Cutting-edge technology enabling settlement of the solar system and beyond – Art by Rick Guidice / NASA
A stepwise strategy for the application of biotechnology to address four key challenges of Martian settlement is presented in a Comment in Nature Biotechnology. As settlement progresses, a phased developmental approach is proposed starting on Earth with gradual migration of industry to Mars for the production of food, materials, therapeutics and waste reclamation toward an efficient closed-loop life support system.
The spinning dual-sphere orbital colony would house 200 settlers completely shielded by asteroid material and under 1G artificial gravity. The business case is promising if launch costs come down to $300/kg. The new paper was just posted on the NSS Space Settlement Journal, an open access journal chuck full of papers on space settlement enabling technologies.
The startup’s customers are studying zero-G materials processing, medical devices, flow chemistry and other processes through their plug and play systems on the ISS. But the company’s long term goal is scalable manufacturing leveraging the microgravity environment to add value through their planned orbiting platform called ST-42, which will operate autonomously from the ISS.
A computer simulation has been developed by a pair of French scientists described in a paper submitted to arXiv.org and accepted for publication in the Journal of the British Interplanetary Society. The model predicts the resources needed for an environmental control and life support system on a multi-generation interstellar mission.
First coined by philosopher Frank White in his book of the same name, the Overview Effect instilled a profound cognitive change of awareness for astronauts who have made it to space thus far. When seeing the Earth from space these individuals report having an overwhelming sense of wonder and awe, unity with nature and all of humanity. Hopefully, more of us will be able to experience this phenomenon in the near future when space becomes more accessible to more people. Until then, you can get a sense of what they felt in a YouTube series called NASA Down to Earth.
If humanity is to settle Mars, with Elon Musk leading the way, the issue of biological contamination of the planet’s surface by humans will need to be resolved in the context of the Outer Space Treaty. This article presents a reasonable compromise proposing a system of three zones partitioned for science, habitation, and resource utilization. This approach minimizes contamination while providing for scientific exploration and Musk’s settlements.
At SSI 50, the Space Settlement Enterprise conference sponsored by the Space Studies Institute, I had the pleasure of meeting Dr. Jim Logan, a medical doctor with 22 years experience as a NASA Flight Surgeon where he served as Chief, Flight Medicine and Chief, Medical Operations. Dr. Logan along with former Flight Dynamics Officer Dan Adamo, developed a strong argument in 2014 for Deimos as the ideal destination for initial space outposts. Says Logan, “Deimos, for a number of VERY valid reasons, is the best choice by far for early settlement”. Their paper outlining this concept provides a convincing argument that Deimos is the most valuable piece of real estate in the solar system.
On the last day of the conference Dr. Logan presented an innovative concept for a string of O’Neill type settlements constructed in a tunnel bored straight through Deimos. The architecture addresses the problem of radiation protection and delivers Earth normal gravity while providing an easy to get to platform for telerobotic exploration of Mars. Video of this presentation is available at timestamp 1:47:23 at this link on the SSI YouTube Channel.
Joe Carroll of Tethers Applications, Inc. delivered a presentation on a proposal for a LEO partial gravity test facility at the StarShip Congress which took place in San Diego September 13 – 15. An interesting fact is that of all the surfaces of bodies in the solar system where humans may want to build settlements, all of them have gravity similar to the Moon and Mars. Thus gravity in the solar system is “quantized” to just these two levels simplifying the testing regime. Determining the prescription needed for human health in partial gravity is a critical path research topic needed for space settlement.
Until engineering solutions for artificial gravity in space habitats are validated, women who want to spend long periods of time in the microgravity environment of space will want options for suppressing menstruation and preventing conception . This article lays out an array of alternatives: