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BradGuth

Posted: Fri Apr 25, 2008 6:46 pm

Guest

Now we have the one and only likes of our William Mook (aka willie.moo
and company of DARPA spooks and moles) telling us we should give up on
Earth, and at the very least move our commercial agriculture into LEO
for accomplishing most of our future food production.

Of course those trusty LEO wizards of DARPA will gladly R&D and
somehow deploy as well as sustain all of this infrastructure in LEO
for next to nothing, along with those rad-hard workers from India
still willing to earn their $1/day plus R&B, that which along with
their to/from transporting and banked stem cell plus bone marrow and
subsequent transplants should only cost us a few tens of millions per
worker per year. (such a deal)

Why this should all work according to plan; It’ll work because along
with those Mook atomic/nuclear rockets it’s so much more profitable,
so much better for our environment, and of that rad-hard food derived
from LEO space will even become so much cheaper for the populations of
Earth, including those that are currently stuck with earning $1/day,
because those folks will soon enough under the wise rule of Mook
become wealthy enough to afford any price for terrestrial energy,
food, housing, education and medical care, regardless of how many
world class wars and AGW events are festering on Earth.

Now for starters, the bipolar/multipolar aspects of lord Mook should
be ignored, all because he is so good at telling us stories, of how
the rich and powerful (mostly of his close DRAPA friends) are
genetically smarter than all of us combined, as well as having been
entirely responsible for all the good on Earth. Of whatever’s bad and
ugly is simply a direct result of those crazy Muslim or similar faith-
based groups that don’t happen go along with the Old Testament as
Zionist interpreted.

Seems like a perfectly good global domination plan of action, doesn’t
it.
. – Brad Guth

On Apr 23, 4:59 pm, Willie.Moo...@gmail.com wrote:

Quote:

NASA did studies on space colonies back in the 1970s and 80s. Gerard
O'Neill wrote on them in The High Frontier.

http://space.mike-combs.com/SCTHF.html

The costs do not take into account the ability of developing the
technology more gradually in a way that sees it more of an investment
that earns profits, which are then re-invested in technology
development.

One interesting finding was that farms in space support 40,500 people
per square kilometer at US per capita levels of consumption. This
amounts to 730 kg per person per year. To fee 6.6 billion people at
this level requires 162,963 square kilometers of pressure vessel
area.

103,745 spheres each 1 km in diameter each housing a spinning cylinder
707 meters in diameter and 707 meters deep, support 1.57 square
kilometers of growing area - each supporting 63,585 persons.

Each satellite has a rail gun and fires 2 meals per second - to people
all over the Earth aided by low cost GPS guidance systems and ceramic
aerogel thermal protection systems with aerodynamic features. MEMs
based rockets forming a propulsive skin to execute a soft landing at
the desired location for each meal. Terminal velocity of the aerogel
encased meal is about 200 m/sec following re-entry - which requires a
propellant fraction of 4.3% or 30.4 grams of propellant for a 700 gram
meal. The rail gun fires it to the targeting envelope and the kinetic
energy and tail fins of the falling meal are adjusted to bring it to a
precise GPS cooerdinate. A solid state doppler radar determines
precise altitude to ignite the engines, and bring the meal to a halt
at zero altitude at the desired location.

The mass of 2 meals per second is 1.47 kg per second. With an
ejection speed from the rail gun of 500 m/sec to deorbit each meal,
this exerts a 75 kgf thrust on the station. This is made up for by
burning of hydrogen and oxygen made from water at a rate of 0.17 kg
per second.

Orders are taken via satellite cell phone or satellite internet, and
delivered within 30 minutes or less anywhere on Earth. . .

10 billion tons per year of asteroidal materials, principally water
and carbon-dioxide - are imported from the asteroid belt by nuclear
pulse deflection of asteroidal material selected for quality and
variety of materials.

The satellites are made from asteroidal material as well brought from
the asteroid belt earlier..

