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| WHY SPACE? We are lured by the beauty and mystery of the unknown ocean of space. What new secrets of Nature can we unlock in space? Is there life on other worlds? It seems as if our destiny is to populate the universe and expand the range of the human species. For those concerned about posterity, we are leaving a galactic inheritance that will sustain countless generations for millions of years. We will save our own species and we will save thousands of other species by averting ecological disaster. We will spread life to lifeless worlds. Our planetary economy will be enlarged by tapping the resources of space and there will be interplanetary trading and mercantile opportunities on an astronomical scale. There are many other reasons to continue spending on our space program and encouraging the growth of private enterprise in space. Stimulating technological development and creating jobs for millions of people are not the least of those reasons to keep pushing the limits of the high frontier. Even so, the non-defense role of government in space must be limited and the bulk of the job should be placed in the hands of entrepreneurs by building infrastructure like rocket launch bases; offering tax breaks, subsidies, awards and research grants to space businesses; and avoiding the creation of suffocating regulations that could kill the infant space travel industry before humanity ever leaves the cradle of Earth. The keys to space are the mass production and operation of spaceplanes or shuttles and heavy lift launch vehicles by private industry at prices many times lower than those charged today. Automation, high paid skilled union labor, cheap foreign labor, assembly lines, design simplification, standardization, centralization of production facilities, cheap energy (which will come from natural gas, clean coal and nuclear fission rather than oil in coming decades), low cost rapid shipping, computerization of book-keeping and free market competition have made things that once could only be possessed by kings affordable to the masses today. Stereolithography and lean manufacturing will lower the price of customized objects in the near future. In time, the same will be true for space travel. Space exploration, colonization and industrialization will keep the spirit of adventure alive. That alone will make it worthwhile for those who would have gone on safari in Africa or trekked to the poles a century ago, but today have no unknown lands to explore. Read on for more answers to the question, "Why space?" Rocketplanes With the success of Burt Rutan's Spaceship One, there can be no doubt that rocketplanes are real and that they will only get bigger and better in the future. Sub-orbital hybrid SCRAMJET-rocketplanes could cross the oceans faster than supersonic jets without leaving ozone damaging trails of nitrogen oxides like SSTs would. This would be quite a luxury for wealthy vacationers and high ranking trans-national corporation executives. These space grazing rocketplanes would provide the thrill of weightlessness for a few minutes and be the predecessors of orbital space planes. Suborbital hypersonic rocketplanes could fly to anyplace on the globe in only an hour or two. This would be of great value to diplomats, captains of industry and military leaders. Injured and seriously ill people in remote places could be rocketed to hospitals where emergency treatment by world renowned specialists is administered in secure circumstances. Soldiers with near mortal wounds could be rocketed to hospitals where the most advanced life saving technology in the world could be used to save them. Organs for transplant could be delivered rapidly. This would require a global organ donation service. Legal documents, vital machine parts, exotic laboratory instruments, works of art, archaeological finds, precious medicines, physical evidence in criminal cases, technical specialists, doctors and human experts of all kinds, even actors trying to star in two international blockbuster movies being filmed simultaneously in separate parts of the world, could be transported with lightning speed. Rocketplanes would be far more than an incredibly rapid form of package delivery by UPS or FedEx, although there would certainly be a niche market for high speed intercontinental delivery of everything imaginable in a fast paced future world of international trade and travel with a far higher standard of living than the one we are accustomed to today. In a world of global telecommunication and global travel with a global economy there can be no doubt that rapid travel by rocketplanes will be of great value, if the price is right. Space Manufacturing? With cheap access to Earth orbit via second, third and fourth generation space planes and reusable heavy lift launch vehicles, it may become possible to build space labs and factories to profitably purify chemicals with "zero G" electrophoresis, grow protein crystals, produce genetically tailored drugs, cast new alloys and use containerless manufacturing. Pharmaceuticals that regrow nerves to heal damaged brains and broken spinal cords, vaccines, anti-virals and cures for various cancers may be developed. We cannot be certain that direct cures for Alzheimer's, the flu, AIDS or breast cancer will be manufactured in space, but we must consider the successful demonstration of electrophoresis and protein crystal growth in space. As biochemists study cells, the basic units of life, they find that cells contain thousands of proteins called enzymes which catalyze the chemical processes, like burning sugar, that give life to cells. Various methods including electrophoresis are used to separate the enzymes from each other and enzyme protein crystals can be studied to determine their molecular structure. Knowing the structure of an enzyme allows one to understand its function. By gaining a better understanding of cellular biology and biochemistry, scientists could someday work out the causes and cures of any disease, and even figure out how to improve on nature by extending the lifespan and increasing human intelligence. Substances produced in the International Space Station and eventually in commercial space labs will be vital to biological and medical research which is at the foundation of advanced pharmaceutical design. Comprehension of the living machine at the most basic cellular level will allow us to go beyond a reliance on serendipity and taking "shots in the dark" by injecting lab animals with odd chemicals. Pure materials like gallium arsenide for faster computer chips could be manufactured without containers in microgravity furnaces operating in the free vacuum of space. Super high temperature refractory materials and mixtures of such materials that will dissolve the walls of any container could be made in zero-G furnaces. It may be possible to manufacture perfect ball bearings and produce alloys with unusual properties by making use of the mysterious effect of undercooling which occurs in microgravity. Imagine motor bearings or turbine blades that never wear out. These would be of immense value to the makers of powerplant turbines, jet engines and rocket engines. We must also wonder about the possibility of growing giant laser crystals in microgravity that would collapse under their own weight on Earth during growth from a molten medium. Perhaps crystals made of mixtures of elements that would