When the time comes for Asgardians to go in space,we will have to take in mind what type of accomodation will the Asgardian government provide and what will the infrastructure will be like.Keeping in mind that our generation may never get to go out there but we have to think about the coming generations.

I invite all fellow Asgardians to give their views and suggestions on this topic and help Asgardia to be a better nation in means of comfort,acomodation and infrastructue

(Apologetic for posting this topic in the section of Litrature).

This topic has been moved from literature to economics forum for further discussion.

That might be a bit far in the future but still dreams might be true one day.

I think that we should set up space colony using materials from space mining

Hey Ken, That would take far too long first the materials would have to be processed and then they would have to be scrubbed clean as they would be highly radioactive thanks to highly radioactive environment from which they came

It won't take as long to mine as you'd think, and much of the "radioactive matter" can be utilised in things that will never come in contact with people - like more deep space mining machines.

Processing is ofc critical, if it's possible to encapsulate an asteroid to prevent fabrication of further debris I postulate ressonance can render it into a lot smaller chunks with minimal thermal or kinetic excess, and this can be mechanically ground into powder and centrafugally sorted. Initially, if this was mostly(say 70%) returned raw to orbit then the limited processing facilities included on the mining facilities(being a long way away, it's a sensible move) can convert this into usable materials with which it can expand it's own facilities and capacities, eventually to the point of being able to throw back usable materials. Of what returns to orbit, we can sell 60% to Earth. This can fund things like the consumables involved in making the mining equipment self-replicate, which in turn results in more/faster resources. The 40% remaining in orbit from each shipment can be processed up there and used to expand facilities to be able to turn the inbound raw resources into usable materials, and the infrastructure required to turn them into the things you could actually begin to build "accomodation" out of. Eventually as this capacity expands it also opens up for selling usable materials and finished goods to Earth

As to what form this "accomodation" will take place as, that is something there is likely to be much argument over between now and when we can actually make it happen. I personally don't think it's sensible to build up plans to and immense solidity or precision on this front as several decades away there may be much new technology that has changed several games. That's not to say it's not worth exploring the issues that will be faced, and the potential ways in which they can be solved. It's possible this process could actually lead to the new technologies that change the playing field. Whatever form it takes, I'd suggest it be modular in design - both externally and internally - in order that it can be upgraded/replaced/expanded/reconfigured as requirements change with ease

Hello Eyer, Considering we do not yet have even a beginning of a space based mining industry it will take long. Then there is the question of how to neutralize the radioactive nature of any ores/precious stones obtained from mining space rocks. A question that will have to be answered because we are talking about ionizing radiation which as you know is extremely harmful to living beings. Now, I do believe that eventually things will be as safe as you suggest but, I also believe it is foolish to think things will be as safe as you suggest right from the start. Accidents will happen after all

No, not yet - That's why you make one. Give me a few years on that one though, it can definitely get online. If by "long time" you mean a few decades, possibly. That's nothing on the scale of time overall, and considering the payback well worth the wait.

As for neutralisation of "radioactive nature" I'm entirely unsure. There may be some particle physicist or nuclear physicist who might have a better idea of how to achieve this than I. Everything is radioactive, as I understand it, it's just a question of decay rate and where in the decay chain it is currently. Thankfully this adjusts it's atomic mass. Sorting by mass is a simple industrial process. As a powder, this should be easy to centrfuge into different elements, then with a higher speed centrafuge spin in into different isotopes. The lesser stable ones should be pretty simple to extract from the ones we want - and as previously mentioned, lots can be used in applications where it doesn't matter if it's got a slight beta emittence.

Accidents do happen. With that in mind, you address this in the design phase. You don't allow it to happen. If the blue wire isn't supposed to ever go into the blue socket, don't make it so it physically fits. Expect idiots. Testing, much testing. Build on top of existing standards and protocols from industries that do no tollerate failure and operate mission critical systems with regularity. Right from the start things will be safe because only an idiot would start until it can be made safe. You don't move 170k people onto a station, then think about thermal dissipation. So, unless you're willing to be going to space surrounded by idiots in something built by idiots - and that surely would have to be a youtube moment - then it's safe to assume any issues will of been picked up in the design phase, rectified in response to the simulations, and after intensive testing shouldn't exist. We're talking decades away here. There's plenty of time for this to be made safe - it's already possible, this has been proven.

With the seperate idea of building modular floating habitats offshore it would be posisble to test much of the technologies before it's actually deployed in a critical environment.

Hello Eyer, If you are capable of doing the things you claim then what's stopping you? I mean, you could pioneer an entirely new industry as well as become a billion if not trillionaire. Hell, you may even surpass a trillionaire and become the wealthiest man alive and anyone in business with you would also benefit tremendously! So, what is stopping you?

