Jul 24, 17 / Vir 09, 01 22:38 UTC
Re: Asgardia - Space Station ¶
How can you build a space station with no infrastructures available?
Jul 24, 17 / Vir 09, 01 22:38 UTC
How can you build a space station with no infrastructures available?
Jul 25, 17 / Vir 10, 01 18:50 UTC
Personally, I believe the space station is already being designed and taken care of. remember read the FAQ and it says in 10 years he (Dr. Igor) will have a space platform in space. Meaning he has the infrastructure in place designing it and eventually built. Typical Asgardians will most likely have zero say in the design and building of Asgardia's main systems such as a space platform/Station. We may, if we have our own companies, or are engineers (like myself) may be able to design some things that will go into Asgardia.
But the average citizen will more than likely be left out of it.
Aug 6, 17 / Vir 22, 01 08:43 UTC
I'm preferred if we can choose Stanford Torus megastructure as our space station/space habitat .
That I know stanford torus applying centrifugal force to create artificial gravity like on earth. Very strong enough to hold the pile of soil, canals, and artificial atmosphere.
We can divide habitation tube areas into four parts of the district. Commercial areas, agricultural areas, offices, and residential areas.
I'm designing a blueprint of how we construct the torus configuration from Central Station as a point of the axis of torus rotation.
Secondary station as a connector of the bridge arm to the station center. It can be function as landing bay for the spacecraft.
In addition as connector strut for the torus ring, bridge arm were also useful as research center area, The seat of Government, and mass transportation line from secondary station to the habitation tubes.
- To be Continued -
Aug 6, 17 / Vir 22, 01 10:23 UTC
I agree. Did you calculate the radius of such a station? Did you take into account the linear velocity? (At a large linear velocity, the Coriolis forces will strongly influence the orientation in space, this can create problems for the human vestibular apparatus).
By the way here is a sketch of the station. How do I imagine it (did very forlornly).
How did you calculate the space inside the station? There you need a place not only for people's lives, but also for their work (offices, laboratories), for production, for shopping entertainment facilities. If there will live a family, then you need kindergartens, schools, colleges, a university. In any case, a network of medical institutions (hospitals, pharmacies) is needed. Transport system. How many people are you planning to design the station for?
But that's not all. You need a place to grow plants (what, in what quantity, what method, under what conditions?), For the sewerage system and waste recycling system (do you know how much space this system will take?)
Water supply and water purification system. Place for water supplies (in case of possible accidents).
Security system (from fires, depressurization, etc.)
Power system. What are the needs for electricity? How will we receive energy? Solar cells may not be enough, and it's impossible to use combustion in conditions of oxygen dif ficit ... nuclear reactor?
You took into account external factors acting on the station (temperature drops, radiation, vacuum, cosmic dust, meteoroid, asteroids). What materials are you going to use to build the station? How are you going to deliver materials for construction? Where do you want to produce them? To build such an object, large blocks are required. How beneficial is it to deliver them from Earth? On my vzglad before you build this you need to learn how to create materials directly in space. Ideally, and to extract resources in space.
Now about growing plants. There are three methods: traditional in the soil, hydroponics (in water) and aeroponics (in the air, the nutrient solution is sprayed onto the roots). The most advantageous in my opinion is to use aeroponics. This will reduce the mass and save more valuable resources.
To be able to maneuver in space, you need not one ring but two, rotating in different directions. This is necessary to reduce the gyroscopic effect. And maneuvers are necessary to evade the station from large space bodies, collisions with which it will not survive.
I also think about designing such a station. As you can see, I have a lot of questions. I think we need to first determine how many people we want to settle at this station, to determine the ratio of children and adults. Determine the number of employed people in enterprises. To understand how many people need water, food, air. Determine how much waste they can produce and how to process these wastes. Determine the number and area of living quarters, kindergartens, schools, university, hospitals, the number of pharmacies, stores. Optimal planning of the transport system.
Knowing the number of people and their potential to plan food production.
And this is only a small part of all that needs to be done ... How far have you progressed in planning the station. It is very interesting to me. I'm ready to exchange ideas.
Sep 29, 17 / Sco 20, 01 10:32 UTC
Great thread, great ideas so far!
