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spacehabitats
05-21-2008, 11:35 AM
Our constitution and nation were born out of the perfect storm of a new frontier populated by pioneers, nearly unlimited natural resources, "free" land for the taking, and enough distance from the oppressive governments of Europe to give our nascent Republic a chance of survival.

It is this type of frontier that is the natural incubator and ultimate refuge for human liberty.

In 1977 Dr. Gerard O'Neill, an experimental physicist from Princeton, outlined a road map to space development that was so elegant and ingenious that it inspired the creation of a private, nonprofit organization, The Spaces Studies Institute, to implement his strategy.

Space Studies Institute (http://ssi.org/)

In many ways I consider Dr. O'Neill to be the "Ron Paul" of scientists.
Once understood, his road map for the extension of human civilization into outer space is incredibly intuitive; in the "Why didn't I think of that!" manner of all truly elegant solutions.
However, in spite of the fact that "The High Frontier" was written in the mid-1970's, and the fact that advances in technology have only made his vision even more attainable today, his ideas are relentlessly ignored by "the establishment".

Today, more than thirty years later, with subsequent technological advances, the path to opening up a limitless frontier in space has become even more attractive and practical.

O'Neill's strategy of using extraterrestrial resources (http://ssi.org/assets/images/slide04.jpg) (lunar soil, asteroids) rather than the incredibly expensive materials launched from Earth to build an industrial civilization in space is the key. It is the concept of "living off the land" (http://ssi.org/assets/images/log_cabin.gif) that pioneers have always used successfully. It is also the one capability that NASA has never even attempted to develop. (If NASA had been in charge of developing the New World, the few Europeans living in America would still be living in pre-fab houses shipped over from England on sailing ships!)

Lunar soil (http://ssi.org/assets/images/slide06.jpg) is 42% oxygen, and rich in building materials like iron, magnesium, aluminum, and silicon. A robotic lunar mine (http://ssi.org/assets/images/slide07.jpg) would just scoop up surface dirt, load it into steel cans, and launch them into space using electromagnetic mass drivers (http://ssi.org/assets/images/astronaut_at_lunar_mass_driver.jpg) powered by solar panels. Notice, no rockets, no rocket fuel, nor any other depleteable resource from Earth.

While the initial investment is high (estimated on the order of the Alaskan oil pipeline), once the infrastructure is in place the resulting products (solar power satellites (http://ssi.org/assets/images/SPS_summary.jpg), space colonies (http://ssi.org/assets/images/slide17.jpg), and inexhaustible clean electrical energy (http://ssi.org/assets/images/SPS_wi_rectenna.jpg)) are virtually "free".

Dr. O'Neill and his colleagues have put the development of viable, independent, space colonies within the grasp of private enterprise.

In a classic example of a self-fulfilling prophecy, NASA has programmed us to believe that living in space necessarily involves living in cramped, uncomfortable, dangerous tin cans launched from Earth at horrible expense.

This IS the result of a space program designed and implemented by a bloated, federal bureaucracy.

http://web.mit.edu/slava/space/images/ess-tiap4-4c.jpg

This is what free enterprise and a little pioneering spirit could give us:

http://ssi.org/assets/images/Stanford_Torus.jpg

Oh yes, and a side benefit from this would be to make the human race virtually unkillable.

Planet-killer asteroids and comets could be scooped up and turned into fodder for new colonies.

No pandemic, nuclear holocaust, or supervolcano could ever again threaten to destroy all of human civilization, let alone cause our extinction.

No "New World Order" could ever hope to enslave all of mankind. Independent space colonies at L5 (a stable orbit around the distance to the moon) would literally have days to shoot down nuclear missiles, and could use particle beams that are very effective in the vacuum of space. It would be as easy as playing "Missile Command" on your old Atari 2600!

No wonder They don't want us to know about this.

Mahkato
05-21-2008, 11:40 AM
RonPaulRocket.com (http://www.ronpaulrocket.com/) :rolleyes:

spacehabitats
05-21-2008, 01:21 PM
RonPaulRocket.com (http://www.ronpaulrocket.com/) :rolleyes:

Exactly the same thing except that one is an embarrassing joke and the other would be the most important advancement for terrestrial life since our ancestors climbed out of the primordial ooze onto dry land.

(or Adam met Eve, depending on your creationist views;))

ronpaulhawaii
05-21-2008, 01:31 PM
Looks like a dream:)

(I love chasing dreams:D)

asgardshill
05-21-2008, 01:36 PM
You'll want to pick up some of that plentiful Helium3 lying around up there on the Moon while you're at it. Makes great fuel for fusion reactors.

yongrel
05-21-2008, 01:39 PM
Cool. I like the bit about being able to survive the super volcano. Yellow Stone terrifies me.

ronpaulhawaii
05-21-2008, 01:48 PM
Kinda eerie,
how similar some of our thoughts must be
to the echos of half a millennia ago

tmosley
05-21-2008, 01:52 PM
I have heard that Helium3 likely doesn't exist in anywhere near the quantities (ie concentration--you can't effectively mine it if it is only present in ppbillion or pptrillion) needed to make rocket fuel on the moon. Without a plentiful supply of rocket fuel in the soil, the whole plan just kind of falls apart. You need large numbers of rockets to launch solar satellites into lunar orbit, and getting that amount of fuel from Earth will be practically impossible. Maybe if they were to deploy a number of space elevators, they could use mass drivers on earth to launch fuel or the first generation of solar satellites into lunar orbit for capture and deployment.

