Transmat World: space

Showing posts with label space. Show all posts

Tuesday, June 25, 2019

Would-Be Asteroid Miners Should Consider What’s in Orbit Around the Earth First

Five thousand satellites pass over your head every day. Only about two thousand are working. The rest are “junk” … inoperative … kaput. They represent approximately $20 billion worth of material floating around in space. The average weight of the currently active 2,064 satellites is 3,212 pounds. If defunct satellites follow that average it means there is 9,936,000 pounds of inoperable satellite in orbit worth $2,075 per pound. Since getting something into orbit costs about $10,000 per pound the actual value of that unused material in space is worth 120 billion dollars. That is more than is expected to be made from mining many asteroids. This is material that it is known exactly what it is, where it is, it’s already manufactured into useful components specifically for use in space, and it's already in space. Plus, it is much more accessible than even the closest near Earth asteroid. One of the asteroids we have actually been to is Ryugu. It’s estimated mineral value is just 83 billion dollars, and that is before costs to extract it are factored in.

The satellite situation has not gone unnoticed by some. Tom Markusic, founder of Firefly Space Systems, wants to tow these objects to an orbit around Mars where the salvaged components can help out with missions to Mars and the outer planets. Keith Volkert, CEO of Satellite Consulting, Inc., wants to use space tugs to tow these objects to an orbit around the Moon where they can be salvaged at leisure from a small space station orbiting there. The parts would then be catalogued and warehoused for future projects on the Moon or heading outward to Mars or beyond. NASA’s proposed Lunar Orbital Platform Gateway might fill the bill for this purpose, providing an attachment for a combination disassembly dock, warehouse, and habitat.

Besides making money, the removal of dead satellites from Earth orbit is a very good thing. There are too many of them, and the problem is getting worse. See this great time lapse video to see how big the problem is and how fast it is getting worse. There is the very real possibility of the Kessler Syndrome occurring. A cinematic portrayal of this event was well done in the movie Gravity. This is where a collision between objects in Earth orbit creates more objects in a cascading effect that eventually ruins the possibility of getting anything into orbit without being struck. Mankind could be stuck on Earth for a while.

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

New technology in thrusters may enable these salvage plans to take shape. Accion Systems has developed an ion thruster on a chip. It does away with a lot of complicated plumbing, bringing the concept down to a chip that accelerates ions and a reservoir of fluid for ion creation. The thruster chip is called TILE — Tiled Ionic Liquid Electrospray. The size of a deck of cards, a TILE has been operated continuously for 42 days straight. The goal is 417 days. That is a lot of time thrusting and one of the things making this technology so promising.

As far as satellite removal goes, think of a selfie stick with some TILEs and electronics on one end and an attachment mechanism on the other. A swivel to allow directional changes gives us the first space tug chugging its way to the Moon and back, gradually whittling away at all those space debris objects representing orbital Armageddon.

Phase Four is another company making tiny, efficient thrusters applicable for this situation. Large, high voltage electronics typically produce and accelerate ions in Hall thrusters to move things around in space. Phase Four has reduced these components down to a size you might expect in a cellphone. These components generate radio waves accelerating plasma produced from xenon gas. These efficient little engines could be used to nudge old satellites outward to the Moon, maybe Mars.

Going beyond the simple salvage, many of these satellites have simply run out of fuel. If they were to be refueled, they would be perfectly good satellites again. A salvage operation could also become a service operation, boosting the value of this material many times over its salvage value. But there is a legal hurdle that must be jumped before salvaging or servicing occurs. By Article VIII of the Outer Space Treaty countries are recognized to have jurisdiction and control over their space objects. Can this be valid after the origin country deliberately abandons the satellite in space? It can’t be a forever situation.

Once some company goes after an abandoned satellite and the country of origin protests, the U.N. must decide how to handle it. The U.N. should tell that nation that if they still want responsibility for their satellite, they will have to pay for it to stay in orbit. A yearly orbital fee based on the weight of the satellite should be levied by the U.N. on the country in question. I believe a nascent satellite salvage company should press the issue to get things done. The world’s governments and the U.N. are unlikely to spontaneously get around to solving this problem.

I think we will be hearing more about companies with schemes to remove dead satellites and simultaneously mine them for their valuable components. It is certainly a better plan than destroying these valuable objects and may even eclipse news and plans for asteroid mining for the near future.

