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Space habitats research and link farm

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Nobby-W

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Nobby-W submitted a new resource:

Space habitats research and link farm - All you ever wanted to know about space habitats but were too afraid to ask.

From something I posted elsewhere, this might be of interest to the sci-fi gamers here.

This is a study that I turned up with some google-fu on the topic of population and facilities on space habitats. It covers a lot of ground and makes for some interesting reading.

https://settlement.arc.nasa.gov/75SummerStudy/Table_of_Contents1.html

This is a discussion of the efficiency of various crops for life support and food production...

Read more about this resource...
 
I am kind of obsessed with Space Habs. My sig link has more. Some of these are my own creations for my own in universe Habs.
 

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On a aside note, Heat radiation was addressed in the 60s. The total surface area exposed to space acts as a radiator, so adding big radiator fans also helps with colony heat management. Most of my art includes those in one way or another.
 
On a aside note, Heat radiation was addressed in the 60s. The total surface area exposed to space acts as a radiator, so adding big radiator fans also helps with colony heat management. Most of my art includes those in one way or another.
One of the docs I linked to discusses the heat management system on the ISS. The executive summary is that if you use ammonia as a coolant you can disperse about 400-500w per square metre of radiators (turned side on to the sun). That's about 10x the power per sq metre with radiators than you can generate with PV cells (the units on the ISS generate about 50w/sq m).

At scale, that means a large colony could have 10's of square kilometres of radiators (if cooling a nuclear power plant of some description) or hundreds of square kilometres of PV cells for the same power capacity.

As an aside, I have seen your deviantart page. Could you PM me an email address?
 
Interesting. Amonia is rather easy to get in our solar system too.
I had an idea for using a highly absorbent aerogel for water storage too. this would provide radiation shielding, water, and balast that does not slosh around.
 
Some items from the background I used.

What is the Artemis Station?
It is a commercial station built by the Selene Republic with aid from all of the major powers to handle trade and culture exchange with the Saurian Commonwealth. It is in the L5 point between the planet Selene and its Sun. There is small but rich asteroid field at the L5 point that is known as the Outback. It is actively mined by Belters to provide the station with resources.

The station can support a permanent population of up to 35,000 sentient beings. There are currently 30,000 humans, 2,000 Saurians, and 1,000 Kang’rits resident on the station. The station has been in operation for two years.

Who runs the Station?
The Astroguard handles the day to day administration of the station. The Selene Republic supplies magistrates and ombudsmen to handle judicial affairs. Overall station policy and contact with the Saurian Commonwealth is handled by a United Colony advisory council with representatives from all the major human powers and headed by a governor appointed by the Selene Republic.

The current governor is Rosette Alcantar who works with the Station’s commander, Captain Anton Pikova of the Astroguard.

What is the Outback?
It is a small asteroid field circling the L5 point between Selene and its sun. It is home to a thousand belters mining volatiles and metals for processing at the station. The main station is buried in the asteroid Perth with 200 permanent residents and up to 300 transits at any one time.
 
Some items from the background I used.

What is the Artemis Station?
It is a commercial station built by the Selene Republic with aid from all of the major powers to handle trade and culture exchange with the Saurian Commonwealth. It is in the L5 point between the planet Selene and its Sun. There is small but rich asteroid field at the L5 point that is known as the Outback. It is actively mined by Belters to provide the station with resources.

The station can support a permanent population of up to 35,000 sentient beings. There are currently 30,000 humans, 2,000 Saurians, and 1,000 Kang’rits resident on the station. The station has been in operation for two years.

Who runs the Station?
The Astroguard handles the day to day administration of the station. The Selene Republic supplies magistrates and ombudsmen to handle judicial affairs. Overall station policy and contact with the Saurian Commonwealth is handled by a United Colony advisory council with representatives from all the major human powers and headed by a governor appointed by the Selene Republic.

The current governor is Rosette Alcantar who works with the Station’s commander, Captain Anton Pikova of the Astroguard.

What is the Outback?
It is a small asteroid field circling the L5 point between Selene and its sun. It is home to a thousand belters mining volatiles and metals for processing at the station. The main station is buried in the asteroid Perth with 200 permanent residents and up to 300 transits at any one time.

Nice, tiny one, but seems like it would serve it's function well.
 
Interesting. Amonia is rather easy to get in our solar system too.
I had an idea for using a highly absorbent aerogel for water storage too. this would provide radiation shielding, water, and balast that does not slosh around.
Polyethylene makes good radiation shielding if you have a source of hydrocarbons such as Titan. Anything with lots of hydrogen is good, apparently. You can mine aluminium and titanium from lunar regolith and fire it to the L4 or L5 point relatively efficiently with a mass driver - this takes less energy than refining it in the first place. Apparently the delta-V involved is low enough that you can catch it with a net (made of kevlar, but nonetheless a net). Getting hydrocarbons from Titan might involve an atmospheric braking manoeuvre if you just wanted to fling them rather than load up freighters (which would be much more expensive if you had to do it).
 
