Transterrestrial Musings

Comments

My best friend for the past 30 years is a Major in the AAMDC (Army Air and Missile Defense Command). The situation is every bit as scary as the article would lead you to believe, and then some.

Posted by Cecil Trotter at August 17, 2006 07:00 AM

Now, visualize a world where honest-to-God RLV spaceplanes can be purchased from commerical vendors at a modest price.

Is that Arab oil prince doing the LEO tourism thing with his current wive(s) or with some WMD looking for 72 new ones?

Posted by Bill White at August 17, 2006 07:04 AM

I think the article is understating the potential of defenses against short-range missiles. As these articles indicate:
http://www.defensetech.org/archives/002583.html
http://www.strategypage.com/htmw/htada/articles/20060815.aspx
http://www.irconnect.com/noc/press/pages/news_releases.mhtml?d=101970
the current laser system worked pretty well in tests and, furthermore, Northrop now has a new version of THEL called Skyguard that is much smaller and practical, though not as mobile as the ideal system the Pentagon wants.

There is also the Phalanx rapid-fire gun system from Raytheon:
http://www.raytheon.com/products/phalanx/
which was developed for defense against anti-ship missiles.

The Aug.7th issue of AvWeek had this interesting article: "Conflicts in Middle East May Give New Life to Anti-Rocket Laser". It said that Israel didn't pursue THEL because they "were more concerned about the threat of longer-range missiles being developed by Iran". From a purely military point of view, they were correct since even with 4000+ short range rockets fired into Israel, they failed to cause enormous casualties or damage. But the rockets did succeed as terror weapons by forcing civilians in northern Israel into bomb shelters and, of course, they succeeded in producing great propaganda for Hezbolla.

I'll be surprised if Israel doesn't obtain at least one or two short-range missile defense systems in the next couple years to test out.
- C.

Posted by Clark at August 17, 2006 08:07 AM

"Now, visualize a world where honest-to-God RLV spaceplanes can be purchased from commerical vendors at a modest price."

We should be so lucky. Acts of terrorism begin to seem less significant when you have people spreading through the solar system like spores, hatching colonies everywhere they find a sustainable niche. Try to imagine the reaction of a resident of some Jupiter trojan, one of several trillion humans spread over an unimaginable volume, upon hearing that a million people died on Earth from a nuclear terrorist attack. "Tsk, tsk. What have those fools done now? Oh well, at least the blue team won the pennant today. I wonder who'll be starting next season..."

Posted by Brian Swiderski at August 17, 2006 08:11 AM

Terrorism will grow to an even greater threat than it is today much quicker than Brians above fantasy of space colonies is achieved. If we don't stop or at least contain terrorism, and primarily the countries behind terrorism, we will never make it to the point of "spreading through the solar system like spores".

And if the day ever comes that a million lost lives is dismissed as easily as Brian suggests, we won’t be a species worthy of inhabiting this world much less other locations through the solar system.

Posted by Cecil Trotter at August 17, 2006 08:19 AM

Electrically-powered laser cannons (solid state, fiber, etc.) are really the best bet in terms of size and cost-effectiveness for missile defense. Unfortunately, it may be 5 years before they get the power high enough and another 2-5 years before they field.

Guided projectile defenses cost too much, and ungioded projectile defenses (CIWS) are too short-ranged.

That said, yes, we seem to be slowly reverting back to the old days, where sometimes armies clash with few casualties on either side, but sometimes the loser's entire population is wiped out.

Posted by Big D at August 17, 2006 08:19 AM

I hope that it would be a colonist saying tsk tsk, and not a co-religionist dropping high speed rocks on north america from space.

Posted by joe G at August 17, 2006 08:31 AM

I hope that it would be a colonist saying tsk tsk, and not a co-religionist dropping high speed rocks on north america from space.

This is part of why I believe Mars is a better location than the Moon for our first significant human colony that aspires to political independence from Earth. The asteroids? Sure, but Mars is easier.

Mining colonies, tourist sites and the like on Luna? Sure thing. But just not as distinct and independent political entities.

Posted by Bill White at August 17, 2006 08:43 AM

Unfortunately, it may be 5 years before they get the power high enough and another 2-5 years before they field.

I wish I shared your optimism about progress in energy storage density. For obvious reasons, many-fold improvements would have implications far beyond missile defense lasers.

But by the same token, a lot of smart people in a lot of industries are working on it full time, and have been for a long time. The TANSTAAFL challenge of a superduper fuel cell or battery is akin to the challenge of superduper rocket propellants: the more chemical potential you pack in a small volume, the closer you are to nasty mishaps.

Beware the temptation to believe that because we'd really like a given breakthrough for defense (or, in other contexts, for space), a defense or space R&D program is where it's going to happen. It's not always true that such programs have the most money, the most talent, or the most luck.