settle out and separate in terrestrial gravity could be grown in space and grown to huge sizes to make super-powerful lasers for welding, cutting, drilling, tunneling, fusion reactors and even weapons. These sound like big promises, and they are. Space manufacturing has yet to "take-off." Law Enforcement, Search & Rescue High Earth orbit has many possibilities. Something way beyond the OnStar system for every land, sea and private air vehicle on Earth is envisioned. Unmanned space stations or "mega-satellites" in geostationary orbit with powerful imaging radars and other sensing systems could cover the globe and track every airplane in the sky and ship in the sea to insure safety of travelers night and day by directing rescue crews and teams of police officers, deterring pirates and detecting smugglers. Survivors of plane crashes and ship sinkings would be rescued rapidly. Even if they go down in a hurricane, the nearest aircraft carrier or nuclear sub could go in to save them. There are satellites in orbit now that can receive distress signals from transponders, but what if someone has no transponder or their transponder fails? What if car thieves disable the OnStar system? What about following get-away cars after robberies? Optical, ultraviolet, terrahertz wave and infrared sensors in the sky could also search for stranded people. Local police stations and fire departments could get data on the location of cars stuck in a white-out, lost skiers and small wildfires that need to be nipped-in-the-bud before a forest fire results. The entire US including Hawaii and territories including the sea out to at least 200 miles from the coast could be scrutinized. The Gulf of Mexico, the Caribbean, the Mediterranean, waters surrounding Japan, Indonesian waters, Fijian and Tahitian waters as well as the shipping lanes would be monitored by US and foreign national forces. The EU, Japan, China, Russia and the Arab nations would establish their own mega-satellites to watch over their lands. Covering so many square feet or square inches of territory will be a monumental job that could only be handled by large workforces and supercomputers that alert humans when there is an emergency on the Earth. With internet 2 and other connections it will be possible to employ thousands of humans to monitor the screens and watch for suspicious activity anywhere in the country. Mega-satellites watching the waters off the Virgin Islands or the wilds of Yellowstone might be supervised by humans in Illinois who can alert local authorities via the internet in a moment's notice. For law enforcement and homeland security the movements of planes, ships and surface vehicles could be tracked with ease by space stations with huge arrays of sensors that surpass anything found in the small satellites of today. The supercomputers could store data accumulated during years of surveillance. If there is a crime somewhere that escapes detection it will be possible for law enforcement teams to review the data and track down the past movements of suspects or people who wandered off and disappeared. International smuggling, piracy and kidnapping could be challenged by this power to monitor globally the movements of air, sea and land vehicles. Smugglers don't use transponders. They fly beneath the radar and even use small airplanes made of materials that don't reflect microwaves. They run drugs in speedboats. Space radars and sensors that can see in the visual, UV, IR and T-wave regions of the spectrum would be impossible to evade. Pirates that raid pleasure cruisers and rob, rape and kill could be tracked down and busted. Needless to say, pirates don't have GPS equipped transponders on their boats that can be followed with the small satellites of today any more than drug runners, smugglers and white slavers do. Powerful stations in GEO providing global coverage with large antennas and receivers more sensitive than anything in space today could pick up weak signals from tiny nanocircuit chips implanted in the bodies of soldiers and police officers that transmit location and medical telemetry. Questions about future MIAs, KIAs and POWs would be answered with this technology. No American soldier would ever be left behind. Children who are possible targets for kidnappers and others could have chip implants. Even lost pets could be monitored and found this way. Suspects out on bond, parolees, people on probation, legal narcotics addicts who might go back to illegal drug suppliers and released sex offenders could be implanted for law enforcement reasons. The value of this is clear. Advanced Telecommunications Large telecommunication stations in geostationary equatorial orbit could provide world wide cell phone coverage from the most populous to the most remote regions of the Earth as well as fax, pagers and internet service. Web servers could be located in nice air conditioned space stations for a faster net than that which would be possible if the servers were ground based and radio waves had to travel 22,400 miles up to GEO, down to Earth and back again. Modules for these stations would be orbited by heavy lift launch vehicles, perhaps Delta 4, Atlas 5 and Titan rockets, assembled in low Earth orbit with teleoperated robots and propelled to GEO with solar or nuclear electric ion drives. The powerful transmissions from these 22,400 mile high stations could be received by small handsets-ordinary cell phones or wireless cards in computers, on the ground and the weak transmissions from small handsets or wireless cards could be received by large dish antennas and superconducting amplifiers in the space stations. Placing a call or sending a text message by typical cell-phone or logging on to the internet with a special compact satellite transceiver card in rural areas, remote parts of the world, at sea, in the depths of a building complex of any kind or even in a shallow mine will be possible, and much cheaper than a call or internet connection using the satellite systems at work today. Roaming charges and areas where service is unavailable will be nuisances of the past. These unmanned stations could be serviced and refueled by teleoperated robots. If machines can't do the job, humans could travel to GEO aboard reusable orbital transfer vehicles (ROTVs) and capsules like the Crewed Reusable Exploration Vehicle to do the work. Future space stations might not have old-fashioned vacuum tubes that need regular replacement, but cooling systems can still conk out and CPUs can fry. Station keeping thrusters can run out of fuel and malfunction. Solar panels and antennas can get stuck and fail to deploy. Micrometeroids can damage vital equipment. Why scrap a multibillion dollar satellite just because a micrometeroid punctured the armor and smashed a chip? Since the term "space station" conjures up images of Von Braun's big wheel or the ISS with human crews aboard, I like to use the term "mega-satellite" to designate unmanned stations in GEO. These terms can be used casually. In the future, there will be billions of cell phones on Earth and many of them will rely on satellite connections. The multitude of costly short lived expendable rocket launched satellites in orbit won't be able to handle all the telecommunications traffic in the future, especially with tens, even hundreds of millions of travelers that might be placing a call while in flight or on the road. To make things worse for the small satellites of