The thread for space cadets!

[hobbsyoyo]

fighting a war with a planet because you would certainly be in war to close off the orbit to that planet , would be more efficient if you were to place a battle station or whatever to shoot stuff down . Or ı don't know , because of the tech that would require , you might plant a curtain at a given distance from the star , to block or limit sunrays and stuff ?

unless of course there's some sort of Prime Directive that requires you hurt people or stop them from spreading their vermin across the galaxy , but then ı would still say battle station .

A solar mirror/cloak plus a battle station to defend it would be pretty devastating.

 

[Thorgalaeg]

A gigantic solar magnifying glass would be funnier. You could toast whole countries like if they were ant nests while holding a white angora cat.

 

[AdamCrock]

Seeing this Earth as it is I have so desperately want into space I wish They'd launch a suicide Mars missions - than at least my skeleton could serve a purpose. I feel that I am so wasted on this earth, I wish to become a colonist so bad, face the stars and tell them "You ain't seen nothing yet !" and than with a roar of a rocket engine be propelled into the unknown with my fellow suicide wannabes" I can still dream right ?

 

[hobbsyoyo]

You could make it very difficult to launch something off the planet but probably could not completely seal it. You'd never be able to congest super low orbit because everything gets dragged in so quickly (on the order of hours). So someone on the planet could stage a launch to an atmosphere-skimming altitude and continually reboost to stay there until there is a clearing to exit to a higher orbit. But that would take an enormous amount of fuel and would make mission planning next to impossible.

You would also have a hard time congesting anything above low orbit since space is so huge, you'd need an impossible amount of junk.

But if you do manage to congest low orbit, you have effectively sealed off the planet because it will be very tough to get to a higher orbit from a congested lower one.

I would like to point out that we are talking about a massive amount of material for an effective debris blockade. And you would have to position each piece into separate orbital planes. You could do it in batches to make it easier but we're still talking a massive effort.

When we talk about space junk becoming a problem today, what we really mean is that the number of close encounters might go from 1 every 3 years to 1 every 3 months. Even still, almost all of those close encounters will be misses. This is difficult to deal with and imposes economic hardships on space operators, but it isn't enough to seal off the Earth from space by a long shot.

I think you would need the material equivalent of maybe 10 decently sized (radius of ~km) asteroids pulverized into pellet-sized chunks and dispersed into different orbital planes in LEO to seal off the planet and you'd have to add a new asteroid's worth of material every few months as they de-orbit with time. You could position the debris higher to make it less susceptible to drag but then you are fighting the square/cubed law and you need orders of more material to fill the bigger orbital shells.

There is nothing non-physical about this plan either. It's straightforward and achievable with today's technology. The problem is it is so bloody impractical and therefore expensive. One day when we've fully industrialized space, this won't be such a daunting concept but for now it is firmly fictional based on cost alone.

 

[AdamCrock]

I really meant what I wrote - it wasn't part of "I wanna AC everything on CFC" ,If You are not mad I would really want to ask (Hobby I feel I can safely say You'd be the man to ask) what is a realistic chance of launching a colony ? What is the chance of me getting on it ? As I understand Space-X is experimenting on reusable rockets and space tourism for profits (can't blame them) but I am really interested in colonization. What are the real chances ?

 

[hobbsyoyo]

50/50 there will be some sort of extra-planetary colony or at least a research base by 2040. If I had to bet, I'd say there will be a limited (but permanent) international presence on the moon at that time, with some brief expeditions under preparation for Mars. There will also be at least a handful of permanent manned space stations at that time. Most will highly specialized production and research facilities with one or two tourist spots.

I want to go to Mars to live as well. And things are changing so fast in this sphere. Unfortunately, they are not changing not quite fast enough to make Musk's dream a reality in our lifetime unless we hit an exponential curve on the technological and economic growth of space activity.