As far as not letting accidents happen goes, you can not stop them from happening. They are events that happen spontaneously, in order to stop an accident from happening you would need prior knowledge that one will occur before it does. So, unless you receive a never ending news feed from the future it is impossible to prevent an accident from occuring. You are being naive if you think life aboard a station in the most hostile environment a human could ever find themselves in will ever be safe much less right off the bat!

Safety is an illusion not a guarantee

There's nothing stopping me, plenty of things slowing me down, like things ahead of it in the queue, but not ocurred something to stop me yet. I'm still on schedule. Tock follows tick. Ofc, it is comforting to note your progress is much faster, and we'll get there quicker that way. As for becoming the wealthiest man alive, that's not the goal. If that was the goal I'd possibly not persue it like this, and I'd not tell you all I'm going to do it, I'd just do it. I'd also be prepared to engage in lesser ethical means to get there, too so I'd definitely get there faster.

You can stop accidents - or at least the ones that really matter - with sensible planning policies and procedures, much of this can be gained from previously learned lessons in other industies. Everything else is basically down to good design. You don't need a never ending news feed from the future to achieve it either. If life in a station can't be made safe, then why entertain the notion? that's seriously not sensible. If that's other people's lives you're talking about then that's criminally irresponsible. Certainly "safe" is a relative term, but it should be possible to be made at least as "safe" as any terresterial location, for the larger percentage of time. It'd certainly be safe right off the bat unless you're intending on commiting mass murder with your criminal negligence. Hope isn't something that's accepted as a valid way of doing things when it comes to survival in space. There's likely to be "teething issues" with deployment etc but I'd not expect for anything substantial. I'd expect most things to of been solved a long time before constructions are even considered. There is plenty of time fo this.

Hello Eyer, If you say so but honestly I am unconvinced, No, no you can not stop accidents from occuring. They are events that happen spontaneously how do you figure they can be stopped? Even with the best of planning, policies, and procedures they will still happen. You simply can not account for every possible variable that could lead to an accident. Life aboard a space station will never be truly safe, it will however be as safe as one can make it which is not very. Unless they have control over every factor that makes it unsafe to begin with and last I checked god was not a citizen of Asgardia

Granted, you cannot stop every accident. Someone will leave their shoelaces untied and trip and othersuch - but for anything that actually matters, you can commonly prevent it with a little planning and good design. Like being unable to open the outer airlock until the inner airlock is sealed and pressures equalised. Don't allow stupid things to happen in the first place, in the very design so even if they try it then it won't work.

With planning and good design, there's little reason why a station shouldn't be possible to be made as safe as pretty much any terrestrial location. Some stations may eventually end up in sincerely hazardous locations but these are a different senario within themselves, I was specifically talking of near-Earth. There's not a lot of unknowns involved with such a venture, much of it is the same as on the floor, especially if there's artificial gravity in the mix. True, you can't control every factor - but you can control enough or there's not really any sense in starting, you'll just end up killing lots of people.

Of the known things that are disturbing, most are commonly mitigated. To have a 5 meters thick NiFe skinned with 6cm of titanium as a radiation shield, most MMOD will be of no particular threat - naturally this should be in modular sections and easily replacable. Might be good to have an external panelling with a foot of metal foam for absorbing ballistical impact, that can be replaced cheaply after MMOD without replacing the entire 5 meter thick panel - and we should be well into clearing that up near Earth debris by the time we'd be building ourselves places to live. Just to make it sensible to try and put something there. Anything big enough to threaten our facilities would rightly threaten the Earth and thusly already be in our mandate to be doing something about. There's multiple ways to deal with this - all easier if intercepted earlier, so we should eventually sensibly expend effort and deploy equipment in seeking of them, and add this effort onto the efforts of others in this field. Besides, it's not as if this will be "just floating" it'd more than likely require thrust to maintain it's orbit, and will be "repositionable" - it won't be a graceful swan in the stars by any means, but it might be able to move 50 meters to the left, or slow down by three meters a second and that can be enough to avoid an impact.

A sensible design to the internal structure should mitigate damages by fire or flood, with autonomous systems to rapidly take care of either essential. Especially during loss of gravity - you don't plan disaster mitigation strategies for when it's all working good. Generally all "critical" systems should be tripple redundant, utilising preferably two independant principles so in event of failure of one, the other still operates. Someone might trip and bang their head, or cut their hand on knife - but certainly no-one will be venting the general atmosphere into deep space, or creating their own personal tsunami by filling a room full of water or anything stupid. All this will be taken care of in the design phase. If it's done right there, to do anything seriously wrong then you'd have to be trying pretty hard and mitigating at least one countermeasure. Difficult to describe that as an "accident".