7,255,410 equilateral triangles composed of aluminum framing encased
in PET film are manufactured as a flexible 'string' 3,627 km long. An
assembly head welds the aluminum frame, and seals the PET film in a
spiral pattern to form a 1 km diameter stationary sphere. A 707 meter
diameter cylinder 707 meters wide, rotates freely inside this sphere
supported by magnetic bearings at the edges of the cylinder. The
cylinder rotates once every 37.7 seconds. The interior of the
cylinder has an oblate thin film reflective surface that reproduces
over the course of 24 hours the same day/night conditions one finds on
Earth which rotates along with the cylinder, but in such a way that it
completes one rotation every 24 hours - giving a day night cycle to
the plants and animals on the cylinder surface.
.
40 farmers and 200 farm helpers are present tele-robotically to grow
the foods at the station. Additionally, there are 360 cooks cleaners
and handlers at each station to prepare meals and package them. Thus,
600 people are needed to support 40,500 in their food needs. All
stations together require a total of 62,247,000 telerobotic workers.
Each station has a set of 10 people present in person, thus
1,037,450 people are living on orbit in the 103,745 stations.

The world presently spends $9 trillion per year on food. The network
here captures the bulk of this, and at $50,000 per person on average
$3.15 trillion is salaries, and the balance is capital cost and
profits. A total of $46 trillion may be supported in this way - This
allows $440 million per satellite as the target price in this
quantity. This is $282 per square meter - allowable cost.

This is the fourth step in a seven step process of lowering cost of
space borne pressure vessels

1) mining - highest cost
2) smelting
3) forming/assembly
4) farming - mid-range
5) forestry
6) residential <-- high frontier level
7) private home - lowest cost

Moving entire asteroids from the asteroid belt into MEO seems to me
more 'doable' than lifting things piecemeal from the lunar surface.
Since substantial ice is present in the asteroid belt, that is also a
plus.

10 billion tons per year requires the expulsion 17 billion tons of
'propellant' vaporized from the surface of the asteroids moved in this
way. Expelling the materials at 7 km/sec requires an average
expenditure of only 20 terawatts - averaged over the entire year. .
856 tons per second are harvested and 317 tons per second are made
availale. Of this, half is turned into food and deposited on the
Earth.

Four asteroid fragments, each roughly spherical each 100 meters in
diameter, arrive at Earth orbit from around the asteroid belt every
hour to resupply the ring of farm satellites. They have taken 3 years
to get to Earth and enter a MEO to be processed at centers that build
the satellites in the first place. Each fragment has sufficient raw
material to feed a farm satellite for 3 years. Each moves to an
appropriate position next to a satellite, and is fed into it - and raw
materials are processed on board into air, water, fertilizer and
nutrients- to replace the constant stream of materials falling to
Earth.

The satellites form a Saturn like ring in polar orbit above the Earth
- and each satellite flies over the entire Earth several times per
day.

I've intentionally top-posted for the benefit of others.
. - BG

BradGuth

Posted: Fri Apr 25, 2008 7:02 pm

Guest

Now we have the one and only likes of our William Mook (aka willie.moo
and company of DARPA spooks and moles) telling us we should give up on
Earth, and at the very least move our commercial agriculture into LEO
for accomplishing most of our future food production. It’s almost as
though our wise Mook knows something that’s worse off than WWIII or
AGW, that’s just around the corner (perhaps as soon as 2029, in the
form of an asteroid).

Of course those trusty LEO wizards of DARPA will gladly R&D and
somehow deploy as well as sustain all of this infrastructure in LEO
for next to nothing, along with those rad-hard workers from India
still willing to earn their $1/day plus R&B, that which along with
their to/from transporting and banked stem cell plus bone marrow and
subsequent transplants should only cost us a few tens of millions per
worker per year. (such a deal)

Why this should all work according to plan; It’ll work because along
with those Mook atomic/nuclear rockets it’s so much more profitable,
so much better for our environment, and of that rad-hard food derived
from LEO space will even become so much cheaper for the populations of
Earth, including those that are currently stuck with earning $1/day,
because those folks will soon enough under the wise rule of Mook
become wealthy enough to afford any price for terrestrial energy,
food, housing, education and medical care, regardless of how many
world class wars and AGW events are festering on Earth.

Now for starters, the bipolar/multipolar aspects of lord Mook should
be ignored, all because he is so good at telling us stories, of how
the rich and powerful (mostly of his close DRAPA friends) are
genetically smarter than all of us combined, as well as having been
entirely responsible for all the good on Earth. Of whatever’s bad and
ugly is simply a direct result of those crazy Muslim or similar faith-
based groups that don’t happen go along with the Old Testament as
Zionist interpreted.