today, increased cell phone, videophone, long-distance and data transmission traffic will demand more and more bandwidth for mobile high speed and high quality audio, video and internet service. The radio spectrum stretches from 3 Khz to 300 Ghz, but communication above 60 Ghz requires more power and expensive equipment that makes satellite radio links at these frequencies impractical. Subsequently, satellite operators must compete for a thin slice of the electromagnetic spectrum. Large, high power telecommunication stations could break this barrier and utilize the full range of the radio spectrum as well as parts of the optical spectrum with lasers. If the price of a mega-satellite cell phone call or an e-mail can beat the price of a call or e-mail by land lines this business will skyrocket during the holiday and summer travel seasons in the developed world, which will include every nation on the planet someday. Large mega-satellites will replace the satellites of today and do so more economically because multi-billion dollar satellites will not have to be replaced every few years. The mega-satellites will be built to last for decades. The consolidation of services in no more than one hundred mega-satellites will also put an end to the growing problem of space junk. World peace could be fostered by international ownership of the mega-satellites. On the ground it will not be necessary to string wires all over the planet to provide phone service. Many developing nations will be able to by-pass the construction of expensive ground based infrastructure and go straight to satellite mobile phone service, to the delight of African villagers, cattle ranchers in the steppe country of Kazakhstan and western telecommunication companies. This will accelerate progress in the impoverished nations. In the developed countries, ugly cell phone towers could be dismantled and all mobile communications could be via mega-satellites. Unmanned airplanes might serve as cellular base stations in widespread rural areas, but these can be grounded by severe weather and lightning strikes. Engine failure can bring airplanes down also. Unmanned robotic airplanes circling at high altitude are at best an intermediate solution to the 21st century telecommunication challenge. Low Earth orbit (LEO) constellations of satellites for global cell phone service have been tried with unimpressive results. These byzantine systems are more prone to failure not only because the satellites are constantly moving and handing off signals but because the failure of one or two satellites spells periodic loss of signal in many places and at many times and reduces the reliability of the whole system. The satellites are placed in polar orbits that are not as immediately accessed as GEO. Launch windows to GEO from equatorial rocket bases occur every 90 minutes, but launch windows to polar orbit can be days apart. Finally, the LEO satellites must pass through the lower limits of the Van Allen radiation belts and this reduces solar panel output and lifetime. Satellites in LEO, like unmanned airplanes, are mere substitutes for large stations in GEO that could be launched in the near future with Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicles like the Delta 4, Atlas 5 or Titan, assembled in LEO by remote control and propelled to GEO with ion drives. Global cell phone communication via mega-satellites in GEO to and from tiny low power phones will work just fine but internet speed via GEO sat is slow because it takes 0.12 seconds for radio waves to travel one way between GEO and Earth. Perhaps all the old cell phone towers will be used for high speed wireless web accesss. Perhaps in the future all phone service globally will be via mega-sat cell phone and all web access will be wireless via towers and land lines will disappear except for those fiber links between towers and computer centers. In areas where there are no towers web users will just have to use slow mega-sat links, but there will still be global web accesss even if it is not all high speed web access. Broadcasting Powerful direct broadcast transmitters on the mega-satellites could deliver TV and radio programs all over the world to cheap receivers that have just a typical whip, "dog ear" or built in antennas instead of bulky eighteen inch dishes that seem to be everywhere today. Thousands of channels could be offered to subscribers worldwide. Cell phones might be made that have a second function as a TV receiver. Hand held digital TVs and radios costing less than one hundred dollars could pick up broadcasts anywhere in the world; while on the road, at sea, in the air, in the Outback, the Rockies or just on an overnight campout somewhere. Global advertisers could reach anybody anywhere. News teams and journalists in the wildest places, including war correspondents on the battlefield who can't be bothered with the orientation of even a small dish antenna, could upload high definition video, still images and voice signals in real time with very compact equipment via the telecommunication space stations and live broadcasts could reach any subscriber in the world with a receiver. There could even be private broadcast stations operated by international corporations to keep employees up to date on company matters throughout the world. Space station owners and operators could lease transponders to broadcasters depending on the constantly changing market on Earth. Renting transponders on the mega-satellites will be much less risky than launching a satellite and broadcasting venture the failure of which could mean the loss of billions of investors' dollars. Broadcasting and webcasting will be improved by the construction of large mega-satellites in high Earth orbit. There are satellites in orbit now broadcasting radio and television programs. In the future, the demand for this kind of service will grow. Imagine a world where all the people in China are as rich as people in the West today, thanks to democratic reforms, and they drive their hundreds of millions of cars, motor homes and boats; or fly in airliners and private airplanes all over Eurasia, Africa, Australia and Pacific Oceania. Imagine a world where North and South America are linked by superhighways and vacationers tow their trailers with their hybrid engine powered SUVs or fuel cell powered autos on vacations in both continents. A bridge, tunnel or some kind of ferry boat service across the Bering Straight could even link North America and Asia. People of the future will move about more freely. They will want TV and radio from the part of the world they come from and local broadcasts in their native tongue. They will want news and weather reports from their destination and points along the way. Space stations that provide translation for travelers and minorities by broadcasting in dozens, even hundreds, of languages will need extra bandwidth. Myriads of small satellites will not be able to handle all the direct television and radio broadcasting demands of the future when global freedom of movement becomes reality for the masses of humanity. Moreover, mounting a satellite TV dish today is a nuisance, especially for people who live in apartments that only have north facing windows!! Large, powerful broadcasting stations in GEO will eliminate this difficulty. Cars will have plain old whip antennas that can pick up TV broadcasts from these high output space stations, irregardless of orientation, to