Hello Eyer, No space station can ever be made as safe as any terrestial location it simply is not possible. The most you could realistically get is a relative sense of safety that is it. All the planning in the world can not account for such things as thrusters failing, severe solar activity, or gamma ray bursts to name a few variables that make life on a space station dangerous. Factor in the fact that threats could come from all directions in space and you begin to see the real danger present. Sure, intelligent design can account for some human errors but in space the threats will not come from just humans and those variables are the true dangers! You just simply can not plan for everything, oh and, the station would have to be far enough away from the Earth as not to be pulled out of orbit by the planet's gravity. Believing that you can plan for unknown variables and make life on a space station as safe as life on Earth is naive and dangerous. Your giving yourself a false sense of security and underestimating how deadly the environment of space can be!

You account for thrusters failing by having regular maintainence and testing and additionally deploying multiple independant examples of. To assume a toroid/cylindrycal design, these would sensibly populate the perimeter and slight rotation - which is more than likely to be going on anyway to provide for gravity - brings another thruster into line with Delta-V.

Severe solar activity is likely to be rendered futile by the radiation shielding, there's a reason I'd specified five meters thick NiFe skinned in 6cm of titanium. It's called density. If it's getting through that, then it's also wiping out all life on Earth, as after magnetic dispersion a couple of miles of air has significantly less density than five meters of NiFe, I'd not imagine much to get near, let alone past the 6cm on the other side of the NiFe, the outer hull, the inner pressure hull or near the habitation zone. Same with xrays, gamma rays - wave and particle it should stem the lot.

Design can account for more than some, it can almost eliminate the possibility. What remains is a factor regardless of if you're on a station or not. On the whole. Hence "about as safe as a terrestrial location". Being in a much more controllable environment, a lot of that can have something done about it too.

Factoring in that threats can come from (almost)any direction would possibly be why as well as "left" I'd also suggested adjusting velocity as this would hold potential for the easiest way to be in a different point in space in a more appreciable time. You can just simply plan for everything - how do you think it happens now? You don't wait until after the event. Unless you are eager for failure. We've also an advantage as there's a massive list of previous mistakes to learn from.

There are very few unknown variables with such an operation, at least to those who would take the time to pay attention to what is actually involved. There's a large number of them, certainly, but they all resolve. Most easily as these problems have all been solved before. Seriously, the largest headaches are things like thermal dissipation systems on that scale. Most of the unknowns are centered around the human element, and not the station structure or biostasis aperatus. Or for several generations down the line.

I'm not underestimating how deadly space is, and there is no false sense of security. I just don't panic over easily solved problems.

Hello Eyer, You can test and maintain the hell out of those thrusters and they can still FAIL! You are acting as if all the testing and maintenance in the world will make the thrusters 100% fail proof and that just is not true. As for severe solar activity the radiation is not the only threat. The electrons streaming at high speeds from the sun can wipe out electrical systems. Which could lead to the failing of propulsion and other systems aboard the space station or electrical fires aboard the space station! You are fooling yourself by believing that good planning and design can help eliminate threats. The most that can do is minimize the possible threats and that is a fact. Why do you think that no industry or invention has ever existed that has been 100% safe? Because you simply can not plan for every possible eventuallity, you just can't. If you tried you would never achieve your goal because you'd still be in the design phase. In fact you would have to continually be designing and redesigning whatever it is you hope to create in order to keep up with the possible threats it would face!

No, testing and maintainence doesn't mitigate failure in it's entirety. You are accurate with this. But does minimise this as much as is feasible. Having a stock of spares should suggest it's not out of operation for long. Again, due to the almost certain rotation applied to the vessel, combined with the dozens of units acros the perimeter, the loss of even 5 units wouldn't impact propulsive capacity much more than 10%. Unless you think everyone aims for failure like you seem to and only affixes one single unit.

The electrons streaming at high speed from the sun are highly unlikely to make it through the outer radiation shield. Otherwise that really wasn't designed very well. It will act somewhat like a faraday cage to such particulates as the dispersion and the electron excitement will pass "harmlessly" around the outside. Regardless, any critical system will be insulated and shielded additionally, it might even be viable to directly harvest this energy.

The thing you don't seem to quite grasp is nothing I am talking about is novel or unique. Everything exists right now, maybe packaged slightly differently but it's all operational right now and to acceptable safety margins. You can plan for every possible eventuality, as history has been remarkably rich with examples and it's getting a little repetative to anyone that pays attention. You shouldn't be needing to continually redesign - yes, improvment is a good thing, but the simpler something is the less it can fail, and once you've got it so you can't make it any simpler that's possibly when you should stop. The simple ways to mitigate "threats" are quite obvious, almost self explainitory.