Ice on the Moon

Having landed on the Moon a half century ago we should have fleets of spaceships traveling the solar system by now. You would think. The reality is the public does not understand what would define a true spaceship. Though I have always disliked similes concerning space, especially those like JFK’s calling space an ocean, it has some utility.

1. A spaceship, like a ship on the ocean, must be capable of crossing an ocean. The space analogy of a small ocean, like the Mediterranean, might be from the Earth to Mars. The Pacific analogy might be Pluto. The analogy to oceanic storms would be radiation and the equivalent to running aground would be meteorite damage.
2. The basic requirement to travel interplanetary space, that is, Human Spaceflight Beyond Earth and Lunar Orbit (HSF-BELO), is to weather space storms. If radiation is the equivalent of an ocean storm it is interesting that taking a microcosm of an ocean into space as a kiloton+ cosmic radiation shield seems to be the prerequisite.
3.  The next requirement for HSF-BELO is speed. It relates directly to the first problem because though 400 tons are needed to shield a small capsule, humans have psychological limits concerning living space and mission time which equates to thousands of tons of water. And pushing those kilotons requires nuclear energy. There is only one practical nuclear propulsion system: Bombs.
4.  Along with dosing there is long term microgravity debilitation which will require tether generated artificial gravity. Micrometeorite shielding will require more mass and a warning and deflection system for larger particles. The unavoidable mass penalty for multi-year HSF-BELO missions is going to be ten thousand tons plus.
5.  A “true spaceship”, versus a spacecraft, would likely mass well over ten thousand tons minimum, carrying a couple thousand nuclear bombs, at least a thousand tons of water for cosmic ray shielding, using either a metal disc or a parachute of some kind as an engine. Water would be acquired from, and assembly and testing would be done on, or in the vicinity of, the Moon.
6.  On multi-year missions the true spaceship would spend most of the time split in half with equal or spaced masses spinning at the end of a several thousand foot tether system. The larger the disc (or “spinnaker” in a Medusa type) the more efficient, faster, and longer ranged, likely operating between Ceres and Neptune.
7.  Relocating the superpower nuclear arsenals into deep space to ratchet down the cold war launch-on-warning situation is perhaps the only enabler for HSF-BEO. Fleets of such “space boomers” would also protect Earth from impact threats and allow for guest scientists on voyages of exploration to the gas and ice giants.

“BTW, all, just for context, it appears that 2019 OK is by far the largest asteroid [to] pass this close to Earth in the last century!” reads one subsequent email from Planetary Defense Officer Lindley Johnson. NASA experts determined that a combination of factors ultimately caused the agency to miss it, including the position of the moon, bad weather and the slow-moving nature of the asteroid. (https://www.huffpost.com/entry/nasa-internal-emails-asteroid-ok-2019_n_5d8402bbe4b0957256b3f555)

Wiki: “The object’s size is estimated at 57 to 130 metres (187 to 426 ft) across-”

“If 2019 OK had been around 100 m (330 ft) in diameter an Earth impact could have released as much power as the 50 megatons generated by Tsar Bomba.[11] If 2019 OK had been around the middle of the size estimates it could have released the equivalent explosive energy of about 10 megatons of TNT similar to the 1908 Tunguska event that flattened 2,000 km2 (770 square miles) of forest land.[9] If 2019 OK had been on the smaller size it still could have released over 30 times the energy of the atomic blast by Little Boy at Hiroshima.[12]”

 

These city killer near misses happen all the time. It is the extraordinary one that is the problem. One of those big asteroids or comets is going to get us. Could be tomorrow and it could be even bigger than the one that killed the dinosaurs. Really. It would be just a spike in that probability curve everyone mistakes as safety. In hindsight we would remark it was out of the ordinary but considering the timescale not really extraordinary. Except no one would be left to make the comment.

The human race would be gone…forever.

Any alien race observing us would not be surprised.

We were just not intelligent enough to survive.

I made some references to being a Queen fan in a previous post and mentioned the song “39.” On my birthday a few days ago I averaged the lifespans of my Mother and Father and figured out what year I would die if that average held true- and it was, coincidentally, 2039. Less than 20 years to go.

The most likely method of star travel is going to be the “slow boat” that takes several centuries to reach a fairly close star by travelling at well under ten percent of the speed of light. The crew would almost certainly be frozen and even though massively shielded from radiation would likely still have to be re-animated periodically. The reason for the wake-ups for several months each time would be so their bodies could repair damage done by unavoidable energetic particles. The slow boat would be accelerated by beam propulsion out of the solar system and use H-bombs to slow down upon reaching a destination. This would require an immense space solar power infrastructure and is not  likely to happen in the next 20 years.

