21st Century Space Travel

[orionrider]

Imagination leads to fantasy more often than Science. It makes people think some concepts are possible because they are so easy to imagine. But it ain't so...

Nothing is colder than 0°K;
The speed of light is finite. 299,792,458 m/sec is the limit;
Antigravity is a popular idea; it does not exist;
One can only travel to the future, we do it all the time.

Star Wars, Galactica and all the others: magic, just like Harry Potter :idea:

 

[EarthlingX]

Some of the magic slowly dripping into reality :

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sM7QkB2Cjxg[/youtube]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xpGULqoaS7Q[/youtube]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HPIw4POnfTY[/youtube]

I don't hold my breath for FTL, and some other of course, at least until i hear of confirmed working experiment. It doesn't take away much of my sleep though, and no arguing about the time travel, well, except for the Time Lords .. :roll:

 

[DarkenedOne]

Imagination leads to fantasy more often than Science. It makes people think some concepts are possible because they are so easy to imagine. But it ain't so...

Nothing is colder than 0°K;
The speed of light is finite. 299,792,458 m/sec is the limit;
Antigravity is a popular idea; it does not exist;
One can only travel to the future, we do it all the time.

Star Wars, Galactica and all the others: magic, just like Harry Potter :idea:

"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."

If you were to go back a bit over a hundred years ago and propose that one can fly from one continent to another people would of considered that magic. People honestly did not think it was possible.

On the other hand many people believed that by the year 2000 we would have flying cars. They were clearly wrong.

Point is that it is very difficult is not impossible to predict the distant future.

 

[DarkenedOne]

Many people have been limiting our time in space based on artificial gravity. Is it not possible to alter our DNA in-order to make us more susceptible to the space environment?

I agree it might be better to learn to adapt, than always trying to change the environment.

It might relatively soon become an option :

http://www.edge.org : ON "CREATION OF A BACTERIAL CELL CONTROLLED BY A CHEMICALLY SYNTHESIZED GENOME" BY VENTER ET AL" [5.20.10]

Rodney Brooks, PZ Myers, Richard Dawkins, George Church, Nassim N. Taleb, Daniel C. Dennett, Dimitar Sasselov, Antony Hegarty, George Dyson, Kevin Kelly, Freeman Dyson

...

Introduction

On May 20th, J. Craig Venter and his team at J.C Venter Institute announced the creation of a cell controlled by a synthetic genome in a paper published in SCIENCE. As science historian George Dyson points out, "from the point of view of technology, a code generated within a digital computer is now self-replicating as the genome of a line of living cells. From the point of view of biology, a code generated by a living organism has been translated into a digital representation for replication, editing, and transmission to other cells."

One of the things that makes us human is our ability to engineer and modify our environment as we please. This ability is critical because the naturally occurring environment is not always sufficient. Therefore we modify it in order to make it so.

 

[cavesofmars]

Thanks to everyone for many thoughtful replies. I appreciate and welcome all of your constructive criticism. Let me comment on some of the criticisms.

In noting that the processing power of advanced computers will exceed a million, billion operations a second in the 2020s, I realize this does not mean that they will be able to do everything an intelligent human can do. However, the design and building of varieties of construction robots will be easy to do with that processing power. Further, the construction of factories to support the replication of the construction robots will also be quite feasible in the same timeframe. Finally, various exploration robots will have located where all the needed minerals are and will be able to build the transportation robots to deliver the materials to the factories. A hint of this capability is already with us today in the robot cars racing in the deserts of the Southwest. Also, note the success of IBM's Watson computer in playing the Jeopardy game with today's capabilities. Once the processing power is available, humans will develop the software to take advantage of that power.

Another criticism relates to the cost of doing all that I have described. The self-replication capability and a vast amount of available materials can address this problem. The bulk of the cost is in the initial startup factories.