The Environmental Advantage of a Space Elevator

The U.S. Must Recycle Recycling

Climate Change Will Herald the Age of Island Cities

Carbon Capture and Sequestration (CCS): The Existential Technology We Are Ignoring

Nations at Risk of Becoming Psychological Echo Chambers: China Sets Worrisome Precedent

Climate Change Will Alter The Way We Think About Energy

What Do We Do Now That We Know Climate Change is Inevitable?

Are You Susceptible to Digitally Induced Cognitive Karma

Why the Oceans Will Be Humanity’s Life Raft

There May Be a Quadrillion Dollars Lying About on the Moon

Mining That First Asteroid - Manned Mission or AI?

A Convergence of Technologies Will Create a New Age of Space Exploration

Steampunk Meets Star Wars: A Harrowing Micro-Tale of Future Spacefarers

The Space Habitat Revisited and Revised

Are Seeds of Conflict Brewing Over the Moon?

Just What Are NASA’s Plans Under Trump

Thruster On a Chip: An Alternative Rocket Science That Could Revolutionize Space Travel

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

How We Will Get Asteroid Material Back To Earth

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

Saturday, June 8, 2019

Outfitting a Mined Asteroid Into a Luxury Solar System Shuttle

ESO/M. Kornmesser on flicker

The early explorers set out on the high seas in wooden boats with cloth sails. They were brave people facing difficult conditions. The next century will see a similar wave of brave people willing to face difficulties to go see in space what no other human has seen or experienced. With proper planning, adequate funding, and modern technology, however, the conditions may not be all that difficult. In fact, they would definitely be considered luxurious by the crews of the Niña, Pinta, and Santa Maria. And it all has to do with an industry that doesn’t even exist yet—asteroid mining.

Near Earth objects or NEOs are usually asteroids, sometimes comets, that come close to Earth at some point in their orbits around the Sun. These are some of the most likely candidates for extraterrestrial mining. There is no gravity penalty with asteroids like there is for Mars and the Moon so design, equipment, and fuel costs are much lower. Although the technology is almost up for it, there are a couple of things to be resolved before mining the asteroids becomes a real thing.

A power source is required that won’t fizzle out towards the asteroid’s farthest point from Earth, which may be even further out than the asteroid belt. NASA could have a solution with technology called KRUSTY (Kilopower Reactor Using Sterling Technology) that puts out between 1 and 10 Kilowatts. I doubt that NASA is tired of the Simpsons jokes yet, so keep 'em coming. While most of the power needs of mining drones would be satisfied by a field of solar panels installed on the surface of the asteroid or hanging in orbit, it would not hurt to have a back-up generator should something go wrong. The drones will be powered by large lithium ion batteries like those in a Tesla and automatically seek a recharge near depletion like a Roomba.

KRUSTY nuclear power plant - courtesy NASA

Also, someone needs to come up with an AI capable of running a space mission on its own. Once that's done and likely asteroid choices vetted, it won’t be long before AI driven, solar powered mining drones with a nuclear backup touch down on an asteroid as it makes a flyby of Earth and start mining it for water, metals, silicon, or whatever substance of value that can be hauled back to Earth orbit on the next closest pass.

If the drones are careful about how they excavate this chunk of space rock, the owners will not only be making money from the mine, but by renting out a perfectly safe and comfortable Solar System shuttle as well. It will serve as a scientific expedition base as easily as a planetary system cruise ship or some combo thereof.

What makes this craft so safe and comfortable? Besides the normal stuff like food, water, and air, there are two big current problems for human habitation of space—radiation and the lack of gravity. Radiation is a big bugaboo. Cosmic radiation can throw an iron nuclei at you that packs the power of a baseball thrown at 40 mph. Concentrating that much power in such a small area causes physical damage and ionizing radiation with mutagenic effects on human tissue. It could damage your eyesight and your genes. Also, we are not sure why, the lack of gravity in space is not that great for humans. It makes bones porous and muscles weak. It can also affect vision and balance. An asteroid-based shuttle does away with both of these problems. Here is how it will be done.

We will use asteroid 1996 FG3 as an example for this thought exercise. Asteroid 1996 FG3 has a diameter of 1.7 kilometers or 5,600 feet. It is a chondrite asteroid and rotates once every 3.6 hours and weighs more than a trillion pounds. It crosses Earth's orbit reaching just inside the orbit of Venus on its trip toward the Sun. Outward bound, it comes close to the orbit of Mars without crossing before heading back in. It takes 395 days to complete its journey so your trip will normally take at least a year.

