GZGL FH - Habitats in Space.

In GZG's Future History, will there be any space habitats, O'Neil colonies,
B5-like space stations, or similar? Or, with FTL drives, will people
just
find another earth-like planet to live on?
What's your thoughts, ideas or comments?

There'll definately be space habitat's of some sort. Especially when
you start mining asteroid belts & Venus-type planets, where surface
habitation isn't feasable, but there are sufficient resources to make mining
or harvesting feasable.
It probably won't be on the scale of B5, more likely about 5k-10k
permanent residents in a mass 1000-1500 station.

'Neath Southern Skies
http://users.mcmedia.com.au/~denian/
*****
T'was brillig, & the slithy toves, Did gyre & gimle in the wabe. All mimsy
were the borogroves, And mome raths outgrabe.
                       - Lewis Carroll "Through the Looking Glass".

> -----Original Message-----

> In GZG's Future History, will there be any space habitats, O'Neil

There will be such habitats; and, within the Alarishi Empire, if you have a
habitat of your own, you can have a legal code of your own too. And the only
tax is a flat 5% sales tax (unless you decide to have additional local taxes).
Plenty of room within the Alarishi systems for anyone who wants to immigrate.

Andrew spake thusly upon matters weighty:

> In GZG's Future History, will there be any space habitats, O'Neil

Of course. L-5..... Man's Last Line of Defence Against the Kra'Vak
(B5 music playing in background.....)

:) Tom.
/************************************************

> On Wed, 2 Dec 1998, Andrew & Alex wrote:

jon t recently indicated that he envisaged alpha centauri as colonised
primarily by space stations. this sounds cool.

[executive summary: space habitats are useful for mining asteroids and
gas giants, a bit useful for certain industries and vital for enabling
interstellar trade]

consider humanity's perennial motives: food, resources, and trade. i assume
there are lots of habitable planets, perhaps due to terraforming.

* food

growing food in space is not terribly efficient - you have to provide
enormous areas, filter the sunlight, import immense quantities of nitrogen and
carbon, etc. a planet is by far better for this one.

* resources

you can get metals from asteroid belts and hydrocarbons etc from gas
giants,  ice-over-ocean moons, etc. these are pretty much
non-terraformable, so sealed environments will be needed. you can build
domes on ice moons like titan, and you can tunnel into big asteroids, but for
gas giants or small asteroids space habitats are the thing. for asteroids,
this has the plus that you can move your habitat once you have mined all the
rocks in one area.

* trade

trade involves four things:

+ production of raw materials - dealt with above under food and
resources

+ manufacturing - in general, it is cheaper to site a factory on a
planet than in space. however, there are some processes which work better in
zero
g, such as making silicon wafers, ball-bearings, maltesers and dilithium
crystals. these would need space factories, along with habitats for the
workers. another reason for space factories would be to place the factory
close to the source of raw materials if they are very bulky.

+ consumption - this is a chancy one, but: duty-free. a space habitat
has
a good shot at claiming tax-haven status, and so would be a shopper's
paradise. this is analogous to the role of France as a nearby source of
low-tax alcohol for us brits.

+ transport of goods - freighters connect all the above stages; services
required by freighters include refuelling, repair, and transshipment and
processing. transshipment is simple - move stuff from  one freighter to
another, say if one company sells a cargo to another or links up small and
large ships into a big freight network. processing is not manufacturing but
repackaging, like grinding up ore or containerising bulk cargo. malta (a tiny
island in the med, near the suez canal) has made its fortune from this. this
is rather similar to b5, without the political gunk. these tasks all require
workers, and since the ports will be in deep space, habitats will be needed.

i really can't see space habitats purely for people to live in as being very
important: i think history teaches us that expansion is in search of resources
rather than anything else. things like religious freedom account for a tiny
fraction of human exploration (sure, the pilgrim fathers were the first to
settle in north america, but it wasn't them who truly colonised the
continent).