 

[AdamCrock]

I surely hope so , We must if we are to survive as a species. Already the predictions look like we are not gonna brake the first barrier, even if we manage that , we need to survive. I just hope human kind is gonna be able to accomplish that ! .....All in life is like a race, we race ourselves, we race it all, even the time itself. Is it going to be enough ? Will we be able to finally outrace ourselves and become a type 1 Civilization or are we all just destined to be a forgotten ruin on a devastated planet ... once called Earth ....bit now I just feel like Greata talking about world hunger ... (things I do not really know about) sorry for that. Anyways we are a ...

Civilization, will we stand the test of time ?

 

[r16]

Seeing this Earth as it is I have so desperately want into space I wish They'd launch a suicide Mars missions - than at least my skeleton could serve a purpose. I feel that I am so wasted on this earth, I wish to become a colonist so bad, face the stars and tell them "You ain't seen nothing yet !" and than with a roar of a rocket engine be propelled into the unknown with my fellow suicide wannabes" I can still dream right ?

ı will assure you without the slightest shame that you would be turned back at the customs . Especially if you have French or American passports , due to the thing that NASA once boasted people were making a lot of trouble so to ease tensions it would be only American Nationals and one or two agreeable French persons . Much better if the frogs were not men .

 

[uppi]

50/50 there will be some sort of extra-planetary colony or at least a research base by 2040. If I had to bet, I'd say there will be a limited (but permanent) international presence on the moon at that time, with some brief expeditions under preparation for Mars. There will also be at least a handful of permanent manned space stations at that time. Most will highly specialized production and research facilities with one or two tourist spots.

My prediction for 2040 would be: two manned space stations (one international, one Chinese) and a plan for a manned presence on the moon.

I still have not heard of any convincing proposal for the production of anything (in 2040 or before) that would require a space station and even if that were the case, I fail to see why such a space station would have to be manned.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

One group (FOMS of San Diego) actually just produced their first batch of ultra-pure fiber optics on the space station. The samples were returned by a visiting Dragon spacecraft for examination and they produced papers on it. They plan to go into real production sometime in the next couple of years. Microgravity allows them to create these pure fibers and there are likely other materials that would have similar benefits. The applications will be niche and high-value until the supply expands. There is another company (Made In Space) that is pursuing the same thing and they have their production machines destined for the ISS as well.

It's absolutely true that the ISS has failed as a serious research platform but most of that is due to the loss of the Shuttle and the intentional starving of crew capsule programs of funds by a handful of Senators. Without the extra crew capacity, the astronauts have to use all their free time maintaining the aging platform. With new capsules introduced this year, that should change. The administration of the ISS has also been shaken up in the last few years as they have not been very helpful in fostering research either.

Spoiler Fiber optic samples - left shows a sample produced in a micro-g airplane flight, the right is an Earth-normal sample. :

https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/...4h-3rd/eds-mis-building-better-optical-fiber/

Spoiler Fiber Optic production machine destined for the ISS by Made In Space :

https://www.space.com/made-in-space-second-zblan-optical-fiber-space-factory.html

Spoiler One of 2 fiber optic production machines installed on the ISS by FOMS :

https://spacenews.com/foms-reports-high-quality-zblan-production-on-iss/

I actually misread your post though. At first I thought you were saying you saw no programs that require more space stations and even though I re-read you correctly, I'm still going to answer that point as if you made it because space spam. The Artemis lunar program has been architected to require a new space station in Lunar orbit, in part because those are easier to pull in international participation than say a lander because of the way stations are designed with a modular architecture. The US NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine promised the Japanese a spot on a landing team if they gave support and JAXA announced a vague participation agreement. Bridenstine has been going to all the big space agencies and making the same pitch with success. But we'll see if the program even survives the current US administration. But so far the EU, JAXA, Canada and Russia have all signed up to produce various components of what they're calling the Lunar Gateway.

I used to believe the technical argument that the Gateway is a massive waste of resources but after listening to Bridentstine explain the flexibility that the approach allows and the way it establishes international cooperation (which means it will have some level of bureaucratic inertia) helps ensure its survival. I think if the original Orion program had been an international effort, it would have survived Obama.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

I'm reading this science fiction book where humans have to fight an alien invasion in space and it jumps through time a lot. At one point it mentions in passing about how there were some key innovations and new space efforts that led to giant leaps in capability for mankind. I feel like honestly we're currently living in that very important slice of time that the book skipped over and we're watching the future unfold right now.