Seems like a perfectly good global domination plan of action, doesn’t
it.
. – Brad Guth

On Apr 25, 1:52 pm, Willie.Moo...@gmail.com wrote:

Quote:

On Apr 25, 3:17 pm, BradGuth <bradg...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Apr 25, 11:54 am, Willie.Moo...@gmail.com wrote:

On Apr 25, 2:14 pm, BradGuth <bradg...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Apr 24, 12:14 pm, "Mike Combs"

mikeco...@nospam.com_chg_nospam_2_ti> wrote:
Maybe. I tend to expect that food grown in space will become economical for
sale to space dwellers long before it becomes economical for sale to Earth;
given that if the market is space dwellers, the only competition you have to
undersell is food rocketed up from Earth. Space food fired off to Earth
would have to compete with Earth food.

But in the long run... many decades into the space settlement era.... maybe.
Perhaps if that Yellowstone supervolcano goes off and global agriculture
collapses it could be that food will rain down from HEO.

--

Regards,
Mike Combs

What? You mean that $25,000 per head of lettice from space is too
spendy. Who would have guessed that Mook LEO grown produce wouldn't
become all the rage.
. -BradGuth

I can get a bag of spinach leaves ready for tossing into a salad for
$2.15 at Trader Joes. The farmer gets $0.15 of that. Everyone in the
supply chain gets the balance. Produce growing area on orbit for 1/2
the price the farmer now pays for land (without property taxes!) and
increase his productivity by 20x - and reduce his labor cost to 1/3 -
and he is happy to charge $0.05 per bag - ready to go. Now, figure
out how to deorbit that bag of lettuce and drop it to where its needed
on Earths surface - within a centimeter - for another $0.05 - and
you've delivered the product for $0.10 - charge those who are now
buying a bag of spinach leaves for $2.15 at trader joes (plus taxes)
$1.00 - and point out its harvested just minutes ago in the field -
nothing fresher - and take $0.50 to buy five bags of lettuce from our
farmer and deliver them to people with butkas to pay - and pocket
$0.50 for your troubles - perhaps investing in other aspects that are
growing because people aren't going apeshit over food.

Lord Mook on topic reentry, burning up our $25,000/kg spendy bags of
spinach leaves that'll unavoidably create NOx prior to crashing
through the roofs of our energy and food starved homes that are in
foreclosure, as well as Mook LEO Produce having been polluting our
environment with having to launch all those tonnes of water and
essential minerals into LEO.

Gee whiz, can life anywhere on Earth get any better?
. -BradGuth- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

pdf.aiaa.org/preview/CDReadyMTC04_974/PV2004_2273.pdf

A simple porous phonelic impregnated carbon ablator (p2 ica) less than
0.15 cm thick (in this case) - with a liquid nitrogen sponge -
surrounding a multi-layer aluminum foil - inflated with gaseous
nitrogen at near freezing - provides structural rigidity and keeps the
spinach leaves cool during re-entry.

MEMs based self-contained rocket array wafers

http://sciencelinks.jp/j-east/article/200313/000020031303A0398737.php

and combined vane control - attached to strakes folded in the lines
where the gas tight bag is crimped closed after the spinach leaves are
inserted.. costing only pennies per square inch - equipped with GPS
ASIC and integrated control system - provive a variety of control
inputs - including rocket braking for automatic landing - and guidance
during free fall and re-entry. A total cost of the wafers, attached
to the foil bag during forming - is less than 5 cents.

The 1 pound bag of spinach is housed in a highly engineered self
propelled intelligent package that weighs only 4 ounces. So the total
mass of material sums to 1-1/4 pounds. That's 568 grams altogether.
Now I showed in an earlier post that raw material costs dominate, and
are unlikely to exceed $130 per metric ton - that's $0.13 per kg, or
1.3 cents per 100 grams - so, we're talking 7.5 cents per 1 pound
spinach bag - DELIVERED - add the other costs of labor capital and
whatnot - and you have something like $0.11 - which is what it costs
for a pound of spinach leaves ON THE FARM - before it goes through the
supply chain.

So, you see, the cost is really quite reasonable and the spinach
arrives cool crisp and fresh - minutes after being picked and washed.

Furthermore the NOx production caused by the slowing of 0.54 kg of
material from orbital speed to subsonic speed is about 100 ug due to
atmospheric heating early in the deceleration cycle.

Making PVC packaging on Earth produces more than 100 ug of NOx

Running refrigerators to keep the spinach cool for the week it takes
to go from the field to your home produces more than 100 ug of NOx

Running trucks trains and ship engines for a week to move the spinach
from field to your home produces more than 100 ug of NOx

Making artificial fertilizer to grow the spinach in Earth's biosphere
releases more than 100 ug of NOx

The tractors harvesters and other farm implements used to plant,
fertilize, tend grow and harvest the spinach releases more than 100 ug
of NOx

The automobiles that bring the workers to the field create more than
100 ug of NOx.

