SPC #8: ASTEN Report

Welcome to the Sunday Paper Club. Every Sunday, this blog will offer analysis of a paper on space habitation and other related topics. These are my opinions on a weekly scientific paper; basically I read the paper and write down my thoughts are I read it. They are subject to my perspectives and believes. I am open to debate, so if any reader believes I have misinterpreted something in a paper, please point it out. I'm only a student and I'm still learning how to read these papers and interpret them. All quotes are from the paper unless otherwise noted. All papers I review are available for free online.

This week we are reviewing the ASTEN Report, the paper which made a kid from Canada famous.

From the first 2 pages of the report, I was impressed. What this kid did was minimize the human extinction argument and presented it in a way the made his point not something to fear, but something that if we address would bring the improvement of mankind. He also points out the positives of a space habitation by writing about how space habitations will promote space and make it more useful.

The paper's assumptions are fairly solid. The writer has assumed that solar panels and Aerogel will have their manufacturing costs reduced. Also, sustainable public opinion is critical for this to work. This will be a major piece of a society's work and the whole society must stay behind it for a long time.

The report goes through the author's thought pattern for designing this station by showing the reader pro and con lists for each element. He presents a very good argument for smaller space stations, stating increased size would "make the project financially unfeasible".

I don't understand why the author stated that the ability to look across and see the other side of the space station as a negative. It might confuse some people and it also might not allow for the space station's residents to be immersed in the illusion of a Earth like environment. But, I don't think the later is a big deal and people eventually stop being confused in spinning structures. However, the paper does choice to use a cylindrical design, which would disprove an early concept I posted about which was spherical. Basically, cylinders allow for even gravity across all surfaces. This student's idea also allows for the modular design which also caused me to call that earlier post's idea brilliant.

What was interesting was the industrial sections are in the middle of the sphere, while the living areas are on the outside. This allows for micro-gravity to be used in industrial applications and the residents while not have all the bone zapping negative effects of Zero-G. Another design advantage over the idea which I held up as brilliant is the inflatable of this space settlement. Also, any industrial accidents would be contained to the center.

This station uses a algae oxygen recovery system. With such a critical system, a natural processes will reduce the moving parts and thus the failure rate of the system. It truly is brilliant. The station uses Demron to protect it's self from radiation.

In short, this is a very interesting idea and this kid is the next Gerard K. O'Neill. I can't wait to see his doctoral paper.

SPC #7: Maslow Windows

Welcome to the Sunday Paper Club. Every Sunday, this blog will offer analysis of a paper on space habitation and other related topics. These are my opinions on a weekly scientific paper. They are subject to my perspectives and believes. I am open to debate, so if any reader believes I have misinterpreted something in a paper, please point it out. I'm only a student and I'm still learning how to read these papers and interpret them. All quotes are from the paper unless otherwise noted. All papers I review are available for free online.

This week we are reviewing the paper 21st Century Waves: Forecasting Technology Booms and Human Expansion Into the Cosmos.

Photo by Grant MacDonald

One of my favorite rebuttals for economic arguments against space habitation is the Maslow Window theory. However, when I asked a question on the blog Ask Me Anything, I found myself unable to explain this theory in depth. If I am going to continue to use this theory to support the space habitation argument, I must at least read the paper.

Basically, Maslow Windows are economic time periods that are similar to the 1960s, the height of the space race. Every major event in human history tends to be clustered in 56 year bursts. This theory suggests that economic booms are the driving force behind history's biggest wars and finest engineering projects.

An optimistic society is a more productive one. During times of economic prosperity, the people of the world tend to be happier. If they are happier they are more productive, plus they have the time and resources to dream. I can tell you right now, no major progress in space will be made during this recession. In my opinion, humanity is focused on the negative; we are a pessimistic society. I see extreme movements with negative opinions of the future, like the 2012 movement, forming and growing. If we think humanity is on a downward slide to it's doom, if we think that we will never return to the good old days, then we will not have the will to better ourselves.

I feel, right now, only the most passionate people are in the space field. You can only find people who where born to work in this field, supporting and funding this field. The general public simply doesn't care about space anymore. Dreams of space cities are crazy when your in a world stocking up emergency supplies for a end of the world date which was born out of fear for the future.

