The Oort Perspective

a reply to: johnwick

Myself I consider Quantum Vacuum Plasma Thruster as a potential candidate.

Especially given the fact as offered, that some of the current tech on that engine is Classified based upon the responses at ATS.

a reply to: HawkeyeNation


Generating a cave on Pluto that was about 50 miles deep and extended in width to about 2000 miles, again in the shape of an Igloo should not be a problem.

originally posted by: Kashai
a reply to: caterpillage


The thing with Mars is the Radiation and the same applies to anything in orbit with respect to Jupiter. The Oort Cloud in that respect is another story. Sure we can deal this the issues of Saturn and Beyond but in respect to problems with radiation a light year from the Sun .

You're talking underground facilities on outlying planetoids anyway, so wouldn't an underground facility on Mars be safe from radiation as well? And more logistical?

originally posted by: Ultralight
a reply to: johnwick

My spacecraft will provide...??

Yes.

They when 3d printing takes the next step, will come small enough to fit on a wrist.

You would then feed scrap metal into it to make tiny bots.

These tiny bots would fan out to acquire more resources.

You would then feed these into it to make the parts for a bigger minifacturing plant.

That would make bigger bots with more complexity.

These would get more raw resources..... This would continue until you are making entire vehicle and habitat parts.

At which point you are at full scale production with an array of shapes sizes and capability bots slaving away in gathering resources for you, with a great side effect if digging out underground habitat space.

Within 10 years of this cycle you should be able to begin working in sending out a new minifacturing plant to the next proto planet.

Think of this cycle like von Neumann probes, but with human interaction.

a reply to: caterpillage

Caves would be practical unless one wanted to create a man made one. If anything on Mars we would probably look into volcanoes. The other problem is with respect to water and that would not be an issue in respect to what I am suggesting.

In relation to working with Ice it is another story in that sense, we can create seas, rivers and lakes in such environments.

On Mars we are limited by the environment while, in relation to the Oort cloud.

We could very well be limited only by imagination and the Laws of Physics.

a reply to: johnwick

I have put away my toothbrush and pillow.

a reply to: Ultralight

We could in effect transfer a substantive amount of Earth human and animal population to such facilities and so aiding in the survival of life on Earth.

Any thoughts?

originally posted by: Ultralight
a reply to: johnwick

I have put away my toothbrush and pillow.

Us future tech sucks like that.

But at the rate if current advancement.

It may only be 20 years until this is a reality.

Sorry for the suck fest, but reality sucks a lot most of the time.

a reply to: johnwick


20 years ahead of us only because we have decided not to apply "Project Orion", otherwise we could do this today.


In a way and from the sense of available technology it is possible we already have,

Any thoughts?

Everything in the Oort cloud is far away from us, and most of the rocks out there are as far away from each other, as we are from Jupiter, not to mention that while the Suns radiation can be bad, it's nothing compared to interstellar radiation. So you got a place that's really hard to get yourself and supplies to, really hard to build and maintain, and there's nothing out there to mine that you couldn't get from a planet or even our own asteroid belt ten times easier and cheaper. So what's the point?

originally posted by: Kashai
a reply to: chr0naut

It may be very cold their but using moon sized snowballs to create underground habitats, the size of the United States is feasible technologically.

Further we are talking in context an enormous amount of territory, all things considered.

Any thoughts?

I'm not sure if you realize how remote the Oort cloud is. It is 100,000 times the distance that the Earth is from the Sun and approximately halfway to Proxima Centauri, the nearest star.

With this great distance also is the issue that Oort objects are very weakly gravitationally bound to the Solar System and easily disturbed by the passage of nearby stellar objects. You could suddenly find that your habitat is a sun-diver or will spin off into the space between the stars. Either way, it would most likely spell death to all in the habitat.

The Kupier Belt at only 55 AU is a closer and safer option.

you guys are so close and missing the point entirely at the same time.


From wikipedia:

The Oort cloud (/ˈɔrt/ or /ˈʊərt/[1]) or Öpik–Oort cloud,[2] named after Dutch astronomer Jan Oort and Estonian astronomer Ernst Öpik, is a theoretical spherical cloud of predominantly icy planetesimals believed to surround the Sun at a distance of up to around 100,000 AU (2 ly).[3] This places it at half of the distance to Proxima Centauri

To date, as it has been, there is nothing unique about us, including Planets, if we have an oort cloud reaching halfway to the next system and other Stars have oort clouds too and If ours reaches half way, one would be able to wager a triple star system would be a bit further out given the hypothesis of how the oort cloud forms... ergo our Oort clouds overlap

What is only 2 Light years from A Centauri? WISE J104915.57-531906, a pair of Brown Dwarfs also likely to have an Oort cloud.

In fact it has been estimated that there are also roughly 4x as many failed planets and Brown Dwarfs we can't see as there are visible stars out there, which means look at a star map and see our nearest stars 6 LY, 8 LY and guesstimate in those spaces are 4x as many more dwarfs and rouge planets with either Oort clouds or orbiting Planets or Moons

Factor in it seems even our nearest neighbor has planets in fact there is a current debate in regards to a super Earth right next door...