I think we need to realistically think about a few places on the Earth that would serve as Training Facility's/Base of Operations/Asgardia Prime(Our Earth City). A lot of people like myself are space enthusiasts but don't have the training or are not satisfied with staying where we are and would like a fresh start with like minded individuals.
For examples I would direct people to consider similar projects of large group think, such as the New Hampshire Free State Project, where lots of people with more or less the same goals all chose to move to New Hampshire to try to affect the demographic/voting districts to favor their goals, specifically:
The Free State Project (FSP) is a proposed political migration, founded in 2001, to recruit at least 20,000 libertarians to move to a single low-population state (New Hampshire, selected in 2003) in order to make the state a stronghold for libertarian ideas.[2] The project seeks to overcome the historical ineffectiveness of limited government activism which they believe was caused by the small number and diffuse population of libertarian activists across the 50 United States and around the world.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_State_Project
Another project I'd heard about over the years that is attempting kind of what we are doing, a self sustainable city, is Jacque Fresco's "Venus Project"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacque_Fresco
What do you all think?
Nov 20, 17 / Sag 16, 01 23:38 UTC
Hello everyone. I'm new here and I do not want to destabilize this topic (which I've been reading with interest). Would it not be simpler and more economical, in an infrastructure for so many people, to start colonizing the moon?
The moon has available resources that can be collected and processed remotely.
Critical infrastructures can also be built remotely.
It seems to be a simpler technological challenge
And it can serve as a yard for building space bases
Nov 20, 17 / Sag 16, 01 23:58 UTC
I'm sorry, I just found out that there is a topic on this issue ...
Nov 25, 17 / Sag 21, 01 16:55 UTC
Surely a good way to finance and built up the tech and knowledge for a system such as this would be through the SpaceX method - eg. Have an end goal and do something in a related field to finance progression towards the end goal. This is why SpaceX is at the moment a satellite launch provider but is working towards and financing their end goal to colonise Mars using the money and expertise they've gained from doing this.
This could be achieved through such areas as Space Debris Clearing, Asteroid Mining, Space Tourism, perhaps even as a launch company? This would build the expertise and help finance such an ambitious project. Though I do agree that the majority of the building is likely to be done third party, with perhaps small things done by Engineers and other qualified Asgardians.
Nov 25, 17 / Sag 21, 01 17:55 UTC
I reckon having a moon base would be far better than a space station* as we would have something to export to earth (Helium-3, heat the moon dust and extract the gas). We can use that export to facilitate a better economy.
Lunar dust quarrying would be a valuable resource, not only would it allow us to claim land, but it would also allow us to functional
*The reason i think having a space station would be a bad idea is due to cost of assembling a large station without any purpose other than land, it would also have no export which would increase the cost in the long run.
Nov 26, 17 / Sag 22, 01 11:20 UTC
First I feel the need to explain that I am one of the "dreamers" in this context, with no formal education in space engineering or the like. BUT I have ideas and visions crammed in my head that needs to get out. So here goes!
Imagine using gigantic 3D printers in space to build the habitat, using resources mined from asteroids and other near earth objects. Severeal AI drones will be gathering resources, bring these to the printer which in turn processes the raw material into building material. This will give us an almost endless source to finish one or several habitats and no human is needed at the actual "building site". The printer as such could be a cluster of drones, programmed to mould shapes and weld these together, all under our control from the comfort of earth.
Even if asteroids aren't ideal as material for building/smelting/shaping, we wouldn't need to send up thousands and thousands of parts to build the station, only tanks full of building material (like the 3D printer plastics today) and let the drones use this.
Dec 8, 17 / Cap 06, 01 14:07 UTC
In my humble opinion, there is no point in orbit of living, such a large number of people.
The orbit can only be an intermediate stage for the colonization of the solar system.
We need to build the orbits of the laboratories, the assembly lines, and the accommodation for the service personnel and scientists, space-building engineers, space tourists, but no more.
Then colonization and mass living for the citizens of Asgardia will be on the moon, Mars, probably on the moons of Saturn, such as Titan, Enceladus.
There is no point in making calculations for hundreds of thousands of colonists in orbit.
With regard to the concept of the space platform, we will even have an advantage over NASA or the ROSKOSMOS or EKA in near future, since we have a huge concentration of people in the technical warehouse in Asgardia, many are already working or working in space.
Asgardia a huge concentration of inventors and dreamers and practitioners.
