Transmat World: August 2018

Wednesday, August 15, 2018

The Second Amendment ... Wait For It

The Second Amendment of the United States Constitution reads: "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."

Is everyone discounting the first part of this sentence? It is a sentence, despite that awkward comma behind “Militia”. It means, in modern English, that the right of the people to bear arms shall not be infringed upon because a well regulated Militia is necessary to the security of a free State.

It costs $4000 to recycle ton of plastic bags worth $500 on open market.

Historical references and perspective lend credence to the idea that “State”, in this case, is equivalent to “Nation”. This was written in 1791, the year the Constitution was ratified. It was after the formation of the U.S. military in 1775, so was an additional precaution to keep the United States from falling into the hands of a foreign power.

I don’t see any well regulated militia anywhere in the United States. Yes, there are militia, but they are typically sorry-looking fringe groups of dubious heritage and purpose. The whole Second Amendment has been perverted to accommodate those who like to make, sell, and use guns. Just guns. Not arms. Arms is what the Second Amendment calls for. The arms necessary to do what the Second Amendment purports to do, protect the state, is not available to individuals legally. To go up against a Russian T-14 Armata tank or a Mil Mi-24 helicopter gunship you need the right equipment.

If you knew your neighbor had an M1 Abrams in the garage and carried a couple of Sidewinder missiles and a satchel nuke around in the trunk of his car, would you sleep better at night? Of course you would. Now slowly hand me that “For Sale” sign and take a deep breath.

Don’t worry. He can’t get a tank except for old, obsolete WWII crap that’s obsolete and wouldn’t hold up for more than 30 seconds in a modern firefight.

That begs the question, however. Is the U.S. government in conflict with the Second Amendment for not allowing citizens to properly arm themselves for the coming conflict that our forefathers predicted the U.S. military might not be able to handle?

Yes, it is! After all, this is the land of the free and home of the brave. We should be able to buy our own attack helicopters, tanks, fighter jets, and bombers. The Second Amendment tells us so.

Wait … there is a problem. Nobody can afford those things except for the U.S. government. Let’s just get straight what's going on here. The U.S. government buys all those arms that the Second Amendment says we should be buying ourselves. Furthermore, the government collects our money to spend on these arms.

Paper bags take 5 X the water to make and 7 X the fuel to transport than plastic bags.

So, not only is the U.S. government unconstitutionally forbidding us to buy arms, they are collecting our money to do it for us in the most brazen, bald-faced practice of socialism on the planet. You must contact your representative today and make him or her understand that military socialism will not be tolerated on your watch. Either give back the money collected as if we belonged to an Israeli kibbutz or equally and fairly divide up the arms bought so far among all the citizens of the U.S. (I want an aircraft carrier - just putting my dibs in).

Monday, August 6, 2018

How We Will Get Asteroid Material Back To Earth

Tesla Roadster in space - courtesy wikipedia

We won't be hauling it down with a Tesla Roadster.

An asteroid one kilometer in diameter is parked at the Lagrange point L5 of the Earth/Moon gravitational system. The asteroid orbits the Earth at the same distance as the Moon - 238,900 miles. If a line were drawing through the center of the Earth to the Moon and the center of Earth to the asteroid there would be about a 45 degree angle between those lines. It is in a safe, stable orbit that does not require regular expenditures of fuel to keep it there. This safe, stable location was the deal between the United Nations and the company retrieving the giant space rock; actually more metal than rock. 16217 Ryugu contains iron, nickel, cobalt, water, nitrogen, hydrogen, and ammonia.

Plastic bags are made from ethane, a part of natural gas burned as waste before they started making plastic bags.

Outer space construction has not yet hit its stride so some cheap way is needed to get these metals to the surface of Earth where they can be sold. Here is how it could be done.

If chunks of metal were cut off of Ryugu and simply dropped to Earth, it would be a mess. Chunks big enough not to vaporize completely upon reentry could do major damage. The velocity when it reached Earth would be nearly 200,000 miles per hour and create an explosion equivalent to 100,000 tons of TNT. So, for practicality, we need to get this stuff closer to Earth and reduce that velocity.

Flaming mass making reentry - courtesy Neil Bleving

A deal is brokered between the powers that be on Earth and the asteroid mining company so that a million ton chunk of iron can be brought into a medium Earth orbit about 2,000 miles up with careful planning and monitoring. Along with it comes several space tugs and lots of water (from the asteroid) as fuel (electrolysis - oxygen, hydrogen) to keep it in orbit. Engines are anchored to the big asteroid chunk and will automatically kick in to prevent a deterioration in orbit.

Any amount of heat one requires in outer space is available. One simply needs the right size mirror configured to apply that heat to an appropriately sized area on command. With this heat the stoney portions of an asteroid and, perhaps, lunar regolith can be melted and turned into ceramic. Metals can be melted down by these same mirrors.

