Category Archives: Space Settlement

Activism, Events, Space Settlement

Soyuz with ISS crew lands safely while Chris Hadfield’s video goes viral

Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield, US astronaut Thomas Marshburn and Russian cosmonaut Roman Romanenko returned safely to earth today: Soyuz capsule brings three-man crew to safe landing – SpaceflightNow.

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Hadfield’s “Space Oddity” music video (see Sunday posting) on the ISS has become viral sensation. It’s up to nearly 3.9 million views at the moment.

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Hadfield defends the ISS as a research station and sees the big picture for why humans are learning to live and work in space: Chris Hadfield says [NASA]’s job is not to ‘titillate’ – BBC

“We are leaving Earth permanently,” he said with zeal. “It is a huge historic step and we are trying to do it right and it takes time, it takes patience and it takes tenacity – and we’re going to do it.”

His argument is that the construction and utilisation of the ISS will lead to the development of technologies that will eventually enable humanity to leave Earth and settle on other worlds. But that process will be a slow and incremental one.

History, Space Settlement

Darrell Romick, a nearly forgotten space visionary

This article describes the visionary rocket and space infrastructure concepts laid out in the 1950s by Goodyear Aircraft engineer Darrell C. Romick, who was eclipsed by Wernher von Braun: The Space City That Could Have Been, If Not For Wernher Von Braun –  io9.com

More about Romick:

Romick-Goodyear Meteor Junior

Living in Space, Space Settlement

Mars settlement – not as far fetched as it used to be

Science writer Marc Kaufman writes about the growing realization that creating settlements on Mars and elsewhere in space in the not so distant future is not an impossible fiction but something that might actually be doable: Human mission to Mars is no longer just a sci-fi dream – The Washington Post.

There certainly will be no shortage of people wanting to go as discussed in this recent post about applicants for the Mars One settlement project. (See also this BBC report and video about Mars One and the flood of applicants: Prospect of one-way Mars trip captures the imagination – BBC)

By far the biggest challenge is lowering the cost of getting to space. Progress is being made on that front by new companies like SpaceX, which is aiming to develop a fully reusable rocket system that could lower the costs by as much as 100 times below today’s average space transport prices. The amazing video below shows a recent test of a prototype first stage booster that is demonstrating vertical takeoff and landing capabilities. (You can follow progress in new rocket vehicle development at NewSpace Watch, where I post daily on the latest developments.)

In the following video, Elon Musk, founder and chief of SpaceX, talks with Salman Khan of Khan Academy about a range of topics including lowering the cost of rockets and Mars settlements:

Living in Space, Space Settlement

Long queue for Mars One pioneering + Adapting to different gravities

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When the cost of putting people on Mars drops to an affordable range, there will be no shortage of people wanting to go there to build a new world: Life on Mars to become a reality in 2023, Dutch firm claims: Thousands apply to become one of four astronauts selected to set up a human colony in a plan that comes with snags – guardian.co.uk.

Regarding the effects of living for a long period in gravity that’s 38% of that on earth, we don’t know the effects. The only data on fractional gravity is from the Apollo astronauts that spent a few days on the Moon and this was too short a time to have any effect.

To answer such questions, the Space Studies Institute has proposed the G-Lab, a rotating tethered habitat system for doing long term animal studies at different gravity strengths.

For a Mars settlement plan, it is not unreasonable to make the working assumption that it would be too dangerous to attempt to re-adapt to earth. However, my guess is that it will in fact be quite possible for a long term Mars resident to adapt to Earth’s gravity. The fundamental physical capacity to withstand that level of gravity will remain and can be retrained.

Ultimately, it would make sense to have a transport system traveling from Mars to Earth to provide rotation to generate spin gravity. This would allow for the gravity to be gradually increased from 0.38g to 1.0g over the course of the months long trip and allow passengers to gradually adapt to Earth conditions.