It is possible that this recession, a time where the space field is in danger, was born out of the lack of hope in the future. If you thought everything was going downhill, you would roll up into a ball and pull all your money into gold. Look at the news, just looking at this small sample of human event, it is very reasonable to conclude that we are all doomed. But, if you where to look at each industry, each area of human life in depth, there is reason for hope. "The critical factor is our belief about what's going to happen to us".

"Rene Dubos [said] [t]he most distressing thing about the modern world is not the gravity of its problems...it is the dampening of the human spirit...[o]ut very survival as a species depends on hope". I agree with and have first hand experience with this statement. I'm graduating from high school on Monday, yet the morale of my high school's class of 2009 is at an all-time low. My class has a sense of impeding doom; the child-free movement is strong in my class, 2012 is a favorite topic. My class does not have the ambition and passion and all the other characteristics of youth that a fresh, 18 year old, high school graduate should have. Let me give you an example, this is a discussion thread on Facebook. The names have been blacked out for legal reasons. My real name is Daniel Sims.

I see comments like this all the time. We are the youth and we are hopeless. Space dreams can not survive if they can't even seek refugee in our youth. The human spirit is crushed and with it, dreams of space. The Internet might be a factor in triggering the mindset change needed for space habitation. With the Internet, bigger audiences then ever are reachable. One person can try and comfort someone with a dark mind. The great events that happened today are easier to find.

Something I found interesting was the description of a Macro-engineering project: "although sometimes practical in purpose, they are often aimed at satisfying intangible needs of a spiritual or psychological nature and are highly inspiring". A mass space habitation project would be enough to push my classmates out of the dark frame of mind. Since it is a need, maybe, as we get darker, the support for any inspiration will grow. Just like how people start wanting to eat anything as they get hungry.

Maslow windows also call attention to the need for humanity to stop fighting each other. Maslow windows are often shattered by war. The reason we are not in an infinite time of abundance is because of the destruction war brings. "To a visitor from Mars, it must have appeared that the Western world in 1914 was on the brink of Utopia". WW1 brought us away from that joyous brink. Something that is stopping NASA from getting more funding is the Iraq war; if we weren't in Iraq, we might have more money for dreams.

Maslow windows are triggered by great technological developments. If someone where to develop a very cheap rocket, then humanity would less economic reasons not to go, and more reasons to go to space. Which we need to have because if we do not establish space habitations by 2025, according the the theory, we will have to wait till 2081.

Sunday Paper Club #5: Entomophagy as Part of a Space Diet for Habitation on Mars

Every Sunday, this blog will offer analysis of a paper on space habitation and other related topics. These are my opinions on a weekly scientific paper. They are subject to my perspectives and believes. I am open to debate, so if any reader believes I have misinterpreted something in a paper, please point it out. I'm only a student and learning how to read these papers and interpret them. All quotes are from the paper unless otherwise noted. All papers I review are available for free online.

To design a space settlement many things must be considered, but if that settlement wants to be sufficient then they must build the settlement around the generation of food. But, in order to build around the food, one needs to know the diet of space colonists. This weeks paper explores that diet.

The paper suggests entomophagy, yes insect eating, to feed space colonists. Insects are a very stable and highly productive food source. Since there will be so little room on a mars colony, we can not risk the space resources on traditional farm animals who may die off. The paper primarily suggests vegetables as the core of the diet, but incests are included to make up for the lack of certain minerals in a vegetarian diet. As a vegan, I disagree with this statement the paper makes, but I am biased. The paper does point out that B12 and cholesterol can be obtained from plant life, but this paper is looking only at using the most efficient food sources and bugs are more space efficient than growing seaweed for B12 and mushrooms for vitamin D.

Assuming the space colony relies on trees, leafs would be a huge source of inedible biomass that incests can convert into an edible form. Insects are also a good choice as an animal food source because of their position on the food chain. “One level up the food chain, 80-90% of food energy is lost as dissipation of heat. This decreases the exploitable energy down to one tenth for one step up in the ecological system (Odum,1971)”. To best utilize leafs, silk worms where chosen as the staple insect.

The paper also suggests a few more foods to make use of the waste a space colony would produce. Chickens can eat any wasted vegetables, mushrooms can be grown on scrap wood. An “Aquatic fern, Azolla, is cultivated on the water surface of rice paddies for nitrogen fixation by symbiotic cyanobacteria” (Blue-green algae). Loach, a type of fish, can eat Azolla and can survive in low water quality.