I'm amused by the laments I've seen that the current THEL wasn't used in Israel, e.g. posts around the blogosphere inspired by
http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=16135

Golly -- what soldier wouldn't leap at the chance to operate in a target zone (it is a point-defense system) amid four tankers full of pressurized, volatile, toxic, corrosive reactants? I guess the IDF must have gone all candy-ass.

Posted by Monte Davis at August 17, 2006 09:16 AM

I kinda think the probability of asteroids being used as weapons is being overworked. There are really two scenarios, slow death and fast death. Slow death (the more plausible one) is where you sneak out to an asteriod, and unbeknowst to anyone you install an ion drive - the idea being that in 5 years, your enemy is history. First, that kind of long term plan would get leaked; but even if it wasn't, by the time mad people are in orbit doing that, sane people will be in orbit watching asteriods anyway - I mean the asteriod would already have the equipment onboard to deflect it!

Fast death is where you take an asteriod (or moon rock) and you just sling it at Earth, and gravity does the rest. But wait a minute, if gavity was going to do the rest, surely the rock would have hit anyway? So really, what you have to do is cancel the kinetic energy of a large mass, so that it has a low kinetic energy with respect to Earth. Or at the very least you need to deflect the path by a lot. So, if you use a near Earth asteriod, again someone will be watching it - and what you can deflect they can undeflect. For Earth orbit stuff (say moon rocks), you would have to give it more energy than it would take to orbit the rock in the first place!

So in the realistic case, you do better to stay on Earth and lob big freaken rocks at each other - or wait a minute, why not use something that explodes rather than a rock? We could call it a ICBR!

Posted by David Summers at August 17, 2006 10:22 AM

Monte, I believe you're mistaken. The tactical systems in development are solid state, with very modest energy requirements- the peak power for a shot is stored in a capacitor bank, which is supplied by an utterly prosaic diesel generator- no "pressurized, volatile, toxic, corrosive reactants". The capacitor bank stores at most a megajoule of energy, less than a single hand grenade.

The ABL airborne laser system is a whole 'nother kettle of basic hydrogen peroxide- high test peroxide laced with sodium and potassium hydroxides, oh joy. That system, though, would be aloft well behind the forward edge of the battle area, protected by air superiority, and would not be in the impact area of incoming weapons.

Posted by Doug Jones at August 17, 2006 10:41 AM

Electrically-powered laser cannons (solid state, fiber, etc.) are really the best bet in terms of size and cost-effectiveness for missile defense.

How well do these lasers work against shipping containers?

Posted by Chris Mann at August 17, 2006 11:10 AM

The real issue that the article does not discuss is of these rockets and cruise missiles can easily be manufactured by post-governmental groups, not just used. Shoulder-launched rockets have been around since the 60's (made famous in that Dirty Harry movie in the 70's). But can groups like Hizbolla or others actually make these things?

Posted by Kurt at August 17, 2006 11:10 AM

"Terrorism will grow to an even greater threat than it is today much quicker than Brians above fantasy of space colonies is achieved."

What are you basing that on? It will indeed take several decades before we're comfortable operating manned missions out in the solar system, but once that occurs the destinations become arbitrary and limited only by flight duration. There are thousands of people this very minute, maybe tens of thousands, who would sell everything they have for a one-way ticket to Mars and enough startup machinery to survive while they figure things out.

We just have to reach the plateau where enough hardware, production capital, and people are up there to become self-sustaining, and then it'll expand in all over the place without terrestrial help, probably without our permission, and sometimes without our knowledge.

"If we don't stop or at least contain terrorism, and primarily the countries behind terrorism, we will never make it to the point of "spreading through the solar system like spores"."

Oh stop it, you're being hysterical. The world stood on the brink of total nuclear annihilation for decades, and that is something that would have really put a crimp in our style. But the threat of terrorism is so far removed from that, it's almost laughably insignificant by comparison.

It's disgusting how some people who weren't around for the Cuban Missile Crisis, who never had to sit wound up like springs waiting for the air raid sirens announcing the end of the world, talk with this silly Boris Karloff gravitas about the possibility of terrorist attacks. 9/11 really pissed me off, but it didn't scare me one damn bit, and neither does anything that could be conceived of terrorists.

"And if the day ever comes that a million lost lives is dismissed as easily as Brian suggests, we won’t be a species worthy of inhabiting this world"

Do you read your own words after typing them? Floods in India kill thousands every year, buses constantly plummet over ravines in Pakistan and Chile, people in several regions of Africa are being butchered mercilessly, and does any of that normally produce a stronger reaction in you than the one I just described in our hypothetical colonist? Because it certainly doesn't in the overwhelming majority of Americans, as the minimal coverage devoted to it in corporate media can testify.