The mining robots will form a cylindrical shape from the interior of the asteroid as they remove material to be processed. The axis of this cylinder will coincide with the rotational axis of the asteroid. But there is a problem. Even if the internal cavity is quite large, say 3,400 feet in diameter, standing on the inside of that big cylindrical cavity the artificial gravity would be a paltry .002 standard Earth gravity at its current rate of rotation. However much it would help your dunk shot, it would not work to keep you healthy.

If artificial gravity were to be created for cavities inside, the asteroid would have to be spun up to about 1.25 rpm or 20 times faster than what it is now. Even using the mass driver propulsion system I’ve proposed in A Heavy Metal, Cannibalistic, Asteroid Propulsion System producing 155,000 pounds of thrust, it would take a hundred years to get the asteroid up to speed. How can this be solved?

We build a cylinder inside this cavity that is much lighter. With a cylinder spinning inside the asteroid, the gravity can be controlled by the speed of rotation. Assuming the dimensions already given, a cylinder 3,400 feet in diameter spinning at 1.25 rpm would provide .91 normal gravity. A 200 pound person would weigh 182 pounds if that person was standing on the outside wall of that cylinder.

Such a large cylinder may have many levels from the center to the outer wall. If each level was a hundred feet from floor to ceiling, there would still be 17 levels. Gravity at the innermost level (100 feet from the center) would be .05 Earth normal while level 10 (1,000 feet from the center) would be .53 or half Earth normal.

To save time and resources, the cylinder will be made a lot smaller and the rotation sped up to compensate. For instance, a 2,000 foot diameter cylinder spun at 1.65 rpm to provides .93 Earth gravity at the outermost level. But we’re not talking about enough room for a space colony … yet. We are only planning for a few dozen people. Plus, if the cylinder is over 100 feet long, serious structural issues begin to pop up at the outer level, the same ones that bedevil an engineer on Earth trying to span a 100 feet with proper safety margins. The above design can be pared down to its simplest configuration—a glorified centrifuge.

This centrifuge would consist of two arms of equal length attached to a central hub. The arms would serve as the vertical access tube to the different elevations and as the main structural support countering centrifugal forces.

Drawing by Glen Hendrix. Click to enlarge.

This first illustration shows a minimalist layout for the habitat inside the asteroid. The hub of the habitat contains electromagnetic bearings that provide frictionless rotation of the habitat. The illustration shows six levels but that could vary. Whatever the final configuration, the arms have to be identical and the internal loading must be monitored by AI to prevent unbalanced loads.

The long, curved outer tubes on the arms will be considered the “basements” as they are the farthest thing “down” and they have the highest gravity at .93 g, a little less than Earth normal. The next level “up” would be .79 g and the next, .65 g. The short tubes closest to the center will be the “attics”. They only have an artificial gravity of .23 g, less than 1/4 of Earth’s gravity. The basement and the next level up will be the primary levels for residence since this will convey the greatest protection against the deleterious effects of low gravity. The rest will serve as labs, storage, and special applications.

Drawing by Glen Hendrix. Click to enlarge.

1996 FG3 is a chondrite asteroid made up of anhydrous silicates, hydrated clays, organic polymers, magnetites, sulfides, and maybe some nucleic and amino acids. The Murchison meteorite proved the extent of organic materials in space when 70 different amino acids were found using high resolution spectroscopic tools. There is the possibility of millions of unique organic compounds in that same meteorite. It is possible these will also show up in asteroids like 1996 FG2.

The asteroid has water, which is important. Water will be extracted during the mining process and stored as ice. This water will power the rotation of this habitable centrifuge. Rocket motors burning hydrogen and oxygen will bring the habitat up to speed with occasional boosts to keep it there. The hydrogen and oxygen come from water mined from the asteroid. This will be the only instance where rocket exhaust in space can be reclaimed and reused. The rocket exhaust will turn to water which will turn to ice which will accumulate in the inner cavity housing the habitat. Special drones will vacuum the ice crystals up periodically for recycling.

Drawing by Glen Hendrix. Click to enlarge.

Once the habitat is up to speed, it’s time for the voyagers to move in. A deep space tug has brought them from Earth’s orbit to 1996 FG3 as it makes one of its passes near to Earth. The tug parks in a bay excavated for it by the mining drones. This gives it protection from radiation coming from most directions. The illustration labeled “Detail 3” shows the tug in its protective bay. The space-suited future inhabitants go from the tug to the access tunnel dug into the rock of the asteroid. This leads to the airlock for the habitat. Through this they gain entry to pressurized living space and transition from 3.6 rotations per hour of the asteroid to the 1.65 rotations per minute of the habitat. They shed their suits, and climb “down” one arm or the other to different levels.

