[ExI] Hawking urges Moon landing to 'elevate humanity'

Fri Jun 23 17:38:45 UTC 2017

Then here, once again, is my plan for this:

1) Find a high-valuable-metal-content asteroid of sufficient mass,
preferably in an orbit that makes step 2 convenient.

2) Move it into the Earth-Moon system.  (Possibly GEO - there's an
unused swath over the Pacific, and GEO may be as close as politically
feasible - but anywhere no further than the Moon will suffice.)

3) Set up a mining camp, start extracting the easiest-to-extract
chunks, land them on Earth, and sell them to achieve first revenue.
Aggressively ignore the pundits who howl that the only profitable use
of resources in orbit must be in orbit, but who can't point to
specific buyers with nearly as much to spend as, say, the platinum
commodity market.  Accept that first sales of these minerals will
start crashing the market; getting to first revenue ASAP is critical
to getting the funding to have gotten this far.

4) Use the profits to expand the mining camp, eventually using the
slag to make a disc around 100 m thick and 1-2 km diameter.  Fill it
with air, line the outer rim of the disc with hydroponics (for food,
primary air and water recycling, and radiation shielding), spin the
disc so it reaches 1G above the hydroponics (where people will
reside), and otherwise make it habitable.  Possibly set up automated
lunar mining - maybe railgunning cargo up to the mining facility - as
part of this.

5) Once the colony has been sufficiently tested that people can trust
their lives to it, evacuate the mining camp into the mining colony.
By this point some museums may be willing to buy the remnants of the
camp, if it can be deorbited sufficiently intact.

6) Use profits to expand the colony, setting up secondary services
(health, education, and so on), encouraging other users (such as
national & international space science efforts) to lease part of the
facility.

7) Once the colony gets populated enough, lengthen the disc into a
cylinder.  (Construct a shell for the extra volume, spin it up and
attach it to one side, pressurize it and verify airtightness, extend
hydroponics along the "floor" of the new space, then dismantle the
now-internal bulkhead.)

8) Press on to at least 10,000 people, the absolute minimum to have
any chance of being generally recognized as a true city in space.
More is better, of course.  (3 or even 10 actually in space is just a
few people camping, no matter how many still on Earth support them.
Even 100 or 1,000 is a mere facility, under the laws of a sponsoring
Earth-bound government.)

9) Probably around 5 km long, stop lengthening the cylinder and start
making a second one, spinning in the other direction but linked by a
hub (which will cause the natural political shape to be different
districts in the same city, or different states in the same nation,
but not different nations that might someday war upon one another).
Once the second cylinder starts filling up, make more cylinders in
counter-rotating pairs.

None of this assumes that there will be any other significant economic
generator in space.  There probably will, of course, but assuming they
will and relying on that means you can't get the resources to start.

On Thu, Jun 22, 2017 at 11:47 PM, Giulio Prisco <giulio at gmail.com> wrote:
> Good point. We don't need to see people walking on the Moon tomorrow.
> But there must be credible plans to go back there to stay before our
> generation logs off and the next becomes old.
>
> The ESA "Moon Village" initiative looks great, but just don't trust EU
> bureaucracy to get anything good done anytime soon. I am afraid the
> Moon Village will get lost in committee after council meeting after
> committee after budget cut and all that. The private sector should
> step in. Musk has the heart in the right place, but I really think the
> Moon is a much more affordable intermediate stepping stone.
>
> Of course, the private sector asks where is the money. It's important
> to find good answers.
>
> On Fri, Jun 23, 2017 at 8:16 AM, Adrian Tymes <atymes at gmail.com> wrote:
>> And...there's simply not enough money, or competent people, or time,
>> or whatever other necessary component to make all that happen at once.
>>
>> So what can we focus on first, that will make the rest happen?
>>
>> On Thu, Jun 22, 2017 at 11:12 PM, Giulio Prisco <giulio at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> Adrian, please repeat with me the magic word: AND. Repeat it like a
>>> mantra, and, And, AND... it's really a magic word.
>>>
>>> We need space industrialization. YES. We need cheap access to space.
>>> YES. We need commercial space. YES. We need cubesats (YES). Cubecab is
>>> awesome. YES!!! ;-)
>>>
>>> AND we need to see people walking on the Moon to intoxicate us with
>>> imagination highs and never ending dreams. YES. Otherwise, why should
>>> a young and brilliant engineer want to work on space projects instead
>>> of developing one more useless phone app and become an instant
>>> millionaire?
>>>
>>> On Fri, Jun 23, 2017 at 7:52 AM, Adrian Tymes <atymes at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>> Not so.  Space industrialization can make that happen.
>>>>
>>>> The Moon landings were one thing.  Lots of people getting very, VERY
>>>> rich (billionaires if not trillionaires) from their workings in space?
>>>>  That's a whole other kind of sexy.
>>>>
>>>> On Thu, Jun 22, 2017 at 10:30 PM, Giulio Prisco <giulio at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>> Adrian, of course this depends on one's emotional triggers, but to me
>>>>> the ISS is no powerful symbol. It's sexy like a brick. When I was at
>>>>> ESA I used to criticize the ISS/Shuttle emphasis and the abandonment
>>>>> of Moon exploration as a losers' choice that would make space boring
>>>>> and uninteresting. I got into troubles with top management for that on
>>>>> at least one occasion, but facts proved me right.
>>>>>
>>>>> Not to say that we don't need the ISS, and of course as you said we
>>>>> need cheap access to space more than everything, but we need to make
>>>>> space sexy again (as Hawking says), and only manned exploration of the
>>>>> Moon and the planets can do that.
>>>>>
>>>>> On Thu, Jun 22, 2017 at 9:15 PM, Adrian Tymes <atymes at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>>> Another moon landing would not be such a symbol.  It's been done, and people
>>>>>> have seen what little comes of it.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Just extending the ISS's lifespan, or setting up the ISS's replacement (to
>>>>>> be launched and manned before the last person leaves the ISS), would do
>>>>>> more.  People are in space today, and that hasn't gone away yet.  That is a
>>>>>> powerful, ongoing symbol.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> On Jun 22, 2017 6:07 AM, "Giulio Prisco" <giulio at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Of course I agree that cheaper space access is needed and, once it's
>>>>>>> there, will open many doors. But don't dismiss the power of symbols.
>>>>>>> Apollo was all about flags and footprints, and everyone knew that. Yet
>>>>>>> Apollo inspired a whole generation, and some of them did great things,
>>>>>>> in space and in other sectors. We need cheap access to space, and
>>>>>>> people like you are doing good things for that, but we also need to
>>>>>>> start dreaming again.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> On Thu, Jun 22, 2017 at 3:32 AM, Adrian Tymes <atymes at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>>>> > On Wed, Jun 21, 2017 at 12:18 AM, Giulio Prisco <giulio at gmail.com>
>>>>>>> > wrote:
>>>>>>> >> Hawking urges Moon landing to 'elevate humanity'
>>>>>>> >> http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-40345048
>>>>>>> >
>>>>>>> > Even Obama said "we've been there", IIRC.  Flags and footprints won't
>>>>>>> > help - on the Moon or on Mars.
>>>>>>> >
>>>>>>> > What we need is more affordable space access.  That will cause all
>>>>>>> > other space dreams to become far more possible - and be enough to
>>>>>>> > cause many to happen.
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