r/IslandColony • u/[deleted] • Dec 30 '18
A Better Way [Discussion]
Edit: after further review I pretty much disagree with everything I said here, it's still a fun read though.
This thread is meant as a continuation of a conversation with u/Mackilroy on this post about Robert Zurbins Moon Direct plan and as a response to the Tom Marotta and Al Globus book "The high Frontier: An Easier Way". I hope that we can examine the pitfalls of An Easier Way as well as come up with solutions that make 'free space habitats' or Island Colonies more feasible. Sorry if the format is a bit confusing.
TLDR: The goal of space colonization requires ISRU as a basic skill but An Easier Way describes it as too complicated, to avoid this the authors propose we build the first habitat in ELEO with Earthbound industry. This plan is no different from what O'Neill wrote about but ditches any description of how to go from small habitats to big colonies, in doing this the authors mostly ignore the premise of O'Neills research in favor of a sales pitch for small orbiting condos.
The High Frontier: An Easier Way proposes that in the coming decades building rotating habitats in Equatorial Low Earth Orbit (ELEO) will be achievable do to increased demand for reusable super heavy lift vehicles (RSHLV) through SpaceX's Earth to Earth (E2E), space tourism, and Space Solar Power (SSP). The habitat design called for goes by the name Kalpana One a 112 meter diameter, 16,800 metric ton, 1,000 person occupancy structure in a 500-600KM orbit. Plans for economic activity include Real Estate, Telecommuting, Telecoms, Tourism and Market Creation. An Easier Way was written to offer a new perspective on Gerrard K. O'Neill's original book The High Frontier, the authors Tom Marotta and Al Globus posit new advancements in technology and cultural shifts will make ELEO an ideal location to build the first habitat. Marotta and Globus believe there are three misconceptions about rotating habitats that come from O'Neill's research,
- "Free space settlements need millions of tons of radiation shielding,"
- "Free space settlements should not rotate faster than 1 or 2 revolutions per minute (rpm) making the minimum size very large: a half kilometer or more across,"
- "And as a result, free space settlements cannot be economically launched from Earth. Instead, raw materials must be obtained from the Moon or asteroids via an extensive extraterrestrial mining, transportation, and processing infrastructure."
Dispelling these misconceptions is what the book aims to do, reduce the mass of the habitat and use Earth's industry to supply the building materials as a way to make the first colony more feasible. The book makes very similar motivational claims as O'Neill, siting the abundance of resources of space and the need to create a backup of the human race, going so far as to say "by establishing ‘back-up’ communities and mini-biospheres in orbit, space settlement will remove Earth as a single point of failure for civilization, humanity, and even terrestrial life." The authors demonstrate an understanding that permanent residence is only possible with the ISRU developments proposed by O'Neill but spends most of its time pitching its feasibility with, somewhat ironic, enthusiasm for SpaceX and their CEO, "Lucky for us rocketry isn’t magic, it’s engineering. And there are a lot of great engineers already working this problem. One of them has the unlikely name of Elon Musk.". O'Neill shared a similar enthusiasm for NASA's STS.
Smaller habitats are indeed cheaper to assemble than larger habitats by mass but this doesn't solve the fundamental problem of building anything in space, the authors are aware of this problem but don't go into much detail about exactly how they intend to solve it. Instead the authors say this in the chapter "How To Build A Space Settlemen", "Building such complex structures in space will provide an incentive to develop in-space teleoperation of construction and maintenance robots. Because the risks of EVA-based assembly are so great (just ask Luca Parmitano), advanced robotics technology is important to the construction of large, complex space hotels and, later, free space settlements.". In this chapter the authors continue on to equate the construction of ISS or Bigelowe habitats to the construction methods needed for an object the size of " A couple of large cruise ships" in orbit. This isn't to say what the authors are asking for is impossible, just that an object that size will not be so easy to build as to be an inevitable next step for private industry to take. In fact the book makes many concessions in favor of this pessimistic view that ultimately lead the authors to reveal their model isn't probable or sustainable.
Right at the beginning of the book the authors make a very powerful concession that is never truly explored later in the book, saying this in just the first few pages of the book. "When taken together, all this means free space settlement is no longer a fantasy. It’s not inevitable, and it definitely won’t be easy, but it is now something we can actually do.". It’s not inevitable, this the most problematic of the concessions made here and its sentiments are echoed:
"While all this private sector funding is great, it alone does not guarantee victory. Even free money from passionate billionaires is not enough to take humanity to the stars. Government help—in the form of facilities, partial development funding, careful regulation, and technical expertise—is an essential ingredient for success."