But here is the deal regardless...

it seems, if you build a craft and leave Earth and exercise population controls.... You can go forever, if every thing has an oort cloud your never going to be going very far without being able to get Water, which has Hydrogen and Oxygen which is all you need. If there are 4x as many Jupiters and Brown Dwarves loose in space it all gets "even smaller" and if we have things like "wise" and "hubble" we can already mount onto such craft in use leaving the solar system they could plot a course to "eventually" find "some place" to land for good way in the future...

IMHO we can leave Earth

There are enough resources along the whole trip your never even in the "bigger gaps" going to be going more than a light year or so without fresh water and that's again all you need... If you had to use cryo or some method to slow down consumption through any gaps, it would be generations apart

There is "stuff" stuff with "ice" and other resources the whole dang way... it's not "empty" the Oort clouds overlap and there are many large bodies between the stars we are only beginning to see...

You don't need to drill a hole in pluto, you just need to be able to take some ice... and keep going

Now wrap your noodle around this, if the largest possible gaps between icy bodies are 2 light years (remember there is likely NO gap between our Oort cloud and A Centauri and NO gap between Centauri and WISE J1049) (there might not be any gap at all between stars once we chart less visible bodies better)

But the biggest gaps not including "invisible stars and worlds" wont be bigger than 2 light years as is...

1/16th the speed of light is only a 32 year holding of fresh water, hydrogen and Oxygen

1/8th is only 16 years

1/4 is only 8 years

That's a heck of a difference in what needs to be achieved in regards to a "sustainable" environment on board a craft before needing.... Water/Hydrogen/Oxygen then what we have been thinking all along.

We aren't looking at needing to go a century or centuries without "freshening up" not at all, even 1/32 the speed of light is only 64 years

Gliese 667c, 3 possibly habitable words... just under 22 Light Years, there are 11 stars I counted assuming they come with Oort clouds on path to it, that's an average of 2 light years each, overlapping Oort clouds all the way before factoring the "unseen" in regards to brown Dwarfs etc...

We should be starting on "arks" already, planning stages

This is the beginning of the next age of exploration, it's going to be hard, but not impossible.

a reply to: johnwick

Yeah, well in 20years I might not need my toothbrush.

originally posted by: Kashai
a reply to: chr0naut

It may be very cold their but using moon sized snowballs to create underground habitats, the size of the United States is feasible technologically.

Further we are talking in context an enormous amount of territory, all things considered.

Any thoughts?

The energy of the solar system comes from the Sun. Just about all of the energy available here on Earth (except maybe fission or fusion energy) has its origins with the Sun. In addition, our entire food chain relies on energy from the Sun -- i.e., the Earth's food chain starts with photosynthesis turning sunlight into metabolizable sugars used by other organisms "up the food chain" as an energy source.

Virtually all of the energy animals use (and the human body uses to survive) has sunlight as the ultimate source of that energy.

Due to the inverse square law, the sun energy falling on Pluto averages out to be about 0.08% that of the sun energy falling on Earth -- and the Oort cloud is far further out than that. So I'm thinking that putting a colony so far from the energy potential of the Sun would not be practical, and we would be wasting the opportunity to use the greatest resource we have in the solar system, which is sunlight.

We would first need to tackle the issue of practical fusion power, and then we would have limitless power to fuel things such as the sunlamps needed to fuel a food chain.

a reply to: Kashai

Source of energy production, heat dissipation, and waste management? These are three big issues you'll have to contend with being stuck on a planetoid. You'll have to create self-sustaining ecosystems on the interior of these moonlets.

For all we know we might bump into some company out that way!

originally posted by: chr0naut

originally posted by: Kashai
a reply to: chr0naut

It may be very cold their but using moon sized snowballs to create underground habitats, the size of the United States is feasible technologically.

Further we are talking in context an enormous amount of territory, all things considered.

Any thoughts?

I'm not sure if you realize how remote the Oort cloud is. It is 100,000 times the distance that the Earth is from the Sun and approximately halfway to Proxima Centauri, the nearest star.

With this great distance also is the issue that Oort objects are very weakly gravitationally bound to the Solar System and easily disturbed by the passage of nearby stellar objects. You could suddenly find that your habitat is a sun-diver or will spin off into the space between the stars. Either way, it would most likely spell death to all in the habitat.

The Kupier Belt at only 55 AU is a closer and safer option.

In relation to distance that is surely becoming less of a problem as time goes by. Consider that when the trans-continental railway was completed in the United States the trip from New York to San Francisco to took about 30 days.

Today Voyager's one and two are currently traveling in the general area we are discussing.

Its not just that we are developing the means to travel faster than light. But as well there is substantial research that can put human at those distances within months of a launch from Earth.

In so far as the issue of impacts? Yes but keep in mind the precise amount of area we are talking about. I mean sure we consider the Oort cloud the reason for comets. So in looking at the actual amounts of comets that result vast sections of this structure could actually be very stable.

I agree with you that the Kuiper Belt is also ideal as the point of the OP is to start moving our proverbial eggs out of the one basket.

Any thoughts?

a reply to: MystikMushroom

We are still of course waiting but Lockheed Martin (if memory serves), recently announced they will have a fusion reactor in about 10 years.

The interesting thing about it is that it can fit into the trailer of an 18 wheeler.

a reply to: Quantumgamer1776
Its not so much Rocks in the Oort Cloud as much as it is Ice.

So if the Habitats are under the surface of such ice based planetoids radiation should not be a problem, unless one is on the surface.