Concentrating mirrors cut off a 300 ton chunk of iron and begin to melt it down.

Concurrently, stoney portions of the asteroid are melted to form ceramic. While the ceramic is molten, pre-heated (to prevent explosive expansion) nitrogen is introduced into the ceramic melt to produce a foamed ceramic material. This material will be formed into the shape of a lifting body similar to that of the Space Shuttle but about half the size. As the hot nitrogen entrained in the ceramic cools it forms a partial vacuum, making the material much less conductive to heat.

It takes 7 trucks to move the same number of paper bags as one truck moving plastic bags.

The blob of iron melt is rammed into the ceramic mold. High temperature spargers inserted through the wall of the mold inject the iron with nitrogen as well, making a foamed metal having one tenth the weight of iron while still retaining much of its strength.

Once out of the mold, a foamed-ceramic mat is attached to the bottom of the foamed metal lifting body. and a steering module is inserted into the cavity molded in the rear to accept it. This is a heat-resistant rudder and elevators on vertical and horizontal stabilizers controlled by an onboard GPS and autopilot. Built in space with only the electronics and motor coming from Earth, those parts are used again while the rest is recycled.

A railgun is built on the mass of the asteroid chunk and points at a tangent point to Earth about 100 miles above the surface. The lifting body is attached through grooves molded into it and launched towards Earth at 20,000 miles per hour retrograde to orbital velocity. When the lifting body reaches the upper atmosphere, it is going much slower in relation to the Earth, allowing a safe, guided landing on a shallow lake where it is recovered.

The bubbled metal might be worth many times its solid value, making the whole operation profitable. Many types of metallurgy may be possible in a vacuum and weightlessness that aren’t feasible on Earth. We could be talking about metals such as high temperature inconels that are very expensive. I designed a coil in a furnace, the prototype for making BPA free plastic bottles, where a 6 inch schedule 40 (1/4” thick wall) piece of pipe cost $1200 per linear foot.

For smaller packages of very valuable metals like platinum or palladium, NASA may have just the thing. They have developed a folding heat shield. A small reentry vessel with a hundred pounds of palladium has a heat shield that folds out to a much larger size than the vessel itself, creating a shield off of which most of the frictional heat is sloughed away around the side of the vessel on its reentry path to an elevation and speed at which it can deploy a parachute. Be there to pick it up before someone else gets it because that's 1.6 million dollars we're talking about.

courtesy NASA

These are the possibilities once we start thinking about how to maximize the payback for such a massive undertaking as capturing an asteroid. Of course, the real payoff for the asteroid miner will be when construction off world begins, increasing the value of their asteroid many times. Unexpected returns will be the technological advances necessary to get this done that will eventually work their way into our everyday lives.

Other articles you may enjoy:

Oumuamua: Alien Probe or Asteroid? It Could Be Both

Cryptocurrency Is Going Into Space

Going Back To the Moon Is Not Just for Governments Anymore

Why It Is a Certainty We Will Become a Space-Based Civilization

Asteroid Mining - How to Pick the Right Asteroid

Recycling Asteroids For Fun and Profit

Taking the 06-03-25 Asteroid Shuttle to Mars - An Alternative to Planned Mars Missions

A Heavy Metal, Cannibalistic Asteroid Propulsion System

Sticking the Landing On Your Billion Dollar Asteroid

Artificial Intelligence and Asteroid Mining Will Be a (Necessary) Match Made In the Heavens

The Weapon of Mass Destruction Nobody Is Talking About

How We Can Diminish the Possibility of Water Wars

There's An Asteroid Out There With All of Our Names On It

What Will Be the Most Common Currency In a Future Space-Based Society?

Workers In Space Will Live In Igloos

The Military Values High Ground - Space Is the Highest

Very Large Scale 3D Printing In Space

Energy and Space; Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum

China’s Strategy for the Future Is Scary Smart

We Will Live on the Moon: the How and Why

Thursday, August 2, 2018

The Military Values High Ground - Space Is the Highest

Moon being bombed by asteroids - courtesy NASA

The energy of the Sun near Earth is about 1368 watts/meter squared. The Falcon Heavy will be able to lift a directional mirror into space with a variable focus length of about 50 feet to thousands of miles. Its 332 square meters could focus 455,000 watts onto a spot the size of a baseball, vaporizing whatever has the poor fortune to be there at the time.

Paper bags take 5 X the water to make and 7 X the fuel to transport than plastic bags

Why would someone want such a machine? To mine asteroids. To mine the moon. To melt lunar regolith and asteroid material into shapes to build habitats in space or on the Moon. To power crucibles making steel and aluminum and other metals in space. To vaporize space debris that has become a hazard. Such power is handy in space, but there is a dark side.