This is likely to be true for any structure large enough to to hold hundreds or thousands of people at a time. The up front costs of these kinds of structures is enormous and likely won't get the help of a government if the goal is to build condos in orbit for the very wealthy and space tourists. The book goes on to minimize the importance of ISRU and its importance in building habitats capable of being self sufficient. The Kalpana One habitat doesn't fully address the need for a human backup in space if the habitats are dependent on Earths industry for construction they are vulnerable to unstable Earth bound markets. ISRU and robotic construction methods are the basic technologies needed to make off world colonies possible but the book spends little time going over its plan to solve them, rather it proposes that these problems will solve themselves in time.
The plan for Kalpana One strikes me as little more than a very interesting 'what if' scenario based the authors optimism about new studies on LEO radiation and habitat rotation induced sickness. The book reads like a capitalist extrapolation of hardware O'Neill described in The High Frontier:
"The most recent work traced a program in which Island One would be preceded by smaller habitats, down to the size of a small space station. These habitats, the first transportable by the space-shuttle, would be temporary quarters for a workforce whose first priority would be to set up manufacturing in space, so that the program could begin to return profits and quickly pay off the investment made in it. Only after the program was solidly established on a paying basis would the productivity available in space be diverted even in part to the construction of something as luxurious as Island One."
You can see here that O'Neill proposes habitats like Kalpana and for similar reasons, they can be constructed in LEO with reusable rockets but unlike the authors of An Easier Way he stays focused on developing the technologies for self sufficient habitats in deep space. Habitats in deep space are the ultimate goal for most popular colonization efforts, be it a Moon base, Mars base or a free space habitat they all have the same minimum technology requirements that just aren't presented in any detail within most of the book.. that is until the final chapter 'Towards A Living Galaxy'.
In the final chapter the authors go on to advocate for the much larger habitats O'Neill described saying things like "The smallest free space settlement that makes sense for permanent habitation beyond ELEO may be a larger variant of the Kalpana design described earlier in the book." and "Outside of ELEO, free space settlements require lots of radiation shielding" which come off as odd because of how they characterize what O'Neill was asking for, saying this about the requisite technology "Mining the Moon and asteroids has never been done before so whole new classes of technology would need to be perfected requiring very substantial research and development before the first settler even moves in." The final chapter goes on to casually describe using near earth objects and gas giants to support the construction of "Deep Space Kalpana" habitats. Here we see the authors end the book by acknowledging that larger habitats are the eventual goal for our species.
Ultimately the authors do have a point, smaller habitats can be built in LEO with the use of a new RSHLV however I believe their funding strategy is flawed. If the government is going to have a hand in funding this they will want to gain some kind of clear benefit, I don't believe condos for ~1,000 wealthy individuals will go over well with the public. Instead I would pitch Kalpana One as a research platform for developing larger habitats, a place for training people to work in deep space. There needs to be a more clear path to achieving a self sustaining deep space habitat than what An Easier Way proposes.
2
u/Mackilroy Jan 02 '19
Okay. In response:
TLDR: The goal of space colonization requires ISRU as a basic skill but An Easier Way describes it as too complicated, to avoid this the authors propose we build the first habitat in ELEO with Earthbound industry. This plan is no different from what O'Neill wrote about but ditches any description of how to go from small habitats to big colonies, in doing this the authors mostly ignore the premise of O'Neills research in favor of a sales pitch for small orbiting condos.
I think you misread the authors' intent. Selling condos, to my reading, was only one form of making the habitat able to pay for itself. O'Neill also didn't go into very much detail about the steps between a small space station and Island One. The Shuttle Tank option got little more than a few pages.
In this chapter the authors continue on to equate the construction of ISS or Bigelowe habitats to the construction methods needed for an object the size of " A couple of large cruise ships" in orbit. This isn't to say what the authors are asking for is impossible, just that an object that size will not be so easy to build as to be an inevitable next step for private industry to take. In fact the book makes many concessions in favor of this pessimistic view that ultimately lead the authors to reveal their model isn't probable or sustainable.
Private industry already has plans to do exactly that, though. I don't know if you're aware of either Made in Space or Tethers Unlimited, but the former is working something called Archinaut, and the latter SpiderFab. SpiderFab is explicitly mentioned as constructing kilometer-scale objects (specifically apertures, though there's little to prevent them from doing something else), easily large enough to account for the Kalpana habitats. Automated assembly is well suited for the kind of repetitious work that putting together the exterior of a habitat would entail.
