Colonization of the Moon, Mars, and Titan

I've often wondered what it would take in order to colonize another world, and I feel because of my knowledge of history of both America our proud nation as well the international colonization through reading about England, Spain, as well as the East India Trading Company, and bouncing about the world on both trading routes, colonizing, and hunting pirates, connecting this to also the fact that the now current United Kingdom combining their efforts during their effort to get rid of criminals from England, Ireland, and Scotland, in order to put them on a penal colony in Australia, this similiar to an "outer colony" since it was a unknown land at the time the authorities of England pushed these criminals off to a distant land, to get rid of them. Little did they realize that these prisoners would soon begin to love Australia and make it one of the most warm and welcoming continent on the planet.

I've been to Australia three times, so I'm using the analogy here, as "Australia" being similar to Mars in a metaphorical sense towards this possibly being a template of what is soon to come. Of course, I could be wrong, but I felt it was a unique persepective I thought I could share on here. I created this other thread about the potential for what ATS'ers might do if they figured out that Earth was collapsing, but so far I see only dire and fatalistic replies at this point.

What If You Knew Planet Earth Was In Jeopardy of Collapsing...

I think personally I would be willing to do almost anything I had to do to accomplish whatever I could to be on the very first ship that was transporting me into orbit to get to a starship if one were built, kind of like the Ark that Noah built in order to save the animals that lined up two by two, I would of course need an extreme reason to do anything towards changing any of my ethical thoughts in order to get on the ship, because it wouldn't just a citizen off the ground, it might be a soldier, trainer of soldiers, and leader of those same soldiers that I might try to pick towards getting on there because of my knowledge of World Politics, intergalactic space travel through reading vast amount of fictional references when all kinds of information can be gleaned if you know how, to as well knowing conflict de-escalation in order to pacify anyone who did not meet the requirements who might be in line with me and if they began to panic for any reason.

Spaceport America

Of course America would need a spaceport, in essence a place for launching at a higher altitude, as well as being able to lift greater payloads more efficiently. An organization like the Carlyle Group might be big enough to help in assisting through financing and insuring this endeavor as well as someone like Henry Kissinger to focus on some of this as well.

Since the Moon is in essence devoid of almost any kind of resources in order to assist in this endeavor, it would be the best of the three planets as probably a research facility and as well an outpost and an observation post towards other stars, galaxies, and universes.

Mars of course would need to be terraformed in order to be life sustaining for large amount of people, but would be okay for small amount of highly trained individuals to do research into different aspect of the red planet.

If these plans were initiated and initialized in what I've began as a very oversimplified version of this plan, Titan could be visited and colonized by the year 2065 if things went according to plan and nothing slowed the process down. It helps of course if you think of all of the continents as planets, in that they are each far distance from each other, but not too far to have been colonized by England, Spain, and Asia later being visited by people like Marco Polo to establish the Silk Trade Route from Europe to Asia.

[edit on 7-9-2008 by SpartanKingLeonidas]

reply to post by SpartanKingLeonidas


There's a starship being built in the sky. It ought to be ready by 2020. They'll be building it up in the air ever since 2011. People with a clever plan can assume the role of the mighty. Hijack the starship! Carry 7,000 people past the sun! Our babes'll wander naked thru the cities of the universe. We've gotta hijack the starship!

Push the button!
Pull the switch!
Cut the beam!
Make it march!



sorry Paul (and Robert)

reply to post by Phage


Wow!!!

That was one of the fastest replies I've ever seen to one of my threads, as well as one of the most unique ones ever.

I'm interested, tell me more. I don't know about hi-jacking a starship, I'm no intergalatic terrorist or nothing, but I understood your references there as well as the intent behind it.

reply to post by Phage


"It's a fresh wind that Blows Against the Empire."

Methuselah's Children R.A. Heinlein

I'm up too late, talkin' with Mr. Jack D.

Originally posted by Phage
reply to post by Phage

 

"It's a fresh wind that Blows Against the Empire."

Methuselah's Children R.A. Heinlein

I'm up too late, talkin' with Mr. Jack D.

I've read Heinlein's Starship Troopers, and of course the book was like twenty times better than the cheesy movie, although my girlfriend of the time cried because of the realism in watching people getting sliced to ribbons by alien bugs. It's an interesting aspect of intergalatic space travel if you ask me, because the book shows that it takes years to get to the bug home world instead of the cheesy movie that failed to display that making it seem like the actual minutes that it took within the movie.