The paper suggests rice as the grain of choice in space and soybeans to provide additional protein. Both crops have high yield for the room that they take up, the only problem is that soybeans are an “entomophilous flowering species depend[ing] on pollinating animals or their equivalent”. So, either the colonists have pollinate the crop themselves or they have to take bees with them. It could work out though, having bees would mean space colonists have honey. Sweet potato was also chosen for it's high yield per area of land.

The paper also suggests planting a crop called Komatsuna (Japanese mustard spinach). “Komatsu[na] is a fast-growing vegetable and is ready for harvest 35 days after sowing in warm climates” (1). Thus making it a great choice for the space colony which may have brought little food and needs a quick turn around. It also allows for an crop failure's impact to be reduced by just planting new crops. “It was found that a combination of 300g rice, 100g soybean, 200g sweet potato and 300g Komatsuna per day fills the nutritional requirement”. With Komatsuna filling much of the vitamin, iron and calcium requirements.

In zero gravity human bodies loss a lot of water. Any water that does remain moves to the chest and the head. All this increases the work the kidneys have to do, so a reduction in the salt intake is necessary.

I have a question for my readers: If this was your diet if you were to become a space colonist, would you go?

Sources:

(1): Author Unknown. Komatsuna (Japanese Mustard Seed). Oriental Vegetable Seeds - EvergreenSeeds. April 05, 2009

Sunday Paper Club #4: The Interplanetary Superhighway and Human Habitation on the Moon

Every Sunday, this blog will offer analysis of a paper on space habitation and other related topics. These are my opinions on a weekly scientific paper. They are subject to my perspectives and believes. I am open to debate, so if any reader believes I have misinterpreted something in a paper, please point it out. I'm only a student and learning how to read these papers and interpret them. All quotes are from the paper unless otherwise noted. All papers I review are available for free online.

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.

Sunday Paper Club #3: The End of Easy Energy and What to Do About It

Every Sunday, this blog will offer analysis of a paper on space habitation and other related topics. These are my opinions on a weekly scientific paper. They are subject to my perspectives and believes. I am open to debate, so if any reader believes I have misinterpreted something in a paper, please point it out. I'm only a student and learning how to read these papers and interpret them. All quotes are from the paper unless otherwise noted. All papers I review are available for free online.


The End of Easy Energy and What to Do About It, by James Michael Snead, is the very through analysis of today's energy situation that pleads for the and proves, beyond a shadow of doubt, that space solar power is the best way to solve the energy crisis considering our current technologies.


The problem that space solar power is best equipped to solve is this: most alternative fuels require energy to produce them, for example, one needs to electrolyze water to produce hydrogen and biofuels requires energy to run farms. Furthermore, space solar power allows for the on-demand generation of energy (dispatchable energy), whereas wind power and earth based solar power does not. Not only that, but, because of logisical and safety problems, nuclear power would require a ton of political will to implimate on the massive scale ("350 1-GWe (gigawatt-electric) nuclear power plants" built every four years) that the paper calculates. Hydropower would require an equilly massive project with geopolitical tensions increased because of water blackage.


All of these future energy projects are massive, but they must be undertaken. Even if you don't believe in global warming: "With an annual average of about 155 billion BOE [,Barrels of oil equivalent,] through the end of the century, the world would need about 14,100 billion BOE of oil, coal, and natural gas to reach the end of the century. Current proved recoverable reserves of oil, coal, and natural gas total only about 6,000 billion BOE. Expert estimates of additional recoverable reserves optimistically add another 6,000 billion BOE—for example, including nearly 3,000 billion BOE from all oil from oil shale—for a combined total of around 12,000 billion BOE.[Not including methan hydrates] With increasing world energy consumption and if oil, coal, and natural gas continue to provide most of the world’s energy, known and new reserves of oil, coal, and natural gas will be exhausted by the end of the century, if not much earlier". The fact is, we will run out of nonrenewable fuels by the end of the century. If America or any other nation takes the leap and builds Space Solar Power, they will be the leaders in 2100, free from the struggle of the last drop of oil.


But, make no mistake, space solar power would be a massive project, requiring 224 platforms each weighting atleast 20,000 to be built; each would be about 5 miles long. A problem because we won't have the space shuttle in less then a year; space solar power would require a huge investment, not only in the platforms, but in space infastucture. But, the energy output could be multplied by using the ground based rectenna as a site to grow algae to make into biodiesel.