 

[cavesofmars]

Another criticism relates to the timeline for all this. Once the key factors for change are in place, the transition can occur at a pace that would seem unbelievable to people living a decade previously. A good example is the World Wide Web. At the beginning of the 1990s, few would have believed the massive transformation of the global economy that would take place during that decade. The vast construction effort that I have described for the moon and Mars will be driven by the ambitions of the various Nations and the self-replication capability of advanced robot technology. The first primitive bases and factories on the moon in the 2030s will provide the basis to test out various technological ideas. Just as competition with the Russians in the 1960s led to men on the moon in eight years, similar competition will speed up the schedule for moon bases. China, Japan, India, and Europe will compete with the Americans to master the required technology. In the same time frame, robots will have explored Mars extensively and all of the materials required by the factories would have been located.

 

[cavesofmars]

Finally, a billion humans on Mars seems very far-fetched to many responders. Here is why this is a very real possibility for the 2090s.

Human space travel requires many technologies--artificial gravity, radiation protection, closed system agriculture, etc. While these are difficult problems today, they are well within our capability to solve. Today, significant progress is being made in scramjet technology and SSTO technology will follow within one or two decades. The design of space liners with artificial gravity will emerge a decade after that and will converge with the self-replicating robot technology around the 2040 timeframe. The 2040s will see the building of the first liner along with the initial base infrastructure on Mars. When the first humans arrive on the liner, the base they will live in will already have been constructed.

Nations will compete with each other to establish bases and to claim territory. We could easily see a replay of the migration to the Americas. By the 2060s, over ten bases would have been built as well as ten or more space liners. Each base would be continually expanded using self-replicating robots that would number in the tens of thousands.
Each nation would encourage its citizens to migrate with all sorts of incentives. By the 2070s, the space liners would number in the hundreds and, a decade later, in the thousands. Similarly, the bases would grow into the hundreds with vast inter-connected transportation systems. At the same time, the exploration and exploitation of the asteroids will begin to play an ever-larger role in the activities of the bases.

 

[cavesofmars]

Some responders seemed to think that most of the infrastructure on Mars would have to be transported from Earth or the moon bases. In fact, except for building the initial bases and factories, very little would have to be transported this way. The materials to build everything needed already exist on Mars and the surrounding asteroids. The self-replicating robots needed to build the factories would be replicated at a rate similar to today's auto factories. It would probably be faster since it would all be robot designed and manufactured. All the food, energy, waste treatment facilities, etc. would all be created and built from Martian materials.

Since very little of the bases would exist above ground because of the radiation effects, all the factories and facillities would be in multiple levels underground. To make this environment palatable for humans, their portion of each base would be airy, colorful, and filled with plants, birds, and small animals. Imagine something like Central Park in New York with thousand foot ceilings with natural lighting. Human living quarters would be all around the outside of the Park.

The information to create millions of different products would be stored in the vast memory banks of the networked information systems. Each person could choose and select whatever products they needed "online" and the products would be manufactured and delivered automatically.

 

[cavesofmars]

Since most of the humans on Mars would arrive sometime after 2050, they would most likely be different than humans today. The decades of the 2020 and 2030s will see a revolution in biological technology. By 2040, almost every human will be a cyborg of some sort. Stem cell technology will be able to create any organ needed to replace ones that break down. Augmentation of the bodily senses to a thousand times the sensitivity of today's human will be feasible. The insertion of billions of nanomachines into the body to repair and monitor every cell will appear in the 2040s. The effect of this technology will be to adapt the human cyborgs to the requirements of the Martian and general space environment.

The human cyborgs of the 2050s and beyond will be long-lived. As long as accidents are avoided, life expectancy should be in centuries if not even longer. Since all this will be true on Earth as well, the population pressure will ensure a massive expansion into the solar system with Mars as the initial focus of the expansion. Huge space liners of the 2080s and 2090s will provide the foundation for the space worlds of the 22 century. Enough materials will exist in the asteroids and the moons of Jupiter to build thousands of space worlds in rotating cylinders ten miles or more in diameter and fifty miles or more in length. Humans would live inside these worlds in enviroments modeled on ideal ones on Earth.

 

[bdewoody]

Again I think you are way overly optomistic concerning cyborg technology. Having lived my whole life as a disabled person and being an amputee since I was 13 I can testify that at the street level we are still in the dark ages.

 

[EarthlingX]

Again I think you are way overly optomistic concerning cyborg technology. Having lived my whole life as a disabled person and being an amputee since I was 13 I can testify that at the street level we are still in the dark ages.

That's a question about social insurance and politics, not tech.

