Space.com reports on lunar colony designs:
- How to Live on the Moon: A Lunar Mission Guidebook
- How Moon Bases and Lunar Colonies Work (Infographic)
Source SPACE.com: All about our solar system, outer space and exploration
Category Archives: Space Settlement
Videos: Mars One and asteroids at ISDC 2013
Moonandback has posted lots of videos from the recent National Space Society ISDC 2013 event in San Diego, including these three:
Bas Lansdorp of Mars One:
Asteroids session, Pt. 1:
Asteroid session, Pt.2:
Al Globus and space settlement, pt. 2
Al Globus continues his discussion of space settlement in part two of his Moonandback interview: Al Globus – Prognosis for Settlement – Moonandback. He also mentions a a Student Space Settlement Design Contest and gives details for entry.
Find part 1 of his interview here.
No babies in Mars colony till proven safe
Rand Simberg discusses the potential health hazards involved in a human pregnancy and birth in an environment at a fraction of earth’s gravity such as the 0.38g on Mars : The Bioethics of Mars One – PJ Media.
Before permanent settlements are the Moon and Mars are viable, he points to the need for a G-Lab orbital facility, which would use spin gravity to study the effects of fractional gravity on lab animals.
Video: “Elysium” – new movie to feature an orbital space colony
Huge rotating habitats, promoted in the 1970s and 80s by Gerard O’Neill and others as the best places to put space settlements, always seemed to me to provide ideal locales for exciting science fiction. However, except for Babylon 5, I don’t know of any high profile sci-fi work that has used them. Till now.
This summer the movie Elysium, starring Matt Damon and Jodie Foster, appears from the trailer (see below) to make in-space colonies key factors in the plot. The scenario is a future where the rich live utopian high-tech life styles in the Elysium space colony while everything is going to hell on earth. Damon plays a character on earth who is determined to reach the colony Elysium to obtain a life-saving cure. (See IMDB.com synopsis.)
This follows from a common but spurious criticism that space settlement is about abandoning earth and pursuing a feckless dream of a space utopia. This is a silly misrepresentation of what space settlement is all about. Developing space does not mean rejecting earth any more than if someone moves to Alaska it means abandoning the continental US. Alaska is extremely useful in many ways for the rest of the country, particularly with respect to resources. Thankfully there is a small but significant number of people who think Alaska is a great place to live. Space will one day support earth and provide homes for a small but significant number of people who find space a wonderful place to live. And like Alaska, it will also be a great place to visit.