But, just to underscore the massive amount of rescources we will need to survive when oil runs out, "In the United States, 375,000 sq. mi.—about 12% of the continental United States—would be directly placed into use for renewable energy generation to meet this paper’s projection of 2100 energy needs". This is huge, but space solar power is the best use of land because it only takes up 0.6% of the United States' land, yet it will provide 70% of the nation's dispatchable energy needs in 2100.


But, this paper is not a soapbox for space solar power alone, it suggests the aggresive search for more oil to ease the transition into these new energy systems, conservation of energy, the premptive switch to renewable energy sources before the oil runs out and reaserch into renewable energy. But we must do this, "The total U.S. 2100 need for about 28 billion BOE per year equates to 162 Q-BTU per year, or 10% of the world’s total... in the form of oil, the world would need about 140,000 super tankers each year by 2100 while the U.S. would need about 14,000 super tankers each year" to keep to lights on.


Furthermore, the power trasmittion back down to earth is safe, at around the same frequency as cell phone, the skin would only warm if one where to step into the beam. So, this is not a really big laser, nor could it be an effective weapon (Sir, the enemy seems to be tanning in the death ray). Yes, cell phone signals are not the best thing for your body, but a human will not burn in the ray. Plus, the radiation is non-ionizing.

This paper is a must read for the space community. Please check out the author's website, http://mikesnead.net/, and read the paper, it is over 120 pages and has so much information that can not be placed in a blog post. Once again, I'm sorry for this post being late.

Delay in Sunday paper club

Hey, I have a really big test tomorrow, so I can't post the Sunday paper club this Sunday, it will be up tomorrow.

Sunday Paper Club #2: Adapting To Artificial Gravity at High Rotational Speeds

Every Sunday, this blog will offer analysis of a paper on space habitation and other related topics. These are my opinions on a weekly scientific paper. They are subject to my perspectives and believes. I am open to debate, so if any reader believes I have misinterpreted something in a paper, please point it out. I'm only a student and learning how to read these papers and interpret them. All quotes are from the paper unless otherwise noted. All papers I review are available for free online.

This Sunday we will be covering the paper Adapting To Artificial Gravity at High Rotational Speeds by Heiko Hecht, Erika L. Brown and Laurence R. Young of MIT's Man-Vehicle Lab. This paper is covering the adaptation of subject to a spinning vehicle which will be affected by the Coriolis effect. The Coriolis Effect is head spinning to even consider and study. At first it would seems to defy newton's laws of motion. An object, on a spinning plane, will appear to deflect to one side. I have a youtube video and an image to help explain this effect.

(Image Source: Wikipedia, licensed under GFDL)

Zero-gravity environments cause to body to adapt, however these adaptations greatly weaken the human body. One way to over come this is with artificial gravity. The consensus on achieving artificial gravity is with a spinning structure that will take advantage of the pseudo, centrifugal force: a force that only exists within the frame of reference of a person on the spinning object. Previous research has suggested limiting rotational speed to 10 rpm, but this paper suggests that the speed can be pushed to 23 rpm. Previous research has concluded that limiting the rational speed is because “during head turns [in a artificial gravity environment], the changes in angular velocity caused by bringing the semicircular canals into or out of the plane of rotation can cause disorientating sensations of illusory self-motion, improper reflexive eye movements, and motion sickness.” But, senses will adapt to an environment to decrease negative effects, just like how one adjusts to a bad smell after a while.

This study has three test groups with 19 subjects divided among them. This is a fairly small sample size, so I think this study should be repeated with a larger group. But this study did have a high P-values (The chance that a sample mean would occur assuming the treatment had no affect) which means their results are significant. I would just want to see the data pinned down exactly. The three had the following treatments: group one had a dark centrifuge which they could not see out, group two had a lit environments where subjects could not see out of the centrifuge and group three had a centrifuge which they could see out of.

This study measured the subjects discomfort by measuring the number of head turns they where willing to do and asking the subjects how sick they felt with a scale where 0 represented “I'm fine” and 20 represented “I'm going to hurl”. The subjects where all volunteers so the study did not use a random sample.

The study found that with a simple hour long training session, mission control can train a crew to operate on a centrifuge in space, simulating artificial gravity. This allows to development of artificial gravity on smaller crafts. Despite confusing effects caused by a spinning plane, the human body can adapt. No matter what the frame of reference be; they can look inside the spaceship or look outside the space ship.

What do you think about this article? Do you agree with my interpretation?