Wednesday, August 3, 2011

The Robotic collection of the future

An expanded robotic settlement on a 3-10km asteroid chosen for a settlement could use a bigger made ion jet to refine the orbit over maybe even decades, like to have it periodically swing in near Earth's orbit to receive/return settlers.

It wouldn't be too hard to make it once/12yr if a Jupiter Trojan asteroid (60deg before or after Jupiter in its 11.86yr orbit). At such times the greatly enlarged radius Solar energy collecting film not fast spinning disk (for only 1/8000 - 1/2000 of Earth weights) up on a tower would nicely shield the asteroid below from having its near surface ice warmed and lost as a useless
comet tail.

Or when now swinging far out in its now far more elliptic orbit, big disk film size would collect enough energy to do all needed things, including keeping an initial, then later an enlarged settlement warmed, while providing electricity wanted inside, including for vitally needed farms lighting.

Out nearing Saturn, Sol would appear about 1/9.5 as wide (1/90 as bright) as seen from Earth. Thus the disk film would need to be about 9.5 times wider out there to keep collecting enough needed electricity. (More future wanted energy might eventually come from a nuclear reactor it might form.)

The Robotic collection would keep increasing its robotic construction capacity. Finally it would have formed the wanted initial small surface settlement, ready when swinging in near Earth to receive the first arriving settlers.

Best should be for the robotic equipment to stay quite usefully active, including refining lots more asteroid materials to form all needed to build a much bigger surface settlement, such as a big cylinder having many floor levels for homes and wanted farms etc. all around inside.

Those already here could at times help in space suits. That will be very easy since on a 3-10km asteroid, gravity and weights will be merely 1/8000 - 1/2000 of on Earth. So you could quite easily slowly lift and move a ton of materials here since it would weigh under a pound!

For a better bigger surface settlement, a 200m radius base can be dug deep, while refining wanted materials and forming new things to use. A thick strong metal base can be multiply anchored into the asteroid, with surface anchor points getting attached cable ends to later reach up to a top to hold it down once air from isolated nitrogen and oxygen is injected into the living space and raised to normal Earth surface 1 Atm air pressure.


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