Moon City?

"Greg D. Moore \(Strider\)" wrote:
[[about a lunar colony]]
I'm thinking more of folks who once setup, pretty much live off the land,
albeit it at varying levels of tech.

The problem is that the combination of "live off the land" and "moon"
requires a very high level of technology. That, in turn, creates a need
for many, many different kinds of specialized equipment, and the many,
many different sorts of specialized expertise needed to keep that
equipment running and to keep the humans and their domestic animals
in reasonable health. By the time you add that up, you need a pretty
substantial population.

Moreover, there are a great many things that could go wrong in such
a (necessarily high-tech) colony. Each of these may be individually
fairly unlikely, but (because there are so many of them, and because
you want the colong to survive for a long time with high probability)
the chances of at least one them happening are substantial. Alas,
each one has its own set of resources-required-for-an-effective-response,
and the sum of those over all the different scenarios adds up to (again)
a pretty substantial population: A few examples:
* A new parasite evolves (from some previously-benign species) and
devastates the food-production system. Response: you need biologists
and agronomists and chemists (and maybe biotechnology) to come up
with a suitable response.
* The life-support computers start crashing because a psychopath
sabatoged them (maybe in the hardware, maybe in the software).
Response: you need computer experts to figure out what's wrong,
and fix it (quickly, before the air gets unbreathable). And you
need something like police to find the psycopath before s/he does
something else equally nasty.
* Many computers start crashing because a manufacturing flaw left
the metal interconnect layers in their chips vulnerable to corrosion.
Response: you need a whole IC-chip-manufacturing infrastructure to
figure out what's wrong, and to make new chips which don't have
the problem.
* One day most of the critical-infrastructure-network crashes, due
to the same sort of network-software-bug which crippled AT&T's long
distance network on January 15, 1990. To get a working network again
(which the colony *needs* for efficient communication), the colony
has to have a bunch of talented networking/software engineers to
diagnose & fix the problem.

Another important driver for minimum-colony-size is the danger of
inbreeding (and the consequent buildup of genetic diseases) in either
humans or their domestic animals (livestock). To have a good safety
margin against this, you'd really like to have a a minimum population
size in the thousands.

Finally, you need to consider whether the colony is engineered to be
the smallest possible colony possessing the necessary spectrum of skills
and equipment, or whether it grows in a way dictated by other criteria
like cost and economic efficiency. In the latter case, it may have to
be a *lot* larger in order to possess the necessary spectrum of skilled
people and specialised equipment for long-term independent survival.

A somewhat-relevant data point: Consider the survivability of Australia
(population now a bit over 20 million) and/or New Zealand (just over 4
million) after a major nuclear war in which the Americans and Russians
collectively wipe out technological society in the northern hemisphere.
People who have studied this seriously have all concluded that these
societies would be in serious trouble due to lack of specialized and
hard-to-manufacture products, with the notable examples of computers,
pesticides, medical equipment, and hybrid seeds for agriculture.
[See, for example, the studies reported in
Barrie Pittock
"Beyond Darkness: Nuclear Winter in Australia and New Zealand"
Sun Books, South Melbourne, 1987
ISBN 0-7251-0536-4]

ciao,

--
-- "Jonathan Thornburg [remove -animal to reply]"
Dept of Astronomy, Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana, USA
"Space travel is utter bilge" -- common misquote of UK Astronomer Royal
Richard Woolley's remarks of 1956
"All this writing about space travel is utter bilge. To go to the
moon would cost as much as a major war." -- what he actually said

Ken S. Tucker wrote:
My impression of the long range goal of Program Constellation is the
establishment of a permanent *city* on the Moon. (?).

Can anyone point to anything (cites?) about resources on the moon that would
support building a moon city? A mining operation I get. Construction
of Solar Power Sats (economics aside) I get. Being on the moon just
to be on the moon? I don't get.

Dave


======================================= MODERATOR'S COMMENT:
Please let's focus on the technical side of this issue (resources, etc) and posts strictly related to policy should be left in strictly in sci.space.policy. GdM.

On Apr 13, 3:55 pm, David Spain wrote:
Ken S. Tucker wrote:
My impression of the long range goal of Program Constellation is the
establishment of a permanent *city* on the Moon. (?).