The requirements for a lunar space elevator would be much less than one for Earth, given the decreased gravity and lack of atmosphere. The material wouldn't need nearly as much tensile strength, wouldn't have to be nearly as long, or nearly as durable near the bottom.

spacehabitats
05-21-2008, 02:58 PM
NASA is an example of Dr. Paul's "unintended consequences" of federal activism.
Not only does the tax system suck up private capital that could be invested in space R&D, the space shuttle program actually COMPETES with private enterprise space industries!

I am the proud owner of 2,000 worthless shares in a now defunct company which wanted to offer satellite launching services.

But we could not compete with the highly subsidized shuttle program. YOURS AND MY TAX DOLLARS AT WORK!

If NASA had been in charge of developing early airplane technology there would be no airline industry today and it would probably cost $20,000 for an airline ticket to fly from New York to Chicago. We would be told that this was to be expected for something as inherently dangerous, expensive, complex, and difficult as "flying through the air"!

spacehabitats
05-21-2008, 04:35 PM
Helium3, we don't need no stinkin' Helium3!



You need large numbers of rockets to launch solar satellites into lunar orbit, and getting that amount of fuel from Earth will be practically impossible.

You don't launch solar power satellites from Earth, you construct them in space from materials mined on the lunar surface (http://ssi.org/assets/images/lunar_material_flow.jpg). You launch the raw materials from the moon using electromagnetic catapults called mass drivers. With no atmosphere and free solar energy you can construct a mass driver that will reach lunar escape velocity (http://ssi.org/assets/images/mass_driver_chart.jpg) easily.

Look, Ma! No rockets!



The requirements for a lunar space elevator would be much less than one for Earth, given the decreased gravity and lack of atmosphere. The material wouldn't need nearly as much tensile strength, wouldn't have to be nearly as long, or nearly as durable near the bottom.

Attractive idea, but the "High Frontier" uses existing technology and mostly off the shelf parts.
The space elevator can wait for the next generation, we can do this NOW!

AmericaFyeah92
05-21-2008, 05:17 PM
It kinda sucks that making it to space has been forgotten becuz of all the shit going on on Earth

hypnagogue
05-21-2008, 05:40 PM
This kinda stuff just sets my imagination to spinning. I have to stop though and remind myself that it remains a difficult and dangerous enterprise. I'm confident it will happen, but I'm not expecting anything soon.

spacehabitats
05-22-2008, 06:31 PM
This kinda stuff just sets my imagination to spinning. I have to stop though and remind myself that it remains a difficult and dangerous enterprise. I'm confident it will happen, but I'm not expecting anything soon.

Everything is relative.

Traveling across the Atlantic in the Mayflower was "difficult and dangerous".
Winning our independence from Britain was "difficult and dangerous".
Homesteading the American prairie was "difficult and dangerous".
Even being a passenger on an airplane used to be "difficult and dangerous".

Almost anything truly worthwhile is, at some point, "difficult and dangerous".

It just so happens that some things are worth it.

The High Frontier is definitely worth it.

spacehabitats
05-22-2008, 06:39 PM
It kinda sucks that making it to space has been forgotten becuz of all the shit going on on Earth

things happening that distract us from the truly important.

Fighting a trillion dollar war in Iraq to "secure" a supply of oil, instead of using a fraction of that money to secure an endless supply of nearly free, inexhaustible, practically infinite, clean source of energy in the form of solar power satellites is a classic example of twisted priorities.

I just think that as we fight to restore the Republic and our liberties, we should remain aware of the tremendous potential that awaits us.

jabowery
05-23-2008, 12:41 PM
I find it useful pedagogy to think of the current historic pattern as something of a repeat of events following on the invention of the Gutenberg Press when the corrupt theocracy -- treating the State as God hence adults as Children of the State -- lost its control over the primary medium to a new technology.

The Protestant Reformation, tragically accompanied by a hundred years of bloody wars, was part of the resulting recovery of the direct relationship between sovereign individuals and God with the State as human creation.

That, in turn, led to a direct relationship between sovereign individuals and the rest of creation -- the relationship better known as science.

The natural urge of humanity is humanity's seeming paradox: mastery over nature, hence his own nature. This impulse for mastery over nature leads directly to the age of exploration. The frontiers deriving therefrom lead to freedom -- literally, a domain that is free.

However, in space there will be no conflicts between pioneer and indigenous ways of life -- as, for example, there has historically been between higher carrying capacity agrarian culture encroaching on older lower carrying capacity hunter-gatherer cultures -- or going further back into prehistory, between man and "nature" in the narrow sense of life which is not man. Moreover, the free heliocentric domain is so much greater than the free domain enjoyed by life when it crawled onto dry land from primeval oceans, that it shows how absurdly inadequate even the history following on the Gutenberg Press is in the rational treatment of this potential. As I said, it is pedagogy -- but we must all grow up sometime.

spacehabitats
05-30-2008, 01:41 PM
Moreover, the free heliocentric domain is so much greater than the free domain enjoyed by life when it crawled onto dry land from primeval oceans, that it shows how absurdly inadequate even the history following on the Gutenberg Press is in the rational treatment of this potential. As I said, it is pedagogy -- but we must all grow up sometime.

So to paraphrase the good doctor, "...it's big, its really, really big!"

Breaking out into space is an even bigger and more fundamentally critical step than mankind has faced in history.

The fact that it would also secure the liberty of at least a major segment of humanity (possibly even provide a mechanism for preserving liberty here on Earth) is icing on the cake.:)

spacehabitats
06-01-2008, 11:58 AM
Just thought I would bump this again seeing how the Ron Paul Rocket is back at the top of Grassroots Central.

My mission is to keep this somewhere in our racial memory until it comes to pass.