Date: Mon, 29 Nov 1999 00:23:49 -0500
From: JAY RESPLER <jrespler@superlink.net>
Organization: SkyViews Astronomy & Space information Web Site
X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.04 [en] (Win95; I)
To: jrespler@superlink.net
Subject: NEWS . Sun. Times Magazine
A Space Station? Big Deal!
How about a space hotel connected to Earth by elevator? Or a mining
camp on the Moon? An adventurous approach to the final frontier needn't
be confined to science fiction. By TIMOTHY FERRIS Illustrations by BOB McCALL
Orbiting Resort Hotel . A low-gravity swimming pool ranks high among the attractions of a hypothetical
resort in low-Earth orbit. Fashioned as a giant spinning wheel
-- its centrifugal force generating gravity so
that ''up'' is always toward the hub -- the hotel offers zero-G medical facilities and honeymoon suites at its
center, and a more earthly one-G environment in the suites and dining facilities along the rim. Space tourism
is being taken seriously by hotel industry professionals, some of whom have recently been turning up at
conferences studying commercial uses for space. With Las Vegas hotels costing billions, the start-up costs of
such a venture are no longer regarded as impossibly high. Indeed, NASA itself has offered 2017 as a possible
completion date for the first space hotel.
Fifty years ago, the rocket scientist Wernher von Braun and several of his
colleagues charted a course for space exploration that
envisioned using
winged shuttles to construct a space station in Earth's
orbit, from which
astronauts would venture forth to establish a Moon base and,
ultimately, a colony
on Mars. Vividly illustrated by the space artist Chesley
Bonestell -- first in Collier's
magazine and then in various books and films -- the von Braun
plan imprinted itself
on Americans as the way to space.
A lot has changed since then. At John F. Kennedy's urging, the
Apollo program
landed men on the Moon in a hurry, without first stopping to
build von Braun's
stepping stones. Unforeseen advances in computer technology
resulted in a
robust unmanned space program that sent robotic probes to
search for life on
Mars, map the cloud-shrouded surface of Venus and take close-up
photos of the
giant outer planets and their many moons. Private industry got
into the act,
deploying billions of dollars worth of communications
satellites that wired up the
world.
Yet as the century draws to a close,
NASA's
manned program remains frozen in the
headlights of von Braun's old plan.
The Moon
rockets have come and gone -- an
astonishing
and unanticipated development -- but the
agency is still launching shuttles to build a space station,
which hardly improves
the prospect of getting to Mars. Suddenly, it's 1950.
Frustrated by what they perceive to be a stagnation in American
space policy, a
growing number of visionaries are proposing new ways of
exploring (and
exploiting) the final frontier. Scientists want to learn a lot
more about our cosmic
surroundings, at less cost, than can be accomplished by
spending billions on the
space station. Engineers are experimenting with propulsion
systems that could
orbit payloads more cheaply than the shuttle can. Entrepreneurs
are betting on
space tourism, asteroid mining and other profit-seeking
endeavors. (Nor is this all
pie in the sky; "space markets" are expected to approach $200
billion in annual
sales in the next 10 years.)
These pages present a few new ideas that promise to get space
exploration out of
a rut and on toward the stars. Some, like sending probes to
Europa and mining the
Moon, are relatively practical. Others, like biologically
engineered spaceships and
interstellar missions, are highly speculative. Objections can
be raised against them
all, but that's not necessarily discouraging: an argument often
bruited about the
von Braun blueprint was that humans could not endure the stress
of being
launched into Earth orbit.
Many prospective missions are missing from this brief sampling,
notably
small-scale robotic endeavors -- like reconnaissance balloons
on Mars or space
telescopes designed to search for signs of life on the planets
of other stars -- that
could add more to the sum of human knowledge than all the big,
flashy manned
space missions combined. Nor is there much left here of von
Braun's passion for
methodical order. Rather, this is a bouquet of creative
imaginings -- prospects, not
predictions, of things that may be, if we can summon the means
and the motivation
to make them so.
Cruise to the Moon
To arrive at a space hotel in style,
high rollers might travel aboard
second-generation shuttles like the
one seen here. Once they've
checked in, guests needn't stay put
(though they might want to, given
the spectacular views and a sunrise
every 90 minutes). One idea being
bandied about is equipping an
orbiting hotel with a "cruise liner"
shuttle that would circle the Moon
and return weekly, capping off one of the most memorable --
and, presumably,
most expensive --vacations in the history of human leisure.
Mars Colony
Making Mars a home
for humankind would
double the land area
available for future
generations and provide
them with an insurance
policy by making ours a
two-planet species. In
the approach depicted
here, Mars has been
explored from the start
by colonists who came
to stay. (Safety rockets
are standing by to
return them to Earth
only if the colony fails.) Life on the Martian frontier is
harsh at the outset but
improves as farming and industry take root. The long-term goal
is to "terraform"
the red planet, by resurrecting its atmosphere and defrosting
the surface so that
the great-grandchildren of the original settlers might breathe
freely under the blue
skies of a renewed world. That's if Mars proves to be lifeless;
if instead there turns
out to be indigenous Martian life, many will argue on ethical
grounds that the
planet ought to be left alone.
