Moon key to space future?

On Mon, 24 Nov 2003 18:57:02 GMT, in a place far, far away, "Dave
O'Neill" dave @ NOSPAM atomicrazor . com made the phosphor on my
monitor glow in such a way as to indicate that:

Unfortunately not every problem. Take spam, for instance. Is there any
market solution that could work?

Yes, but it would require revamping the internet.

I could introduce you to some mobile network operators who think they can do
just that.

It's not a technical challenge--just a market and institutional one (a
lot like access to space, actually).

--
simberg.interglobal.org * 310 372-7963 (CA) 307 739-1296 (Jackson Hole)
interglobal space lines * 307 733-1715 (Fax) http://www.interglobal.org

"Extraordinary launch vehicles require extraordinary markets..."
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Allen Meece wrote:

There would be a steady stream of Lunar
tourists today if Nixon, that ~bleep!, had allowed nasa to follow up the Apollo
program. (which included a manned Lunar station!)

This is extremely dubious. The cost of reaching the moon with Apollo technology
was astronomical, and would most likely have remained too high for
any significant tourist activity. An alternate world nice-guy Nixon would not
have changed the economic facts.

Paul

Some fairly remote places found themselves affected by the various
Great Wars. The trading posts in Hudson's Bay, for example, which were as
close to the back of beyond as one might like, found it extremely
inconvenient
when their supply ships got nailed en route during one of the Anglo-French
disagreements because (among other things) it meant there were no trade goods
for the natives, who settled down to wait next to the posts, getting
increasingly peeved with the traders as time went by.


But the Solar System is huge, even out to the Asteroid belt. I suppose you
imagine as giant Solar System wide radar tracking system that distinguishes
artificial objects from natural ones, and that the fighting nations will
painstakingly comb though each one of the asteroids looking for human
settlements to destroy with their nuclear weapons. Human settlements that may
have as few as 10 people in them.

Tom

In article ,
TKalbfus wrote:
Some fairly remote places found themselves affected by the various
Great Wars. The trading posts in Hudson's Bay, for example, which were as
close to the back of beyond as one might like, found it extremely
inconvenient
when their supply ships got nailed en route during one of the Anglo-French
disagreements because (among other things) it meant there were no trade goods
for the natives, who settled down to wait next to the posts, getting
increasingly peeved with the traders as time went by.


But the Solar System is huge, even out to the Asteroid belt. I suppose you
imagine as giant Solar System wide radar tracking system that distinguishes
artificial objects from natural ones, and that the fighting nations will
painstakingly comb though each one of the asteroids looking for human
settlements to destroy with their nuclear weapons. Human settlements that may
have as few as 10 people in them.

Doing what, exactly? Not interacting much with the solar economy
(or the indirect effects of the war would reach them by screwing with
the terrestrial end of the trade routes) so this would be an example of
decoupling. Also maybe of miserable poverty and eventual extinction since
the terrestrial record for low population isolated communities is not all
that bright.

In any case, stealth is very hard in space. Rockets are bright,
solar sails and mag sails are huge and all are trackable from Earth
using the sort of remote sensing apparatus we can make now and which
the tech that has to exist for asterite hermit kingdoms to exist should
make even more effective. In the context of a run up to a Great War,
I would expect keeping track of where the rockets are going (or more to
the point, potentially returning from) would be a priority. Or is this
one of those scenarios where the hermit kingdoms are allowed access to
various technolgies that Earth isn't, in order to crock the system to
produce the results you want?


--
It's amazing how the waterdrops form: a ball of water with an air bubble
inside it and inside of that one more bubble of water. It looks so beautiful
[...]. I realized something: the world is interesting for the man who can
be surprised. -Valentin Lebedev-

The World's problems are one of the motivations for travelling in space in
the
first place, that is to get away from them.
While this is true, let's not forget that plain old space tourism will fuel
the civilian conquest of space. There would be a steady stream of Lunar
tourists today if Nixon, that ~bleep!, had allowed nasa to follow up the Apollo
program. (which included a manned Lunar station!)
There are good philospophical reasons for space travel but tourism could pay
the bills, *now*
The moon IS key to the space future because it's such a visible and nearby
destination and it would give it's tourists life-long bragging rights.
^
//^\\
~~~ near space elevator ~~~~
~~~members.aol.com/beanstalkr/~~~

On 28 Nov 2003 02:39:00 GMT, in a place far, far away,
pamsuX (Allen Meece) made the phosphor on my
monitor glow in such a way as to indicate that:

The World's problems are one of the motivations for travelling in space in
the
first place, that is to get away from them.
While this is true, let's not forget that plain old space tourism will fuel
the civilian conquest of space.

This is likely.

There would be a steady stream of Lunar
tourists today if Nixon, that ~bleep!, had allowed nasa to follow up the Apollo
program. (which included a manned Lunar station!)

This is a fantasy, not a fact.