Whole villages being wiped off the map is pretty big news to the survivors who lived in them, but over here in this bubble it's just a piece of information for most people. And that's ignoring the constant drumbeats of violent death by more banal causes that don't even merit reporting--the hundreds of thousands of global car fatalities not involving ravines or bombs, the simple illnesses that take down the poor by the thousands, and all of it happens without disturbing a single hair on your head or even making you blink. Why? Because (1)we're far away from most of it, and (2)there are so many people it just doesn't affect you in any practical way.

For God's sake, think before you write.

Posted by Brian Swiderski at August 17, 2006 11:31 AM

"How well do these lasers work against shipping containers?"

Really well, if you detect the shipping container, but you'd probably just send somebody to grab the container, or simply sink the ship.

Please note that the subject is rocket/missile defense, not warhead defense. It takes more than one means to defend your country. It just so happens that Israel has vividly demonstrated that it's getting very good at blocking shipping containers, people, and cars coming to attack them in the last few years but has been unable to come up with a practical counter to the ballistic threat.

Also, on the earlier subject of power storage, capacitors work fine. Laser cannons require far, far less power than it takes to move a car 400 miles. For example, a 100KW-output laser cannon (the AF claims this as roughly the minimum for combat) with 10% efficiency (last I heard, they're above that now) requires 1MW of power.

1MW of power is... what, 1300hp of electical generation? A tank engine puts out more than that (albeit in mechanical rather than electrical power). 1MW sustained for 3.6 seconds, BTW, is 1 kwh.

It's all about the efficiency of a laser beam in burning through one spot on a target to create secondary (aerodynamic damage, warhead, weapons or fuel cook-off, engine damage, etc.) effects that do the actual destruction. The charge from that new electric sports car, if channeled into capacitors for rapid discharge, could probably wipe out a few companies of tanks or APCs firing from above them, or who knows how many rockets.

Posted by Big D at August 17, 2006 11:54 AM

Gotta throw in with Brian on this one -- though I do think getting our eggs into a bunch more baskets in time is going to be a near thing. A lot of political hysteria could be usefully redirected by looking at the actual numbers of people getting killed by actual, identifiable causes. The WHO's World Health Report is a good place to start.

Posted by Jay Manifold at August 17, 2006 11:59 AM

I am strongly with Brian on the other half of the equation:

It will indeed take several decades before we're comfortable operating manned missions out in the solar system, but once that occurs the destinations become arbitrary and limited only by flight duration. There are thousands of people this very minute, maybe tens of thousands, who would sell everything they have for a one-way ticket to Mars and enough startup machinery to survive while they figure things out.

Equip a seed population (100 or 150 people?) with the technology needed to extract volatiles and with decent closed loop life support and maybe some nifty pebble bed nuclear reactors and the solar system starts looking like a sterile Petri dish well stocked with growth medium.

Once babies start being born then the rabbit strategy for evolutionary development takes over. Which subset of humanity makes babies faster, out there?

Secular humanists? Rastafarians? Pastafarians? Hezbollah?

Posted by Bill White at August 17, 2006 12:12 PM

Doug: my comment about nasty reactants was in connection with "the current THEL" -- i.e., the one that did indeed hit multiple Katyushas in the White Sands tests, and spent recent weeks in a warehouse instead of protecting Kiryat Shmona. Read the URL I provided, and you'll see that the author -- taking advantage of the news peg -- leaves considerable ambiguity between the real, tested (but not ready for prime time) hardware and the Good Stuff Coming Soon.

I've been told such ambiguity can be seen at space conferences, too, but I refuse to believe that.

Posted by Monte Davis at August 17, 2006 01:11 PM

Kurt;

Rockets are easy. Guidance is hard.

Posted by Annoying Old Guy at August 17, 2006 01:37 PM

Brian says: For God's sake...

I guess you did break out in stigmata.. (grin)

Posted by Mac at August 17, 2006 01:46 PM

> Now, visualize a world where honest-to-God RLV spaceplanes can be purchased
> from commerical vendors at a modest price.

> Is that Arab oil prince doing the LEO tourism thing with his current wive(s)
> or with some WMD looking for 72 new ones?

So, you're saying it's time to cancel VSE and give the money to the Air Force so they can buy some RLVs of their own, muy pronto. Right? :-)

Posted by Edward Wright at August 17, 2006 02:08 PM

I think it's a silly article, Rand. Its points boil down to these two, to which my reaction is well, duh:

(Point 1) It's really, really hard to hit one projectile with another. The problem has not been generally and economically solved yet.

Unstated but obvious conclusion: national defense against projectiles still requires going after, or threatening to go after, the projectile launchers and their associated personnel, supporting infrastructure and governments, et cetera. The best defense is still sometimes a judiciously-timed and aimed offense. You can't just hide behind a wall and hope.