Titan and the moon are low enough in gravity, that current material science will allow for an orbital tether.
Mining the Moon for Titanium and Aluminum is good for an initial start, but once asteroid mining is a thing, it is less an ideal option. The moon, however, has Deuterium which will most likely be needed for fusion reactions.
As for Radiation shielding... any sufficiently thick material will do, but Water is among the best, hence my suggestion of Saturated Aerogels. We are developing Aerogels that can absorb water, pollutants, and other materials to filter them out. Its being trialed for oil spills, but could be adapted. If you suspend the water in the Aerogel, you will prevent it from sloshing about and contributing to any wobble in a rotating habitat. It would then provide water, balast, and shielding all in one fell swoop. You could also carve the landscape from silicon or carbon aerogels and cover them with a layer of asteroid concrete.
Glass is also easy... you can use quartz glass. It is incredibly hard and could resist most impact, it has no compression or torsion capability though, so you would still need to suspend it in a flexible frame (Hello plastics and hydrocarbons). Keep in mind too, that in almost all cases, the atmosphere near the glass will be thin and a serious breach of the glass wont cause serious outgassing.
The biggest draw of Titan and the outer system moons is the organic materials. They are predicted to be rarer in the inner system, but they will also be incredibly hard to get when we are first making habitats.

I think when we start this, we will start smaller with a Kalpana or Stanford Torus habitat and then move up to a Bernal Sphere, Lewis Cylinder, or O'Neill Cylinder. We also need to setup space nurseries to make the biomes inside the habitats. This will be a large undertaking as you will need to constantly create new soil and regolith from sources in space. So that means constantly making soil with cyanobacteria cultures and so on. A lunar lava tube would also serve this purpose well at first.
 
[ . . . ]
Glass is also easy... you can use quartz glass. It is incredibly hard and could resist most impact, it has no compression or torsion capability though, so you would still need to suspend it in a flexible frame (Hello plastics and hydrocarbons). Keep in mind too, that in almost all cases, the atmosphere near the glass will be thin and a serious breach of the glass wont cause serious outgassing.
With Aluminium available you can also use sapphire (Aluminium Oxide) for glass. Glass wool can also be used as an insulating material.

[ . . . ]
The biggest draw of Titan and the outer system moons is the organic materials. They are predicted to be rarer in the inner system, but they will also be incredibly hard to get when we are first making habitats.

The main claim to fame of the Moon is that the delta-v to get something off the lunar surface and into a rendezvous with a construction project in the Lunar L4 or L5 point ls relatively low and could be provided with a mass driver system on the lunar surface. There would be no need for a shuttle. On the rendezvous the delta-V to match orbits is low enough that you could just catch the material with a passive collection system (literally a strong net), although the vehicle with the net would still need reaction mass for a station-keeping drive. That makes material for a Lunar L4 or L5 colony relatively easy to get from the moon. YMMV for other locations.

Titan's biggest issue is the delta-v needed to get at it (about 15km/sec for Titan surface-lunar orbit or L4/L5 capture). You have to get into Saturn's planetary system and then out again, then somehow slow down your load when you get back to Earth. It's quite a lot of velocity to burn off - maybe you could use atmospheric braking. Really that would depend on how cheap delta-V was in your 'verse.

Mining from asteroids would involve substantially less delta-V than titan (about 3km/sec maybe). If you took one with significant amounts of ice (e.g. 24 Themis) you could mine water from that, although most asteroids formed inside the ice line have long since sublimed any volatiles. Most other options involve comets, some of which are accessible with reasonable delta-V. However, you would still need to decelerate the payloads to capture into lunar or earth orbit, again perhaps using atmospheric braking.

The main difference here is that these payloads would require a drive system to make an orbital rendezvous whereas the relative velocities between a lunar launch and L4 or L5 rendezvous are low enough to use a passive collection system.

If you wanted to put a colony in Jupiter's L4 or L5 point there might be enough material in the trojan asteroids around those points to build a habitat there, including volatiles. However, photovoltaic energy is starting to get marginal at that distance, meaning you would probably be obliged to use a nuclear power source.

The image below is an orbit transfer map. Add up the figures (in km/sec) to get the total delta-V from origin to destination.

Have you ever played Kerbal Space Program? If you want to learn about orbital mechanics, I can't recommend it highly enough.


SqdzxzF.png
 
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I've got most of my drive systems done, I boiled it down to a more abstract system because not many really want to play a game involving a scientific calculator. :tongue:

There is a lot of NEOs that will help an early start in the system. The Moon is great as an initial start point for the first dozen or so habitats, but after that, it would be more efficient to just capture and pulverize asteroids. These things are mostly balls of gravel anyway with few having monolithic stone.
Titan has something that is scarce in the system though... Hydrocarbons. That alone would make the costs worth it. There are a few suspected asteroids and moons that have organic compounds but not in great quantity. Water is everywhere and easy to get in most cases so that wouldn't be the primary draw... Titan also offers a few unique opportunities for cold facilities also. At .14g, you could build a tether with current material science.

Also, not a fan of Kerbal. :tongue:
 
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