[edit on 7-9-2008 by SpartanKingLeonidas]

reply to post by SpartanKingLeonidas


Read more Heinlein. A lot more. I'd like to give you a list but hell, it's all good stuff. His future histories give a bleaker view of what the NWO can do than what anyone here can come up with...and what we (alone) can do to deal with it.

The starship stuff is from Jefferson Starship's first (real first, not the second one) album "Blows Against the Empire". Kind of a spinoff from Methuselah's Children.

[edit on 7-9-2008 by Phage]

Originally posted by Phage
reply to post by SpartanKingLeonidas

 

Read more Heinlein. A lot more. I'd like to give you a list but hell, it's all good stuff. His future histories give a bleaker view of what the NWO can do than what anyone here can come up with...and what we (alone) can do to deal with it.

The starship stuff is from Jefferson Starship's first (real first, not the second one) album "Blows Against the Empire". Kind of a spinoff from Methuselah's Children

[edit on 7-9-2008 by Phage]

I've read the entire Ender's Game series as well as some other of Heinlein's books. Puppet Masters and Stranger in a Strange Land were as well contributory books in my upbringing towards what I posted on here on ATS in regards to this thread specifically.

Ender's Game Boxed Set: Ender's Game, Ender's Shadow, Shadow of the Hegemon

By the way, John Lithgow is one of my favorite actors.

I think Harry and the Henderson's was his funniest movie.

[edit on 7-9-2008 by SpartanKingLeonidas]

I was reading a very interesting article by Stephen Hawking on the subject of colonization of our planets in the not too distant future. He talks more about colonizing other star systems, and I agree here, in that the time and effort required to terraform any of our planets with the exception of probably Mars, and a couple of moons in the Solar System, would not be a viable proposition.

We’re talking of time lines in hundreds of years, and by then would have achieved a breakthrough in propulsion systems that would allow us near light speed travel or probably even FTL travel to search for star systems that have habitable planets.

We would need to be prepared to reach out for the stars in order to ensure continuance of the human race. Accrding to Hawking, "The long-term survival of the human race is at risk as long as it is confined to a single planet." We cannot rule out disaster scenarios like asteroid collisions, destruction due to climate change from global warming, nuclear war, pole shifts and so on. We as a race may even outlive the life of the planet witnessing the sun becoming a red giant a couple of billions years from now. Needless to say, this situation is too far away to even contemplate. But other situations may warrant us to leave the Earth for ‘greener pastures’ maybe a few thousand years from now.

However, colonization would never be easy. There are hazards in deep space, and very few planets may be habitable by baseline terragen life and such systems may contain nothing but inhospitable planets or asteroids. Terraforming can modify them, making them earthlike, but such a project would need to be much nearer home, in our own Solar System.

Terraforming Mars and Venus would perhaps be possible in the future, but doing that for planets in other star systems is near impossible due to the enormous requirements of energy and other resources. In would perhaps be more cost and time effective to live in sealed domes, underground habitats, and orbital settlements in space. And we would need to find planets in other star systems that are akin to ours, as terraforming them would be an impossible task till we reach the level of a Type III civilization perhaps a few million years from now.

But the bottom line is, we need to start seriously thinking of colonization NOW!

Cheers!

reply to post by SpartanKingLeonidas

Ender's Game and the other books in that series are by Orson Scott Card, not Robert Heinlein.

Good Heinlein: The Door into Summer, The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress, Time Enough for Love, Glory Road, I Will Fear No Evil. Enjoy.

Originally posted by Astyanax
reply to post by SpartanKingLeonidas

 

Ender's Game and the other books in that series are by Orson Scott Card, not Robert Heinlein.

Good Heinlein: The Door into Summer, The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress, Time Enough for Love, Glory Road, I Will Fear No Evil. Enjoy.

You are quite right, and I apologize.

What I did is reference Heinlein, and forgot to reference Card there.

Good eye, and thank you.

I've actually considered communicating with Orson Scott Card, because he lives in a state I've both driven and flown to. This is not out of the realm of possibilty, in the near and distant future.

Thanks again.