(Point 2) With time, new weapon technology diffuses, and will eventually fall into the hands of even your smallest and stupidest enemies. Worth nothing: the tech we're mostly talking about -- Hezbollah's Katyusha rockets -- dates from the late 1930s to early 1940s.

Unstated but obvious conclusion: national defense requires continuous R&D and regular upgrades in your own tech if you want to stay out in front of your enemies. Given that Iran and Hezbollah have only just caught up to the Third Reich's tech, I think the correct reaction is a serious and sustained concern -- the kind that keeps Pentagon R&D budgets modest, but healthy and stable -- hardly the half-hopeless fear which this article would seem to suggest.

Then there's the arthritic boilerplate the article drags out about the supposedly fossilized military mind needing to adapt from old, massive, inflexible ways of fighting wars to the new, flexible, adaptable, fast ways of the future. Yawn. This could have been cut 'n' pasted from any military criticism dating from the Napoleonic Wars on down. I've read practically the same words in a history of the Spanish Civil War (1936-39) I just finished. It was said about Caesar's Gallic Wars, ferfuxsake. It's a perennial and mindless criticism that sounds a lot more insightful than it actually is.

It's only serious content is the totally obvious points that (a) if you're more intelligent and adaptive in how you use your military resources you do better, and (b) smaller and more motivated forces tend to allocate their resources more imaginatively.

But any implied conclusion that smaller forces have a good chance of defeating much larger and well-motivated forces is pure nonsense. Only on rare occasion do larger forces get defeated by smaller, and always because the larger cracks up or gives up for its own internal reasons. The South had the best generals, but the plodding North with 10 times the railroad mileage still won. Plain old GNP kicked bushido's ass in the Pacific during the Big One. It turned out to be the more ideologically pure and disciplined opponent in the Cold War that ended up on the ash-heap of history, 'cause -- oops, ha ha -- they were so concerned with purity and discipline they forgot to make sure their economy grew. And so on.

I'm not in the least saying you are guilty of this, but I sure wish sometimes the public attitude towards national defense could strike a sober middle ground somewhere between sunny, LSD-tripping, "We Are The World" complacency and apocalyptic full-throated scream panic. Geez.

Posted by Carl Pham at August 17, 2006 02:19 PM

"How well do these lasers work against shipping containers?"

They don't. And you know what? It doesn't bloody matter that they don't - because shipping containers are not the only threat.

Posted by Derek L. at August 17, 2006 02:19 PM

Having actually worked on many of the lasers being discussed, I make the following observations. Militarily effective electrically powered lasers are 10 to infinite years away. The problem is less getting enough power rather getting enough range. Beam quality dictates range and for the foreseeable future BQ is bad, real bad.

ABL has dozens of problems I predict that the program will be quietly scrapped perhaps after a single demonstration shoot down under rigged conditions.

THEL wasn’t bad, but it was a huge sitting duck. MTHEL is doing ok so we might see that sometime soon. Problem is that it’s only good for something like 10-20kms. I don’t sweat the nasty chemicals (fluorine or NF3 are really the only ones to worry about). True both are very nasty but we’ve handled them successfully for years. Come to think of it instead of using a tank full of fluorine to make a laser, just lob it at your enemy and dissolve them. It’s pretty nasty I’ve seen it cause stainless steel to spontaneously and violently catch fire for seemingly no reason.

Posted by brian d at August 17, 2006 03:19 PM

The only comfort I can see (and of a backhanded sort at that) is that if the assorted small-state/non-state groups get their hands on more and more capable weaponry, if they reach the point in a given situation where they think the West can't or won't take further action against them, at least we may then have the 'pleasure' of seeing them duke it out with each other. (And post-victory unity *will* last all of five minutes with these guys)

...and:

"Now, visualize a world where honest-to-God RLV spaceplanes can be purchased from commerical vendors at a modest price."

That assorted bad guys might get their hands on some, is no reason not to develop and market them (I've seen that, or impossibly tight controls suggested elsewhere), but it *is* an additional reason for a ballistic missile intercept capability. Missiles and/or seperate warheads aren't the only things we might have to engage at some future date, if it's making a beeline from orbit toward an urban center, and refuses to respond to traffic control, just as we would've brought conventional air defense against the 9/11 planes, had we known in time.

Unfortunately, this scenario gives you even less time to know if a commercial vehicle's been compromised...ask the USS Vincennes crew about things like that.

Posted by Frank Glover at August 17, 2006 03:46 PM

Frank, I agree with your response:

Bill: "Now, visualize a world where honest-to-God RLV spaceplanes can be purchased from commerical vendors at a modest price."

Frank: That assorted bad guys might get their hands on some, is no reason not to develop and market them . . .