Such synergies are lacking in the case of earth organizations, as there is a wall between them and the policies of States and countries.
I think we're obligated to design an IT structure that will be part of a powerful platform for development or a collective effort that should combine both CRM and task-Manager and the mass brainstorming application, a task-manager with many Levels of detail.
Then, with the help of this platform, we can start with a brainstorm on the task, and instantly transmit the most promising results of the brain attack to the calculation unit, which will be able to prepare the technical release.
Dec 10, 17 / Cap 08, 01 03:48 UTC
@Cryokeen I agree a Resource Based Economy s is the answer and is one that we will have to pursue if Asgardia is serious about a future for humanity.
I have an entire article written about this:
Dec 11, 17 / Cap 09, 01 08:51 UTC
Davidgreat, thank you for starting this conversation, but I think you are looking at it backward. I don't see any indication that these questions have been answered or already decided by the founder, and I don't think we will get any input from the leadership until the parliament is established and it goes through committees, and so forth. Ultimately the leadership will need to give us some direction, but we are going to need to give them the information they need first. I suspect there will probably be some engineers in parliament, but probably not many. When they make the decisions, they are going to need information in order to make those decisions, and it is on us to start compiling that information. Step 1 is to determine what we are trying to create, and step 2 is to brainstorm a list of what all that will entail. Step 3 will be to develop plans that fulfill those needs. Step 1 I think is beyond the scope of engineering. It asks the questions such as how many people will this host? How much space will be needed? Step 2 is where engineers and others are going to need to advise parliament.
As far as plans that have been decided, I believe the constitution laid out that it would start with a low earth orbit satellite, but would eventually evolve to expand to the moon.
I think that we should plan for a larger population. There is a quote from a movie I watched as a kid that I think applies here: "If you build it, they will come." In this case it is saying that if we build a space station where people have the chance to live in space, we will have a lot of people wanting to be a part of that. Right now well over 100,000 people have taken an interest and it still at a point where most people think it is a ridiculous notion. Once it is actually a reality, how many more people will want to be a part of this? At the same time, practicality will limit how big it can be built. Perhaps additional ones can be built after (and may be much easier to build), or perhaps the design can be developed to allow for additional modules to be added on down the road. Either way, shooting for a number in the 100,000 to 500,000 people ball park would seem prudent to me, and it should also be built with the idea of an influx of tourists and visitors as well. For the sake of starting the conversation, let's say 400,000 people. It seems that in developed nations the percentage of the population that is children or those in college (not yet contributing to society on a full-time basis) is about 25%, those of retirement age seems to sit around 15%, and the unemployment rate hovers around 10%. That leaves 400,000 people to provide for, and about 200,000 working. For discussion point let's say 100,000 tourists at any given time (Las Vegas has a population of about 650,000 and about 40 million tourists a year for comparison, but Las Vegas is a little easier to get to). I anticipate that by the time this station is developed transportation will be easier and those who save up for it and are from a relatively affluent background would be able to make the trip. At the same time we could limit visitors to what designs can handle by issuing a limited number of visas. There will probably be a larger portion in the workforce early on, as those most likely to relocate to a new home (in space) are those younger adults who haven't settled down with a family yet (as uprooting a family is a much more difficult decision). Still, this should be planned for the long term, not just for the first few years.
Now, what is needed in a station in Low Earth Orbit that is designed to be home to 400,000 people, about half of whom work full time, plus about 100,000 visitors? What problems will it encounter that need to be resolved? What services and facilities will be needed? What technologies and advancements will be needed to make this possible?
If it rotates to create a centrifugal force for artificial gravity, it will need a counterbalance rotating the other direction. I would suggest that the counterbalance be another wheel, so one wheel would house half the population, and the other wheel would house the other half. If expansion is needed, an additional wheel could be added to each side. The center would be in a state of perpetual microgravity and could be used to house microgravity experiments as well as be used as a docking port (as it would be a stationary target where as the wheels would be much more difficult to dock with). Moreover, I suggest that these not actually be full wheels, but instead be modules at the end of spokes, so that as a module gets old, it could be replaced without having to replace the entire station. I would also suggest that the station make one rotation per hour. It will have sufficient size to pull that off, plus with the modular design, if a greater radius is needed to increase velocity without increasing rotation time, all that needs to be added is longer connecting tunnels (which won't add substantially to the cost). The reason for this rotation speed is that it is slow enough that someone can look out a window comfortably (without getting vertigo due to the rapid movement of the environment). A 60-minute rotational period isn't a scientifically derived number, just an educated guess based on how fast I could fly when I use to operate a planetarium without people getting dizzy. Additionally, at less than .02rpm, the Coriolis effect shouldn't be a factor.
