time it might be feasible technology to shift the 
> Earth itself into a slowly expanding orbit.

 It detracts from a practical discussion to bring up issues
 that are definitely millions or billions of years away.

 Our time horizon ought to be 100,000 - 200,000 years. For one
 thing the major climatic cycle on Earth seems to be a stable
 100,000 years, most of which period is ice age and only 15%
 interglacial. But importantly also natural disasters such as
 asteroid and comet strikes plus super volcano eruptions must
 be taken seriously within such a timeframe.

 There is a distinct possibility that the average human lifetime
 will grow significantly in the near future. Some predictions
 suggest that babies born to-day may live for over 1,000 years.  

>  	So space flight lobbyists need a more immediate 
> argument. Necessity over decades, rather than necessity over 
> mys. or bys.  I apologize that I present problems rather than 
> solutions, but I hope this contributes to our thinking.
> 
> Keith

--
Jens Kieffer-Olsen
Slagelse, Denmark