 

[uppi]

One group (FOMS of San Diego) actually just produced their first batch of ultra-pure fiber optics on the space station. The samples were returned by a visiting Dragon spacecraft for examination and they produced papers on it. They plan to go into real production sometime in the next couple of years. Microgravity allows them to create these pure fibers and there are likely other materials that would have similar benefits. The applications will be niche and high-value until the supply expands. There is another company (Made In Space) that is pursuing the same thing and they have their production machines destined for the ISS as well.

This is really interesting if it actually works. Do you have any idea where to find a paper with actual results from the fiber they produced on the ISS? I searched and could only find propaganda pieces.

I do not see much of a market for regular communications, but this could be extremely helpful for quantum communication (mostly quantum cryptography). However, for this to be useful, they would need to be somewhat near the theoretical maximum and it would be interesting how far away they are.

I actually misread your post though. At first I thought you were saying you saw no programs that require more space stations and even though I re-read you correctly, I'm still going to answer that point as if you made it because space spam. The Artemis lunar program has been architected to require a new space station in Lunar orbit, in part because those are easier to pull in international participation than say a lander because of the way stations are designed with a modular architecture. The US NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine promised the Japanese a spot on a landing team if they gave support and JAXA announced a vague participation agreement. Bridenstine has been going to all the big space agencies and making the same pitch with success. But we'll see if the program even survives the current US administration. But so far the EU, JAXA, Canada and Russia have all signed up to produce various components of what they're calling the Lunar Gateway.

I used to believe the technical argument that the Gateway is a massive waste of resources but after listening to Bridentstine explain the flexibility that the approach allows and the way it establishes international cooperation (which means it will have some level of bureaucratic inertia) helps ensure its survival. I think if the original Orion program had been an international effort, it would have survived Obama.

Yeah, this is one of the space stations in my prediction. I just think that it will suck up so many resources so that no other space station will be constructed in the next 20 years.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

Do you have any idea where to find a paper with actual results from the fiber they produced on the ISS? I searched and could only find propaganda pieces.

No I haven't gone looking for it and I am fairly certain that the research value of any said paper would be dubious. I've come across many 'research' papers for aerospace technology that are thinly-veiled advertisements. They typically do not give enough information to replicate any of the experiments because they have to protect their IP. And even what counts as an experiment is dubious because they are not actually measuring anything fundamentally new or even in novel ways.

My go-to example would be research papers put out by various propulsion companies where they test the performance of their ion engines. They all measure thrust and specific impulse in the same two or three ways so there is absolutely no scientific value to the paper itself. They are basically just verifying their performance parameters to drum up sales, even though I can't even use the paper to justify their claims since it is so vague. Universities do this as well but in that case if you contact the individual researchers, they are generally more than happy to hand over technical details of the propulsion system itself in hopes of spurring collaboration and ultimately funding for their labs.

Re- Lunar Gateway sucking up all the resources. This is true but if launch costs really do come down to the $100/kg level as Musk and others publicly push for, the amount of private investment in the area will skyrocket and governments will no longer be the only owners and operators of manned space hardware.

 

[uppi]

Re- Lunar Gateway sucking up all the resources. This is true but if launch costs really do come down to the $100/kg level as Musk and others publicly push for, the amount of private investment in the area will skyrocket and governments will no longer be the only owners and operators of manned space hardware.

A permanently manned space station will still be a multi-billion dollar project. It is certainly possible to fund this with private investment, but only if there is at least some idea how to get returns from that investment.

And then there is the question that if you had a case for a manned space station, whether it would not be much cheaper to make an unmanned one.

 

[Broken_Erika]

Then we can send whalers to the moon.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

A permanently manned space station will still be a multi-billion dollar project.

I strongly disagree. Hundreds of millions, yes, for the foreseeable future. And they certainly could cost multi-billions of dollars but not necessarily multi-billion.