We will just need to keep the NORAD guys calm since overflight rights will allow essentially NO reaction time. If a Saudi prince buys an RLV spaceplane he WILL be flying over our heads every 90 minutes or so.

Now, visualize a Chinese rotovator overflying CONUS every 90 minutes. Buy those NORAD generals some more ulcer medicine.

= = =

I predict that as we become multi-planet, a requirement that all incoming payloads be on a trajectory to acquire an equatorial orbit would be a simple method to safeguard a large portion of Earth.

If cis-lunar space command detects an object not on a path to enter Earth orbit at zero inclination it can be intercepted relatively far out.

Inefficient? Perhaps, but hey I take my shoes off at the airport right now.

Space debris management is simplified as well.

Posted by Bill White at August 17, 2006 04:03 PM

Brian: How bad is "bad"? 10-20km range is enough to post small units across something like the Israeli border and stop everything coming across cold. It's also enough to defend any base or ship or city with a very small number of units from anything short of a ICBM.

For more tactical considerations, 10-20km is enough range to plink ground targets from miles away in the sky. This includes SAMs, and we already have low-powered laser jammers in the works, so we have sensor gear for detecting them; just use a bigger laser. Ditto as ASPs for ground vehicles that don't frag friendlies.

So, I'm not all that concerned if we can't make lasers capable of ranging effectively hundreds of miles in the atmosphere--but if it was more like 500 meters, that would start to make them less useful.

Posted by Big D at August 17, 2006 05:17 PM

> The asteroids? Sure, but Mars is easier.

Bill, the Near Earth Asteroids are easier than Mars, both in delta-vee and transit time. Some are easier than the Moon, at least in terms of delta-vee.

I'm actually glad that VSEers have such disdain for the asteroids, though. It means there's one place beyond LEO where private enterprise can go without NASA trying to compete and scaring the pants off of investors with their $20-billion HLVs and $12-billion LSAMs.

Posted by Edward Wright at August 17, 2006 05:59 PM

Edward, I agree the asteroids are easier to get to but, Mars has water, carbon dioxide and 3/8ths Earth normal gravity.

Making babies on Mars will be easier, IMO.

On the other hand, making money at the asteroids may well be easier.

Posted by Bill White at August 17, 2006 07:05 PM

Bill, once you have money making babies is easy!

Posted by AnyMouse at August 17, 2006 08:16 PM

"How well do these lasers work against shipping containers?"

I don't know, how well do ICBM's work to deliver cheap Chinese consumer goods to US ports?

How well does a screwdriver drive nails?

When you understand those two, you will have your answer.

Posted by Mike Puckett at August 17, 2006 08:46 PM

"Equip a seed population (100 or 150 people?) with the technology needed to extract volatiles and with decent closed loop life support and maybe some nifty pebble bed nuclear reactors and the solar system starts looking like a sterile Petri dish well stocked with growth medium."

Ideally, there would be multiple seed populations sent to different locations on various bodies, and each would pursue somewhat different strategies for survival and expansion. Catastrophic losses in one settlement could be mitigated by the successes of others on the same body, who would then (initially) share their advances with groups who find themselves in dire straits. Once survival becomes relatively stable, local advances could be sold or traded among the settlements rather than shared.

"Once babies start being born then the rabbit strategy for evolutionary development takes over."

Rabbit-like propagation won't be plausible except on Mars, because everywhere else will have far fewer resources and need much more efficient systems for quite a long time. I'd say the vast majority of solar system population growth for several centuries would be people leaving Earth for new destinations, not established colonies having lots of children.

"Which subset of humanity makes babies faster, out there? Secular humanists? Rastafarians? Pastafarians? Hezbollah?""

Genetic groups with smaller, shorter, less muscular bodies and/or denser bones may be advantaged by needing fewer calories and maintaining skeletal strength in lower gravity. Even if that only means they can feed one additional person per hundred, that can rapidly telescope over time.

Then again, it doesn't really matter what the majority of spacefaring humans end up looking like, any more than it matters on Earth. Economies and culture determine the success stories, not so much population beyond a certain threshold. But as to culture, you won't see religious fundamentalism up there in any significant degree for several centuries, IMHO. Fundyism is a parasitic phenomenon bred of ignorance, malaise, and lack of positive social progress over an extended time period, none of which I envision becoming a problem in space for many generations.

Posted by Brian Swiderski at August 17, 2006 11:12 PM

Bill:

If current population stats are anything to judge by, secular humanists (if we assume that highly educated folks are more likelyi to be secular humanists) actually reproduce more slowly than the rest.

Europe, where religious attendance has plummeted, is below replacement in terms of births. Similarly, Japan is below replacement (although I've no good sense of religious observation in Japan).