A recent article about a new therapy that can reverse aging was interesting, except it is only good for 2 years. That bumps me up to 2041…maybe. Humans are great at imagining the best possible scenarios and making them reality. That is, they lie to themselves and then try and turn that lie into truth. I prophesy around 2040 freezing people without damage and thus allowing them to be revived decades later will be perfected- and I will be fading fast and among the first to go into cold storage.

Since nobody will allow their loved ones to simply die when there is hope for them to be cured of their condition or aging reversed- the terminally ill and the elderly will all be frozen. With 56 million people a year going into storage facilities those solutions will simply have to be found. So…at some point in the future I consider it quite possible I will be awakened from a frozen state and start aging backwards. I am familiar with the work of Hugo DeGaris and considering his worldview I might also expect to be gradually “enhanced” in that future new age. How the existence of Artilects (super intelligent artificial intellects) will affect humankind is unknown. We cannot even guess. I can, however, speculate that in some sense it will be as if I died because I will not be the same person I am now. So be it.

Perhaps humans will form binary personalities and then even larger composite minds. This joining of minds is not my idea and has been around since E.E. Doc Smith wrote his space operas in the 1930’s. When my wife is washing dishes I often rest my chin on her shoulder. I will then ask her, “would you let them transplant my head onto your body  to save my life? Then we would always be together. Wouldn’t that be great?” She does not think it would be so great. And that is my-hoped-for-imagined-future. Kind of.

A proposal to create an artificial black hole propelled starship using a parabolic reflector to reflect Hawking radiation was discussed in 2009 by Louis Crane and Shawn Westmoreland. This is the most likely “fast boat.” There is a possibility many slow boats will head out and then be intercepted a century or so later by these fast boats. It has always been a mystery to me why the entertainment industry cannot take these most likely scenarios and build stories around them instead of the garbage that passes for science fiction. It is depressing because it seems we are a basically stupid species which means my imagined best future is a throw of the dice…at best.

It is not just our bad science fiction not providing any expectations of success, it is actual threats to our species we simply ignore. Despite continuing evidence of the rock that ended the dinosaurs, we are not worried. Despite continuing evidence of past volcanic epics that caused mass extinctions, we are not worried. Despite continuing advances in genetic engineering that could create a doomsday plague, we are not worried. From heaven above, from hell below, and from test tubes in modest labs around the world, we turn away and ignore these most serious threats.

The problem, of course, is we are already on death row in this great open air prison called Earth. Why should we waste our time worrying? As long as every story ends with execution we are not likely to focus on the rest of the human race ceasing to exist- and will continue to watch bad science fiction.

 

My (now slightly edited) comment on https://phys.org/news/2019-09-europe-teaming-asteroid-deflection.html

“Nothing will work better than a nuclear device. Yet there are several entities who are pushing their “gravity tug” or other concepts and they have hijacked this train.”

However, the train has not left the station yet.

A human crewed Nuclear Pulse Propelled spaceship capable of interplanetary missions would necessarily carry a couple thousand “pulse units” (bombs). Those devices would be just as effective deflecting a rock as pushing a spaceship.

The Parker-Dyson-Spudis Continuum states only a kiloton range water shield can make Human Space Flight Beyond Earth and Lunar Orbit practical (Parker). Only a Nuclear Pulse Propulsion system can push such a shield around the solar system (Dyson). The Moon is the only place to acquire the water for shielding (Spudis), assemble, test, and launch nuclear missions.

The NASA Space Launch System is the only human-rated Super Heavy Lift Vehicle with an escape tower that makes launching fissile pits direct to the Moon an acceptable risk. SLS launch cadence needs to expand to 6 per year.”

The proposed “Space Force” is not about space at all, it is about Earth orbit and mostly about Low Earth Orbit. This NewSpace marketing technique of calling LEO space has always been a trick, a ruse, and it needs to end. Exploring LEO is not space exploration.

The best demarcation between space and Earth orbit is the distance where an object at the equator in a circular orbit will remain stationary over the surface. This is Geostationary Earth Orbit (GEO) at 22,236 miles up. Just as the ability to see out to the horizon originally determined where international waters begin, the minimal energy required to leave GEO makes this distance the ideal “edge of space.”

By this measure cislunar space, between the Earth and the Moon, would be comparable to “coastal waters” and GEO and the cislunar sea would properly be the domain of the space version of the Coast Guard. Call it the “Space Guard.” This could include a fleet of Lunar Cyclers flying around the Earth-Moon and providing a superhighway in space. The space counterpart to the Air Force would be the “Space Force” and would fly Beyond Earth and Lunar Orbit (BELO). If a space counterpart to the Navy is required there are always the ocean moons of the gas and ice giants and their subsurface seas to drive submarines around in.