--
simberg.interglobal.org * 310 372-7963 (CA) 307 739-1296 (Jackson Hole)
interglobal space lines * 307 733-1715 (Fax) http://www.interglobal.org

"Extraordinary launch vehicles require extraordinary markets..."
Swap the first . and @ and throw out the ".trash" to email me.
Here's my email address for autospammers:

In article ,
James Nicoll wrote:

snip

In any case, stealth is very hard in space.

Having said that, I spent the evening noodling around with
scenarios whereby a small community (~1000) could hide in a rock
until the shooting stopped. Step one: lose the radiators because
they only attract the wrong sort of attention and be prepared to
live as cold and hungry as you can stand, to reduce the IR signature.

Maybe pump heat into the rock, warm the whole thing up to
get a slightly warmer asteroid rather than the road flare a decent
radiator would be...

--
It's amazing how the waterdrops form: a ball of water with an air bubble
inside it and inside of that one more bubble of water. It looks so beautiful
[...]. I realized something: the world is interesting for the man who can
be surprised. -Valentin Lebedev-

In any case, stealth is very hard in space. Rockets are bright,
solar sails and mag sails are huge and all are trackable from Earth
using the sort of remote sensing apparatus we can make now and which
the tech that has to exist for asterite hermit kingdoms to exist should
make even more effective.

Asteroids are even brighter with reflected light. Magsails are invisible, you
can't see a magnetic field. Rockets are very bright when their engines are on,
but you have to be looking in the right section of space while their engines
are running to see them and you can't look in all directions all the time. Now
if there are thousands of settlements, are you going to have a telescope
trained on each one of them all the time. If a settlement is not looked at and
it fires its rockets, its going to change its orbit track, and may drift
outside the field of view of the sensor, or what if it fires a rocket while
behind a planet? Its going to be hard to detect it emerging from the otherside
since you don't know where to look.

Tom

In article ,
TKalbfus wrote:
In any case, stealth is very hard in space. Rockets are bright,
solar sails and mag sails are huge and all are trackable from Earth
using the sort of remote sensing apparatus we can make now and which
the tech that has to exist for asterite hermit kingdoms to exist should
make even more effective.

Asteroids are even brighter with reflected light.

Brighter than what?


Magsails are invisible, you
can't see a magnetic field.

But you can detect them. I'd look for the sort of kilohertz
radio noise we see out in the heliopause as the solar wind hits the
magsail.


Rockets are very bright when their engines are on,
but you have to be looking in the right section of space while their engines
are running to see them and you can't look in all directions all the time. Now
if there are thousands of settlements, are you going to have a telescope
trained on each one of them all the time.

You're moving the entire hab? How big are your habitats?


My assumptions a

More than one Great Power

Cheap space travel (if ten people can afford a hab)

War footing between several space based GPs.

If I were a GP competing with another GP, both with interests
in space, you bet I'd be trying my best to keep track of every object
within the sphere of travel. From a GP POV it can be very difficult to
tell the difference between ten guys in a tin can only trying to keep
their heads down and ten guys in a tin can quietly manuvering to screw
me over.

So, yes, I would expect detection systems to try to watch
everything in the system above a certain size 24/7 just as in the Cold
War, the US and USSR kept a close eye on rather tiny objects in LEO.

Actually, the consequences of being mistaken for a stealthy
hostile force are potentially bad enough that what you might want to
do is be extremely loud, radio-broadcasting who you are and how neutral
you are at all times. That might keep you safe until one side or the
other disguises a military asset as a neutral civilian one, anyway.

If a settlement is not looked at and
it fires its rockets, its going to change its orbit track, and may drift
outside the field of view of the sensor, or what if it fires a rocket while
behind a planet?

Behind a planet? Planets don't cover much sky, so either you are
working with a limited amount of time (although enough so that e.g. a
0.5 m/s/s rocket in the belt could pull off a 5 km/s delta vee while
obscured from Mars from the POV of Earth, according to this scrap of paper)
or are in orbit around the object.

The problem is that the more spread out the GPs are across the
system, the less likely it is all of their intelligence gathering assets
will be blocked by the planet at the same time. Even the Sun, large and
bright, is unlikely to have all of Earth+Moon, Mars and NEOs on one side
at the same time and if anyone thinks of Earth-Sun L3, L4 and L5 observation
posts you will never be able to use the Sun to be obscured to everyone.

Its going to be hard to detect it emerging from the otherside
since you don't know where to look.

So you use well distributed low definition systems to look for
anomolies and high definition ones to take closer looks at them.

--
It's amazing how the waterdrops form: a ball of water with an air bubble
inside it and inside of that one more bubble of water. It looks so beautiful
[...]. I realized something: the world is interesting for the man who can
be surprised. -Valentin Lebedev-

I will grant one place a small colony could lurk unseen:
in one of the three gas giants with Earthlike cloudtop gravities.

They would have challenging environments to work in, though.

--
It's amazing how the waterdrops form: a ball of water with an air bubble
inside it and inside of that one more bubble of water. It looks so beautiful
[...]. I realized something: the world is interesting for the man who can
be surprised. -Valentin Lebedev-