By contrast, the Muslim populations, even in places with decent health care, like Saudi Arabia, seem to have a high birth rate. Poor populations (with high infant mortality) have always had high birth rates, but that's cancelled, in this context, by the low likelihood that such folks will make it into space.

So, it would certainly seem possible that, once the technology is available, that the inhabitants out there will be religious (and specifically Muslim).

Posted by Lurking observer at August 18, 2006 05:41 AM

"So, it would certainly seem possible that, once the technology is available, that the inhabitants out there will be religious (and specifically Muslim)."

That conclusion falls apart on close inspection. On Earth, population growth pretty much sustains itself: Each new person contributes proportionally far more to the economy than the marginal increase in production needed to sustain them. But in a space colony, especially if it's completely artificial, the marginal increase will exceed the marginal contribution for many generations. That means the first colonists will have to work themselves ragged for years before they can even contemplate having children, and even then it's doubtful they could sustain a full generational cycle of one child per couple. There would probably need to be waiting lists, with births staggered over time rather than in baby booms, and only brought about once the settlement determined it had achieved the needed capacity increases. A libertarian's nightmare, to be sure, but probably necessary for several (Earthly) generations--and by the time they could start having kids haphazardly, their cultures would have been shaped by the experience of disciplined population growth.

The colonized bodies that will grow fastest are the ones with the most resources at the disposal of settlers, and the settlements in those locations will grow fastest whose people are most competent, far-sighted, creative, and entrepreneurial. They are the ones who will reach the needed economic milestones fastest, and create the new capacity needed to support population increases. Muslim culture, while quite robust, does not emphasize creativity or entrepreneurialism, and has come into money largely through the demands of Western economies, not really by its own ambitions. Islam will follow humanity into space like all other religions, but it will have no advantages there, and quite a few disadvantages.

Posted by Brian Swiderski at August 18, 2006 07:00 AM

Lurking writes:

If current population stats are anything to judge by, secular humanists (if we assume that highly educated folks are more likelyi to be secular humanists) actually reproduce more slowly than the rest.

I have a pending novel (Sam Dinkin has seen an early draft) about the Mormons building a city on Mars and I depict that city as the tip of the Anglo-sphere expansion out into the solar system.

Why Mars? As Brian writes:

Rabbit-like propagation won't be plausible except on Mars, because everywhere else will have far fewer resources and need much more efficient systems for quite a long time.

Mars has abundant water and carbon dioxide which permits less efficient life support to actually function and which permits easy enlargement of the artificial bio-sphere to accomodate more children.

Nitrogen appears to be scarce on Mars yet 3 out of 4 of the C-H-O-N is better than anywhere else. In my book, a Miracle-Gro like product is shipped by the ton to add nitrogen to the local H2O and CO2.

Various plant food makers financially compete for the privilege of becoming the "official fertilizer of the Mars colony" kinda like how Tiger Woods helps market Buicks. The home gardening market is surprisingly large and such sponsorships helps fund the transport of Miracle-Gro to the Red Planet.

Lower cost Earth-to-LEO lift and momentum exchange tethers for LEO-to-Mars help also.

Posted by Bill White at August 18, 2006 07:02 AM

Brian,

The Mormons would kick Muslim butt.

Ever visit Salt Lake? They have already made one desert blossom with life and the Beehive is a favored icon. A perfect metaphor for a Mars colony.

And remember, Genesis says "Be fruitful and multiply and subdue the Earth"

Okay, we've been there; done that. Now what?

Posted by Bill White at August 18, 2006 07:09 AM

LEO settlements have direct access to oxygen and nitrogen by grazing the Earth’s atmosphere via momentum exchange tethers. Considering the large quantities of Earth derived foods, packaging and plastic products space settlements will initially consume, recycled carbon and hydrogen should be fairly abundant until long after NEO volatiles become available. The moon will similarly benefit from most of this with extra resources of polar hydrogen and oxygen.

On the other hand Mars will be lacking in nitrogen and be bereft of energy. Earth derived resources will take a long time to get there and be very expensive. Not only is available solar power significantly diminished but the Martian atmosphere prevents the use of very large light weight concentrating mirrors. Martian energy will be more expensive than that on Earth, as will the industry that uses it. Phobos and Demos make more sense with direct access to solar energy and volatiles from Mars, perhaps also a good staging point for NEO resources.

Posted by Pete Lynn at August 18, 2006 08:21 AM

Bereft of energy?

Isn't that what nucs are for?

Posted by Big D at August 18, 2006 08:27 AM

The same nukes that are barely economic on Earth? After transport costs the picture will be looking particularly un-rosy, assuming environmental considerations even permit their launch...

Posted by Pete Lynn at August 18, 2006 08:47 AM

Bill,

Will your Mormon colony be vulnerable to attack from giant space insects? Service garentees citizenship.

