Comments on Rocketpunk Manifesto: Worlds Beyond, Once Again

Rick, Joe, Jean, et al...'Stuff' mined in ...

2010-01-27T16:19:45.390-08:00

Rick, Joe, Jean, et al...'Stuff' mined in space will be used (and shipped to), places that need it most; very probably some other colony or outpost. For example: Callesto Main Base needs a couple hundred tons of nickle-iron for a containment building for their planned powerplant...shipping that much heavy metal from Earth is prohibitive, but from Ceres...not so much. Callesto Main Base pays Ceres Minning Co-op in ice and volitiles thus allowing Ceres to expand its hyrdoponic farms to self-sufficency. Everbodies happy...except the companies on Earth that normally ship things to Ceres and Callesto...

Ferrell

Jim - That may be what I was thinking of.

2010-01-27T09:23:56.640-08:00

Jim - That may be what I was thinking of.

Re: biological 'wheels': The bacterial fl...

2010-01-24T19:01:10.931-08:00

Re: biological 'wheels':

The bacterial flagellum is driven by a rotary engine made up of protein (Mot complex), located at the flagellum's anchor point on the inner cell membrane.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flagellum#Bacterial

Venus figured prominently in Heinlein's Solar ...

2010-01-24T17:48:53.942-08:00

Venus figured prominently in Heinlein's Solar System, but Mars took much deeper roots in the popular culture. That may be a 'Murrican thing, or at least Anglosphere, since Wells did some heavy lifting.

I wasn't much surprised or concerned when Venus turned out to be hellish, but it was a real blow when Mariner 4 sent back such bleak moonlike images. It was sheer bad luck that it happened to image a mostly cratered area of Mars, instead of an area with cool features like canyons.

Ironic footnote being that the actual riverbeds on Mars have no connection whatsoever with any of the claimed canals.

Rick: I agree that our initial interest in Mars c...

2010-01-23T10:57:24.383-08:00

Rick:

I agree that our initial interest in Mars comes from Percival Lowell mistranslating from the Italian which caused him to "see" things that weren't there because he was projecting his wishes on blurry images. Rather than the proper "observe and draw theories" of good science he drew conclusions and strove to mold his observations to those conclusions.

However, Venus was of greater interest in early astronomy. Venus was the same size, and had clouds and obvious weather patterns. Then we realized that what lay hidden beneath the cloud banks was a hellish pressure-cooker that rained acid. Mars really is more of a consolation prize. Well that, and the fact Mars held liquid water in the distant past (and a large amount of ice water at its poles) and the distinct possibility Mars has seen primitive microbial life at some time, make Mars a good candidate in its own right. Plus it is the only major solid body within reach in a reasonable time frame, and it is one of the least outright hellishly hostile lump of rock in the solar system.

For all that our interest in Mars dates from a time we could imagine Martians, unlike Venus and other worlds it maintained a place in our vision of space exploration simply because it is survived as an interesting and feasible goal.

Rick: I believe the wheeled microscopic organisms ...

2010-01-23T09:57:32.425-08:00

Rick: I believe the wheeled microscopic organisms you are referring to are rotifers. These tiny critters only appear to have wheels, the wheel motion is an optical illusion caused by a vortex of cilia beating in a circle.

The closest I am aware of for wheels in the natural world is a type of stomatopod "shrimp", which, if caught above the water level on the beach, can curl its whole body into a circle and roll back down the beach into the ocean. Even this lacks much of the properties of wheel motion and takes on many of the aspects of running motion because as the shrimp rolls, there is significant transfer from elastic potential energy to kinetic energy and back. Presumably this helps it overcome irregularities in the surface over which it rolls.

Forgot to add that VonMalcolm's point about &#...

2010-01-23T08:06:53.257-08:00

Forgot to add that VonMalcolm's point about 'bare bones' mining versus massive infrastructures is related to some of what Jean and I have been saying.

Developing a big space infrastructure for its own sake is circular. We will go into space for other reasons, then build whatever infrastructure the things we are doing call for.

In this regard, and from what we know now, Mars seems likely to be developed and perhaps ultimately settled long before the asteroid belt, mainly because Mars has more intrinsic interest.

The interest may be parochial, may even be based mainly on the historical accident that English speakers jumped to conclusions about the Italian word canali, but that is humans for you.

I seem to recall that some microscopic life forms ...

2010-01-23T07:46:01.217-08:00

I seem to recall that some microscopic life forms actually have wheel or rotor structures, though not necessarily for locomotion. That said, wheels may be simple for us, but biological wheels would be tricky to evolve.