 

[cavesofmars]

It must be terribly frustrating for those who have lost limbs or are facing early-onset Alzheimers to accept the reality of today's primitive medicine while people like myself are predicting tremendous advances in medicine over the next two decades. As with the building of bases and factories on the moon, the advances over the next decade will seem to proceed at a snail's pace.

That said, the mastery of stem cell technology over the next ten years or so is likely to lead to the ability to regrow damaged nerve cells and, later, to actually regrow missing limbs. All life from plants to animals is all based on the dna molecule and this is the basis for optimism in the long term. Animals that have the ability to regrow limbs demonstrate what is a latent ability in the human genome as well. The slow but steady understanding of the cellular mechanisms for this ability will eventually lead to mastery of the corresponding mechanisms in humans.

Similarly, mastery of the technology to connect the human brain to various types of prosthetic devices will eventually lead to certain types of cyborgs that exceed human capacity in strength and endurance.

 

[orionrider]

Cavesofmars, your post is outrageously optimistic. I guess you must be either very young or never have left a very protected environment to believe that.

As with the building of bases and factories on the moon, the advances over the next decade

NOBODY is going to the Moon. The next place we go is an asteroid, in 2025 at the earliest. And then maybe there will be enough money to replace the space station and send people in orbit around Mars, just once.

At the beginning of the 1990s, few would have believed the massive transformation of the global economy that would take place during that decade.

'Massive'??? Right, in fact we just lived a replay of the crash of 1929.
As for technological advances, not much changed, even in 20 years. For one thing, in 1990 cars were faster because there were less speed-guns. Nothing replaced the wheel and we still have to drive our cars. Flying to Australia still takes the most part of a day and people still eat dead animals. People still die of cancer and AIDS is still around...

China, Japan, India, and Europe will compete with the Americans to master the required technology

Cold War is over, my friend. It took all the nations of the planet to build just one space station. It will take all nations (except maybe China) to send a few people once to a near Earth asteroid. Yes, it is that expensive.

various exploration robots will have located where all the needed minerals are

It took generations of dedicated geologists to finally find one of the largest ore deposits in Afghanistan. Why would robots do better on Mars???

the success of IBM's Watson computer in playing the Jeopardy game

The stupid thing couldn't order a damn pizza!

The 2040s will see the building of the first liner along with the initial base infrastructure on Mars.

Earliest manned orbit of Mars is officially planned for 2035. We will be lucky is someone sets foot on Mars before 2050.

By the 2060s, over ten bases would have been built.

You should go have a look at Africa or Bangladesh. Nobody is going to pay for that kind of space comedy as long as people there don't get 2,000 calories a day.

Add a century and many society changes to your scenario and I will begin to believe it can be done

 

[SteveCNC]

Again I think you are way overly optomistic concerning cyborg technology. Having lived my whole life as a disabled person and being an amputee since I was 13 I can testify that at the street level we are still in the dark ages.

That's a question about social insurance and politics, not tech.

I think your exactly right about that it's not that it can't be done and if your father was bill gates I guarentee you would have something incredible replacing your limb . Perhaps an extension to the exo-suit should be a means to give back limbs to amputees or even the paralized (if stem cells don't pan out) . Or develope a smaller exo-suit that can simulate gravity in a weak gravity environment for long duration space travel or moon stays . Sustained weak skeletal stress should keep the bones from thinning , maybe wearing the suit a few hours a day might be enough .

to the OP:

There are many techs that need to come along and it's not that a time table like you lay out isn't possible in a perfect world , this isn't a perfect world . I'm somewhat of a computer nerd and have been since the mid sixties so I have seen all the developments first hand for the most part and I have also had experience with what the brain is really capable of (near death experience) and there is no way any computer will ever compete in certain areas with a human brain . I use robotics every day at work and my machines have to calculate to within .00005 in. every posistion in 3d (the resolution of the machine) at a speed sometimes 100 in. per min. or more . I could never keep up with on my calculator , however it's ability to extrapolate and hypothesize based on all of it's knowledge I don't believe will ever exist at least not to the extent a human brain can . So in that sense a computer can never compete .

 

[Valcan]

Cavesofmars, your post is outrageously optimistic. I guess you must be either very young or never have left a very protected environment to believe that.