Posted by Mike Puckett at August 18, 2006 09:31 AM

Mike, no aliens in my future history. At least no sentient ones with technology. Same stance as Joss Whedon, we are alone in the Solar System.

Well, some DNA based bacteria and viruses or lichen might make a good subplot. Mars fossils? Who knows.

But no giant insects with plasma weapons in their rear ends.

Posted by Bill White at August 18, 2006 09:52 AM

"The Mormons would kick Muslim butt."

I doubt that would ever be an issue. Muslim countries, in all likelihood, either wouldn't have the opportunity or the interest to build space colonies in the seed stage, and once things started really taking off most of the juiciest destinations would have been taken or claimed by previous waves of colonists. Individual Muslims could still emigrate to preestablished settlements, but their religion wouldn't be relevant in that instance.

Mormons do have an intrepid tradition, and it wouldn't surprise me if they launched a colony, but I doubt very much it could succeed very long as a sectarian island. Other, more entrepreneurial settlements would attract a lot of newcomers from Earth with fresh new hardware, but how many Mormons personally want to colonize space? Even if it's the same percentage as the general population, there just aren't that many Mormons around, and the wild black yonder just doesn't appeal as much to religious folk.

Did you ever notice how fundamentalists tend to concentrate inland and avoid oceans? They're not sea people, definitely not air people, and I'd say pretty confidently they're not going to be space people. Infinity scares them, and while space is (reputedly) a very spiritual experience, I can't imagine anything more likely to shatter religious illusions.

"Ever visit Salt Lake? They have already made one desert blossom with life and the Beehive is a favored icon. A perfect metaphor for a Mars colony."

Metaphor perhaps, but hardly an analogy. There is nothing fundamentally alien about Utah from other parts of the country, and the main difference consisted in the greater amount of work needed to achieve the same results with the same technology. The first few waves of space colonists can't just be determined people, they'll all basically have to be MacGuyver--engineering and systems geniuses who can spot problems and solutions ten moves ahead, and can maximize efficiencies intuitively. Religious colonists just aren't like that--certainly robust, hard-working, and determined, but ingenious and innovative are not among their qualities.

So one of two things would likely happen to a Mormon colony on Mars, for instance: (1)It would cease to be a Mormon colony and blend into burgeoning society of the planet, or (2)it would retreat into insularity and stagnate, eventually becoming quaint and backward.

"And remember, Genesis says "Be fruitful and multiply and subdue the Earth" Okay, we've been there; done that. Now what?"

Now they wait for Jesus to return. And we, the bold, seize our destiny in the heavens without waiting for permission. (Pretty eloquent, huh?)

Posted by Brian Swiderski at August 18, 2006 10:08 AM

"Now they wait for Jesus to return. And we, the bold, seize our destiny in the heavens without waiting for permission. (Pretty eloquent, huh?)"

Nah. Pretty bigoted and ignorant - as bad, if not worse, than the people you satirize.

Posted by Anon Mouse at August 18, 2006 12:46 PM

Pretty bigoted and ignorant

Yes, Brian has already proudly displayed those stripes in other posts. He also seems appallingly ignorant of Mormon culture and history. Not to mention how different Utah is from upstate New York and Nauvoo, Illinois...

Posted by Rand Simberg at August 18, 2006 01:03 PM

I get the distinct impression you don't like us dumb ignorant religious folks, even if some of us do happen to somehow believe in freedom, liberty, and expansion.

Posted by Big D at August 18, 2006 01:07 PM

Yes, he's obviously much smarter and more tolerant than you gap-toothed serpent-juggling bible beaters. He proves it with every ignorant, bigoted insult.

Posted by Rand Simberg at August 18, 2006 01:10 PM

Nameless Troll: "Nah. Pretty bigoted and ignorant - as bad, if not worse, than the people you satirize."

Too bad non sequiturs aren't rocket fuel, or space travel would be a lot easier. Did you have anything relevant to say, perhaps some original thought on a remotely interesting subject? I happen to think space settlement is a very fascinating, important, and fun topic of discussion, but apparently you don't.

Ayn Rand Simberg: "Yes, Brian has already proudly displayed those stripes in other posts. He also seems appallingly ignorant of Mormon culture and history."

Rand, you've already displayed your desperate willingness to seize on trivia rather than debate real ideas, and now you're just sinking into pathetic self-parody. For someone who pretends to be a space advocate, you sure as hell go all-out to avoid talking about space. If you ever write a book review, I'll be sure to read the first and last pages of the book to know exactly where you're coming from.

Big D: "I get the distinct impression you don't like us dumb ignorant religious folks, even if some of us do happen to somehow believe in freedom, liberty, and expansion."

That would be a false impression, but thanks for asking me to clarify my remarks. I refer only to religious fundamentalist cultures, not everyone who has some degree of religious belief or other--and I think I made that abundantly clear. A space colony consisting of people who hold religious beliefs is not the same thing as a religious space colony, and it is the latter whose prospects I addressed.