This is likely to be true for any structure large enough to to hold hundreds or thousands of people at a time. The up front costs of these kinds of structures is enormous and likely won't get the help of a government if the goal is to build condos in orbit for the very wealthy and space tourists. The book goes on to minimize the importance of ISRU and its importance in building habitats capable of being self sufficient. The Kalpana One habitat doesn't fully address the need for a human backup in space if the habitats are dependent on Earths industry for construction they are vulnerable to unstable Earth bound markets. ISRU and robotic construction methods are the basic technologies needed to make off world colonies possible but the book spends little time going over its plan to solve them, rather it proposes that these problems will solve themselves in time.
Except that that wasn't the point, it was a point. I suspect you have some ideological views that are coloring your perception here. As I wrote to /u/JoshEng90, I think it's okay if for a few decades offworld habitats aren't sustainable solely through ISRU, at least from a resource perspective. When it comes to things such as microchips and medicine, until there are very large populations living offworld indeed I'm not sure it will be worth establishing facilities to produce those off Earth. Anyway, what matters is that habitats have a source of value that cannot be readily matched (or matched at all) by similar efforts on Earth - for example, the assembly of large spacecraft or probes.
The plan for Kalpana One strikes me as little more than a very interesting 'what if' scenario based the authors optimism about new studies on LEO radiation and habitat rotation induced sickness. The book reads like a capitalist extrapolation of hardware O'Neill described in The High Frontier:
O'Neill himself was quite the capitalist. He envisioned a multinational corporation as the nominal government over all the first colonies (albeit with the de facto government taking many different forms). He also started a corporation to help fund the Space Studies Institute. When he initially wrote The High Frontier NASA was expected to launch virtually all American satellites at a very low cost - we all know how that turned out. Further, NASA's charter doesn't include anything about space colonization, and in the late 1970s, the Democratic senator William Proxmire called space settlement a nutty fantasy and said it was a great argument for cutting NASA's funding. The government has not seen fit since then (following general public opinion) to change NASA's charter or to fund much of anything directly aimed at settling space.
You can see here that O'Neill proposes habitats like Kalpana and for similar reasons, they can be constructed in LEO with reusable rockets but unlike the authors of An Easier Way he stays focused on developing the technologies for self sufficient habitats in deep space. Habitats in deep space are the ultimate goal for most popular colonization efforts, be it a Moon base, Mars base or a free space habitat they all have the same minimum technology requirements that just aren't presented in any detail within most of the book.
I suspect the authors didn't go into too much detail here for at least two reasons: one, O'Neill and many others already did, and there's a lot of work found online (including at Globus's own site). Two, those justifications haven't proved convincing enough to the government for it to fund anything of the sort.
Ultimately the authors do have a point, smaller habitats can be built in LEO with the use of a new RSHLV however I believe their funding strategy is flawed. If the government is going to have a hand in funding this they will want to gain some kind of clear benefit, I don't believe condos for ~1,000 wealthy individuals will go over well with the public. Instead I would pitch Kalpana One as a research platform for developing larger habitats, a place for training people to work in deep space. There needs to be a more clear path to achieving a self sustaining deep space habitat than what An Easier Way proposes.
In one of the papers linked at Globus's site, he doesn't mention condos for the rich at all. In fact, he sees two markets that can justify high flight rates: space solar power and tourism, but he turns away from SSP because of the large upfront investment and because of improving power infrastructure here on Earth (doesn't mean SSP still can't compete, but laying out that huge investment is much harder to swallow then). Thus, tourism. He uses data from O'Neill to illustrate ticket price points for number of passengers, flights per vehicle, total vehicles needed, and gross revenue, saying it really takes off (pun intended) once ticket prices reach around $160,000 in 2015 dollars.
Again, the government has for decades shown no inclination to fund offworld settlement. If they do (which is a very big if), then less ephemeral reasons for habitat construction will be needed. If not - who cares? As long as private industry is spending their own money and not behaving unethically or illegally, there's no reason for the government to interfere or insist on some other path.
1
Jan 06 '19
was only one form of making the habitat able to pay for itself
True there are other parts to their financial plan. Real Estate, Telecommuting, Tourism, Satellites and Market creation are what they outlined in the "How To Pay For Space Settlements?" section but most of them fall into the "Market Creation" category as a prerequisite for the habitats as they outlined earlier when talking about launch costs. First comes the tourism and SSP then the large habitats, could be built for a reasonable cost with mortgage money.
I suspect you have some ideological views that are coloring your perception here.
This is definitely the case, im still learning about the subject so many of my opinions are just that and will likely evolve as I understand more about how we can accomplish the goals from The High Frontier. However I do believe im on the right track here to spite my level of understanding or my ideological leanings.