Tom

Thomas spake thusly upon matters weighty:
> i really can't see space habitats purely for people to live in as

I guess a view *might* suggest that.... but there are more things under Heav'n
and Earth, Horatio.....

things like religious freedom account
> for a tiny fraction of human exploration (sure, the pilgrim fathers

Counter/Otherpoints:
1. I can make some stuff in space (crystals etc) that I can't manage in a
gravity well. 2. I might need to live in a system for strategic reasons having
nothing to do with resources. 3. Some of the inner colonies may have been
established with weaker stardrives which limited options so space stations may
have been the only approach.
/************************************************

> On Wed, 2 Dec 1998, Thomas Barclay wrote:

as i said - silicon wafers, ball bearings and dilithium crystals. you
will need space stations to make these, but they strike me as highly automated
processes, not requiring much in the way of habitat for support. of course, i
am not an expert on making dilithium crystals; perhaps it is a manual job?

> 2. I might need to live in a system for strategic reasons having

put a fleet anchorage or a scientific field station there. maintaining a real
civlian population in a system where one is not needed is going to be far too
expensive to justify unless the stratgic reasons are *really* important.

> 3. Some of the inner colonies may have been established with weaker

good point. however, i find it a little hard to believe that people would keep
living in (and maintaining) old space habitats when earthlike worlds became
available.

don't forget what i said about freeports: these are vital and very profitable,
so expect lots of space stations with habitat and commercial facilities
hanging about in strategically vital systems at the hubs of trade networks.
and with no flipping ambassadors hanging about getting in the way!

Tom

> Thomas spake thusly upon matters weighty:

Religion has played a HUGE part in the expansion of people around the planet
(particularly the Europeans), though in most cases there were other
factors that were just as/more important to the people doing the
expanding
(like economic gain - East India Company - or opportunity to survive
with a
better life - the settlement of the USA, though N.America was at first
all about money too...). Or, to be really cynical, maybe we could say that
religion has provided a moral justification for economic exploitation...

Incedentally, the pilgrim fathers were by no means the first to settle
North America - the "native Americans" were...  They arrived looking for
happier hunting grounds between 20 and 40,000 years ago, depending on which
archaeologist/anthropologist happens to be yelling loudest at the
moment. As for Europeans, the Vikings had settlements in North America back in
the
700 - 800 AD period (plenty of archeological evidence for this).  They
didn't last 'til now, but they were settled, in some cases for a long time,
long before Chris Columbas "discovered" the new world and the pilgrams crashed
into Plymouth rock...

> Counter/Otherpoints:

Yes! Like space ships! Way better to fabricate really big stuff like
spaceships in zero-g dockyards - so you'd want stuff like the material
processing there too.  Even if we end up with fancy anti-grav systems to
get stuff out of a gravity well cheaply, there will be structural reasons
why big spaceships should be built in zero-g (unless you subscribe to
the Flying Yamato theory that says starships will land in water... in which
case, they need to be atmospheric capable, which is a whole different story).
Producing high weight, high bulk items like steel (or whatever) for orbital
production of starship hulls would be more efficiently done in
orbit - lower costs.  You'd have plenty of orbital facilities dedicated
to things like this that don't directly have to do with expanding your
resources... If you had an asteroid belt with plenty of raw material, why
not have a space yard relatively close by - cut down on transportation
costs for materials.

> 2. I might need to live in a system for strategic reasons having

yes.

> 3. Some of the inner colonies may have been established with weaker

Or, at least the first approach that made the most sense at the time.

> as i said - silicon wafers, ball bearings and dilithium crystals. you

Metals of higher purity, crystals of sizes you can't grow in a gravity well,
etc. etc. and you always need people to maintain them. Plus its a great spot
for university research facilities, which might evolve into whole Campuses.
I'd love a chance to go to a Uni in orbit.