entertain the kids in the back seat with cartoons and adults who want to watch their hometown news while on vacation in distant parts of the world. Standard rooftop antennas or just the old "dog ears" on top of the TV set will pick up signals from the space stations. There will no longer be grotesque swarms of dish antennas on the balconies and windows of apartment complexes. Portable TVs and boom boxes will receive broadcasts from space easily also. Eventually there will be arenas and movie studios in space. Live broadcasts of sports and entertainment productions in orbit could lure vast audiences for pay and ad supported TV. Space athletes could invent games more exciting than water polo. Erotic filmmakers could invent a few things to. And imagine the circuses! Defense Defense matters could be handled by large stations in high geostationary orbit. Optical, T-wave, infrared, cloud penetrating ultraviolet, radio, gamma ray and radar surveillance as well as electronic counter measures against the enemy during wartime could be conducted by these powerful stations. Enemy satellites could be blinded with lasers, jammed with microwaves and even destroyed with projectiles. World wide missile watch and early warning could prevent attack by rogue nations and terrorist groups. Eventually, even high energy anti-ballistic missile lasers powered by gigawatts of power from solar power satellites could be built. Perhaps massive laser crystals for the ABM systems could be grown in micro-gravity space factories. Defense communications could also be handled by mega-satellites with onboard defensive systems that replace multitudes of temporary low-power satellites. Unmanned aerial vehicles of all sorts, even long range robotic bombers, could be tracked and operated by crews in manned defense stations without the fraction of a second time-lag that results during ground-to-ground communication via satellite. As mentioned earlier, "flea powered" chips implanted in the bodies of soldiers could be used to monitor their medical status and locate downed flyers and POWs. There are spy satellites in orbit now, but they are moving fast in low Earth orbit and cannot loiter over a target. It may be hours, days, even weeks before a low-Earth orbital satellite can make a second pass and photograph a target again. In the meantime, the enemy can move around. Spy planes like the U2 can supply our leaders with more immediate intelligence, but these can be shot down and are very vulnerable during war time. Spy planes can crash and they can be hindered by bad weather. Defense stations in geostationary equatorial orbit could hover over the Earth while powerful telescopes and cloud penetrating or night vision sensors spy on the world below, and they would be invulnerable to all but the most sophisticated attack by nations of great wealth and power. These high orbit defense stations might be built by the USA alone or in cooperation with our international allies. There might even be stations operated by the United Nations for the sake of enforcing international law and treaties. Given the reality of nuclear proliferation and the fact that so many nations have the industrial capability to build nuclear weapons today or will in the near future, it becomes necessary to monitor developments in these nations and prepare a defense against the worst possible outcome. Political instability is certain to result in the future from the effects of overpopulation, fossil fuel depletion, deforestation, newly evolved infectious diseases, global warming, climate change, and the rise of industry in small nations that is applied by tyrants to weapons build-ups and wars with rival nations rather than improved living conditions for their people. The future is filled with new nazi Germanys, Talibans and Sadaams in civil war torn Third World regions where the European Union or the United States may or may not have great financial interest or political influence. Nobody can be certain about the social and political future of the developed world either. It seems as if cheap access to space with advanced space shuttles and re-usable heavy lift launch vehicles that can launch 80 to 100 ton payloads will be needed to build these telecommunication, search & rescue, surveillance, broadcasting and defense space stations in the next ten to twenty years. In truth, the job could be done with existing launchers. The stations will consist of modules that are assembled in orbit by teleoperated robots rather than astronauts struggling in bulky spacesuits. They will be powered by large banks of solar panels, fuel cells and even nuclear power. The stations could have five to ten meter large aperture telescopes with super sensitive CCD cameras that can see ground targets at night by the light of the Moon, the planet Venus and starlight. Large reflectors made from aluminized plastic sails could bounce sunlight down to illuminate portions of the Earth below. Enemy forces would see a bright man-made star in the sky and know that they were being watched. This could induce them to retreat. Ultraviolet cameras will penetrate the haze and clouds during the day. Powerful UV lasers could illuminate targets at night. High resolution imaging radars will scan the surface night and day. Radars could even be powerful enough to penetrate the ground and detect subterranean activity. T-wave cameras and telescopes could even see through the ground at wavelengths that aren't absorbed by soil, clay and bedrock to allow surveillance of underground weapons labs and factories. Terrahertz wave cameras could even see through the walls of buildings. Supercold infrared sensors will also be put to work. Gamma ray and neutron detectors could keep tabs on nuclear facilities and perhaps even locate smuggled atomic bombs and fissionable materials like enriched U235 and plutonium. If large defense stations hovering in GEO with banks of five meter or even ten meter telescopes and advanced sensing equipment that could spy on selected targets below night and day for days, weeks, even months at a time existed in the late nineties and early 21st century the show-down with Sadaam Hussein and UN debate would have been a simple open and shut case. Whether weapons of mass destruction that the Bush administration used to justify the war on Iraq, a war that killed tens of thousands of Iraqis, ever existed or not we will never know. If powerful defense stations under the auspices of various nations and the UN exist in the future we will know if war is or is not justified. The international community could have conclusive proof regarding claims of the existence of weapons of mass destruction. If weapons of mass destruction do exist, we will find them, even if they have been moved to a neighboring country which may have happened just before the Iraq war. There has been some suspicion raised about the possibility of Hussein's weapons of mass destruction being moved into Syria before the American attack. We may never know. And claims of disarmament and dismantling of WMD programs like those claims made by Libya must be investigated deeply. We cannot be certain that these defense stations will ever be built, but we can be sure that more tyrants will emerge in the future as they have throughout history. The ultimate success of these defense stations for surveillance or even anti-ballistic missile weapons deployment will be to never discover weapons of mass destruction in the making