Can anyone point to anything (cites?) about resources on the moon that would
support building a moon city? A mining operation I get. Construction
of Solar Power Sats (economics aside) I get. Being on the moon just
to be on the moon? I don't get.

Dave

======================================= MODERATOR'S COMMENT:
Please let's focus on the technical side of this issue (resources, etc) and posts strictly related to policy should be left in strictly in sci.space.policy. GdM.

Agreed.
I think "policy" follows after the economics of the technology
is understood, such as, a healthy life support involving,
Power, Air, Water, Food, Construction Materials/Techniques.

Where resources are concerned, I'd suggest a quick read here,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sudbury_Basin
Basically a meteor impact melts a lot of material, and then
that molten material stratifies, due to varying density of the
liquids and after a few decades or century's solidifies.

The Moon has lot's of evident craters :-).
From the standpoint of geo-science alone, drilling down into
the Copernicus crater would provide great knowledge, if an
economical technology can be developed to do that. After that
the possibility of using those resources for construction might
develope.
Regards
Ken

"Ken S. Tucker" wrote:

Where resources are concerned, I'd suggest a quick read here,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sudbury_Basin
Basically a meteor impact melts a lot of material, and then
that molten material stratifies, due to varying density of the
liquids and after a few decades or century's solidifies.

You might give it a more than quick read - because it doesn't say what
you claim it does.

D.
--
Touch-twice life. Eat. Drink. Laugh.

http://derekl1963.livejournal.com/

-Resolved: To be more temperate in my postings.
Oct 5th, 2004 JDL

On Apr 14, 3:39 pm, (Derek Lyons) wrote:
"Ken S. Tucker" wrote:

Where resources are concerned, I'd suggest a quick read here,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sudbury_Basin
Basically a meteor impact melts a lot of material, and then
that molten material stratifies, due to varying density of the
liquids and after a few decades or century's solidifies.

You might give it a more than quick read - because it doesn't say what
you claim it does.

Your understanding is welcomed by our group.
An improved understanding of impact results
is certainly welcomed by me.
For me, it' a bit complicated.
Regards
Ken

Jonathan Thornburg [remove -animal to reply] wrote:
"Greg D. Moore \(Strider\)" wrote:
[[about a lunar colony]]

I'm thinking more of folks who once setup, pretty much live off the land,
albeit it at varying levels of tech.


The problem is that the combination of "live off the land" and "moon"
requires a very high level of technology. That, in turn, creates a need
for many, many different kinds of specialized equipment, and the many,
many different sorts of specialized expertise needed to keep that
equipment running and to keep the humans and their domestic animals
in reasonable health. By the time you add that up, you need a pretty
substantial population.

Moreover, there are a great many things that could go wrong in such
a (necessarily high-tech) colony.

Hopefully, we won't ever have a completely self sustaining lunar settlement.
You see, the United States are not strictly self sustaining, they import
energy, wheat, cars and airplanes from Canada and what not from China. The
U.S. could survive without importing stuff from other parts of the world but
it would lower the living standards of its inhabitants.

Similarly, I wouldn't expect a lunar settlement to ever be completely
self sustaining. The interesting question is what would be needed for the
settlement to be able to survive, even if that means considerable hardship
on it inhabitants, without help from non settlers. I view the point in history
where humans have the ability go on without Mother Earth as an important
turning point in history.

If one is ready to accept considerable hardship on the settlers, I don't see
the technological level necessary as all that high.


Each of these may be individually
fairly unlikely, but (because there are so many of them, and because
you want the colong to survive for a long time with high probability)
the chances of at least one them happening are substantial. Alas,
each one has its own set of resources-required-for-an-effective-response,
and the sum of those over all the different scenarios adds up to (again)
a pretty substantial population: A few examples:
* A new parasite evolves (from some previously-benign species) and
devastates the food-production system. Response: you need biologists
and agronomists and chemists (and maybe biotechnology) to come up
with a suitable response.

Or you need two independent settlements, separated by vacuum.

* The life-support computers start crashing because a psychopath
sabatoged them (maybe in the hardware, maybe in the software).
Response: you need computer experts to figure out what's wrong,
and fix it (quickly, before the air gets unbreathable). And you
need something like police to find the psycopath before s/he does
something else equally nasty.

