Talk:Colonising Space
SSETI seems to be a step in the right direction.
A project to create a self-sustaining space colony would be the perfect focus to kick off the open design movement, to get enough people involved and get the necessary high quality tools created.
It's great to see Anansi Spaceworks operating in this area...
x prize etc.
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amsat
- http://www.amsat.org/amsat-new/eagle/EaglePedia/index.php/Main_Page
- http://www.osaerospace.com/wiki/tiki-index.php
- :-) I was the one who did the giant linkdump to osaerospace re: rockets, colonization, open source GLXP teams, etc. Good times. -- Kanzure 00:36, 14 December 2008 (CET)
How this might play out
1. Make launches much cheaper
- Space gun
- 3D printed, open-source rockets that can be built with little labour and reused as easily as cars to amortize initial costs
- Mass-produced rockets that can be built with little labour and reused as easily as cars to amortize initial costs
- Nanotechnology
- A combination of these
2. Step 1 having opened up space to thousands of new groups, there will be a period where tens of thousands of spacecraft of all kinds, manned and unmanned, are launched and we learn a lot about how to do it. It will become safer and more reliable.
3. Commercial exploitation. Space solar (if we find a way to transmit power back to earth) and moon mining are likely early applications
4. The pioneers. The first permanent habitats in space, like Gerard O'Neill's 'Island One'. Probably built with metals from the Moon.
5. The colonists. Space habitats self-replicate and the population of space-people grows. Possible terraforming here. Asteroid mining and other difficult commercial exploitations
(This is a possible course of events leading to colonizing the solar system. Beyond that lies colonizing the rest of the universe, but it seems futile to try to imagine that from our limited knowledge.)