Space Elevator
Climbing into orbit on a lanky
tether made of a strong, lightweight
material -- possibly carbon
nanotubes, spinoffs of the famous
'"Buckyball" atom -- a space
elevator could provide cheap
access to orbit. In this conception,
based in part on the ideas of Arthur
C. Clarke, the elevator speeds
24,500 miles from Earth's surface up
to a geostationary terminal. (From
this way station, a small shuttle
could connect travelers to a space
hotel.) Power for the elevator's
electric engines comes from the
terminal's solar arrays and from the
tether itself. Carbon nanotubes conduct electricity, so the
tether could act as a
dynamo as it moves through the Earth's magnetic field. One big
challenge is
finding a way to produce nanotubes inexpensively. To date, only
small fragments
have been synthesized, at costs of about $1,000 per gram.
Lunar Mining Camp
If nuclear fusion emerges as an
important 21st-century energy
source -- as it well may, given that
fusion reactors would be far less
dirty and dangerous than the
fission power plants now in use --
profitable mining camps could be
established on the Moon, which
has an abundance of the
high-potency fusion fuel Helium-3.
This camp is powered by the fusion
reactor in the background. It uses
electric catapults and a pair of cannons firing laser or
microwave beams to send
ore carriers off toward Earth. Ordinary lunar soil is also
dispatched from this camp,
for use in constructing large space stations and industrial
facilities anywhere in
the vastness of sublunar space.
Tiny Interstellar
Probes
Giant starships of the
"Star Trek" class may
use warp speed to leap
across light-years in a
single bound -- but,
barring a tremendous
breakthrough, the
business of sending big
ships to the stars will
remain absurdly
expensive and
forbiddingly slow. Tiny
instrumented probes are
another matter. Low in
mass, they can be
accelerated to high velocity in reasonably short times, and
their minuscule cargo
of electronics -- plus, perhaps, biological materials -- can
hibernate patiently
throughout their long journey. A cluster of smart,
grapefruit-size probes is seen
here landing on an asteroid in an extrasolar planetary system.
Using metals mined
from the asteroid, they set up antennas to phone home, and
fashion sensors to
expand reconnaissance of the planetary system in which they
have arrived.
Eventually they can make copies of the propulsion system that
took them there,
fuel it up from indigenous materials and launch new probes on
to other stars. But if
it's really that easy, and if there are advanced civilizations
out there, why haven't
they already sent a probe to our solar system? The answer is
that maybe they
have. A tiny probe, embedded in one of the billions of
asteroids orbiting the sun
and programmed to keep itself inconspicuous, could be out there
right now, and
we probably wouldn't know it -- not now, or in the century to
come.
Space Squid
Bioengineering might one day
create living creatures adapted to
survival in space, their utility
comparable to that of horses and
mules in the winning of the West.
Giant space birds could cruise the
inner solar system, their wings
sailing on sunlight. Farther out,
where sunlight grows weak, "space
squid" like those seen here live off
the land, drawing volatile fuels from
Jovian planets and water from
comets to power their gentle but
efficient propulsion systems. Such creatures would be welcome
companions out
among the trillions of comets that some scientists have
envisioned as providing an
inexhaustible supply of dwelling places for those humans
seeking the solitude --
and lawlessness -- of abodes far from the madding crowds of the
inner solar
system.
Europa Probe
An sea of liquid water is thought to lie
beneath the global ice that sheathes
Jupiter's satellite Europa -- an ocean that
has been kept from freezing by thermal
vents on the ocean floor. Such "black
smokers" support abundant life in the icy,
pitch-black depths of Earth's seas, so
scientists speculate that there might be life
on Europa too. Here, an instrumented probe
has landed on Europa, melted a hole in the
icecap -- no mean feat; the ice is probably
more than two miles thick -- and dispatched
a submarine to search the ocean floor. The
pictures the sub sends back, distributed
live on the Internet, offer to millions the
chance of becoming the first to find
extraterrestrial life.
Table of Contents
November 28, 1999
Copyright 1999 The New York Times Company
Orbiting Resort Hotel . A low-gravity swimming pool ranks high among the attractions of a hypothetical
resort in low-Earth orbit. Fashioned as a giant spinning wheel
-- its centrifugal force generating gravity so
that ''up'' is always toward the hub -- the hotel offers zero-G medical facilities and honeymoon suites at its
center, and a more earthly one-G environment in the suites and dining facilities along the rim. Space tourism
is being taken seriously by hotel industry professionals, some of whom have recently been turning up at
conferences studying commercial uses for space. With Las Vegas hotels costing billions, the start-up costs of
such a venture are no longer regarded as impossibly high. Indeed, NASA itself has offered 2017 as a possible
completion date for the first space hotel.
---
--
Jay Respler
--
JRespler@superlink.net
SKY VIEWS: http://mars.superlink.net/jrespler/skyviews.htm
Satellite Tracker * Early Typewriter Collector
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