A curious historical fact about wheels: They were 'disinvented' in much of the Muslim world, to the point where artists' efforts to portray wheeled vehicles (even allowing for stylization) show that they didn't know how wheels work.

The reason is that the early Muslims took camels along, and introduced their use across a much larger area. Camels are very efficient pack animals for arid climates, but they are not draft animals. So as camels caught on, wagons fell out of use, and the obsolete technology of wheels was lost.

Hmmm. . . that's interesting; they would be ...

2010-01-22T17:13:21.253-08:00

Hmmm. . . that's interesting; they would be a severe handicap in many (most?) situations; perhaps in a desert, tundra or rocky plains environment they would provide an advantage: traveling long distances in search of little food and water; this would also depend on what size/type creature would have them and how they were powered/utilized.

"just like we have legs instead of wheels bec...

2010-01-22T13:13:31.153-08:00

"just like we have legs instead of wheels because the intermediate steps towards evolving a wheel are probably not advantageous to an evolving life form,"

You are assuming a wheel is "better" than legs there, which is patently incorrect. Legs of more flexible and versatile. I can climb steep rocky cliffs, I can climb trees, and I can swim with them. No wheel can do that. Wheels are simple, that is their only advantage. The Japanese, ever the robot-lovers, have found with Asimo and other walking robots that legs take a LOT of processing power to coordinate something we do naturally. And all they do is lumber awkwardly on flat surfaces, and sometimes up and down precisely measured stairs. As I said, I can run, climb, swim... pretty versatile, huh?

Terraforming vs. free space colonies: I think th...

2010-01-22T04:18:31.811-08:00

Terraforming vs. free space colonies: I think their needs to be a distinction made between space industry and space colonization. To colonize free space/build an Island Three habitat there would have to be some industry behind it to justify the expense. To colonize Mars, there only needs to be the will to explore scientifically and expand humankind throughout the solar system. Colonists there could live and expand their manmade environments while working towards terraforming their Martian environment. This could be done slowly, over time, no rush, no great export industry so long as they were basically self sufficient. Perhaps, eventually, they could even build their own space ships to bring in the necessary missing elements and compounds. This separation from Earth would of course lead the to the Martian uprising and Earth suppression, but I’ll let Red Faction take care of that discussion.

Additionally: Is there not a difference between a bare bones mining operation supported by a few torus rings and building Island Three space habitats 20 miles long? When you guys get into the math, logistics and the economics of space colonization I am WAY over my head, but an Island Three space habitat seems like a massive (50-100 year?) undertaking that could only take place after an initial solar system infrastructure was already in place, mass drivers were on Earth and a need or desire for 20 million people to be spinning in space. A major negative of an Island Three habitat is it would be all or nothing, no slow progression toward larger and larger populations and the industries they could sustain, indicating huge start up costs.

I would think this would be the advantage of terraforming, at least in terms of large scale non-earth human expansion: though it maybe a millennia or more undertaking it could take place in stages with populations living in isolated, yet ever expanding manmade environments as the planet was turned slowly from unlivable to semi-livable to livable. And no this may not be profitable for ‘Earthlings’, but perhaps would feasible so long as is was profitable unto ‘Martians’ themselves in their own separate economy. This also takes me back to sapient or let’s say ‘space faring intelligent’ life, just like we have legs instead of wheels because the intermediate steps towards evolving a wheel are probably not advantageous to an evolving life form, so to a life form just can’t jump to become sapient/space faring intelligent without taking the first useful baby steps as well as other useful technological steps along the way.

Strike one for cephalopod tool-weapon use/intellig...

2010-01-22T03:56:22.625-08:00

Strike one for cephalopod tool-weapon use/intelligence: The Blanket Octopus tears off arms of Portuguese Man O’ Wars (which they feed upon) to apparently use for offense or defense. (Though this species still has a long way to go before donning a spacesuit.)

Other interesting facts about this creature for those who maybe interested:

Females can be up to 100x larger and 40,000 times heavier than the males.

Males fill one of their tentacles with sperm, rip them off, then give to them the females who then use them to fertilize their eggs.

Blanket Octopi not use ink, instead unfurl a cape-like membrane to increase their apparent size.

(Wiki and Wiki link)

Absolutely. I said that about he-3 in another post...

2010-01-18T17:56:30.007-08:00

Absolutely. I said that about he-3 in another post I think, but basically we'll go to space for other reasons (SCIENCE!) and everywhere humans go, we build things. And then bash in people's heads in to take their things as well. And they'll build more things to bash back.

Ain't we a predictable bunch?

JR, your arguments only hold when you're only ...

