Atlantis Online
March 29, 2024, 05:35:51 am
Welcome, Guest. Please login or register.

Login with username, password and session length
News: Site provides evidence for ancient comet explosion
http://www.thenewstribune.com/news/nationworld/story/173177.html
 
  Home Help Arcade Gallery Links Staff List Calendar Login Register  

Private Enterprise- To mars

Pages: 1 ... 21 22 23 24 25 26 [27] 28 29 30 31 32 33 ... 35   Go Down
  Print  
Author Topic: Private Enterprise- To mars  (Read 23608 times)
0 Members and 333 Guests are viewing this topic.
HereForNow
Superhero Member
******
Posts: 3279


HUH?


« Reply #390 on: February 26, 2012, 01:11:41 pm »

As planetary scientist John S. Lewis says in this excerpt from his fascinating book Mining the Sky , the asteroid belt contains enough iron to construct an enormous space city.

    We have enough asteroidal iron [in the asteroid belt] to make a metal sphere . . . 550 miles in diameter. Hollowed out into rooms with iron walls, like a gigantic city, it would make a spherical space structure over . . . 1,200 miles in diameter. . . . With a nine-foot ceiling, we could provide each family with a floor area of 3,000 square feet for private residential use and still set aside 3,000 square feet of public space per family. This artificial world would contain enough room to accommodate more than ten quadrillion [a million times a billion] people. Very simply, that is a million times the ultimate population capacity of Earth.

It is fair to ask why the inhabitants of such colonies, as well as people still living on Earth, would choose to get metals, minerals, and other resources from asteroids and comets rather than from larger cosmic bodies. Why not mine the Moon first, for example, or perhaps the planet Mars? After all, the Moon and Mars are both far larger than all of the asteroids put together, and both are closer to Earth than most of the asteroids and comets (the NEAs being an obvious exception).

First, whether they live on Earth or in space cities, people will naturally want to obtain cosmic resources as easily and cheaply as possible. The fact is that mining the asteroids will be far easier and more economical than mining a large body like the Moon. The Moon's surface gravity is about one-sixth that of Earth, which is strong enough to require a good deal of fuel to land miners and their equipment on its surface. More importantly, getting the processed metals and minerals off the Moon's surface would take even larger amounts of fuel. An added problem is that most of the valuable metals and minerals on the Moon are spread out over thousands of square miles and bound up inside mixtures of rock and dirt, many lying deep underground; it would require a lot of exploration, as well as strenuous and expensive digging and processing, to free them. So robotic mining is the key to all the possibilities that can be created.

The genius and imagination of quantum computing and man/woman, appears to be the only way to accomplish such a goal and we already have those resources to begin this task.
The logical, and responsible thing at this is point is to choose between what is given. And what we can give....
To date mankind has demonstrated it's ability to destroy very efficiently, and wastefully. Packaging for food and beverage alone with eventually poison the ground and water over hundreds and thousands of years. Famine and natural disasters, disease, war, and tyranny are the things we support in doing nothing. The Exodus is an idea that I am offering to give us a reason to go on. Humanity to this point is wasting itself away to nothing so that a few individuals can reap all that they have sown. Outshine the weak as they see it. However the truth is a matter of your own perception and to be freer from the humanity that we are. I must remind myself that things aren't important. What matters is surviving and becoming more as a species/beings and less destructive to ourselves. Knowledge is the path, to learning ways to live longer and healthier. 800 to 900 years maybe? Ok. I'll want it. Learning that a pattern may exist in the dynamics of how earth-like worlds are produced in chains very can very from the way the gravities and other forces behave within a galaxy. Could this actually hold some weight? ok. I would like to know.
My point is, at the moment like so many others. I imagine this in all my being. I will awaken to my 7 to 3:30 job. Come home and go threw the bills. Take something for a headache, with a nice cup of tea.

However, at this moment. I have already taken a step in the right direction I believe. I offered a vision of something more.
A thing of imagination? Yes.
Could we actually do it?  : ) 
That's for you to decide.



« Last Edit: February 26, 2012, 01:49:09 pm by HereForNow » Report Spam   Logged

Pages: 1 ... 21 22 23 24 25 26 [27] 28 29 30 31 32 33 ... 35   Go Up
  Print  
 
Jump to:  

Powered by EzPortal
Bookmark this site! | Upgrade This Forum
SMF For Free - Create your own Forum
Powered by SMF | SMF © 2016, Simple Machines
Privacy Policy