In case of emergency life-support can be human controlled. You have
a human monitoring environment parameters and flipping on or off some
switches when the parameters go outside the acceptable. You need a
second human to monitor that first human just in case he himself flips
to the psychopath state.

* Many computers start crashing because a manufacturing flaw left
the metal interconnect layers in their chips vulnerable to corrosion.
Response: you need a whole IC-chip-manufacturing infrastructure to
figure out what's wrong, and to make new chips which don't have
the problem.

You don't need computers to survive. Some of us even remember a day when
we didn't have them. For life-support control, see above.

Another important driver for minimum-colony-size is the danger of
inbreeding (and the consequent buildup of genetic diseases) in either
humans or their domestic animals (livestock). To have a good safety
margin against this, you'd really like to have a a minimum population
size in the thousands.

No. The dangers of inbreeding, though they are real, are generally
exaggerated. The Egyptian pharaohs ruled for centuries with extreme
inbreeding (brothers marrying their sisters). They did suffer some
problems because of that, but not enough to make them incompetent
to rule the most important empire of the day. Marrying first cousins
is much less risky. Some human settlements have been founded by about
20 people and went on for centuries without major problem. For livestock
the problem is virtually non-existent. If their is some genetic defect
in the population you select the breeders to prune out the defective
genes.

Finally, you need to consider whether the colony is engineered to be
the smallest possible colony possessing the necessary spectrum of skills
and equipment, or whether it grows in a way dictated by other criteria
like cost and economic efficiency. In the latter case, it may have to
be a *lot* larger in order to possess the necessary spectrum of skilled
people and specialised equipment for long-term independent survival.

If you want economic efficiency and there is still a civilization on
Earth to do commerce with, you don't go self sufficient.

As for the settlement being able self replicate. If it is viable, it must
be able to self replicate. Everything will eventually break down. If you
can build and replace every part when they break down, you can also "replace"
them when they didn't break down. So if you build every part of your
settlement and assemble it all together, you have a new settlement. I
hope I don't have to explain how to make new settlers for that new settlement :-)


Alain Fournier

Jonathan Thornburg [remove -animal to reply] wrote:
"Greg D. Moore \(Strider\)" wrote:
[[about a lunar colony]]

I'm thinking more of folks who once setup, pretty much live off the land,
albeit it at varying levels of tech.

I replied
The problem is that the combination of "live off the land" and "moon"
requires a very high level of technology. That, in turn, creates a need
for many, many different kinds of specialized equipment, and the many,
many different sorts of specialized expertise needed to keep that
equipment running and to keep the humans and their domestic animals
in reasonable health. By the time you add that up, you need a pretty
substantial population.

Moreover, there are a great many things that could go wrong in such
a (necessarily high-tech) colony. Each of these may be individually
fairly unlikely, but (because there are so many of them, and because
you want the colong to survive for a long time with high probability)
the chances of at least one them happening are substantial. Alas,
each one has its own set of resources-required-for-an-effective-response,
and the sum of those over all the different scenarios adds up to (again)
a pretty substantial population:

Alain Fournier wrote:
If one is ready to accept considerable hardship on the settlers, I don't see
the technological level necessary as all that high.

"Accepting considerable hardship" can certainly lower the standards,
but on the moon, even the basics of providing breathable air & recycling
wastewater into clean drinking water (and -- very important -- testing
that air/water to make sure they're safe) already require pretty
sophisticated technology.


I wrote
Another important driver for minimum-colony-size is the danger of
inbreeding (and the consequent buildup of genetic diseases) in either
humans or their domestic animals (livestock). To have a good safety
margin against this, you'd really like to have a a minimum population
size in the thousands.

Alain Fournier replied
No. The dangers of inbreeding, though they are real, are generally
exaggerated. The Egyptian pharaohs ruled for centuries with extreme
inbreeding (brothers marrying their sisters). They did suffer some
problems because of that, but not enough to make them incompetent
to rule the most important empire of the day. Marrying first cousins
is much less risky. Some human settlements have been founded by about
20 people and went on for centuries without major problem. For livestock
the problem is virtually non-existent. If their is some genetic defect
in the population you select the breeders to prune out the defective
genes.

Hmm. This same issue came up in this newsgroup a few years ago.
In that discussion, Henry Spencer wrote
(article dated Tue, 23 Mar 2004 23:03:46 GMT)
[[about minimal human population size]]
A few hundred is probably minimal. A few thousand would be safer.