Drawing by Glen Hendrix. Click to enlarge.

As illustrated, this habitat has about 320,000 square feet of habitable space. That does not include areas for storage or utilities. If just half is used for 600 to 1200 square feet apartments, a hundred to two hundred people could have their own digs aboard this asteroid shuttle.

Drawing by Glen Hendrix. Click to enlarge.

This design easily lends itself to expansion. From the minimal wedges of the original layout, it goes full circular. Also, the mining drones have excavated four more cavities for additional rotating habitats and added another access tunnel with docking bay at the other end of the asteroid. This space would allow about 26,000 people to inhabit the shuttle.

By this time, and we may be talking about a couple of centuries in the future, there is a mature economic system in space. There will still be a few tourists, but much of the habitat will be devoted to labs and manufacturing facilities making products in low gravity or vacuum that can't be made on Earth. There will be labs studying new organic compounds discovered on asteroids and comets. It could include a new repository of seeds that will replace the Svalbard Global Seed Vault in Norway. It will be safer from cosmic radiation and/or conflict and climate change on Earth. Likewise, a repository of the world's animals as embryos will come about and be stored on such an asteroid.

On its approach to Mars, it will become commonplace for one of the deep space tugs to rendezvous with the uppermost station of the Mars Space Elevator, allowing people to go to the surface of Mars to conduct business or science or just sightsee. Likewise, the approach to Venus allows travelers to make a connection with the orbital labs around Venus working to terraform the planet.

Other asteroids will be converted in a similar matter. Some will have orbits taking travelers to the outer edges of the asteroid belt, almost to Jupiter. These shuttles will be excellent for launching expeditions to the outer planets and their moons, the Kuiper Belt, and even the Oort Cloud. Outposts with fuel and supplies for these ventures can be more easily stocked with such a conveyance.

The human race is at this fantastical pivot point in history. At the same instant in time, historically speaking, we are poised to begin an expansion into space and to witness our planet ravaged by unforeseen (or ignored) circumstances involving the very industrial/technology base that allows us to venture into the great unknown. I sincerely hope we are up to the precarious balancing act from here forward that will allow us to keep our home planet livable while exploring others.

Other articles you may enjoy:

Hybrid Airships Will Change the Economics of Asia and Africa

I Am a Witness to Climate Change—You Should Be, Too

The Environmental Advantage of a Space Elevator

The U.S. Must Recycle Recycling

Climate Change Will Herald the Age of Island Cities

Carbon Capture and Sequestration (CCS): The Existential Technology We Are Ignoring

Nations at Risk of Becoming Psychological Echo Chambers: China Sets Worrisome Precedent

Climate Change Will Alter The Way We Think About Energy

What Do We Do Now That We Know Climate Change is Inevitable?

Are You Susceptible to Digitally Induced Cognitive Karma

Why the Oceans Will Be Humanity’s Life Raft

There May Be a Quadrillion Dollars Lying About on the Moon

Mining That First Asteroid - Manned Mission or AI?

A Convergence of Technologies Will Create a New Age of Space Exploration

Steampunk Meets Star Wars: A Harrowing Micro-Tale of Future Spacefarers

The Space Habitat Revisited and Revised

Are Seeds of Conflict Brewing Over the Moon?

Just What Are NASA’s Plans Under Trump

Thruster On a Chip: An Alternative Rocket Science That Could Revolutionize Space Travel

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

How We Will Get Asteroid Material Back To Earth

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

Wednesday, May 15, 2019

How a Space Mirror Could Deal With Orbital Debris and the Threat of an Asteroid Strike

Photo by Renden Yoder on Unsplash

On August 20, 2075, in Kalispell, Wyoming, a young amateur astronomer is drinking ice tea to cool his thoughts about the 103 degrees F. outside his window at 9:30 in the evening. Climate change is relentless. Harold thinks this is fairly normal weather. It’s been nearly this hot most of his adult life.

Checking the laptop hooked to the homemade telescope in the plastic bubble on top of the house, he inputs values into a program and runs it. He runs it again. And again. He shows the results to several astronomer friends by email. They check it and verify the output. Soon thereafter, the world goes crazy.

Something happened to asteroid 2005 YU55. It was supposed to come within 237,000 miles of Earth on November 8, 2075. Now it is on a collision course. Some other asteroid came close to or bumped 2005 YU55 and slightly changed its direction. NASA has known for weeks but not released the information for fear of mass panic. The amateur astronomers have forced the issue, and NASA holds a press conference.