> > 2. I might need to live in a system for strategic reasons having

I'm thinking you have an inhabitable but not very useful world (Arrakis minus
the spice). It may sit at a strategic point. Might therefore act as training
ground and chokepoint stopper. So put a big
marine and Naval base there - not so expensive due to breathable
atmosphere (maybe plants grow?).

> > 3. Some of the inner colonies may have been established with weaker

> > only approach.

Hmm. I assume class M (ST terms) planets are not that common.
Habitable ones, maybe somewhat. But nice, garden-like worlds with
abundant resources, abundant breathable air, water, and abundant consumable
plant life? Pretty unlikely (but I'm guessing).

> don't forget what i said about freeports: these are vital and very

Oh don't count on that. You'll see the major powers making big
attempts to influence/control these and therefore there might well be
ambassadors. The attempts might be overt or covert, but they'll pressure the
freeports.

/************************************************

> On Wed, 2 Dec 1998, Adrian Johnson wrote:

the only particular examples i can think of are the expansion of islam and the
crusades, and even those were conquest rather than settlement. the spanish
certainly went to south america armed with priests, but they didn't go in
order to convert the natives, they went to enslave them.

> Or, to be really cynical, maybe we could say that

that's pretty much what i reckon, but then i'm a marxist atheist cynic
...

> Incedentally, the pilgrim fathers were by no means the first to settle

fair enough. however, their settling was not in the same vein as european
settling; they were moving from one home to another, whilst the europeans
were empire-building. i suppose my model for settlement is based on the
expansion of mercantile powers rather than migration due to population
pressure; i suppose if the earth's ecology goes down the pan, we could be
looking at such a situation.

> As for Europeans, the Vikings had settlements in North America back in

of course. i forgot about the vikings - there have been stones carved
with runes dug up from lakes in new england, which is pretty cool.

[summary: i think that there will be plenty of industrial activity in
orbit, mostly to do with making and servicing ships, but that people will
continue to live on the surface. i still agree that there will be big habitats
in the asteroids.]

> >Counter/Otherpoints:

doh! yes, in fact it's more or less impossible to build really big ships on
the ground (upwards of 1000 tonnes ish), so orbital shipyards are a must.
however, i think shipyards will be built at planets, at the top of space
elevators. you have to ask if the savings in transport costs (running a more
or less continual employee bus up and down the elevator)
outweight the costs associated with building space habitats - all that
extra life support, structure, room for recreation and support services,
etc. i don't think so - i think employees will live on the ground and
commute up to the facilities.

if you don't have space elevators, things are a little different. if you have
cheap shuttles, then you can have worker populations and lots of
factories on the surface. if surface-orbit transport is expensive, then
you may well want to keep both habitats and facilities (even things like
steelworks which do not gain much from zero-g) in space, to save on the
transport costs of hauling workers and products into orbit. i don't really
think an interstellar (or even interplanetary) economy can take off until
there is cheap transport to orbit.

i picture most orbital facilities being a little like this; something in

geosync (the HiBase), where ships dock and people work, the elevator and
something on the surface (the LoBase) which plugs into the planetary railway
net and is where people live. most planets would have one to four
such assemblies, with all sorts of facilities at each hibase - a few
shipyards, many dockyards, ferry terminals, wharves, quays, shuttle hangars,
warehouses, packaging plants, etc. bigger planets will have a geosynchronous
ring connecting the hibases (does anyone know what these
things are called - mentioned in one or two Clarke books and seen in
Starship Troopers around the moon), with facilities all along it and a railway
running around the ring.

> - so you'd want stuff like the material

if transport is cheap, you can easily make stuff on the ground and then lift
it up. i think surface factories will be cheaper to run than orbital ones.

> Producing high weight, high bulk items like steel (or whatever)

why lower costs? what is cheaper in orbit than on the surface? gravity,
air, water, food, heat, construction - all these things are cheaper on
the surface. everything in space is 15% more expensive due to the overheads.