For a more recent discussion, you might care to peruse
"How inbreeding killed off a line of kings"
http://scienceblogs.com/notrocketsci...e_of_kings.php
http://www.plosone.org/article/info%...l.pone.0005174
discussing the role of inbreeding in killing off the Spanish Habsburg
dynasty.

--
-- "Jonathan Thornburg [remove -animal to reply]"
Dept of Astronomy, Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana, USA
"Space travel is utter bilge" -- common misquote of UK Astronomer Royal
Richard Woolley's remarks of 1956
"All this writing about space travel is utter bilge. To go to the
moon would cost as much as a major war." -- what he actually said

Hi Alain.
On Apr 15, 6:01 pm, Alain Fournier wrote:
Jonathan Thornburg [remove -animal to reply] wrote:

"Greg D. Moore \(Strider\)" wrote:
[[about a lunar colony]]

I'm thinking more of folks who once setup, pretty much live off the land,
albeit it at varying levels of tech.

The problem is that the combination of "live off the land" and "moon"
requires a very high level of technology. That, in turn, creates a need
for many, many different kinds of specialized equipment, and the many,
many different sorts of specialized expertise needed to keep that
equipment running and to keep the humans and their domestic animals
in reasonable health. By the time you add that up, you need a pretty
substantial population.

Moreover, there are a great many things that could go wrong in such
a (necessarily high-tech) colony.

Hopefully, we won't ever have a completely self sustaining lunar settlement.
You see, the United States are not strictly self sustaining, they import
energy, wheat, cars and airplanes from Canada and what not from China. The
U.S. could survive without importing stuff from other parts of the world but
it would lower the living standards of its inhabitants.

Similarly, I wouldn't expect a lunar settlement to ever be completely
self sustaining. The interesting question is what would be needed for the
settlement to be able to survive, even if that means considerable hardship
on it inhabitants, without help from non settlers. I view the point in history
where humans have the ability go on without Mother Earth as an important
turning point in history.

If one is ready to accept considerable hardship on the settlers, I don't see
the technological level necessary as all that high.

That to me is a general and subjective statement.
We have
Power, Air, Water, Food, Construction & Maintenance
to solve, we need 6 GO's there.

Each of these may be individually
fairly unlikely, but (because there are so many of them, and because
you want the colong to survive for a long time with high probability)
the chances of at least one them happening are substantial. Alas,
each one has its own set of resources-required-for-an-effective-response,
and the sum of those over all the different scenarios adds up to (again)
a pretty substantial population: A few examples:
* A new parasite evolves (from some previously-benign species) and
devastates the food-production system. Response: you need biologists
and agronomists and chemists (and maybe biotechnology) to come up
with a suitable response.

Or you need two independent settlements, separated by vacuum.

* The life-support computers start crashing because a psychopath
sabatoged them (maybe in the hardware, maybe in the software).
Response: you need computer experts to figure out what's wrong,
and fix it (quickly, before the air gets unbreathable). And you
need something like police to find the psycopath before s/he does
something else equally nasty.

In case of emergency life-support can be human controlled. You have
a human monitoring environment parameters and flipping on or off some
switches when the parameters go outside the acceptable. You need a
second human to monitor that first human just in case he himself flips
to the psychopath state.

* Many computers start crashing because a manufacturing flaw left
the metal interconnect layers in their chips vulnerable to corrosion.
Response: you need a whole IC-chip-manufacturing infrastructure to
figure out what's wrong, and to make new chips which don't have
the problem.

You don't need computers to survive. Some of us even remember a day when
we didn't have them. For life-support control, see above.

Another important driver for minimum-colony-size is the danger of
inbreeding (and the consequent buildup of genetic diseases) in either
humans or their domestic animals (livestock). To have a good safety
margin against this, you'd really like to have a a minimum population
size in the thousands.

No. The dangers of inbreeding, though they are real, are generally
exaggerated. The Egyptian pharaohs ruled for centuries with extreme
inbreeding (brothers marrying their sisters). They did suffer some
problems because of that, but not enough to make them incompetent
to rule the most important empire of the day. Marrying first cousins
is much less risky. Some human settlements have been founded by about
20 people and went on for centuries without major problem. For livestock
the problem is virtually non-existent. If their is some genetic defect
in the population you select the breeders to prune out the defective
genes.