Asteroid being mined with solar mirror - courtesy Dan Brown on flickr

What if someone wanted to use such a mirror to do damage to a particular country or city for military purposes? One could set fire to or melt just about anything on the Earth or Moon with such a machine - cities, missile silos, air fields, ships, cities, individual buildings. No satellite in orbit would be safe. It could destroy the International Space Station. Keep the keys to the space mirror in a safe place.

There is a lot of money invested in the idea of moving an asteroid near to the Earth and mining it for metals and minerals. The acceptable location for such a huge mass of metal would be one of the lunar Lagrange points L4 or L5 where it would rest in a stable orbit about the Earth. Getting it there is the trick. It would require a robotic space tug.

It costs $4000 to recycle ton of plastic bags worth $500 on open market.

What if someone deliberately sabotaged the space tug’s guidance system and sent a kilometer diameter chunk of iron hurtling toward the Earth? The damage could be incalculable. From treasure trove for the future of mankind to the fall of civilization for some poor region of Earth, perhaps the whole planet. Or someone could attach such a tug to a smaller asteroid and program it to come fast out of the sun. Undetectable until it is too late.

Asteroid being moved by space tug - courtesy Korite on flickr

These examples are besides what may be already in orbit or planned to go into orbit. This includes EMP (electromagnetic pulse) bombs and “rods of god”. Since 1967 it has been illegal to park atomic weapons in orbit, but that may not stop the likes of North Korea. To get around the orbital nuclear bomb ban, the U.S. has come up with a simple rod of tungsten dropped from orbit. The one foot diameter by twenty feet long cylinder of metal reaches ten times the speed of sound by the time it hits and mimics a small nuclear device in its devastation. It penetrates hundreds of feet into the ground, destroying underground bunkers and silos - something a nuclear weapon cannot do.

That is not the only kinetic weapon available. Combine several NASA HiPEP ion thrusters with a TOPAZ style nuclear reactor, a guidance system, and a few tons of xenon (all properly armored against cosmic radiation); and you have a weapon that travels for light years and builds up a velocity that is an appreciable fraction of the speed of light. Besides targeting other planets for destruction, the truly paranoid might put such a device, perhaps several, in a long elliptical orbit around Earth, coming close to Earth on a periodic basis. In a form of mutually assured destruction, a country under attack could threaten to have one of these hit the Earth instead of continue its normal orbit. The affect would be similar to a super volcano eruption. Actual destruction might cover a continent. The weather effects could destroy the rest of civilization over the next few years.

It takes 7 trucks to move the same number of paper bags as one truck moving plastic bags.

Another thing about having control of weapons in space is that it would allow an interdiction of anyone else coming into space for commercial or exploratory purposes. The entity in control of such weapons would be the arbiter of who comes and goes in space, who gets the benefits, who prospers and who doesn't. This is a very powerful position. This is the kind of lopsided power that starts wars.

On June 18, 2018, President Trump directed the Pentagon to create a new division of the military - the Space Force. “My administration is reclaiming America’s heritage as the world’s greatest space-faring nation. The essence of the American character is to explore new horizons and to tame new frontiers. But our destiny, beyond the Earth, is not only a matter of national identity, but a matter of national security,” he announced. “[I]t is not enough to merely have an American presence in space. We must have American dominance in space.”

It seems the President may have been ill-informed about the advisability of a new branch of the military devoted only to space. The reason is that dominance of space means true dominance of the Earth. Other countries know this. The military has always valued high ground and space is the highest. That makes the President’s statement, “We must have American dominance in space,” one of the most nakedly aggressive of any leader of a nation on Earth regarding the frontiers of space. If any other large nations are taking him seriously, they will be making plans to counter aggressive actions taken in the last frontier.

With all of this death and destruction possible from outer space, it should be obvious that the exploration and exploitation of space should be done in joint ventures with as many countries participating as possible. This will cut down on paranoia about what any one country may be up to in space and prevent physical confrontations on Earth surrounding this subject and possibly prevent the use of space as the ultimate militarily strategic high ground.

Wednesday, August 1, 2018

Very Large Scale 3D Printing In Space

Bryan Versteeg / Spacehabs.com

In 2011 German designer Markus Kayser built a machine called a Solar Sinter. It concentrates sunlight via a 3 foot by 5 foot fresnel lens onto a box containing sand. The box moves a layer of sand in programmed patterns, allowing the 1600 degree Celsius beam to melt the sand in a controlled design. Once that pattern, or layer, is complete, another layer of sand is added and the process is repeated until a 3D object is created from fused sand.

A very similar machine could 3D print objects in orbit around the Earth or Moon or anywhere in space sufficient sunlight can be collected to melt stuff. It would have to be highly modified over Mr. Kayser’s design. For one thing, you don’t have the convenience of gravity holding down your bed of sand. Another thing … you don’t have sand.

Plastic grocery bags prefer this as their second career.

