Jan 1, 17 / Aqu 01, 01 17:42 UTC
fabian: Construction of Asgardia ¶
me parece buena su visión Scarbs !!!
Jan 1, 17 / Aqu 01, 01 17:42 UTC
me parece buena su visión Scarbs !!!
Jan 3, 17 / Aqu 03, 01 11:44 UTC
Dears Collegues of asgardia, I'm reading a lot of wonderfull and good Ideas here, however, I think we must put our feets on the ground for a while, there are many engineering to be developed in order to reach the main goal of the orbital space station nation, I'm engineer and normally we use to take a problem and figure out how to solve it.. In this case is like a long way. we should develope clear steps, work teams in different areas of specialities, goals, schedules, etc.
1.- We should engineer, develope, construct and test (somewhere on earth) a self sustainble habitat with full recycle and handling of food, garbage, water, oxigen simulating the most influential conditions of the space, simulating the energy sources that can be used in space (solar, for example). 2.- How the few people who will reside in asgardia will handle the gravity matter (the longest recidence in space is only one year with several expected health complications (i think was Spacex who develope this experiment), is necesary to cevelope efiicient artificial gravity. 3.- Engineer the exposion to solar radiation, effects and shield. 4.- Instruments and monitoring devices development. 5.- Rocket engineer development (I do not think we will be able to develope rocket techologgy in the beggining and obviously we have to pay the ESA or NASA to launch the parts of the asgardia station (is a looooottt of money) 6.- Research in space construction and automation. 7.- Design and test the modules- 8.- Launch!!!!
There is a very long way.. however, the most important point is that Asgardia counts with engineers and technologist to think and develope thinks, and probably in the future we can count with real facilities and labs to work.
Please comment and we should pick some star point, create work teams and beggin to work.
Regards
Carlos Boza Layseca Construction Civil Engineer Geomatics Engineer
Jan 4, 17 / Aqu 04, 01 02:20 UTC
Hello ...... Everyone talks about the materials but nobody thinks about the structures ....... because to create our country in space we have to go beyond a simple idea of building a space station. ... because it is necessary to revolutionize the construction itself and to propose new alternatives .............. new methods of structures ... since the convecionales would be very rustic for the rapid progress of the infrastructure.
Jan 7, 17 / Aqu 07, 01 06:24 UTC
Yes. It's a long way away. Solving it is almost casual. For a loose overview, Lift a seed factory and a few "tugs". We start moving now, we could have that clipped to ISS by 2020. The tugs can tow LEO debris to the seed factory, where it will use them as fodder to expand and upgrade itself to the point it can clone itself. Then after a clone it prints a few more tugs and some centrafugal launchers. The launcher can throw a couple of tugs out to the belt between Mars and jupiter. Then it can throw the cloned seed factory, the tugs can catch it and position it. Few weeks later it can throw a centraugal launcher, same story. The tugs can feed that factory from the belt, if it throws 70% of processed materials back this way, and keeps 30% to upgrade itself, then by the time the first materials get back to us, it's already cloned itself and there's twice the resources inbound. Then double that, then double that, then double that, then double that .... Exponential growth.
Then we can entertain crazy projects, like attempting to house our population...
By the time the first resources arrive, the Earth-side seed factory should of significantly cleared LEO debris, and constructed manufacturing and production facilities. Then we can start production of orbital farms - establishing the food supply for our population, selling it to Earth whilst we don't require it by virtue of not being in space yet - this will provide additional funding for other ventures. As we expand farming facilities to the point of realistically adding in livestock farms, we start on the modular components for stations. Few years later, start clipping the parts together, move the larger chunks to final locations and start assembling stations. By the time this is completed the additional farms constructed should be able to account for our food requirements.
note: stations. As in more than one. A single point of failure represents the greatest chance of wiping the entire nation out with one mishap. Multiple in the same orbital belt sensibly positioned would allow, in the event of systems failure or other emergency requiring immediate vacation there's two stations either side to split the load across. In less severe conditions, each side is able to send support within the hour. Centrafugal launchers could make travel between the stations rendered trivial, completing a full loop in a few hours. Centrafugal launchers could throw further out past the moon, or place anything on any spot on the earth(although it's more likely to deliver people/cargo to specified dropzones, more than doorsteps).
Jan 9, 17 / Aqu 09, 01 07:00 UTC
I lean towards a more Earth based approach, such as the ocean city mentioned before. The ocean is full of minerals that can be gathered reasonably easy and would provide a large amount of raw resources for initial development. -Ken
Jan 9, 17 / Aqu 09, 01 17:47 UTC
I like the idea laid down by scarbs, it is certainly original and sounds relatively feasible within the next few decades. But practically eyeRs plan sounds a lot more realistic and provides a much clearer timeline of events and deadlines as well as focused research points. At least in my opinion, if we were to put it to a vote I chose eyeRs plan.
