A list, at io9.
Not sure about either the space elevator or space solar. And he leaves off a gravity lab, which we need to understand if or how we can properly conceive and gestate in partial gravity.
16 thoughts on “Twelve Technologies We Need To Get Going On”
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If we could create an artificial biosphere, why would we need artificial meat? Kudos to them for accepting that humans are not herbivores.
Considering Glenn’s recent series on teaching women not to rape, the need for male birth control is at least as equally important as providing free birth control that only women can use.
1) Earth is an artificial biosphere and that thing on your face is your nose.
5) Do you know how long it takes to ride an elevator into space and the liability?
6) Already used… in space. Economics will take care of the rest.
7) ha ha ha haaa
8) Practice on venus and stay away from the good enough.
9) Only after we get rid of them will we discover they are essential for our survival.
10) Oh goody… designer cancer.
Is it just me, or does anyone else accept that long before we could build a space elevator, we would have material science allowing the insane mass fractions for cheap, practical single-state to orbit rockets?
If you had that unobtainium-carbide nano-tube composite material for the elevator, why not build ultra light-weight tanks out of it first?
Not only improved mass ratios, but perhaps a giant launch loop or orbital rings. I think those could be built with a tiny fraction of the materials needed for an elevator.
I pointed that out on here like a decade ago.
The dude in the picture doesn’t look like any aging man I know — no “moobs.”
The geoengineering thing presupposes that CO2 has an amplified sensitivity on climate.
As to a self-sustaining artificial biosphere II, it is a misconception that we have a self-sustaining natural biosphere I. The oxygen and CO2 in our atmosphere is not in short-term equilibrium with the biology of plants. Rather, the biology is in equilibrium with those gas concentrations determined over geologic time through the interplay of biology with geological processes such as the burial of sediments, the weathering of rocks, and the subduction of continents.
What we really need to “get going on” is a secure, upgraded version of the world’s best computer operating system . . . XP. Along with that, a secure upgrade for Explorer 8. Along with dungeons for high-minded sys admins and web masters who refuse to support either . . .
IIRC the main reason the biosphere II failed was that the green concrete was absorbing too much oxygen from the closed system.
But the Biosphere I is not a closed system — it has its “concrete” in the form of geological regulation of O2 and CO2 content, a process that may have also failed in the Permian extinction event.
A working Biosphere II then won’t work by just slapping together some kind of ecological balance in a dome as in Silent Running. It will require some regulation system, either human intervention, a control system, or a carefully designed “passive” system.
When I was a child, I remember seeing what appeared to be the small Apollo Command Module (CM), a mockup or perhaps a test article, as the Moon ship. I wondered how three guys were going all the way to the Moon in that thing, and where were the tanks to store that much oxygen going to go? I knew that on Sea Hunt, those tanks didn’t give Lloyd Bridges that much time underwater, and my own commission evaluating the Apollo project wanted to know where they were going to place enough tanks for 3 guys for a week in space, maybe two.
I didn’t allow for the Service Module (SM), having some substantial LO2 tanks, but most of those were actually for fuel-cell power rather than breathing demand. I didn’t account for the crew rebreathing the cabin atmosphere.
Korelev apparently thought work on photosynthesis oxygen systems would be needed, but the experience with both US and his submarines is that you could get by with rebreathing the oxygen and removing the CO2 with chemicals rather than biologics.
Think closed circuit rebreather, not open circuit SCUBA.
Rebreathers are far more efficient than SCUBA but your Nitrogen load makes it irrelevant for most dives as it quickly becomes the long pole in the tent, SCUBA is much simpler and easier to operate and maintain.
“The dude in the picture doesn’t look like any aging man I know”
Why bodybuilding at age 93 is a great idea: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rGgoCm1hofM
“People could print out the vaccine, administer it themselves — and all without having to leave their homes.”
As a newly-minted far-Left Progressivist, and a regulatory bureaucrat, I can state categorically that We will never allow this to happen. No matte how many lives it costs, we will never allow anyone to take a medicine that We have not deemed “safe and effective.” And if you do take it, We will shoot you.
OK, here is important tech not on the list . . .
How about improved space radiators for heat rejection?
On Earth, you can use a river, lake, ocean, or maybe even a well for cooling water — in power generation, HVAC, and industrial processes. In vacuum, the only way to reject heat is not through pretend radiators that benefit by conduction and convection but by for-real Stefans-Boltzmann T to the 4th power radiators.
There are proposals for water droplet or other fluid fountains in space to get more surface area?
It is a real limitation for any serious 2001 Spaceship Discovery-type craft or any serious space colony.
I wrote a post on the design of a radiator system for a rotating deep space vessel a decade ago. With rotation providing gravity you can circulate air through a system of radiators with natural convection.
Your design uses convection to transfer waste heat to the space radiators, but it still requires largish space radiators limited in heat transfer to space by . . . radiation!
The proposals I have seen is to make the necessary ginormous radiator not out of solid fins but out of fluid drops or perhaps pellets, perhaps entrained electrostatically.
Well, I liked to keep things simple. 🙂
One thing I hadn’t considered was making the radiators out of an inflatable Bigelow type material, because one big issue with my aluminum design is its size. It might not weigh all that much, but there’s no way to get it into a payload shroud, and if built in space it would require an enormous amount of fabrication.