A Space Force could serve the very useful purpose of removing nuclear weapons from Earth, a fantastic and impossible dream for many. The over a trillion dollars that is going to be spent in the coming decade on the U.S. nuclear deterrent makes relocating that arsenal to deep space not so fantastic or impossible. For over half a century the superpowers have been on hair-trigger alert and poised to launch on warning. There have been close calls. By placing the nuclear arsenals in deep space months away from Earth on human-crewed spaceships, we no longer face those few minutes to decide whether or not to destroy civilization. The other superpowers will follow America.

There are arguments against space-based-deterrence of course, but the pros, in my view, far outweigh the cons. One of those pros is a dinosaur killing rock will not be ending civilization while fleets of spaceships are on patrol ready to deflect any impact threat with nuclear devices.

For a few million more dollars von Braun would have made Skylab a true wet workshop instead of a dry one. It would have gone up in one launch and been larger inside than the multi-billion dollar ISS which took years to assemble. This does not even take into account the fact that we never should have abandoned the Moon and retreated to Low Earth Orbit (LEO). It was one of the worst wrong turns NASA has ever made.

NewSpace being without a doubt THE worst wrong turn.

What ended the first space age and any hope of a permanent human presence in space was the Apollo 1 fire. While the ISS has been characterized as hosting humans continuously in space this is actually a clever deception. Low Earth Orbit stopped being “space” in 1968 when Apollo 8 left Earth far behind. Low Earth Orbit compared to deep space is like a duck pond compared to the North Atlantic.

The Apollo 1 fire made the aerospace industry realize Human Space Flight Beyond Low Earth Orbit (HSF-BLEO) was going to be hard money. Industry would choose the easy money of cold war toys and the space age was doomed before humans ever left orbit. The prerequisite for humans traveling BLEO is a massive cosmic ray water shield massing in the hundreds of tons and more likely well over a thousand if any practical living space is to be provided.

In addition to dosing the problem of debilitation must be addressed and a tether generated artificial gravity (TGAG) system, which adds even more mass, is the only practical solution. The Double Hulled Workshop (DHW) with a diameter of over 50 feet, a “fat workshop”, is thus the critical piece of hardware for HSF-BLEO.  Spinning the DHW with a TGAG counter-mass is the only practical option for humans on long duration deep space missions. To effect a true spaceship and go Beyond Earth and Lunar Orbit (HSF-BELO) will require nuclear pulse propulsion (bombs) to push the mass of the Cosmic Ray Water Shield (CRWS) and TGAG system.

These acronyms are integral to the Parker-Dyson-Spudis Continuum:

HSF- Human Space Flight.

LEO- Low Earth Orbit is NOT space.

BLEO- Beyond Low Earth Orbit, usually referring to cislunar space.

CRWS- Cosmic Ray Water Shield.

DHW- Double Hull Wet Workshop or “Fat Workshop” containing the CRWS.

TGAG- Tether Generated Artificial Gravity.

BELO- Beyond Earth and Lunar Orbit, usually referring to interplanetary missions.

SNPP- “Soft” Nuclear Pulse Propulsion, referring to Solem’s Medusa-spinnaker concept.

HNPP- “Hard” Nuclear Pulse Propulsion, referring to Dyson’s Orion plate concept.

ISRU- In Situ Resource Utilization, usually referring to lunar water and other materials.

 

Looked at the news this morning and the Amazon is burning, Greenland is melting, and this evening David Koch is dead. Yesterday spacexnews had an article about nuclear power in space. The comments were truly idiotic. Surprised my name was not brought up since I endlessly commented about nuclear energy and space propulsion. They are the most disgusting creeps on the internet by far. And it seems there are some planets that might be habitable not too far away. Better start building those starships if we are going to send any by 39.

I only expect the one comment so I might as well reply to it with an edit:

39 is a Queen fan thing.
Not really happy with that internet article since it absolutely shows how politically biased the space program decision-making process is. I am pushing 60 and have been reading about this technology and been hands-on in the military since I was 20. I have worked on and crewed several types of vehicle and aircraft as a systems troubleshooter and operator/aircrew. And being interested in this technology and history and being a voracious reader has given me what I believe is a unique perspective. My big five personality profile is high on openness so I see this in a different way than those who are more…conservative. My view is all about what works or will work. And this is what I think:
Due to the Parker-Dyson-Spudis Continuum only nuclear pulse is going to enable humans to travel Beyond Earth and Lunar Orbit (BELO). Nuclear Thermal Rockets are a dead end simply because it is hard enough keeping a chemical rocket from melting. Trying to contain a reaction a million times more powerful results in Isp’s only about double that of chemical rockets. Pathetic. No other term for it except maybe incredibly wasteful. Stan Ulam understood the problem and solved it with bombs which provides Isp’s in the tens of thousands. There are of course intelligent people like Dyson and Solem who have followed Ulam but their work is not being considered. Why? Because of the eye-roll factor of using bombs for propulsion. Very simple details like this are trapping humankind on Earth.