I think manned stations will always make economic sense when operational costs are not appreciably higher than far-offshore drilling rigs and there is a product of similar scale in value and demand. There will continue to be a higher upfront cost to setting up space infrastructure because even when rockets are dirt cheap, physical limitations like fairing size or launch pad weather or orbital alignments are immutable. But, even with these barriers, launch costs are now approaching something sane and reasonable for multi-national corporations to exploit if they can find a product or service that demands it. This all sounds crazy but remember Iridium was a multi-billion constellation that both got built with private money and has been a huge success in the long run. We would now need only a fraction of the upfront capital to recreate a far more capable version of that platform.

My thinking on space economics:

Products with high demand but little value will tend to be substituted by Earth-sourced products until launch costs get very low ($10's per kg) because the only way to profitability for such low-margin products is through high volume which demands very high production inputs.

Products with high value and low demand will either be substituted by Earth-sourced products or will be built by unmanned platforms. When demand is low, so is production output and there is a greater likelihood of successful full-automation for small production batches.

But when a product is discovered with the perfect combination of high value and high demand (like oil in the 19/20th century), then manned platforms will absolutely make sense. At these scales you will still mostly automate but the processes involved are so large and complicated that you will need on-site personnel to troubleshoot.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

There are also companies like Spin Launch which are working on totally non-traditional launch mechanisms which would dramatically lower costs for send up non-fragile goods like factory capital inputs. I don't have a ton of faith in such companies but there's an outside chance they will have a major breakthrough.

 

[uppi]

Products with high demand but little value will tend to be substituted by Earth-sourced products until launch costs get very low ($10's per kg) because the only way to profitability for such low-margin products is through high volume which demands very high production inputs.

Products with high value and low demand will either be substituted by Earth-sourced products or will be built by unmanned platforms. When demand is low, so is production output and there is a greater likelihood of successful full-automation for small production batches.

But when a product is discovered with the perfect combination of high value and high demand (like oil in the 19/20th century), then manned platforms will absolutely make sense. At these scales you will still mostly automate but the processes involved are so large and complicated that you will need on-site personnel to troubleshoot.

I doubt you will find oil in Earth's orbit . Well, asteroid mining could be a thing, but I think it will be quite some time until that is viable. I can at least imagine some high-tech, high-value, low-demand product, but my imagination is not good enough for a high-value, high-demand kind of product.

But even then, I would imagine that it would be cheaper to mostly automate everything and then some remote controlled tools for troubleshooting. Remote surgery is possible, so why not remote repair? At least in Earth's orbit where latency is tolerable.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

I think it will be more likely that the first 'killer app' for space industrial activity will come in the form of a manufactured product than a mined product but who knows. These things are hard to predict.

There are only so many things you can do inside a human body relative to the array of tasks you need to do to keep a production line moving. I agree that automation will be heavy as it is in advanced industries today. And I can even go along with the notion that teleoperation will be a part of that to a greater degree than it is on Earth. But we're a ways off from 100% replacement of the human body for every task. At yesterday's launch prices it was not economical to have manned presence in space but that is changing. Until the perfect robots come along, there will likely be a need to have humans at these facilities.

And it may also be the case that industrial and tourist facilities will be co-located, so much of the cost of life support is offset by tourist operations.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

@uppi
We may also be discounting the possibility of future anti-global warming measures spurring on in-space industrial activity. While the act of launching into space is a bad thing for the environment, if you can set up infrastructure in outer space then you can move entire polluting industries off of the planet.

At some point, governments are going to more aggressively tax and regulate pollution and/or offer subsidies to move to cleaner technologies. Those combined forces may push industry into space purely on a profit and loss basis in the not too distant future. We're getting to the point where the big bottleneck to doing this (launch cost and availability) are falling away.


-----

Anyways, as of yesterday afternoon, SpaceX officially owns and operates the largest satellite constellation in the world. A 182 satellites, it already dwarfs even the giant network of 150 pint-sized observation spacecraft from Planet. Pretty impressive. They have 24 launches (of 60 satellites each) on their manifest this year and will likely do at least 6 of them.

Edit: If I ever write a book on space, I am mining the **** out of this thread for content.