As with the building of bases and factories on the moon, the advances over the next decade

NOBODY is going to the Moon. The next place we go is an asteroid, in 2025 at the earliest. And then maybe there will be enough money to replace the space station and send people in orbit around Mars, just once-----------.
------------------------You should go have a look at Africa or Bangladesh. Nobody is going to pay for that kind of space comedy as long as people there don't get 2,000 calories a day.

Add a century and many society changes to your scenario and I will begin to believe it can be done

While i agree that his timeline is too optimistic i dont understand why you think it would take over 100 yrs.
Can we have huge space colonies by 2100 definatly. Just use a NEO say a few km long and wide tunnel it out spin it to a good speed and there you go basic area needed.

Currently many people are working on machines to construct things at a nano lvl. There are already machines that can build parts in any shape needed. One of the biggest limiters here on earth isnt such a limit. Energy. If you were to take all the money spent on global warming sence the 90s you would have bases on both the moon and several space stations.

The point is that it takes long term thinking and more than a "lets explore" attitude. Exploration is great but columbus didnt sail to the new world for hopes and dreams......money which there is much in the form of minerals and possible places for low-G manufacturing of industry.

I've always found the people who bring up the starving or poor and say we should fix it first.

There are always going to be poor and hungry. Heck africas problems can be traced back to corruption and war. If the UN or AU were worth the money for one of there flags then africa could be a paridise. Butt...........

Some people just wont work or get along and some places are just lost.

 

[cavesofmars]

Folks who are skeptical of the timeline for 21st century space travel don't have a clear understanding of the implications of exponential growth in information technology. They think in linear terms and are most impressed with the snail-like progress of today's technology. Yet there are things about to happen in the near future that would have seemed impossible five years ago. One example of this is a full-readout of one's personal genome for under $1000.

While I talk about automated, robot-controlled factories on the moon, the initial versions of this technology will be built first on earth by manufacturing companies that build large construction machines. It will be done to lower overall costs and to ensure better quality. This technology will become very advanced over the next two decades and will be ready for implementation on the moon in the 2030s.

Then there will emerge people like Elon Musk who became very rich and chose to use his money to realize his vision of traveling into space. These successful entrepreneurs will leap past stodgy goverment agencies like NASA to take the next steps into space and beyond. Just compare SpaceX with the Constellation project. Musk is young enough today that he could be the one to make it happen in twenty years.

 

[SteveCNC]

While I do agree that the private space launch industry will make great strides in human space flight I also am fully aware of what slows things down , red tape and testing . Even a rich entrepreneur has some red tape to deal with be it government regulations or an internal issue (maybe not as much but it's still there) . Getting things done is not as easy as just doing it and the way things work around here when it comes to new tech , testing takes time , lots of time . I think far too much time sometimes but have learned to accept it so as not to be driven nuts over the whole thing . Computer advances alone cannot build space ships and even with the best finite element analysis software you can't build and test components that much faster , it helps but does not replace hands on development .

In my line of work , development of a new item can take a lot longer than one would think so even though you say new tech development is exponential the thing holding the curve from going almost vertical is testing . Development cannot go faster than the ability to test all aspects of what was developed especially when it comes to anything to do with space . I've seen development of a simple computer housing for the AtlasII series of rocket take over a year , they tested everything about it . Vibe tests , corrosion tests (which turned out bad and made the test take way longer as a result) , and then destructive tests (sliced that thing all up then examined all joints and mating surfaces for braze fill ) plus pull tests . End result of the first series of tests was the dip braze processing needed to change to prevent the corrosion issue but otherwise it worked as expected , it took over a year to do all of the development on that simple housing and it was really nothing more than a computer housing roughly 12x12x24 inch box (7 components assembled and dip brazed together) that had mount pads for a motherboard and 16 slots that held the plug in boards . But when you have as much money (and lives for human rated ) riding on the success of every component as the people building the rocket your going to test the crap out of everything even down to the smallest item and that takes time , lots of time !

 

[orionrider]

You can robot-control what you want but iron works, chemical plants and refineries are not inflatable.
Miniaturization is not possible for everything. A standard 24" ANSI pipe has a mass of 254kg per meter, period. You typically need several kilometers of pipe for a single plant.