The fresnel lens will have to be replaced with mirrors simply because mirrors are cheaper, more rugged, and more flexible. The bed of the printer will have to be inside a centrifuge affair producing artificial gravity. Envision a large cylinder 80 feet in diameter and 300 feet long. It spins around its long axis. The printer head can travel the length of the cylinder or in a circular path inside the cylinder, or a flat path on a chord of some arc of the cylinder that is still far enough from the central axis of the cylinder to have enough “gravity” for the system to work. Flexible light pipes will take the sunlight collected by the mirrors at the center of one end of the cylinder and feed it to the printer head. A lens at the printer head will further control the acuity of the beam that hits the medium to be melted.

Ideally, the centrifuge portion would be attached to an asteroid placed in orbit at one of the Lagrange points L4 or L5 in the Earth-Moon gravity system. That would simplify spinning it without the worry of compensating for precession like a top or anything else that spins. It would be attached to the relatively massive asteroid with brackets that extend to the ends of the cylinder where bearings and electric motors provide smooth, stable rotation with a minimum of fuss and bother. The asteroid is acting like a good work bench, providing stabilizing mass to carry out projects in space.

If a suitable mass isn't available, the cylinder would simply be set spinning by tangential thrusters with any precession also controlled by swiveling thrusters at each end of the cylinder.

Centrifugal 3D printer attached to asteroid. Drawing by Glen Hendrix.
Click to Enlarge

If we’re not talking about sand as a printing medium, what are we talking about? There are really only two practical sources for meltable medium to be used in our 3D printer. One is lunar regolith and the other is ground up asteroid. The asteroid option is cheaper if you discount the getting it there part. Lunar regolith would have to be transported from the Moon’s surface. Asteroid material is already in orbit. So far, two good reasons asteroid mining will complement our travel to space and our ability to stay there for any length of time.

Use those plastic grocery bags again. Save money. Save the world. Here’s how.

The disadvantages of using asteroid material are that it has to be excavated from the asteroid, sorted by material, and milled into a powder. This will call for the invention of robotic excavators that drill into the asteroid much as tunnel borers do their job on Earth. One of the first jobs to be done in mining an asteroid will be to make safe, comfortable housing for personnel during the project. The asteroid excavator can hollow out tunnels which will be outfitted for habitation safe from any stray cosmic rays.

Asteroid mining - courtesy NASA

The Moon’s regolith, on the other hand, is already a fine powder. So fine, it was a problem on the lunar landing missions. It is also fairly uniform in composition. Although it would have to be transported from the surface of the Moon, the one sixth Earth gravity should make that a cheaper solution than bringing material from Earth, especially if water can be found on the Moon in sufficient quantity for use as fuel. A lot of regolith can be hauled into orbit for the cost of moving an asteroid.

3D printed Lunar base - courtesy European Space Agency

Let’s say we use another, more traditional method of 3D printing whereby a small, sticky glob of substance is deposited out of a nozzle and the nozzle moves on. Mixing our asteroid or lunar powder with water and some other adhering substance to hold everything together gives us a paste to use similar to what concrete printers use now, perhaps thicker to cut down on explosive evaporation of the paste as it comes out of the printer nozzle.

Imagine a large steel plate as the print bed. It could be a light gauge steel sheet with stiffeners on the bottom. Without gravity and its attendant forces, the print bed is just a place holder and starting point. The printing side is coated with Teflon for easy removal of the printed object. The edges of the plate are rounded to fit pulleys. Four pulleys with bearings, two on each side of the print bed and aligned with each other, roll continuously along the edges of the printer bed in the plus or minus “x” direction. From the centers of these pulleys extend upwards four shafts in the “y” axis direction. These shafts go through a stabilizer frame that holds everything together. This whole stabilizer frame moves in the plus or minus “y” direction. Mounted through this stabilizer frame is another shaft with the printer head and motor to drive that head in the plus or minus “z” direction. A large tank for mixing, storage, and pumping floats around, making sure there is no binding or interference with the umbilical delivering print medium to the printer head.

Free-floating 3D printer. Printing volume about 300' x 60' x 15'. Drawing by Glen Hendrix
Click to Enlarge.

This type of printer might be good for producing parts for habitats in orbit or insulating cladding for equipment or personnel tunnels in an asteroid. The cold of space will seep into the deepest parts of an asteroid and must be dealt with.

Whether we bring an asteroid into Earth’s orbit or not, I predict 3D printing of large objects in space will become a reality. It may or may not look and work like what I’ve described here, but they will be an integral part of a robotic fabrication milieu in outer space. Human workers will be at a premium. Machines will have to fill the gap.

The human race is on a course of infinite growth in a finite environment. The push into an infinite environment with infinite space, materials, and energy is inevitable and desirable if a global catastrophe is to be avoided. The sooner we start, the better chance we have of surviving our immature macro-societal tendencies.

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