[ExI] NASA: go Go GO back to the moon

[Adrian Tymes]

On Sat, Feb 25, 2017 at 9:31 AM, BillK <pharos at gmail.com> wrote:
> For a while I have been very doubtful about the viability of humans
> moving away from earth. Even going to earth orbit costs a small
> fortune.
>
> The history of human exploration shows that initially small groups
> went looking for 'treasure'  that they could bring back to their home
> country and make themselves rich. If a rich land was found then larger
> groups including families would move and settle in the new land.
> Sometimes this movement of population led to war if the new land was
> already occupied. Sometimes war, population growth or famine was the
> driving force behind the movement to new lands.
>
> How does this compare to space exploration?
>
> There seems to be little 'treasure' available compared to the cost of
> retrieving it. The Moon and planets are not suitable for human
> habitation. Going to Mars or the Moon is effectively volunteering for
> a harsh desert prison.
> Lengthy space travel outside LEO is deadly dangerous to the human body.

Similar thoughts are why I currently believe the best chance at
starting up permanent off-Earth human habitation is roughly like so:

* Find a mineral-rich asteroid - something that, if mined and returned
to Earth, would at least more than repay the cost of the venture.  It
doesn't have to be extreme large, but it has to be big enough that it
can repay startup costs once mined and returned to Earth.  (There is
not yet enough in-orbit market for delivery to other orbital
destinations to significantly assist with this, so assume that won't
come into play until after the startup costs are paid off.)

* Move it into GEO (exact altitude can vary, but there's a large slice
of unused GEO over the Pacific, so this may minimize complaints about
polluting the orbital environment with pebbles).

* Set up automated mining, refining, and Earth return.  Start getting
first payloads back to Earth, and first revenue.  (This is a far more
important step than most people appreciate.)

* After, and only after, first revenue is realized, have the facility
construct the shell of a habitat from "waste" material (likely iron,
nickel, and stone).  Ship up air and furnishings,

* Ship up some people to oversee operations, and to make them more efficient.

* Use the gains from that to justify diverting more "waste" material
to make a soda-can-shaped cylinder, 1-2 km across but probably less
than 1 km from "lid" to "lid" at first.  Pressurize and furnish that,
spin it up, and move operations there.  Line the inside of the outer
rim with water and plants to try to make it agriculturally
self-sufficient, to lower resupply costs (and help with radiation
shielding).

* Et voila: a habitat with artificial gravity and (if the shell is
thick enough) radiation protection.

* Expand the on-site team until it is at least a mining town.  Perhaps
lease space to various science teams (national government funded or
otherwise) and/or zero-G manufacturing operations.

* Add secondary services (hospitals, schools, police, and so on) as
the population expands to justify them - including the population
brought in by those secondary services.  Expand the habitat every so
often by building a new "lid" further along, with walls leading to it,
then (once secure and pressurized) dismantle the older, inner,
now-obsolete "lid".  In crude ASCII art:

** Start with )==(

** Build a new lid and walls to get )==)==(

** Dismantle inner, obsolete lid and wind up with )=====(

* Use the demonstrated (by this point) quality of living - no natural
disasters, abundant (by this point) on-site food supply, and so on -
to attract more colonists.

* Once the initial habitat is long enough that adding more length
becomes unwieldy, build a second habitat, attached but rotating in the
opposite direction.  Eventually build more, likely in counter-rotating
pairs.

There's more beyond that, but that's the best start I see so far.