As far as radiation is concerned, this station will be well within the protections of the magnetosphere, even if it has an orbit several times higher than the ISS. When it comes to needing to train people for space, I don't think that will be an issue. There will certainly be an adjustment, but as long as this has artificial gravity, it can be designed to be sufficiently similar to Earth to not require extreme adjustment. Besides that, it would need to be designed that way if it were to allow visitors (which would probably provide a large portion of the economy). A safety briefing such as what one might get on an airplane or a cruise ship (maybe a little more in-depth). SpaceX is planning on sending people on a trip around the moon and back, and probably isn't expecting them to go to some training facility first. As long as newcomers are brought on board by a competent guide that can give a good safety briefing and lead them through the transition from microgravity to artificial gravity they should be fine.
Some other factors to consider:
Orbital period
propulsion to maintain orbit
avoiding other space debris
a hull sufficiently strong enough to withstand the outward pressure of the atmosphere contained within the station
a hull sufficiently durable to withstand micro-meteors and other space debris
a hull sufficiently protect against internal impact (someone accidentally bumping the wall with the corner of a chair)
shielding from what radiation the magnetosphere won't protect against
an IDSS compliant docking system
communication to Earth sufficient for internet access for 500,000 people, plus phone calls, television, and streaming services
water, food, shelter, clothing, entertainment, jobs, household goods, schools, power
fire suppression systems, security personnel, a bridge to manage orbital station keeping
an emergency plan in event of a hull breach or in the event of something cataclysmic (such as a module disconnecting, collision with a large object, or the need for mass evacuation)
transport to and from the station (for construction materials or modules at the beginning, and for passengers later on)
furniture - probably very minamalist early on, but still needed
mechanical systems, electrical systems, a plumbing system, data network, transportation (depending on how things are laid out, and on size)
Keep the list going. We should look at challenges that the ISS, B330, skylab, the Salyut program, Tiangong stations, and others have resolved. We should also look at plans for other independent colonies such as seasteads to see what vital services we might be missing. If anyone wants to pick one of those projects and do some digging on it and report back, that would be helpful. If there are any civil engineers that can provide some feedback, that would no doubt be helpful as well. If anyone has a background in orbital mechanics, we'll certainly need that too. Additionally, we'll probably need someone to organize everyone's thoughts into one coherent list. I did a research paper in college that among other things included details on power and water consumption. I'll see if I can dig that out to get some numbers. I believe the electricity numbers were largely based on a U.N. study if I remember right, and projected growth out a few decades. The water usage per person was pretty high, but the vast majority of that was from farming. Aeroponics, as suggested by someone earlier in this thread, would make water a much smaller challenge, though we would have to find figures on what that would take.
Sorry about the long post, but I truly believe that it is up to us to lay the groundwork for planning this station. Parliament will have to undertake some decisions, and ultimately an engineering firm will have to put together the final plans, but if we walk in and just say, "build us a space station to hold 400,000 people", they're going to ask for a little more to go on. Also, the more we plan before it gets to that point, the cheaper it will be when we hire an engineering firm. I also believe that we are looking at a timeline of years, not decades.
Again, thank you, Davidgreat, for starting this discussion.
Dec 24, 17 / Cap 22, 01 11:22 UTC
Hello friends this topic is very interesting and ı would like to write some informations about this. First these calculations were very empricial based on my engineery. There will be a balance between earth mass ( our space station ) and sun etc. according to my very little knowledge everything is balanced with their mass on universe. One of friend wrote population of 400.000 people . lets talk about it. We will need directly 150 km2 surface to construct anything we wish and that means load of 350.000.000 tons. Again according to my very little knowledge if we think minimalistic 400.000 people, possible of minimum they need 26 km2 for housing and that means load of nearly 150.000.000 tons. and we have to calculate others. nearly we need a mass of 750.000.000 metric tons of materials for everything. I am happy now earth need us the asgardians.