[edit on 8-9-2008 by SpartanKingLeonidas]

reply to post by SpartanKingLeonidas


I'm confused, are these the same threads, I replied on the other one, but was that addressed to Mike? [head explodes]

www.abovetopsecret.com...

Oh well, here it is, I replied in that thread, but I think it should have been in this thread

We must start colonizing soon? I think we already have.

EMM

I seen allot of articles and shows lately about colonizing the moon... i saw one really interesting one on mining the moon for hydrogen 3 they said its really rare one Earth but theres tones of t on the moon. i looked it up the stuffs worth over a billion a ton! its said it could be one of the truly green energy sources and nasa is trying to get private corps involved to bid on the mining contracts some time in 09.

Theres a cool site i really like called physorg.com you should check it its got some great info on space colonization and just about everything else sci/tech you could want.

Originally posted by ...and justice for some
I seen allot of articles and shows lately about colonizing the moon... i saw one really interesting one on mining the moon for hydrogen 3 they said its really rare one Earth but theres tones of t on the moon. i looked it up the stuffs worth over a billion a ton! its said it could be one of the truly green energy sources and nasa is trying to get private corps involved to bid on the mining contracts some time in 09.

I'll bet on the companies that will be getting those contracts, the same companies that currently control the power monopoly. You can understand, if there has been a moon base up there, why they're keeping quiet about it, they can ship back trillions of dollars worth of that stuff annually, insane amount of monies. Aswell as incur a charge for every stage of getting up there, mining it, getting it back down, processing it and shipping it.

EMM

[edit on 8-9-2008 by ElectroMagnetic Multivers]

Originally posted by ElectroMagnetic Multivers
reply to post by SpartanKingLeonidas

 

I'm confused, are these the same threads, I replied on the other one, but was that addressed to Mike? [head explodes]

www.abovetopsecret.com...

Oh well, here it is, I replied in that thread, but I think it should have been in this thread

We must start colonizing soon? I think we already have.

EMM

I think you got lost somewhere on the way to the Moon, or Mars, perhaps.

Let me, reiterate what I stated in Mike Singh's thread, in shorthand.

He was kind enough to post here on this thread, so I reciprocated in like kind on his forum, for Conspiracy Master's.

He's a good guy, and I like him. Plain enough?

I am all for making Moon and Mars colonies but they will only support very small colonies and as far as Titan I think it is a lot harder nut to crack than is reasonable to attempt for this or the next century at least. I think Vesta is one of the best possible worlds to conquer It is made mostly of water ice and that is the most important ingredient for colonization in the solar system. Vesta is also a lot closer to the Sun than Titan so it is just on the outer band of the habitable zone of solar radiation. It will require some really large reflectors to supply light to the colony on Vesta but it is doable at least. Titan would require nuclear power for light for growing food.

Comets redirected in their orbits to strike the Moon and Mars might be an affordable way to get CO2 and water ice to colonies to enable them to be larger than the local materials would allow. I think our first steps out into the solar system should be to capture and hollow out some near Earth orbiting asteroids like 2004MN4 Apophis which is about 400 Meters in diameter. We could put a probe on it when it passes within 9 million miles of Earth in 2013. Then we could be ready for a larger capture mission in 2039 when it passes within 19,000 miles of Earth.

The idea is to put equipment on Apophis to hollow it out and use the materials dug out of it to build surface structures, then get it spinning to create artificial gravity inside for the colony. 2004MN4 is a kind of potato shaped so the inside would be hollowed out in the shape of a dumbbell with 6 floors on each end with the floors being the side that faces out with a connecting tunnel that leads to the surface at the center of the rotation or the zero G entry way which is also the docking port for space craft coming and going from the asteroid colony. Each floor would have about 600 square feet so the colony would have a total area inside under 1 G of 7,200 square feet. This is assuming that we would want to keep the walls 50 meters thick on a side. I think it is a good idea to have a lot of wall between the colonist and space. The materials removed could construct about the same area of space on the outer hull of the asteroid colony ship.
I propose we use a plasma sail to drive the ship since that uses mostly energy from the Sun for propulsion and moving something that large will require a lot of energy. Add to this some large plasma rockets for main propulsion and a nuclear fusion power plant and we would have a large enough colony ship to run around the solar system and do other colony projects.


[edit on 9/8/2008 by UFOTECH]