Posted by Brian Swiderski at August 19, 2006 03:53 AM

"Mars has abundant water and carbon dioxide which permits less efficient life support to actually function and which permits easy enlargement of the artificial bio-sphere to accomodate more children."

Yes, certainly easier than the closed-loop systems needed in asteroid or Lagrange settlements. If you plot the marginal cost of supporting new people against their likely contribution, Mars levels off much quicker. However, there would still be constraints, and marginal cost would greatly exceed contribution until there were enough people to build most of the things that would otherwise have to be sent from Earth. Order of magnitude guess: 500,000 settlers as the break-even point, and most of them would have to be new arrivals bringing their own capital.

A rather fascinating consequence of the need for volatiles is that the gas giant moons will actually have better prospects than belt asteroids or inner system Langrangian stations. If they can find places to set up shop where waste heat won't sublimate the ground beneath them, they'd be sitting on a gold mine--not just for themselves, but for transportation to Mars and the asteroid settlements. The cost of sending mass even from Triton would be negligible compared to lifting it off Earth, so from the Jovian moons it would be absurdly cheap. If Mars is ever to be terraformed, I'd guess the raw materials would come from the Jupiter system--assuming, of course, that space elevators don't pan out, in which case I'm not sure which would be cheaper.

"In my book, a Miracle-Gro like product is shipped by the ton to add nitrogen to the local H2O and CO2."

Liquid nitrogen is pretty cheap and easily storable, so you'd probably get a much better per-kg deal sending the raw material and making the soil in situ, not to mention helping the settlements build ground-up manufacturing. Although, on the gripping hand, you might want to supplement the locally available hydrogen by sending ammonium instead of N2, so it's possible Miracle Gro could be cheaper due to the greater difficulty of storing and handling ammonium.

"Various plant food makers financially compete for the privilege of becoming the "official fertilizer of the Mars colony""

They defray the cost of shipping the fertilizer, and in return get the privilege of mentioning the settlements in their advertising. Now that's what I call a bargain--and it could probably be applied to other consumables too. Food, toilet paper, hygiene products, medical supplies, etc, at least until domestic manufacturing ramps up.

Posted by Brian Swiderski at August 19, 2006 06:08 PM

Possibly? Not possibly, absolutely.

In my draft, a early colonist gets an insatiable craving for popcorn. A craving which did not occur to her before leaving Earth. But, once on Mars, she needs popcorn, which no one thought to bring.

100 kg of popcorn to Mars? The folks running the settlement collect over 100x the shipping costs in exchange for the promotional considerations of this colonist going on camera and expresing her gratitude to the popcorn company which donates the product and part of the cost of a supply rocket.

Posted by Bill White at August 19, 2006 09:19 PM

"100 kg of popcorn to Mars? The folks running the settlement collect over 100x the shipping costs in exchange for the promotional considerations of this colonist going on camera and expresing her gratitude to the popcorn company which donates the product and part of the cost of a supply rocket."

Hmm, 100x? If we assume the launch cost to Mars ends up stabilizing around $10,000/kg, then 100 kg is $1 million, and the company would be paying a hundred million dollars for an advertising campaign. I figure they could make maybe 5x off of very large, multibillion-dollar conglomerates who would ship their subsidiary products, but it would be way too large to negotiate with individual brands.

Oh, and here's an idea: Once the settlements have a degree of agricultural and chemical processing, instead of sending products directly, companies negotiate use of Mars-based facilities and manpower to manufacture their products with in situ organic resources.

"First M&M factory on Mars" they could call it, even if it was just a foot-long metal cylinder on a work bench making ten M&Ms per hour for one day. Any necessary innovations in the ingredients could then be marketed back on Earth as the "Mars" version of the product: "Have a taste of the future, try new Mars Pepsi!" Of course, the recipes being proprietary, they would be free to embellish the ingredients if the real thing was kind of dodgy.

Posted by Brian Swiderski at August 19, 2006 11:03 PM

Why $10,000 per kg? Same delta V to Mars with aerobraking and parachute landing as to Luna with soft landing via rocket.

Its a 5 to 1 ratio, in very rough terms.

$1000 per pound to LEO means $5000 per pound to Mars or less than $2275 per kg - - using chemical propulsion.

Use tethers or solar ion for LEO to Mars and the costs drop rapidly below $2275 per kg.

Posted by Bill White at August 22, 2006 07:54 AM

"$1000 per pound to LEO"

Who's offering $1000/lb to LEO? The only rocket offering that or lower is Dnepr, and that's because it's subsidized by the Russian military.

Posted by Brian Swiderski at August 23, 2006 03:11 AM

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