Are you getting the point? The small amount of NOx produced during
the early stages of re-entry when balanced against all the NOx NOT
produced conventionally - spells a dramatic decrease in production of
pollutants - despite a 500% increase in food consumption on planet
Earth.

I've intentionally top-posted for the benefit of others.

On a generous scale of 0-10, I give this Mook rant a 0.5, because
we'll all be long dead and gone by several generations worth,
especially by the time the first pilot version gets placed and
sustained in LEO.

Too bad Mook and DARPA company isn't allowed to utilize the moon's
L1.
. - BG

G. L. Bradford

Posted: Sat Apr 26, 2008 4:25 am

Guest

"Mike Combs" <mikecombs@nospam.com_chg_nospam_2_ti> wrote in message
news:fut6uj$kg7$1@home.itg.ti.com...

Quote:

"G. L. Bradford" <glbrad01@insightbb.com> wrote in message
news:rvednRohRvcqBIzVnZ2dnUVZ_oWdnZ2d@insightbb.com...

Several blue tuna fishery-stations in space the size of space
colonies -- but customized to the specific purpose -- would serve a
purpose you're aren't thinking about but should be.

Oh, I've dreamed about these kind of things too. I've even thought about
O'Neill Cylinders which are nothing but tree farms. Early space settlers
will doubtless get very clever with wood substitutes, but long-term I
expect they'll want to take advantage of wood construction, and certainly
paying for wood from Earth will be a non-starter.

Yes, I'd even allow that a space habitat built for the purpose of a tuna
or shrimp farm might be in several ways less complicated, given that it
would only have to provide an environment which would keep tuna or shrimp
happy.

--

Regards,
Mike Combs

We will have cities and city states in space, Mike, but by far the largest
number of the habitats will be functionally customized to specifically meet
the environmental and life needs of other life that humans will depend upon.
Other stations of course will be specially designed and built to meet and
serve other specific needs, such as ship building and many other hi-tech
productions.

There are those who can think only of all functionality being designed and
built into each and every single colony structure in space...the most
inefficient, also the most potentially catastrophic, way to go. Each
function will have its own differing structures. Each industry will have its
own structures. Some, several different types of individual space structures
that will combine to complete end productions. Everything we have on Earth,
except for the Earth itself, we can in some way, to some degree large or
small, facilitate in space. And in and from all these facilities -- all this
facilitation -- in space, as well as our growth of vast numbers of lanes of
travel and a far reaching mobility in space, we can become vastly freer once
more in increasingly innumerable space and time horizons.

GLB

Guest

Posted: Sat Apr 26, 2008 5:01 am

On Apr 26, 6:12 am, "G. L. Bradford" <glbra...@insightbb.com> wrote:

Quote:

Pay no attention to Guth. Continue to dream and work on the details.
Continue to press! We differ sharply on many subjects but share the want to
get humanity [in mass] going out there, soonest! It doesn't need to do much
of anything different than it does on Earth (except of course to design,
construct and otherwise develop the wherewithal in outer space to not do
much of anything different than it does on Earth).

Those who believe humans have to become, and do, something vastly
different out there are insane. They are the same ones who plan for and work
toward forcing humans to become something quite unnaturally different (than
life) here on Earth. The cost of that, and the cost of trying to keep it
from reverting to nature forever, will be disastrous. So the actual result
will be simply the plagues, the wars and famines of totalitarianism all over
again. In other words, the world is already getting there (disastrous).

Getting out there 'enmasse', soon, is not only important, it's imperative.
There are too many among us who would far rather "rule in Hell," and plenty
enough more of the rest of us who would resolve to grimly make it just that
("Hell") for any kind of total authoritarianism whatsoever. That is the
[nature] of that beast.

GLB

Thanks for the kind words. Guth is best ignored. As I said elsewhere,
I respond to him when such response is helpful to him.

The issue for space access is merely cost of momentum and the momentum
requirements for space habitation.

In this regard we have the NASA space colonization studies of the
1970s - which show that NASA using 1970s technology could build a
space habitat for 337.5 kg per square meter. Deeper in those studies
you will find that agirculture only pressure vessels massing only 58
kg per square meter. Industrial engineers givev the basic design and
charged with reducing the mass would likely reduce asses to 30 kg or
so for the ag satellite and 150 kg or or for homes and industry at 1
gee. A stationary pressure vessel encasing an asteroid that is being
mined or smelted, might mass even less.