Jan 10, 17 / Aqu 10, 01 01:01 UTC
There's nothing to say these are mutually exclusive. When I started thinking to clip some seed factory into orbit, it was with veiw of mining facilities just the other side of the moon ready to park asteroids up at. Throwing a seed factory past Mars is just too sensible to avoid, tho, and that'll get resources back whilst we're parking asteroids. Big mass will require a lot of deltaV - using something with small output like a Q-thruster it'd then translate to a lot of time. I'd personally set on smaller ones, first. Same as LEO debris - possibly even the same model could be recycled - Three or four "tugs" can hold between them something similar to a windsock. They can incercept and guide little rocks into the sock and when done via a drawstring type mechanism close the "mouth" keeping the contents inside whilst it guides it back for processing.... For larger rocks a less sock-like but similar strategy should equally work. The best part of the seed factory idea, IMHO, is it could be pulled off for less than $15/head, by my reckoning. All it should cost is the materials to build it, a few tugs, and to get them lifted. From there it's just infinite payback. Eventually.
There's definitely "engineering challenges" with tunneling inside an asteroid, especially for habitation purposes. I suspect just choosing the right rock to start on will be a challenge. But on the outset it doesn't seem impossible. After the structural integrity of the rock, the next most concerning feature I'd find would be thermal dissipation... Habitation makes loads of heat. Power generation - everywhere you use that power, organic output -=- it'd need just as many - if not more - radiatiors as solar panels... These ovbiously would require to be mounted externally also, and one would commonly expect them to feature same MMOD(micrometeorite/orbital debris) strike risk. From there on out I don't predict too many "unique challenges".
The floating habitats(not my idea, but I did open a post about that https://asgardia.space/en/forum/forum/resource-acquisition-and-management-86/topic/floating-habitation-815/) - which potentially could be scaled city sized if approached correctly - are a sensible venture about now. There's a disconnected place within which to perform various experiments - including but not limited to long term biostasis tests, a place to develop technologies, a place to start putting population... loads of good reasons to think about doing that as well, it can help prepare. The ocean does have minerals - but they're Earths. Depending on what you'd mean by "initial development", anything we do with them will rightly have to stay here. Even if there was enough of the right things, and it was reasonable to reach them, and they could be then processed cheaply - I still think it'd be cheaper to buy off the shelf materials...
Jan 11, 17 / Aqu 11, 01 10:40 UTC
Some good points EyeR, still the idea of orbital "factories" is of great interest to me and I believe it is certainly a good first step after the satellite has been launched. As well as possibly being a stable source of income for Asgardia in the future if materials and other such items could be sold back to earth? If this become a serious project I will certainly like to be involved.
Jan 19, 17 / Aqu 19, 01 20:05 UTC
This may sound a bit crazy, but I was thinking that the stations' hulls should be made mostly out of concrete reinforced with steel rebar, as well as a thin steel outer shell.
My reasons for this are as follows:
Concrete is a lot less dense than steel, (2.4 tons per cubic metre, compared to steel's 8) so it would reduce the weight of the station by a hell of a lot.
Concrete has great compression strength (something like 1000 psi), with the steel rebar helping with torsion and tension.
It would mean there's a lot less waste if we're going through with the asteroid mining idea. You just simply need to take all the leftover rock, grind it up, mix it with water and cement, and there you have it: an abundance of building material.
Just an idea!
Jan 19, 17 / Aqu 19, 01 23:10 UTC
In the early phases wouldn't it be better to Recycle old / discontinued space debris?
Jan 20, 17 / Aqu 20, 01 02:03 UTC
Talking about using abandoned satellites to help with the resource issue of Asgardia got me thinking, just how many satellites DO we have in orbit that are no longer functional? I understand Wikipedia isn't exactly the most reliable resource, but it did seem as good a place to start as any. Here is what I found.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Derelictsatellitesorbiting_Earth
Jan 20, 17 / Aqu 20, 01 04:47 UTC
deleted
Jan 20, 17 / Aqu 20, 01 16:38 UTC
I've seen quite a few good ideas on mining resources however if we think at the financial side it will be very expensive to start gathering minerals by mining. The best and closest thing that we could do would be as I have already seen here is to clean the Earth's orbit from rocket debris and disabled satellites. The start will clearly be slow but in time I am sure that we will accelerate the process and we could use those materials to build the modules that could mine the NEO.