Ever wondered what it would take for us to start spreading to space. Well in this post I will talk about the steps, possibilities, a realistic time line, and how you will live to see it!
As of right now we have several problems. Each pound we send into space, cost us $1000 each. To send one 215 lbs. man into space it would cost about $215,000. We currently use chemical based propellants to escape earth atmosphere. In other words, we need a reliable, cheap, safe way to get into low earth orbit, the first problem. The second being, we need a way of paying for all this, making something so expensive much cheaper. Then when we get those two problems out of the way, everything else will fall like a domino effect. Of course all this is excluding politics. The public tend to forget the advantages we have simply because of the space program and because of this, I am sorry to say it won't be an American only ship that does this. That will take some time and a new office that actually cares about NASA enough to increase their funding.
Just because we abandoned our dreams to get there does not mean that China, European Union, Russia, and Japan with collaboration from U.S. it is possible. There is a lot of money to be made up there and everyone wants a cut. Japan plans to place a robotic colony on the moon by 2015. The European Union plans to be there by 2025. China could land on the moon with a base by 2030. Russia wants to have one by 2025. So one or all of these nations will succeed. For us to get out of low earth orbit, we have to have this first. We have to become a multi planet species.
It could sole scores of problems we have back on earth, ranging from economic problems, to energy, over population, to even food. Most of the first lunar bases won't have humans with them. Robots go in remote controlled or a combination between automated or not, they set up the colony. Then We go in after it’s all been checked out and start putting even more infrastructure up. We found out that there is water on the moon. They sit in the craters frozen. So we have just about everything but food handled once we get there.
Once we set up the base on the moon, what do we do? Well it's simple actually. We mine the moon of Helium 3. This rare form of Helium bombards the moon constantly via the sun. Since our moon base is in the southern poll where there is a constant sunlight, it is presumed the area is extremely rich with the element. We can use HE3 as a cheap and easily accessible fuel on the moon. The HE3 could be shuttled back to Earth for even more profit. The moon has no atmosphere. So solar cells could literally be printed out on its surface. There are some very ambitious concepts of just that. Some putting lasers at each side and constantly beaming power to the earth. That might be a bit too far off for you to see. After several successful years of mining we reach a point in our development where we can construct space elevators on the moon to easily build in space and leave the moons orbit. They cannot be constructed on earth because we do not have a material with the strength both tensile and durability to sustain the forces it would endeavor. A space elevator allows us easy, cheap transport of materials into space.
The year is about 2040, we have at least one successful moon base on our southern pole. The moon base mines HE3, and has Space elevators and has begun construction on our first near earth asteroid miners. At
1997 prices, a small metallic based asteroid 1 mile in diameter (1.6 km) contains more than $20 trillion US dollars’ worth of metals. All the metals we now mine from the earth's crust, came from space. The 2004 iron production exceeded a billion metric tons. One metric ton is 2,200 lbs., about the weight of a compact car. One M-Type asteroid, or an asteroid we know somewhat the composition of, with a diameter of 1 km could contain more than two billion metric tons of iron-nickel ore.
After all that, you look back at the earth from the moon at the wonderful blue oceans, green landscape and realize how close we came to throwing all that away with overpopulation, war, industry, and many other injustices. The words of an ancient astronaut come to mind.
"That's one small step for a man; one giant leap for mankind." - Neil Armstrong
Just because we abandoned our dreams to get there does not mean that China, European Union, Russia, and Japan with collaboration from U.S. it is possible. There is a lot of money to be made up there and everyone wants a cut. Japan plans to place a robotic colony on the moon by 2015. The European Union plans to be there by 2025. China could land on the moon with a base by 2030. Russia wants to have one by 2025. So one or all of these nations will succeed. For us to get out of low earth orbit, we have to have this first. We have to become a multi planet species.
It could sole scores of problems we have back on earth, ranging from economic problems, to energy, over population, to even food. Most of the first lunar bases won't have humans with them. Robots go in remote controlled or a combination between automated or not, they set up the colony. Then We go in after it’s all been checked out and start putting even more infrastructure up. We found out that there is water on the moon. They sit in the craters frozen. So we have just about everything but food handled once we get there.
The year is about 2040, we have at least one successful moon base on our southern pole. The moon base mines HE3, and has Space elevators and has begun construction on our first near earth asteroid miners. At
1997 prices, a small metallic based asteroid 1 mile in diameter (1.6 km) contains more than $20 trillion US dollars’ worth of metals. All the metals we now mine from the earth's crust, came from space. The 2004 iron production exceeded a billion metric tons. One metric ton is 2,200 lbs., about the weight of a compact car. One M-Type asteroid, or an asteroid we know somewhat the composition of, with a diameter of 1 km could contain more than two billion metric tons of iron-nickel ore.
After all that, you look back at the earth from the moon at the wonderful blue oceans, green landscape and realize how close we came to throwing all that away with overpopulation, war, industry, and many other injustices. The words of an ancient astronaut come to mind.
"That's one small step for a man; one giant leap for mankind." - Neil Armstrong
No comments:
Post a Comment