or never shoot down nukes aimed at the USA, Japan or Europe, in the same way that a big mean dog in your backyard insures that you will never find a slit screen or a lock that has been tampered with by a potential burglar or kidnapper while your teenaged daughter sleeps in her fluffy basement bedroom. When one is strong he has no enemies. When one is weak he has no allies. Peace can only be maintained by strength and the guts to use that strength for righteous purposes. An equal amount of intelligence is also essential, as well as truth, honesty and the power of the international community to prosecute war criminals and maniacs who want WMDs. Energy from Space: Solar Power Satellites and Helium 3 Solar power satellites, abbreviated SPSs, many kilometers in diameter, generating massive amounts of electrical power would be needed to power lasers capable of vaporizing nuclear warheads in flight. This could insure the safety of Israel, the USA, Japan and Europe in a future where nuclear proliferation has become epidemic, perhaps due to the production of cheap ICBM knock-offs sold by outlaw nations desperate for money. There are plenty of poor Russian nuclear scientists who are so hard up they will sell their souls to the devil, so there is no shortage of brain power to mastermind these evil schemes. Anti-ballistic missile lasers would be not be powerful enough to disintegrate cities as some alarmists may think. They wouldn't even penetrate through to the lowest layers of the atmosphere. The Moon could supply the raw materials needed to build these mammoth lasers and their power satellites in the future; perhaps twenty to fifty years down the road. Solar power satellites could also provide a reliable flow of clean electricity to the polluted starving world to energize the infrastructure needed to process, transport and store food and other products for the masses. SPSs that beam power down to Earth may deliver power less expensively than fusion and other sources. SPSs may require a high capital outlay, like hydro-electric dams do, but operating costs will be low. Without a doubt, fission and fusion reactors are complex devices that require expensive nuclear fuels. SPSs will reap free energy after they are built. They could be built of thin film silicon cells which are simple, have no moving parts, and thus require little or no maintenance. Turbo-generators filled with helium and thin aluminum sheet solar collectors are also possible. The foil or sheet metal sunlight collectors will not wear away over time aside from occasional micro-meteoroid punctures. The de-oxygenated helium filled turbines will run for years without overhaul. There is no rust, corrosion, foul weather or seismic activity in space, therefore SPSs will last for decades, perhaps centuries. There are no unstable regimes, dictators or cartels in space either to interfere with energy production. Space solar power will allow freedom from foreign energy sources and dangerous energy sources like fission. One thousand 50 GW satellites, each about 10 km by 10 km, could supply 50 TW of power to the world of tomorrow. We have no experience building enormous structures in outer space. If we are to build large numbers of SPSs in space we must get to work now by developing Moon bases, space stations and experimenting with regolith mining and refining, life support systems, robotics and construction in space. To build enough SPSs to supply the Earth with a significant amount of energy we will need large workforces and the means to support those workforces. O'Neill envisioned a Bernal Sphere housing 10,000 people; not just workers but their families also. He also envisioned a 5 GW satellite amassing 80,000 tons. If we are to build 50 GW satellites they will each amass 800,000 tons and a thousand of them will amass 800 million tons. To mine and move this much material through space will require lots of infrastructure that will take decades to develop. It will require armies of teleoperated robots controlled by crews on the lunar surface and Earth's surface. If we get started today by launching 100 Delta 4 rockets and 2500 tons to LEO that is then propelled to the Moon with ion drive tugs and landed by robotic rockets consisting of little more than a Kevlar bladder filled with water mined by robots from lunar polar ice and a nuclear thermal rocket engine, building space stations and Moon bases, and doing some real heavy duty research in space we might get the first SPS (solar power satellite) built by 2050, maybe sooner. Since a Delta 4 rocket, which can be assembled for launch in just ten days, costs $170 million to launch we could blast 100 of them into space for just $17 billion. That's a drop in the bucket. Payloads and teleoperation on the ground will cost more but the price of the whole project would be reasonable when we consider the benefits it could reap. From about 2000 tons actually delivered to the Moon millions of tons of equipment will grow. Mining the Moon for helium 3, a fusion fuel that does not generate nuclear waste, has enormous commercial potential if and only if practical fusion reactors become a reality. Efforts to develop a commercial fusion reactor have focused on the fusion of deuterium and tritium. This reaction releases high energy neutrons that can transmute the materials composing the reactor into radioactive isotopes. Subsequently, radioactive waste results and damage to the expensive reactor might cut its lifetime short. Damage to fusion reactors by high energy neutrons, the high cost of tritium and radioactive waste disposal could make this kind of power uneconomical. To make matters worse, a deuterium-tritium reactor needs a hot liquid lithium cooling jacket that absorbs neutrons and breeds tritium. Corrosion in the liquid lithium jacket and the potential for fires given the combustibility of lithium which burns with about 17,000 BTU per pound compared to 20,000 BTU per pound of gasoline might make this kind of fusion reactor impractical. The reactions of helium 3 and deuterium yield very few neutrons and the reaction of helium 3 with helium 3 do not yield neutrons at all thereby making helium 3 an ideal fusion fuel; however, it takes even stronger magnetic containment fields and higher ignition temperatures to get these reactions. This is why research has focused on the D-T and D-D reactions. Moreover, there is no significant amount of helium 3 on Earth. The Moon has traces of the stuff blown out with the solar wind deposited in its dusty regolith (lunar soil). Moon dust could be mined and the helium 3 extracted simply by heating. At perhaps three billion dollars per ton, helium 3 mining will be very lucrative, presuming the cost of space travel has been reduced greatly by the application of mass production for rockets to launch mega-satellites and space manufacturing stations. Helium 3 is also present in the atmospheres of Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune. The Moon has enough 3he to energize our world for centuries. The Gas Giant planets have enough for millions of years to come. Since one kilogram of helium 3 when burned with two-thirds of a kilo of deuterium yields 19 MW-years of energy, we will need 1000 tons a year to supply just 19 TW to an energy hungry world of tomorrow. There is only about one ton of helium 3 in one hundred million tons of moondust, so vast mining operations on the Moon will be needed to get this stuff. To get 19 TW years