Unless some 'magical' new technology appears, you can't put any kind of industrial factory in orbit, much less on the Moon. It is simply too heavy.

 

[cavesofmars]

One of the great benefits of robot-controlled manufacturing is the quality and accuracy of the work being performed. The level of quality and the methods of self-replication will be worked through during the 2220s and 2030s. Testing will still be necessary but the planning and design of the test procedures will be worked through in massive detail by robot designers who will complement their human cohorts. Keep in mind that intelligent CAD applications will be thousands of times more powerful than those of today. Factories on the moon need not be huge initially. Their output might be only one new vehicle a week. Imagine SSTOs the size of the space shuttle and the components of a small factory could be shipped to the moon in less than a year. The primitive methods and procedures that NASA employs today will be completely replaced by the high quality designs and rapid prototyping of the 2030s.

Assuming China, Russia, Japan, and Europe establish just one moon base during the 2030s, all of their experience combined with that of America will work out most of the issues in manufacturing on the moon during that time. Also, much of the planning for human migration to Mars will be done during that period. It is very possible that a prototype space liner would be built by the early 2040s and would carry the initial factory materials for the first base there.

 

[EarthlingX]

A drop of sci-fi :

news.discovery.com : Tech: Mind-Controlled Robot Uses Human Brainwaves (video)

University of Washington researchers have developed a mind-controlled robot that operates on human brainwaves. Discovery News' Kasey-Dee Gardner finds out the human benefits of such a robot.

 

[orionrider]

the methods of self-replication will be worked through during the 2220s

For the first time, I agree wit you that it could be possible :mrgreen:

 

[cavesofmars]

One of the fascinating aspects of manufacturing on the moon is the way in which human and robot ingenuity will combine to solve a variety of manufacturing issues. The moon environment will force manufacturing to take into a account the access to various materials from the base where each factory is located. Factories very likely will specialize in what they manufacture based on this. A factory that specialized in making iron pipes and steel beams would be located near to an iron ore mining site. Each factory will start with a small number of components shipped from Earth and then grow in size and functionality using components manufactured in moon factories. From less than a hundred factories by 2040, there will be thousands by 2050. Similarly, from less than a thousand humans on the moon in 2040, there will be close to 100,000 by 2050.

 

[Valcan]

the methods of self-replication will be worked through during the 2220s

For the first time, I agree wit you that it could be possible :mrgreen:

Onion many other more advanced machines will take alot of work but refining, melting and shaping would be easier its like i said you have the source of energy. Heating what you get to where it all melts wouldnt be a huge problem.

http://miningasteroids.com/

http://www.permanent.com/a-index.htm

http://io9.com/5475304/will-asteroid-mi ... se-economy

What i found within a minute on google.

Can i get a amen for modern technology? what did we do before googles and wikis?

 

[orionrider]

WAKE UP!

You really think it is enough to melt stones to get steel pipes? http://science.howstuffworks.com/iron3.htm

To create a ton of pig iron, you start with 2 tons of ore, 1 ton of coke and a half ton of limestone. The fire consumes 5 tons of air. To refine the stuff into steel, add 2 to 5 tons of oxygen and about 200 tons of water.

It takes 210,500kg of various stuff, plus a tremendous amount of energy, to make just FOUR METERS of std. steel pipe.


Where are you going to find COKE or LIMESTONE on the MOON?

I'm out, this discussion makes me want to cry

 

[cavesofmars]

When thinking about manufacturing on the moon, the tendency is to revert back to the way things are done today and then claim it won't work. It is better to assume that the technology of the 2030s will be vastly different and will use methods and materials suited to the moon environment. Every decision about the characteristics of the initial factories will be informed by that environment. The early years will be ones of scarcity and each step forward will be taken from the perspective of how it fits in the overall plan for the moon's infrastructure.

However, the first bases on the moon are likely to be sponsored by different nations. This will lead to different decisions as to the best way forward. Inevitably, there will be lots of mistakes along the way. Just how artificial intelligence of that age will fit into all this will be fascinating to observe. My guess is that the requirements to support the self-replication of the construction and assembler robots will be a dominant factor in those decisions.