Image credit: Cici Koenig
By looking at how the world economy was born, we can discover the way to shift to a space based economy. America is the prime example of how a whole society was built around one machine. America an automobile based society with a economy built around the car. But, it didn't start like that, the car was a horrid device when it was first invented, made worse by the lack of infrastructure for the machine. Roads where slowly built, but it took the Interstate Highway System to change the US into a fully, automotive society and economy. So, if we want to become a space based society and have a space based economy, we must follow history's blueprints and develop space infrastructure; we must develop and use a Interplanetary Superhighway.
As a comparison, what we are doing now to get to other planets is like driving across the country in a straight line, it can be done, but one would waste energy going over mountains and rivers. Following a pre-made path across the country would involve more turns, but less effort has to be made to get across.
The paper The Interplanetary Superhighway and Human Habitation on the Moon, by Martin W. Lo, lays out the plan for such an effort reducing highway. One of the major road blocks to Space Habitation is launch costs. If one were to reduce the amount of fuel that needs to be launched into space, the rocket would be lighter or the amount of payload would go up. Both would make rocket launches more economic. The reduction of fuel needs would make space more accessible and desirable.
This paper proposes a system of low energy orbits be used to reduce the fuel need of rockets. These “ultra-low-energy orbits” are “the gravitational dynamics of three or more bodies in the Solar System”. Energy must be used to escape gravitational pulls, but one can make a route so that gravity is not worked against; a route that uses gravity. Unfortunately, such a route would increase the time the trip takes, “requir[ing] 30 days to well over a year to go from the Earth to the Moon.”. But, such long transport times are acceptable when transporting a massive amounts of equipment and the money saved makes the trip well worth the wait.
So, history will repeat it's self. Just like the car, infrastructure will change the spacecraft from a specialized machine into a object of daily use. This system will allow for the habitation of space by reducing costs, giving incentive to invest in space habitation. This system does have it's problems, but with planning, astronauts can have all there supplies arrive and not worry about reducing the supplies taken on a mission.