2010-01-18T17:52:23.631-08:00

JR, your arguments only hold when you're only considering Earth. You're absolutely right that it doesn't make sense to start from Earth, go somewhere far away for raw materials (either shipbuilding materials or consumables), bring it back to Earth, and then sell it to Earthlings, when the Earthlings can make it all perfectly well on their own.

But what about people who aren't living on Earth?

Let's assume we have a permanent (or at least long-term) colony somewhere other than Earth. Even if it's as relatively close as the moon. Once you have people living on the moon permanently, for whatever reason (and you can bet that there will be people there for scientific reasons and "VISIT THE MOOOOOOON!" vacation packages if nothing else), then you already have an infrastructure in place to support a workforce. So once you have some people living there, it becomes easier to expand it to allow more people to live there. And hey, while they're living on the moon, why don't they chew up some moonrocks and sell it as propellant? They're already going to be chewing up moonrocks for their own needs; might as well make a little cash on the side too, right?

The point I'm making is that you're right in insisting that it's silly to go out into space just to ship stuff back to Earth. But the whole point of the conversation is that once we're headed out into space for other reasons -- any reason -- then industry will, eventually, follow. You don't go out into space to build industry; you build industry to support you as you go out into space.

I failed to push my reasoning all the way: You tr...

2010-01-18T15:37:05.060-08:00

I failed to push my reasoning all the way:

You triple production to send an empty ship around with fuel for the return trip. If you actually want to sell the excess in orbit you come up with an even worse case.

Your are on your comet, extracting water. Your ship masses a hundred tonnes, so you need a hundred tonnes to come back to Earth. You need to embark an extra hundred tonnes of fuel to come *back* to your comet, therefore you need *another* hundred tonnes of remass for that. so far it's 300 tonnes of remass and none to spare. So if you want to sell 100 tonnes of remass to the orbital Texaco, guess what? Yep, that means yet another one hundred tonnes of remass. So now we produced five hundred tonnes of remass, to sell one hundred tonnes of remass. I don't think there's an economist on this planet (or any other) that can look at this 5:1 ratio and go "oh yeah you can make money with that." I can't see that as being cheaper than boosting a hundred tonnes of remass from Earth. Ever. If orbital infrastructure we have it will be boosted and space-assembled, not space-manufactured from space-resources.

in space.

Low level mining to fuel the immediate needs of a far-flung outpost I've already argued for, as a matter of fact, but nothing can ever equal the massive industrial capacity of an entire living planet of 6 billion individuals with 200 years of development behind it.

CJ: while yes I agree any industrial effort in spa...

2010-01-18T15:19:58.234-08:00

CJ: while yes I agree any industrial effort in space has to start small and then get bigger, the problem is you still need to send up the factories to build the factories, and factories aren't any less complex to build than anything else. But even the simplest construction in space will require a lot of moolah and a lot of material boosted before it's viable. I just think that boosting stuff for Earth to orbit will always be cheaper than getting it on some other planet and bringing it to our orbit. Also in the above post I compared the costs of sending 10 million tonnes of raw ore into orbit as opposed to ten million tonnes of refined pre-assembled parts. since it is impossible to get 100% efficiency from raw ore tonnage to finished product tonnage, the discrepancy is far, far worse than I've hinted at. The only things we'll be manufacturing in orbit will be the stuff that cannot be manufactured anywhere *but* in orbit, ie: zero-g crystals and high purity vacuum-manufactured electronics. Titanium hull segments will be manufactured on Earth and boosted.

I'm not arguing against an assembly zone for space ships/habitats in orbit from premade parts built on Earth and boosted up a la ISS. I am arguing against mining raw ore from Ceres and sending it to Earth to manufacture ships from scratch in orbit.

Remass extraction on location to fuel your return is another matter entirely. It is far easier to collect basically water (Thar's water in dem hills!) than to build a full-blown industrial park and yes it's mass you won't have to boost into orbit. That makes sense. But it will be to fuel your return trip, you won't be sending a "surplus" back to Earth orbit to fuel the next trip out, either. The more mass you swing into a Hohmann orbit, the more remass you need to fling it with. I think you'd end up with an equation that quickly goes badly for that lone remass extractor. The plans I have seen talk about years of extraction for that station to produce enough remass to return the ship. To return the ship, plus enough remass for another trip you would need to triple the production. Say you need a hundred tonnes of remass to propel a hundred tonnes of ship. If the ship masses a hundred tones, then you need a hundred tonnes of remass. If you add a hundred tonnes of remass to that (for the re-return trip) you need another hundred tonnes of remass just to to propel the additional remass. I just don't think it too likely. Better to stockpile it on location for future missions and emergencies.