Finally, you need to consider whether the colony is engineered to be
the smallest possible colony possessing the necessary spectrum of skills
and equipment, or whether it grows in a way dictated by other criteria
like cost and economic efficiency. In the latter case, it may have to
be a *lot* larger in order to possess the necessary spectrum of skilled
people and specialised equipment for long-term independent survival.

If you want economic efficiency and there is still a civilization on
Earth to do commerce with, you don't go self sufficient.

Apart from subsidies for scientific research, trading with
Earth needs to include in transportation costs.
That returns to propulsion technology, SCRAMjet, Nuke,
Timberwind on steroids, but possible in science today,
or at least foreseeable.
(I think that deserves it's own special thread).

As for the settlement being able self replicate. If it is viable, it must
be able to self replicate. Everything will eventually break down. If you
can build and replace every part when they break down, you can also "replace"
them when they didn't break down. So if you build every part of your
settlement and assemble it all together, you have a new settlement.

I hope I don't have to explain how to make new settlers
for that new settlement :-)

Our swimming pool data supports that activity in 1/6 g.

Alain Fournier

Regards
Ken

"Greg D. Moore \(Strider\)" wrote:
[[about a lunar colony]]
I'm thinking more of folks who once setup, pretty much live off the land,
albeit it at varying levels of tech.

I replied:
The problem is that the combination of "live off the land" and "moon"
requires a very high level of technology. That, in turn, creates a need
for many, many different kinds of specialized equipment, and the many,
many different sorts of specialized expertise needed to keep that
equipment running and to keep the humans and their domestic animals
in reasonable health. By the time you add that up, you need a pretty
substantial population.


Alain Fournier wrote:
[[...]] I wouldn't expect a lunar settlement to ever be completely
self sustaining. The interesting question is what would be needed for the
settlement to be able to survive, even if that means considerable hardship
on it inhabitants, without help from non settlers. I view the point in history
where humans have the ability go on without Mother Earth as an important
turning point in history.

I think the fundamental problem is that without outside supplies,
all kinds of equipment is going to start to wear out. After a few
decades, even ultra-high-reliability equipment may not work so well
-- and for a small colony living on (or under) the moon, a lot of
failures are "life-critical".

I think it's instructive to read this report:
http://www.aaib.gov.uk/publications/...009_n786ua.cfm
It describes the investigation into an aircraft electrical fire
which happened on the ground in a United Airlines Boeing 777. The
investigators wrote
An internal failure of the Right Generator Circuit Breaker or Right
Bus Tie Breaker contactor on the P200 power panel inside the Main
Equipment Centre resulted in severe internal arcing and short-circuits
which melted the contactor casings. The root cause of contactor
failure could not be determined.
Fortunately for all concerned, the aircraft was still on the ground
when the fire started, and the fire was detected and contained quite
quickly, with no loss of life.

The relevance of this to a moon colony is that over a period of
decades, Murphy's law makes this sort of accident (supposedly
well-engineered equipment malfunctions or wears out in such a way
as to cause a serious accident) all too probable.

If the colony is large and spread over many independent pressure
vessels, life-support systems, and agricultural ecosystems, then
even an "impossible" accident is unlikely to wipe out the colony.
But if it's small, with only a few independent units, then the
chances of long-term survival may not be so good...

--
-- "Jonathan Thornburg [remove -animal to reply]"
Dept of Astronomy, Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana, USA
"Space travel is utter bilge" -- common misquote of UK Astronomer Royal
Richard Woolley's remarks of 1956
"All this writing about space travel is utter bilge. To go to the
moon would cost as much as a major war." -- what he actually said

"Jonathan Thornburg [remove -animal to reply]"
wrote:

The relevance of this to a moon colony is that over a period of
decades, Murphy's law makes this sort of accident (supposedly
well-engineered equipment malfunctions or wears out in such a way
as to cause a serious accident) all too probable.

Pfft. Ask any sailor who has served on an older vessel. It can get
ugly.

D.
--
Touch-twice life. Eat. Drink. Laugh.

http://derekl1963.livejournal.com/

-Resolved: To be more temperate in my postings.
Oct 5th, 2004 JDL