> You'd have plenty of orbital facilities dedicated to

as i said, putting a steelworks near the asteroid belt is probably
sensible, but if insystem and surface-orbit transport are cheap, then it
might still be cheaper to build your factory on the ground. this is why we
still ship raw materials around the world rather than processing at source;
the infrastructure on the planet is better

Tom

> On Wed, 2 Dec 1998, Thomas Barclay wrote:
you will
> > need space stations to make these, but they strike me as highly

well, there is some truth in this, but i would make two points. firstly, a lot
of these things can really be done more cheaply on the surface with the
application of a little more technology. i can see advances in
differential neutron acoustics allowing high-purity refining on planet.
secondly, if we have artificial gravity, surely we can do zero-g on the
planet? whether this is cheaper than orbit is not clear. i think there might
well be a big future for orbital industry, but i still think the populations
would live on the planet, which is what we were (originally) discussing (check
the subject line!).

> Plus its a great spot for university research facilities, which might

hmmm. yes, there are some things that are better done in orbit, astronomy
being the obvious one but some kinds of materials science and
high-energy
physics fitting in too. however, i don't see that they would be likely to grow
into campuses any more than antarctic research bases or the observatories at
kitt peak or jodrell bank. campuses are parts of universities, and by
definition those have humanities and arts faculties
-
i can see no particularly good reason for firing economists into orbit (into
deep space, yes, but not orbit). however, i certainly wouldn't mind a posting
in an orbital research lab...

> > > 2. I might need to live in a system for strategic reasons having
maintaining a
> > real civlian population in a system where one is not needed is going

absolutely; strategic systems need garrisoning, or at least a few ships on
station. however, what you are proposing is settling the planet, which is fine
by me, but what was suggested was that space habitats might be used. i don't
see that having a civilian population is all that necessary; i suppose it
would make the garrison less dependent on outside resupply.

> > > 3. Some of the inner colonies may have been established with

i doubt there will be consumable plant or animal life anywhere else in the
universe - there are just too many alternative biochemistries for ours
ot have evolved twice (and bear in mind how many things there are on earth
that we can't eat). i sort of assume that terraforming is commonplace -
anything from venus to mars is just about livable.

> > don't forget what i said about freeports: these are vital and very

quite possibly trade delegations, navy intelligence, police or customs
observers, central bank agents, consular emissaries (to look after their
citizens) etc, but i doubt a freeport will function as a permanent base for
ambassadors.

Tom

<snip>

> must. however, i think shipyards will be built at planets, at the top

I can't find my source at the moment, but IIRC, while elevators into orbit are
feasible, the trip would take several hours. I don't remember how many
exactly, but it's enough that commuting to and from work this way would not
work.

My $.02, if we need large manufacturing facilities in space, and we don't have
any living habitats out there, they will be manned like the oil
platforms now (big bucks pay, and work a couple months--off a couple
months). Eventually, I would hope that any workers would live at a moonbase.
Much easier to live there (and build), and much shallower gravity well to
climb out of to get to work.

> On Thu, 3 Dec 1998, Colfox wrote:

> I can't find my source at the moment, but IIRC, while elevators into

this has recently been pointed out to me. apparently, a two-hour commute
would take a 12 000 mph train...

> My $.02, if we need large manufacturing facilities in space, and we

yes, this is probably a good method. so, it looks like space habitats are
going to be around after all (well, unless we can get that 12 000 mph train
going...). this is a good thing.

> Eventually, I would hope that any workers would live at a moonbase.
Much
> easier to live there (and build), and much shallower gravity well to

but would it be any quicker? i don't know that the shallower well helps all
that much, as the moon is further away and energy is likely to be more
expensive there. i think the following scenarios are possible:

(i) no elevator, no cheap shuttles; workers live in space
(ii) slow elevators; workers live for 3 months at a stretch in oil-rig
style habitat (3) fast elevators; workers commute

it's funny; the better we are able to exploit space, the less we need to live
there. maybe people will live in space voluntarily, as that is what
three generations of ancestors have done. the rise of _Homo sapiens
astronauticus_ beckons ...

Tom