On 10 Jan, 10:00, jacob navia wrote:
Martha Adams wrote:
I was just looking at "The Future of Human Spaceflight" by David Mindell
et al at MIT, and I think it illustrates a fundamental error in how
people are thinking about space. *What is space for? *We can skip right
over a lot of abstract stuff by using an analogy out of Europe in the
early 1500's, "What is America for?" *Our history answers that one
easily: it's for people. *Likewise, space is for people, and Frederick
Jackson Turner's paper (thanks, Robert Zubrin) outlines how people and
cultures will develop there.

The technology for living in space is not here yet. We need

o To be able to resist to mutations and DNA damage much better than
* *now. Space is full of radiation that is lethal to our bodies as
* *they are now.

* *This can be solved by mdifying and enhancing our genetic repair
* *mechanism to be more efficient. As a byproduct of this research
* *we would have a cure for cancer, since many cancers are just
* *genetic repair mechanism problems.

A baby has just been born which lacks a gene known to cause breast
cancer. This birth has been highly controversial. As the future
progesses we will indeed get more control over our DNA. Not just for
space but for disease prevention. Could there be genes that could
tackle obesity and burn up berliners? More later.

Of course an alternative strategy is simply to protect us. if we are
under 10m of rock/ice we will have very similar radiation to here on
Erth. Creating this environment is very much a focus of robotics.

o To develop a closed ecological system that can sustain itself
* *with solar energy in space. We need to develop photosynthesis
* *in vacuum, i.e. plants that can resist and thrive in vacuum.

What's wrong with a pressurized system? Something that can survive in
a vacuum may be an interesting piece of chemistry, but it is not a
plant. If we are to go along the lines of genetic modification I would
suggest that the first priority is to produce hygrogen from water. We
are not in fact that far off.

http://dspace.mit.edu/bitstream/hand...pdf?sequence=1
Masters thesis - survey.

http://www.tesionline.com/intl/thesis.jsp?idt=18984 Here is a later
one. It is in Italian. Still there is Google Translate.

http://www.scientificblogging.com/fi...da_may_36_2009
Here is a forthcoming conference. I await the proceedings with bated
breath.

* *This needs (again) some genetical know how. We need a skin that
* *is able to resist vacuum AND be transparent for our plants.

I think what you are really after is siome form of nanotechnology not
plants as we understand them. More later.

o We need machines able to repair themselves automatically and
* *able to work in space unattended for long periods of time. This
* *needs progress in robotics and automatic manufacturing. As a
* *byproduct of this research we would obtain machines that could
* *replace all our factories with automatic manufacturing. Humans
* *could be able to reach this by 2070 more or less, in any case
* *within this century.

There are two routes to what could be termed a Von Neumann machine.
One is the classical robotic route, along which considerable progress
has been made. The other is the nano route. The nano route is far more
advanced technologically. What we need to do in the near future is to
send a swarm into space. This swarm will have spare parts. A breakdown
of any component anywhere will be repairable.

The Koreans have a definition of "intelligent" which involves the
ability to sense surroundings and carry out manual operations on
higglety pigglety parts. They are working on this NOW. It is not some
pie in a future sky.

But when I look at what's being said on this space topic, it's all
*Terra centered.* *Space is seen as a place where you send out machines
to study hostile environments (why?), which people visit very briefly
and hustle "back home," a method for diverting some of a small
government cash stream won from the military industrial to possibly
innovative purposes. *(If people had some idea what that 'innovative'
is.) *

The technology for human space travel is just not there. Look at the
best humans can manage now: The ISS. It is a few hundred Km away, and
it is still plagued by a lot of problems, it has no closed system
it needs supplies from earth. etc.

Absolutely. What you need is a home on Mars, Ceres or wherever which
is self sustaining. Robots would initially have to build it. The ISS
is doing very little scientific work. The astronauts spend a lot of
time housekeepind and there is absolutely nothing self sustaining
about it.

The only way to explore now is with automatic machines since they do
not need ANY of the points above to be able to travel in space. The
Mars rovers are exploring Mars now, and this since 5 years! They do
not need fuel/life-support/radiation shielding/ they do not need
ANYTHING, just the solar power they receive each day.

Absolutely, but we also need to make swarms a part of unmanned
exploration. A swarm is a necessary precursor to large scale space
construction. We will have a machine which is self repairing. We can
then start to think about making a macine from the resources of space.
If we fail to do this we will be doomed to explore space with things
not much better than the ISS.

I think that's where today's discussion has basically turned a
wrong corner and busily gets us nowhere. *Besides provoking an amazing
amount of verbal rubbish. *The root problem seems to me, to be, get
unhooked from that Terra center to things, and realize space is an
awfully big place and let's get our point of view unhooked from Terra
and focussed out there where it needs to be.

It is not enough to "realize " this. We have to develop the
technologies described above, and that is a very HARD problem.

It is indeed a very HARD problem. I have tried to give some indication
of how we might proceed. As I have said previously we are hampered
considerably by a core of military men who are determened to push
though a high cost, high dependency on Earth agenda. VN mahcines are
as they describe lunacy, but I think what you say would indicate that
unless you move some way in that direction all you will ever be able
to do is move the ISS to the Moon/Mars at horrendous cost.

You are, or people have suggested putting you, on their kill file
along with myself. I think there is a vested interest in not facing
the truth. I don't know whether classification issues are a factor.
What I have said about "OnA ErAqy" is absolutely the point. I think I
am safe in saying it is not a sausage!The techniques of disinformation
used at Falluja are exactly the same as those used against VN
machines.

If we ignore the fil(le)s des chiens ( the Iraqis use the term beni al
kalb) and confront the basic questions progress might be made. I have
no doubt that there will be progress made. Whether tthis progress will
be made by the US is another matter. History from The Peloplenesian
war to the present is full of civilizations which could have found
solutions to their problems but chose not to be "loony".

- Ian Parker


"Us Spartans, our birthrate has plummeted, we have just lost half our
citizens in this battle. They were all will ing to die but were
irreplaceable. The lunatic trhing to do is to allow your men from
their teenage years free access tro women, even helots. The sensible
thing to do is to go on as we have been, go into a state of terminal
decline. It is "sensible" too not to admit this even to orselves".