worth of 3he we need to mine and roast one hundred billion tons of moon dust every year or a square area almost 200 km. on a side to a depth of one meter! Seems like we must dig up the seas of the Moon! This job will demand extensive lunar mining infrastructure that will take decades to establish. Robotic 3He miners will be manufactured on the Moon from local resources of titanium, aluminum and magnesium. Stereolithography or laser additive manufacturing will be the key to making any necessary part on the Moon. If we want to mine the atmospheres of the Gas Giant planets we will need even more industry in space and interplanetary vessels. We better get started soon. Even so, there is one big obstacle standing in our way. Nobody has ever built a successful fusion powerplant! Fusion power is a big gamble. Perhaps there will be a miraculous breakthrough like the growing of giant laser crystals in microgravity space factories that make laser fusion reactors possible. At present, work focuses on superconducting magnetic containment reactors called TOKAMAKS. Perhaps experiments done in space involving the growth of giant laser crystals that would collapse under their own weight on Earth during growth when they are semi-molten will not only yield a defense against rogue nuclear missiles, enemy aircraft and conventional warhead tipped missiles, but also grant us a solution to our energy problems and enable industrial drilling and mining with lasers. This would germinate one huge space manufacturing industry, to be sure. During the "atoms for peace" era in the 1950s most people thought nuclear fission was the energy source of the future and they imagined abundant electricity from the atom too cheap to meter. The dream of power too cheap to meter may be realized with SPSs and helium 3 fusion, and there are no dangers associated. Microwave beams will pass harmlessly through the atmosphere like solar radiation which douses our world with millions of times as much energy as will be emitted by the SPSs. Helium 3 "burning" fusion reactors that cannot explode or meltdown that do not emit radioactive waste or clouds of ash and sulfuric acid could be built safely in the hearts of cities to reduce the power loss from long distance cable transmission and supply free waste heat in the winter to buildings connected to an underground steam loop. Scientific Research Space stations or mega-satellites with sensors that offer resolution far greater than anything we have today might be a real boon to meteorologists who study the atmosphere for science and weather forecasting. Geologists could search the Earth for minerals and oceanographers could study the sea in minute detail. As we alter the Earth's climate with CO2 emissions, cutting in the rainforest and damming the tributaries of the Amazon for hydroelectricity, and irrigating the Sahara desert, the planet will be scrutinized in great detail by scientists. We must know what our actions are doing to the Earth. We must develop better weather forecasting with super-computer models of the constantly changing Earth. That means constant data feeds of up to the second information into the computers from orbiting sensor webs and ground stations that keep the high resolution models so objective that forecasting becomes ever more accurate. We might forecast the occurrence of a tornado an hour before it appears, predict its swath and send warning calls with automatic phone dialers to all people in harm's way as well as general bulletins over TV and radio. Satellites studying the movements of the Earth in great detail with radars and ground stations with geophones, thermal and seismic sensors planted in the ground, uplinking from the most remote spots, like the slopes and caldera of volcanoes via the communication stations to central supercomputer installations, will allow us to predict earthquakes and eruptions on the living Earth. There are unmonitored volcanoes out there on continental land masses and islands, and volcanoes on the sea bottom that could be watched by deep ocean probes that send ultrasonic signals to floating or island based satellite Earth stations to feed the central computers of various national weather and conservation services. Volcanic activity has a powerful effect on Earth's climate and must be thoroughly studied, monitored constantly and predicted. Since earthquakes and volcanic eruptions result from the gnashing of crustal plates, and are closely related, understanding one will help us understand, predict and even control the other. Telescopes in space or on the far side of the Moon, larger than anything that can be built in the high gravity of Earth, unhindered by the atmosphere, could hunt for objects in the Kuiper Belt and Oort Cloud, search for brown dwarfs and rogue planets in the interstellar abyss, and even study Earth-like planets orbiting nearby stars. The goal will not simply be detecting Earth-like planets, but imaging their cloud patterns and continents, and analyzing their light reflection with spectroscopes in the hope of detecting chlorophyll and other signs of life. Radio telescopes built in lunar craters on the far-side of the Moon, insulated from the radio noise of Earth by the Moon's 70 quintillion tons of mass, will study the universe in wavelengths never explored before. Perhaps we will detect the broadcasts of extraterrestrial civilizations or electromagnetic emissions from their mag-sail braking starships. The worlds of our own solar system will be studied in greater detail with unmanned robotic and manned probes. We will drill into the crust of the Moon and analyze its interior. There might be pockets of gas near low volcanic domes that are of value to lunar pioneers. If Thomas Gold is correct about the abiogenic origin of oil, and the Moon formed independently of Earth and not because of a giant impact, there could even be petroleum in the Moon. That would revolutionize our understanding of geology. If oil is of biogenic origin and life did evolve on Mars during its warm and wet youth, there could be oil, gas and coal on Mars that would be of immense value to colonists and terraformers. We believe that Mars had an atmosphere and liquid water for the first billion years of its existence. When we consider that most species on Earth have only evolved in the past 600 million years, that would give life on Mars enough time to reach a fairly high degree of evolution, presuming it got out of the single celled stage and became multi-cellular before the planet froze up. What strange fossils might we find on Mars? Support Industries Investment in the Moon for the construction of mining bases and mass launchers as well as mass catchers and construction shacks in high Earth orbit may create more than SPS and helium 3 power. Many other industries could be "piggy backed" or "ride on the coat tails" of lunar industry. Consider money to be made in lunar tourism; restaurants, coffee houses and bars in space; real estate, scientific research, mining and manufacturing of all sorts of products, materials for space stations, lunar retirement homes, gambling casinos, conventions, blockbuster entertainment ( sports and movies on the Moon), asteroid deflection forces, materials for Mars colonists and their ships, materials for asteroid miners seeking platinum group metals, materials for Saturn missions to harvest helium 3 when lunar resources play out, and support industries from agriculture to dentistry, banking