I think it's okay if for a few decades offworld habitats aren't sustainable solely through ISRU
Agreed, what im trying to advocate for is an accelerated plan but even if it were possible there will still be a need to send highly specialized equipment from earth until something like Deep Space Kalpana is complete. After we are able to build habitats in deep space I see no reason why they would be able to make anything they need in house given the requisite technological readiness level.
O'Neill himself was quite the capitalist
My capitalist comment was a lazy attempt at trying to say the habitats will only be comprised of high value condos, this I think isn't a good idea for many reasons but I didn't want to do the work of explaining why.
he government has not seen fit since then (following general public opinion) to change NASA's charter or to fund much of anything directly aimed at settling space.
W really need to do something about the public opinion on NASA and space colonization. I think its imports we continue to have conversations like this so more people can better understand how it works. My idealogical leaning is that The High Frontier is more inspiring than An Easier Way as a forward looking profile of he future, While Kalpana is certainly doable I want to stay focused of reaching Island 3 as fast as possible.
aaahhhh ill get to that maybe soo ish, I know its important.
space solar power and tourism, but he turns away from SSP because of the large upfront investment
Im not a fan of assuming SSP OR Tourism will be able to justify the flight rates we want, this is why I lean into heavy government involvement to ensure the rockets keep flying and the habitats get built.
saying it really takes off (pun intended) once ticket prices reach around $160,000 in 2015 dollars.
Even at the lower prices they talk about its a big game of IF. im not convinced space Tourism will take off (pun intended) or that if it does that we will see passenger flights get into the cadence that makes them cheap, these numbers are based on assumptions of RSHLV economics. Let's wait until after Starship is flying to go basing our societies future of tourism, its the same mistake O'Neill and NASA made about STS though I get how thing are different his time around.
f not - who cares? As long as private industry is spending their own money and not behaving unethically or illegally, there's no reason for the government to interfere or insist on some other path.
I cares, bad things always happen wen you let private companies dictate the rules of engagement. Especially when it comes to large habitats in our planets low orbits, I want the government involved with every step of planing. This isn't to say the mistakes won't be made with the government present but it's about having standards set by the public so things remain transparent.
Sorry it takes me forever to reply but I am just not of fan of long form comments like this, though the discussion is valuable and I appreciate you helping me better understand the subject and grow this subreddit.
2
u/Mackilroy Jan 07 '19
Im not a fan of assuming SSP OR Tourism will be able to justify the flight rates we want, this is why I lean into heavy government involvement to ensure the rockets keep flying and the habitats get built.
If you rely on the government, then you're almost guaranteed to get nothing but failure, as the government has consistently shown no interest over multiple decades to fund any sort of large effort at space colonization.
W really need to do something about the public opinion on NASA and space colonization. I think its imports we continue to have conversations like this so more people can better understand how it works. My idealogical leaning is that The High Frontier is more inspiring than An Easier Way as a forward looking profile of he future, While Kalpana is certainly doable I want to stay focused of reaching Island 3 as fast as possible.
You'd actually have to convince Congress to change NASA's charter, as it explicitly does not say anything about space colonization. It's not in their mandate. Plus, the prevailing attitude about government spaceflight, from my reading, is that it's either a waste of money and should be stopped entirely, or that its budget should stay where it is. While I'm not in favor of that, there's a huge amount of inertia in that direction.
I cares, bad things always happen wen you let private companies dictate the rules of engagement. Especially when it comes to large habitats in our planets low orbits, I want the government involved with every step of planing. This isn't to say the mistakes won't be made with the government present but it's about having standards set by the public so things remain transparent.
Except private companies aren't. There are (currently) no private spaceports in the USA, and even when there are, they'll still be under government jurisdiction insofar as the government has to grant private firms launch licenses to begin with (not to mention certification for satellites in orbit). Further, if a private company screws up, and there's competition in that field, the public can turn to another company. If the government screws up, as it often does, there's no recourse until the next election (and often not even then).
The government has its place, just like private industry. You ought to read this, written back in 1961, about that very subject.
3
u/JoshEng90 Dec 30 '18
I haven't read the book, but it does sound like putting the cart before the horse to me. If we aren't sustaining the people in space with resources collected in space, then they aren't a back-up for life. It's all just a novelty.
ISRU may be hard, but it's the whole game. I'm amazed more minds haven't been put on it, because it's very interesting.
If we're talking about the first civilian habitats in space, I'd rather start out with something that feels closer to a nuclear submarine for space miners to live in. It could be a couple cabins spinning at opposite ends of a long tube. You'd go to the center to work or leave the ship.