I think we're talking about two different thin...

2010-01-18T14:55:46.128-08:00

I think we're talking about two different things, here. I agree that the idea of space mining is silly. When I'm talking about "orbital industry", I'm not talking about going from raw ore to finished ships entirely in space. I'm talking about more basic necessities: consumables, for the most part. It'd be hard to build space ships from scratch, but relatively easy to refuel them. Chewing up moon rock for remass or hijacking icy bodies like comets for their water (useful either as water itself or electrolyzed into hydrogen remass and oxygen to breathe) wouldn't require nearly as much infrastructure as an entire shipbuilding operation, but still account for most of the mass of interplanetary ships. Build your space ship on the ground, assemble it in orbit, fill remass, water, and oxygen from an orbital Texaco, and you save a bundle on shipping all that heavy stuff up from Earth and they turn a nice profit.

As for an actual orbital shipbuilding industry, I'm with Citizen Joe. I doubt such a thing would be economically viable until you've got population centers on other celestial bodies (Mars being the obvious choice, the asteroids for the cliche one, and the moon system of Jupiter or Saturn for a more "out there" option), whose distance from the established infrastructure on Earth may make local industry a profitable venture.

I think that your economic policy is much like thr...

2010-01-18T14:17:52.272-08:00

I think that your economic policy is much like thrust theory whereby you can front end the whole thing and then coast or you can apply a little bit over a long time.

Specifically, you don't need to boost the whole infrastructure. You need to boost what you need to fabricate an infrastructure. We don't need a thousand tons per day processing plant boosted, we need something closer to a half ton per day facility. That facility would then make the materials needed for the larger facility. That one would make the larger one, etc. Bootstrapping up to the target volume.

One of the proposed Mars missions doesn't send remass and fuel with the astronauts, it sends a ship ahead, which then processes the available materials on Mars years in advance.

I pretty much tip toward Jean in this discussion. ...

2010-01-18T13:43:55.911-08:00

I pretty much tip toward Jean in this discussion. (Thanks for the term 'industrial depth!')

It isn't just sheer tonnage. In principle you might miniaturize the entire production infrastructure. But that lowers launch cost in inverse proportion to mass, while lowering development cost by much less.

Space development costs are mainly driven by labor, and it is very expensive labor - people who know how to design and build space technology.

The problem is that the initial mining infrastruct...

2010-01-18T12:13:45.542-08:00

The problem is that the initial mining infrastructure will have to be built and then shipped from Earth, and we will be talking about thousands of tonnes of infrastructure, which will require thousands of tonnes of propellant and fuel. Rick advances a number of one trillion dollars to even develop the technology to mine in space. I threw some quick calculations up, with an initial investment two orders of magnitude below that which Rick suggested, and came up with the amount of material that would have to be shipped back, not to mark a profit, but to come out even, on the initial investment, and came up with production numbers that equal that of a major producing nation. My initial best was 30 billion dollars and I arrived at 300,000 tonnes of material shipped back from Ceres to break even on the initial investment. At Rick's 1 trillion dollar initial investment you would need to ship back 10 million tonnes of materials to break even on the initial investment. This does not cover the maintenance costs or the costs of actual shipping.

This infrastructure will take decades to develop, test, produce, test again, install, test once more, all this before it actually ever produces anything. We're talking about entirely new technologies on scales never even attempted before. If it only takes 50 years from initial planning to full production, then it was a really quick development cycle. If in 50 years we haven't figured out to drop the price of orbit-boosting, then space is simply not going to be accessible by enough traffic to require millions of tonnes of materials to be boosted in orbit in the first place. In fact, even with a VERY healthy space industry, I don't see the need for 10 million tonnes of materials in orbit.

Which brings me to one last point: For those raw materials to even have a function in orbit at all, a complete manufacturing infrastructure will have to exist in orbit, from the smelting of the raw material all the way to end product manufacturing. ALL this has to be initially boosted into orbit as well! I don't think we realize the massive industrial complex we have here on Earth. We are entirely unaware of the incredible depth of our industrial infrastructure as we go to the car dealership and buy an SUV. From raw material to the finished product, how many raw material extraction facilities have been involved? How many refineries and smelters? How many small parts manufacturers? How many individual components go into the construction of that SUV? Because you don't need 10 million tonnes of raw material in orbit, you need the entire industrial might required to build the finished product from scrap. In orbit.

You've now boosted not just a mining complex, but smelters, refineries, many different specialized factories to produce anything from hull plating to electronics. That's several more thousand tonnes that have to be boosted, with several more billions of dollars of development and production cost to copy in orbit what we already do cheaply and efficiently in a far less dangerous environment.