and live entertainment. Artists will find invaluable new inspiration in space. Countless news stories and documentaries will be made. Telecommunication and electronic information exchange between Earth, Moon and someday even Mars will be big business. Work is being done now on interplanetary internet protocols by NASA. The interplanetary internet will allow businessmen and scientists to communicate and share information. This will be of great importance when billions of dollars of trading is going on in space. Tourism Eventually, the cost of travel to Earth orbit will come down in price so that space tourism becomes realistic. Hotels in low Earth orbit will bring in billions of dollars from tourists and create innumerable jobs. Given the widespread enthusiasm for space travel as evidenced by movies like Star Wars, tourism could be the biggest business in outer space. Cheap access to space brought about through the assembly line mass production of standardized spaceplanes and heavy lift launch vehicles with robots and even cheap human labor that make telecommunication, defense and solar power stations in space as well as lunar helium 3 fusion fuel mines possible in the future will also make space tourism possible. It can also be said that space tourism will make cheap access to space and all these other projects in space possible. Space tourism may be the only industry that can create the demand necessary to make mass production of spaceplanes and heavy lifters economical, and this in turn could make other space industries viable. What starts out as a high priced luxury for the rich will be key to the eventual mass marketing of outer space. There are those who think space tourism for the rich when people in the less developed countries are starving is unthinkably unethical. There will be others who think space tourism for those who can afford it is their bread and butter. Since equatorial sites in Brazil, Somalia and Indonesia will be prime places to locate rocket bases, many formerly poor people working at these bases will be damn glad that rich people are spending their money in their locales. Space stations and large satellites could improve the quality of life in the Less Developed Countries (LDCs) by enabling cheap telecommunications and broadcasting over wide areas. Solar power satellites which could be built with presently existing science could deliver cheap energy to the impoverished nations so that they don't need to burn enormous amounts of coal to energize their transitions from agrarian to industrial societies. Most of the greenhouse gas emissions today are coming from the USA where only five percent of the world's six billion people live. If twenty times as many people want as much electricity and gasoline as we do the emission of pollutants and greenhouse gases will destroy the biosphere in a frighteningly short period of time. Either everybody outside the USA has to stay poor, we must destroy the Earth with CO2 and radioactive waste and commit racial suicide for a few years of the good life, or we must develop clean energy sources from ground based solar and winds to space based solar and helium 3 fusion. If space tourism can provide the demand that stimulates supply and brings about economical space transportation and space energy, every donkey cart owning rice farmer in the world should be in favor of it! Eventually, spaceplanes that take off and land horizontally like jet airliners will transport tourists into space. If such spaceplanes never pan out, there might be vertical take-off and landing rockets that descend with parachutes and a short burst of retro-rocket power. Vertical take-off and vertical landing (VTOVLs) rockets might be more economical than horizontal take-off and landing spaceplanes. A VTOVL only has to endure vertical stresses on its structure and ablative heat shields can be unbolted after each flight, discarded, and new heat shields from an assembly line bolted on. This should be cheaper and safer than maintaining thousands of tiles that tend to fall off. VTOVL rockets can also use aerospike engines which are efficient at all altitudes and can be steered with simple thrust modulation rather than complex gimbals. Perhaps VTOVLs will use three propellants-liquid methane or JP1 with LOX to generate thrust for lift-off and LH2 and LOX for speed after the hydrocarbon fuel is exhausted. Single stage to orbit VTOVL rockets would not involve the costs of booster recovery. The could be built of titanium, lithium-aluminum and composites to attain very high mass ratios. We cannot tell at this time whether horizontal take off and landing spaceplanes or VTOVLs will be the standard mode of human passenger transportation to LEO in the future, but I lean towards VTOVLs. Oil, Platinum and Preventing Mass Extinction There is even more to consider. The possibility of an asteroid impact that could wipe out a city or even life on the entire planet is a frightening reality. The chances of an impact in our lifetime is slim, but the effects of such an impact would be horrible. Why should we live in a cosmic shooting gallery? Astronomers are now scanning the skies for threatening objects. It is just a matter of time before they spot something on a collision course with Earth. If the impact of an asteroid that will destroy Italy is due one hundred years from today, when will be the best time to build an asteroid deflection force consisting of nuclear missile ranges on the far side of the Moon or spaceships that can meet the asteroid and erect mass drivers that can deflect the dangerous mountain sized rock? Asteroids are not just big pieces of slag that could wreak mass destruction on Earth. They are also sources of valuable materials. Stony-iron asteroids are rich in platinum group metals. Fuel cells rely on platinum and so do many modern industrial processes. A growing civilization on Earth and in space will demand platinum group metals for everything from chemotherapeutic agents like cisplatin to fuel cells for automobiles. The asteroids may become a prime source of platinum group metals. Iridium is a platinum group metal and it is the most inert of all metals, meaning that it resists attack by most acids and chemicals. If iridium was cheaply mined from the asteroids it could revolutionize the metals industry by allowing the manufacture of rust and corrosion resistant super-alloys and coatings. The asteroids could even be a source of oil. Astronomers have determined through spectral analysis of light reflected from asteroids that three-fourths of the asteroids are carbonaceous or C-Type. That means that they contain carbon based organic chemicals called kerogen. Although our Earth may be self sufficient in the future when it comes to organic chemicals for plastics, paints, pharmaceuticals and other substances through recycling of trash materials and the extraction of carbon from the atmosphere, oil shale and coal, civilization in space will demand these carbon based substances. It is probable that human beings, ordinary people like you and me, will someday live in space cities floating in the starry void, space colonies, like those envisioned by Gerard K. O'Neill and others. The asteroids could be sources of metals, glass, ceramics and concrete to build these celestial cities as well as sources of carbon based organic substances for plastics and other artificial materials. Space oil tankers are not a crazy idea. Although the Moon