The head of NASA explains the situation is not as dire as it would have been just five years ago because of Project Drogon. Everybody knows about the large, focusing mirror in orbit because it has been efficiently vaporizing space debris cluttering orbital lanes near Earth for several years. Few gave thought to its second purpose until now. It’s shiny discs have been re-focused on 2005 YU55, and it is currently engraving an ablation trench in a spiral pattern as the asteroid sedately rotates every nineteen hours. The mirror is in an orbit that keeps it in sunlight 24 hours a day.

Not meant to cut the asteroid in pieces, the focused power of the mirror explosively evaporates the surface material it comes in contact with. This creates, in effect, a thruster on one side of 2005 YU55, gradually changing its course. The Earth is saved, and the young astronomer is made the new head of NASA. Well … yes, the story does kind of break down there. That would not normally happen in real life, but the description of a focusing mirror is not so hard to believe. We have the technology.

Imagine a mirror array with six circular pads in a circular array and one in the middle. Each pad is about 27 feet in diameter, made up of 120 flat panels per pad. Each panel is 2.25 feet square. Each panel is driven by a precision servomotor. With a total of 4,200 square feet, the mirror could concentrate 530,670 watts of power onto an area 2.25 feet by 2.25 feet. This is enough to vaporize most forms of matter. Note: Sun’s energy in space is 126.35 watts per square foot.

Drawing by Glen Hendrix in AutoCad. Click to enlarge.

The entire mirror is aligned with its target using a system similar to that of the Hubble telescope. Six gyroscopes and four reaction wheels can target the mirror to within .007 arcseconds. Let’s use 2005 YU55 as an example to show what that means. Let’s say we start beaming concentrated sunlight to 2005 YU55 when it is a hundred million miles from Earth, 400 times further than the Moon, about 38 days away. This accuracy guarantees the beam will hit within 40 feet of where it’s pointed. Since 2005 YU55 is about 1300 feet in diameter, it is a pretty sure thing it will be hit. The space mirror’s software will automatically track the asteroid on its path through space.

Drawing by Glen Hendrix in AutoCad. Click to enlarge.

To aim at objects beyond the orbit of Earth will require a reflector mirror about the size of the focusing mirror. It is much simpler, being a large, flat mirror that reflects the sun’s rays back to the focusing mirror when it’s pointed away from the Sun so that it can do its job. It will also need gyroscopes and reaction wheels as well as a suite of thrusters to position it. The whole thing could be lifted into orbit on a couple of Big Falcon Rocket trips with some assembly required, batteries included.

Drawing by Glen Hendrix in AutoCad. Click to enlarge.

The space mirror may be particularly adept at getting rid of that modern day scourge—space debris. The modularity of this design would allow a killing field to be set up for approaching debris, an invisible tunnel of dense solar energy. The idea would be to completely vaporize debris, turning it into a spreading gas cloud without the inertia to be harmful.

Astronauts working on reaction wheels of Hubble. Courtesy NASA.

Another application could be the smelting of ores in space. Nickel and iron from asteroids can be turned to steel. Ore from the Moon can be processed into aluminum. Off-world mining and other heat intense manufacturing processes will not be able to advance without this type of ancillary tool.

Mirrors in space might come in very handy for diverting asteroids, mining asteroids, smelting metals, terraforming Mars, vaporizing space debris, and paving small areas of the Moon with glass. Putting large mirrors in space, however, may have adverse political consequences for whatever nation or corporation that tries it. The main fear will come from those that don’t have a similar device in orbit worried that it could be used as a weapon. It would be possible to burn a hole in some other country’s spy satellite, start multiple fires in forests and brush lands, heat gas and oil lines until they rupture and burn, put a hole in a ship’s hull in the middle of the ocean, and on and on. Concerned parties would be looking at ways to guarantee the safe use of such tools, and they would have a legal basis for protest. One of the guiding principles of the Outer Space Treaty is “States shall not place nuclear weapons or other weapons of mass destruction in orbit or on celestial bodies or station them in outer space in any other manner; ....”

Perhaps the United Nations will evolve to have its own space force, like Trump has proposed for the United States. Trained members of this elite task force will go into space along with worker astronauts to check out the control software of space-based mirrors, their focusing capabilities, their accuracy in aiming and maintaining that target, and all the other things that could turn such a dangerous machine into a weapon. Space Marshall U.N.! It will make a great TV series. Maybe the fiction has to come before the fact as it has with so many such ideas in the past.