In short: the cost to develop the entire industrial infrastructure (that already exists here) will far outweigh the difference in fuel costs for a long, long, long, long long long, long, long. Long. Time.

To be honest? The only way you'll see orbital mines and factories will be if we can cross the tremendous interstellar gaps and arrive at a virgin solar system that does not have an established planetbound industry. There, yes, it will be cheaper, since you have to build the industrial infrastructure from scratch anyway. But in this solar system? No. The Industrial Depth that was talking about is so vast that it can overcome anything so silly as the cost of fuel to go into orbit well before you copy-paste it on the Moon.

Right now the source of all wealth and power is Ea...

2010-01-18T10:52:11.684-08:00

Right now the source of all wealth and power is Earth. So anything being done in space is going to be for Earth wealth and power. Thus the debate rambles on about whether its cheaper to lift into NEO or to build an infrastructure to use space resources.

However, once you get past Earth being the soul keeper of wealth and power, things change. Likewise when Earth doesn't have the object you want, things change.

Is it cheaper to build stuff on Earth, then lift it into space, then ship it all the way to the Enceladus base at Saturn? Or Does it then make sense to have orbital facilities? Can those facilities be at a third location (like Mars or the asteroid belt) or do they need to be at Earth or Saturn?

Jean, I don't see how you can claim that shipp...

2010-01-18T09:28:49.577-08:00

Jean, I don't see how you can claim that shipping from Earth is a priori cheaper than developing spaceborne industry. You say that by the time that you finish setting up the infrastructure, launch costs will have inevitably been reduced to such an extent that it'll still be cheaper to ship from Earth than it will be to use your newly set up space industry.

In short: why? What makes this the case? Assuming a reasonably mature Earth-to-orbit technology (which is a precondition to setting up any orbital industry in the first place; you can't afford to get the infrastructure into space otherwise), I see no reason why there would necessarily be such a dramatic drop in price during the, say, decade or so that setting up the infrastructure would take.

It may very well be the case that that happens. The first attempt at creating orbital industry may well fail -- so might the first several, for that matter. But I see no reason to believe that all attempts to create a spaceborne industry will inevitably fail as you claim, and you have offered neither reasoning nor evidence supporting that conclusion.

The advantage that spaceborne industry has over Earthbound industry is that it's cheaper to run; you don't have to pay that incredible Earth-to-orbit shipping cost. The disadvantage is that it requires a huge initial investment in order to set up the infrastructure, which must come from Earth by necessity. However, if there's enough of an orbital market (meaning if there's enough traffic in space), and your infrastructure is robust enough to last long enough (meaning you can get enough meaningful work out of it), then you can make your initial investment back.

Glad to be of service =D

2010-01-17T19:05:09.809-08:00

Glad to be of service =D

Also, for activity in low orbit you don't need...

2010-01-17T13:38:23.076-08:00

Also, for activity in low orbit you don't need much fuel - the big fuel cost is getting up there in the first place.

And for nearly all purposes but deep space exploration itself, LEO is as far into space as most people need to go. (In fact, the current nascent tourist industry is based on the insight that you don't even need to reach LEO. People will pay for 5 minutes of zero g and a curved Earth against blackness.)

If we have regular and substantial deep space traffic, then it will be worth while to develop fuel supplies at the other end, which is then an opening to other extractive industries.

But my personal guess, worth what you paid, is that extractive industries will play a much smaller role in the space midfuture than they did in the rocketpunk tradition.

As to Jean's point on how laughably retro / zeerust this blog will sound in a few decades, I think he has derailed me into an upcoming blog post.

Oh I misread Thucidides's post slightly there....

2010-01-17T12:49:16.424-08:00

Oh I misread Thucidides's post slightly there.

My earlier point still stands. Building an extraction and refinement station on the moon to process, and ship, fuel back to Earth will require such an enormous cost to develop and set up that before it becomes cheaper to ship fuel from the moon than the earth the price of shipping stuff up from the earth will have dropped to below that which makes it financially viable in the first place. Be it titanium or fuel, unless we are talking about stuff that can absolutely not be refined on Earth or Earth orbit, it will always be cheaper to boost from Earth than to set up the industrial setup necessary to produce it off Earth and then ship it back.

Shipping raw materials from Earth to Earth orbit will always be cheaper than building the infrastructure to produce and ship the same raw material form an asteroid half a billion kilometers away, or yes even the Moon. We'll build a fueling station on the Moon when we have had a permanent settlement of the Moon for a while, not to refuel a rich-boy-toy gallivanting in LEO.