has oxygen in the rocks and metals in abundance, it is not rich in carbon because it never had a thick atmosphere and plant life to form deposits of oil or coal. Since organic chemicals of all sorts have been detected in the star forming nebulae of space, the asteroids probably got their kerogen from the nebula from which they condensed. Civilization on the Moon and in Earth orbit will provide asteroid oil men with a substantial market in the future. New Worlds and Civilization in Space The moons of the outer planets-Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune could also serve as sources of materials for space colony construction. The 70,000+ worlds of the Kuiper Belt beyond Pluto, some of them larger than the largest asteroids, and the trillions of comets of the Oort Cloud could supply materials to build innumerable celestial metropolises. Energy for these space cities at great distances from the Sun could come from helium 3 fusion, protium fusion or more exotic power sources like vacuum energy or the destruction of matter in miniature artificial black holes. For those who insist upon life on a planetary surface the terraforming of Mars and Venus offer hope. Mars could be warmed by the production of greenhouse gases in factories on the surface of the planet. This could trigger a run-away greenhouse effect that melts the carbon dioxide ice polar caps of Mars. The melting of the polar ice caps might be accelerated by dusting the ice caps with dark volcanic soil which absorbs heat. Mars colonists could build ICBMs loaded with dark material, use mass drivers or make drops with aircraft to coat the ice caps with millions of tons of dark material. Plants could then convert the carbon dioxide to oxygen and make the Red Planet green and friendly to life from Earth. Giant sunlight reflectors in orbit around Mars made of materials mined on Deimos and Phobos, the moonlets of Mars, could also warm the planet. Terraforming Venus could be achieved by bombing the planet with comets deflected by various technologies in the Oort Cloud. Cometary impacts could blast the thick shroud of carbon dioxide away from Venus. A thinner atmosphere would trap less heat and cool down. Giant solar shields built of materials mined on the asteroids or the planet Mercury by robot armies could cool Venus. The atmosphere of Venus could also be mined away over thousands of years by robots made of exotic synthetic materials and iridium that can resist corrosion by the hot sulfuric acid laden atmosphere to supply carbon to space colonies in orbit around the Sun. After thousands of years of Venusian atmosphere mining the thinned out atmosphere would trap less heat, cool down and allow the planting of algae and other botanicals to convert the remaining carbon dioxide to oxygen. The greatest bounty will be the future. Mercantile activity in Earth orbit, on the Moon and on Mars is just a starting point for the creation a space based civilization that is no longer affected by the dangers of life on a planetary surface. Population growth at a more restrained, slower rate could continue for centuries more if Mars is terraformed and space is colonized. Perhaps the human population could expand for hundreds of thousands of years into the Oort Cloud of Sol until reaching the Oort Cloud of Alpha Centauri and then beyond until the entire galaxy was inhabited. Opportunities for travel and adventure will grow immensely. People might move to Mars for a good job and back to Earth and then to a space colony before retiring on the Moon or a city floating in the Pacific. Others may stay in the space colonies to avoid ever being caught in an earthquake or tornado!!! Ultimately, the reality of interstellar travel at respectable fractions of light-speed may be realized and we will green the galaxy with life by "leapfrogging" from star system to star system. As for intergalactic travel, transcendental powers of the mind or some presently incomprehensible physics may be required, or there may be "wormholes" in space formed when black holes evaporate from white holes, and leave a space-time bridges behind that allow our starships of the future to enter and traverse billions of light years. The realm of Time, the possibility of other Universes, and contemplating the act of traveling in Alternate Dimensions, seems fruitless for mere mortals such as myself who can't even get on a chemical rocket to low-Earth-orbit at present. Besides, we don't know if anything like hyper-space really even exists. If it does, I am sure someone will figure out how to capitalize on it in reality and not just in science fiction fantasy. Unknown Potential of the Frontier Then there is always the unexpected. The biggest money maker in space may have eluded us all. Rare and valuable mineral deposits may be found in space on the Moon, on the asteroids or on the moons of the Outer Planets-Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune. An anomalous deposit of beryl out there somewhere might supply huge masses of beryllium, a metal as light as magnesium that's as strong as mild steel. This would revolutionize the metals industry and allow the manufacturing of more incredible airplanes and helicopters. That's wishful thinking. Hydrocarbons from C-type asteroids, Titan and the atmospheres of the Gas Giants may be bigger business in the fossil fuel depleted future than anyone has imagined. Oil will still be needed for chemicals, drugs, paints, dyes, lubricants, plastics, and even synthetic food. If we do expand off-planet and build space colonies like O'Neill's Island One our civilization in space will demand these substances. Life spans may be extended in lower gravity fields. The Moon and slowly rotating space colonies could be veritable "fountains of youth" for the elderly. That would attract money. Space colonies may be built to house space work forces. They will also be built for tourists. Space colonies of immense size will be much more fun than the old hotels made of external tanks! In a Bernal Sphere a thousand meters in diameter one could actually leap from the hub and fly freely through the air. If space colonies can be built for tourists and space workers they can be built for rich retirees who want to postpone visitation by the Grim Reaper for a number of years. The inspiration of the new frontier will energize the human race and breed optimism. That alone may make it all worthwhile. The old adage,"man does not live be bread alone," is true. Space exploration, commercial development and colonization will give us more than bread. For some the space frontier offers exciting job prospects from engineering on the ground to frying hamburgers on the Moon. For others the frontier offers freedom beyond the political divisions of Earth where new societies can flourish. A changing world where infinite growth is possible is certainly more interesting than a static one. Without horizons spiritual malaise befalls many people. A chance to create new worlds will replace decadence, nihilism and boredom. The space frontier will supply never ending territory for explorers and new markets where established interests have not gained control of all the business. The excitement that comes from space conquest will effect billions of people in positive ways. The High Frontier will offer a future filled with hope rather than apocalypse. All of Earth's people, from the poorest to the richest, will benefit. |
| David A. Dietzler, 2007 |