 

Looks like the second quarter of 2021 for the first flight of the Space Launch System, just under two years from now. Plenty of time for NASA to rationalize their Human Space Flight program by abandoning LEO and redirecting that over 4 billion a year into expanding SLS launch cadence. In my view the critical pieces of hardware needed to create a cislunar infrastructure are going to be first 6 to 8 SLS launches a year, then a Lander that can shuttle water up to wet workshops, and of course a double-hull 50 foot diameter upper stage “Fat Workshop.”

Concerning a recent article I read about the Fermi Paradox:

https://phys.org/news/2019-08-world-history-silent-cosmos-humans.html

The simple explanation could very well be correct: life is too stupid to survive. We may reach a certain level of technology and then invariably self-destruct.

My view on this is our own mortality virtually guarantees extinction in a self-similar way. Who cares (very much) about a hundred years from now? If tomorrow they revived some dog that had been frozen without damage it might change everything. We might then be like the salmon of the galaxy that make it upstream. If death was no longer certain would we not then have a reason to focus and combine in a collective effort to reverse aging and travel to other stars?

It is discouraging that even supposed “visionaries” like Musk and Bezos do not understand this.

And all that methane in the permafrost is also being released. If we were to start building Super Heavy Lift Vehicles next year and launching them every other month to start, and ultimately once a week, that would be how to address climate change. Actually, the only way to address climate change with any chance of success before it kills a certain percentage of the human race. Those launchers would be sending “fat workshops” and robot landers to the Moon for starters. Sensors on lunar probes to find those likely immense lava tubes are also the first order of business. Immediately identifying these tubes as factory sites is extremely important.

As these factories are slowly brought on line on the Moon, on Earth the best strategy is molten salt solar thermal powerplants. Along with a elevated electric train infrastructure that transports people during the workday and cargo at night, this would ideally be the benchmark for new energy production and infrastructure. By cutting back and going to ever more austere standards (“decarbonization”) the damage will be minimized while the factories are built on the Moon. Until the day finally comes and commercial power is beamed down from orbit and the fossil fuel powerplants are shut down one by one. It is at this point beam propulsion will enable true airliners to space and mass migration will become the next step. Eventually, within perhaps two centuries, the Earth will have a rapidly shrinking population and become a place to visit. The majority of the human race will live in space.

 

Certainly not a shiny starship!

I could predict a rock causing loss of life and a second space age launched to detect, intercept, and deflect asteroid and comet impact threats. Or weather events that cannot be interpreted as anything other than climate change and space solar power as the only solution. Perhaps it will be the realization we are at risk of extinction from a short list of causes including an impact, an engineered pathogen, or volcanic eruptions. Unfortunately, the “odds” of an impact are trivialized, filthy lucre makes climate change a non-issue, and because we are “ephemorons” we just don’t care if our species is doomed.

The problem is we don’t believe we can defeat death. If we could freeze people without damage and revive them decades (or centuries) later then the world would change overnight. Humankind would suddenly realize they better start working on reversing aging and curing diseases. The movie Vanilla Sky, a remake of Abre Los Ojos, depicted a commercial featuring a dog frozen and revived symbolizing a new age. I remember as a boy watching a movie, “Frozen Alive” which was more a muddled moral lesson than a futuristic science fiction tale. The plot centered around an accidental handgun death but the poster on the Wikipedia page reads, “SUSPENDED ANIMATION OR DEATH!” and “TIMELY AS TODAY’S HEADLINES.” It seems as I age our species is not getting any smarter. We only care about our personal drama instead of what we all need to do if we are to survive.

I buy a lottery tickets once in a while and fantasize about sinking those millions into paying for some research on cryopreservation and making suspended animation a reality. Saving the world. Have not won of course. What would happen if some dog or monkey did get thawed out and revived successfully proving the viability of a new technique? Would the world actually change as I imagine? Would the great rescue begin? Questions with no answers. This blog is about the ice on the Moon as the critical enabling resource for expanding humankind into the solar system. This expansion would likely lead to star travel perhaps by way of the black hole starship if sleeper ships never happen. If neither sleeper ships or black hole ships are practical there is always the world ship concept.