Colonization plan by Quantum Immortal

(the title make it sound too cranky) Incremental space colonization and Antarctica colonization and ocean colonization etc...

from my blog

In short:

Use remotely controlled robots from the comfort of your room, to build incrementally an outpost capable of accepting permanent colonists.

Start by sending fully functional remotely controlled robots. They will assemble more remotely controlled robots from sent in spare parts. Assemble a little remotely controlled industry and mining operations. When the remotely controlled robotic outpost is self sufficient, it will start building infrastructure for accepting humans. First humans will be send in a one way trip(80% cheaper), there only job will be to raise children, send in as frozen embryos. When the population reaches a couple of thousand, it will be capable to interbreed by it self. We would have finally established, a permanent human colony, at acceptable cost.

Stage 1 - Assembly.

First mission contains some functioning remotely controllable robots( just robot arms?), they are used to set up a little industry in order to assemble more robots. The first missions will send all the spare parts needed to build other robots and what ever tools and photovoltaics are needed. Rudimentary maintenance can be done at this stage.

It will be extremely cheap, compared with sending humans right away. No atmosphere, no food, no living quarters, no recreation quarters, no sleep, no rest, no radiation shielding, no failsafes, no anything.

For cheapness, most robot arms(and a camera) are fixed. Some are mobile, there primary purpose is to move the fixed arms around depending on the work needs. And very few will even have there own earth antenna on, so that they can perform antenna reparation(if all antennas brake down then we have to resend an expensive mission from earth)

Human controllers work for 1-2 hours and rotate in shifts, this way outpost infrastructure remains at near 100% efficiency use (human efficiency deteriorates very fast after 1 hour, they will be required to give over 100%). Infrastructures will be used 24-7, never stops, never, expendable machines will be used to destruction.

Stage 2 - Industrialization.

Setting up of local little factories. 3D printers for various materials (metals, plastic, resins, etc) are by far the easiest to use. Little machine tools and raw materials are sent, setting up little assembly lines. A little foundry is landed carefully and raw metals are crash landed (cheaper, other raw materials are probably to fragile for this treatment).

For energy: At the beginning, concentrating mirrors for energy, photovoltaics are too complex for early production.

Electronics: Send germanium at first, use poor resolution photolithography (extremely expensive otherwise).

Recycling: Recycling factories will drastically reduce imports of raw materials. Because energy will be much cheaper then raw materials, recycling rates should near 100%.

Stage 3 - Mining.

Gradually replace imports of raw materials from earth with locally mined raw materials, by remotely controlled robot miners. Maybe keep importing certain very rarely used materials.

Stage 4 - Empty human colony building.

At some point the outpost becomes self sustained, requiring only remote controlled orders from earth. From there, we can build infrastructure that can support humans. Living quarters, recreation centres, etc.

Gradually build green houses. First lichen greenhouses, they can survive space vacuum and thrive in low atmospheric pressure( liquid water at 0.006 atm). We should breed edible lichens that can at least temporary survive in a vacuum, later use edible extremophile bacteria. Finally, algae, more complex plants in hydroponics. When we have atmosphere capable facilities, we send animals.

Stage 5 - First humans.

One way trip of a handful of colonists(Yes, they NEVER come back, 80% cheaper). They will not perform research, they will be real colonists, they will be the first Selenites. They don't breed with them selves, they receive sperm and embryos( that would be trashed?) from earth, until genetic diversity is enough.

We still need to avoid toxic materials in earlier stages for when the colonists will arrive. Firsts colonists job is to care for the children, only send there as frozen embryos and grown by the women there. All the early colonists needs are cared for by the remotely controlled robot arms until the colony totally brakes even for good.

==problems(Latency)==
It will be important latency because of light speed limit. With the moon its 5 seconds(barely acceptable), with Venus/Mercury its around 8 minutes(sun its 8min), and with Mars 20-30minutes(for a one way signal). For Pluto, you don't want to know.

Since these huge latencies are imposed, the robots and equipment could be greatly simplified( everything is slowed down). Smaller antennas with lower bandwidth, slower motors, thinner structural elements, slower electronics, weaker photovoltaics. The whole thing could be made more cheaply and with lower mass.

Human controllers would be probably controlling 10-20-50 robots at the same time, probably with little pictograms reminding of what task the robot was supposed to be doing and a little film of the previous moves. Robots would be controlled like stop motion animation.

Work should be redesigned so that things can happen in parallel. On earth short event simulations could be performed with human operators, the instructions are send in block(series of ifs) and executed, the low intelligence computers of the automated outpost are performing the instructions until expected results exceeds a security margin.

We can build outposts everywhere simultaneously in the solar system. Construction on Pluto would be considerably slower then on the moon, the budget per year for the entire solar system should be reasonable.

And will need to be discussed at the UN.

Positives:

The moon will be the first to be colonized, because of the only 5 seconds lag. Once the lunar colony is important enough, it will be able to send equipment for setting up new colonies. It will be cheaper to launch them from the moons surface, then from earth. As the front of colonization will spread, it will make it easier to colonize further. Further colonies will be able to remotely control the further still outpost with lower lag, then if they were controlled from earth. With economies of scale, at some point it will be easy enough to just send humans right away.

With important infrastructure up there already built, costs of sending humans from earth's gravitational well will diminish dramatically, hopefully to reasonable levels. And I would like to go there, but I'll be to old until then :( .

Commercial development of rare materials could happen immediately (RH, He3). Robots could be sold or leased to humans on Earth. Development of remotely controlled tourism. Low gravity experiments. Political benefits, in theory at least the nations of the world will cooperate.

Experiments:

Phase 1: First, I'll organize the creation of a realistic computer simulation. It would be open source of course, and at near 0 cost. Maybe it will not be 100% realistic, more like a game, or purely and simply a game for PR, or both. Because of the lag, the simulation can be very realistic, even for the moon.

Phase 2: With government support, we could then build an experimental outpost on earth with these constraints as proof of concept.

Concretely

We need to start with a realistic computer simulation.

Objective: To attract attention to the idea. Like a multiplayer 3D game, but very serious purpose.

Name: "Incremental space colonization"?

Technical:

start a project at sourceforge

use python as primary language, (faster coding, and with a 5 second latency, no one will notice). It should be possible to do a great deal of realism(latency).

Libraries:

python-ogre: 3D stuff

PyQT: GUI sruff

Features:

First version, will just be a robot that can move around. Pick up rocks.

Multiplayer, of course.

Later permit building of complicated mechanical parts.

relatively easy ability for the users to design there own stuff

Any comments? Any potential volunteers? I have no serious programming experience, its going to take me for ever to get a prototype out on my own.Quantum immortal 18:33, March 12, 2011 (UTC)

Better options

The whole line of reason of economics assumes that there is no better propulsion than chemical rockets, see BTC travel and better launches for alternatives. Also, it would not solve the overpopulation on Earth.

It doesn't assume that there is no better propulsion, it makes no assumption what so ever on propulsion. This assumption must be seen from a practical point of view, if better propulsion methods are developed, the better. The plan tries to be as feasible as possible, by making the minimum of assumptions, and by keeping things cheap. In the short term, space colonies could beam down energy, when we have enough energy we can do anything, that would technically permit Earth to hold an arbitrarily large population. In the long term, it would also permit to send millions into outer space. Quantum immortal 18:31, March 12, 2011 (UTC)