This translates to, in the NASA studies, 53 metric tons per person and
23.5 metric tons per person - for the habitation side.

So, these are the 'fixed' mass costs of space habitats in the current
age.

The recurring mass costs are approximately 1 metric ton per person per
year to stay alive without any recycling or use of local materials.
This is the minimum. The average American consumes 4 tons of products
a year not counting coal and oil - which is a source of heat - and
provided by sunlight or some other nuclear source in space. This
gives a range of 'recurring' mass costs for space habitation.

Farms in space can feed 20 people per acre. That's about 202.5 square
meters per person. This is the low end. At the high end, 100 people
per acre can be supported. This is 40.5 square meters per person.
The average person consumes about 650 kg of food per year. The
average farm - not counting fuel - consumes 1.65 times the productive
mass. So, that's 1.07 metric tons per person per year. This gives
the 'recurring' mass cost for an agsat.

So, we're talking

202.5 sq m x 337.5 kg/sq m = 68,343.7 kg
40.5 sq m x 58 kg/sq m = 2,349 kg

As a fixed mass

and

1,070 kg per year input
650 kg per year output

So, to support 6.6 billion people with agsats requires 15.5 billion
metric tons of satellites (51,678 of those 100 m diameter harvested
fragments returned over the course of two and a half years) and to
feed it requires 7.1 billion metric tons of feedstock each year.. The
annual rate is a constant 223.7 metric tons per second spread across
the entire polar ring area. We start at a high altitude and deliver
raw materials there. That material gets processed and fed to lower
orbits, where food is grown and delivered by rail gun and gps guided
package directly to people anywhere on Earth - typically within +/.- 3
hours of sunrise and sunset.

Now the question of the cost of that mass. At today's aerospace
engineering costs each ton costs $5.3 million to build, and $10
million to place in LEO - with costs increasing exponentiall as you
move beyond LEO.

Larger scale prodcution of payloads and vehicles, combined with higher
launch rates, and reusability, might reduce these costs by a factor of
10 to 100 for chemically fueled vehicles. from $15 million per ton to
$150,000 per ton. Reliance on chemical fuels still imposes a stiff
exponential cost increase as you move beyond LEO.

Nucleaer pulse changes all that. 2 tons of borane in the form of a
series of ICF bomblets can move over 300,000 metric tons of payload
from the asteroid belt to MEO at a cost of less than $100 per ton. A
comparable system lifting materials from Earth's surface to MEO can
deliver payload at $300 per ton. Allowing for seeds and livestock and
specialty material from Earth, including telerobotic factory elements,
a mix of materials on MEO would be $130 per ton.

Henry Ford showed that in the early part of the 20th century that mass
production of any item no matter how sophisticated is possible for
about the cost of the raw materials that go into the item. There is
no reason to doubt that once designs are standardized and means of
mass production are created, that this cannot be done for space based
assets. The mass of the original factories are likely to be about
1/100,000th the mass flow rate and cost on the order of $150,000 per
ton to build.

So, we're processing 7 billion metric tons per year - and that means
the original 'seed' mass - will be around 70,000 metric tons, and cost
about $10.5 billion. This is the fleet of the first ICF ships -
which mass 2,000 tons each, and the original tooling they used on
orbit.

The agsat ring itself will cost $2.015 trillion to build and $855
billion per year to feed. Since humanity spends a total of $9
trillion per year on food, this represents a huge savings and a huge
profit opportunity. Most of this savings will be in replacing the
supply chain with space based direct delivery. Owners of these
assets on orbit could easily eliminate world hunger, since this
infrastructure produces roughly 5x the amount of food currently
produced by humanity. That is, the average American consumption of
food product is 5x greater than the world average consumption.

To promote higher levels of consumption, we take a small poriion of
the profits made among the the wealthiest 20% (which includes
America's 4.3%) and allocate them toward subsidizing food purchases
among the poorer 80%.

This merely is an accounting transfer in the operation of the farming
system - akin to markups made in present distribution systems. This
in order to avoid the logistical cost involved in securing the 20%
deliveries from the 80% who are going hungry.

That is, since 95 cents of every dollar spent on food presently is
spent to distribute food to those with the money to pay for food,
through the market - any system that eliminates this logistical
overhead easily makes food freely available while reducing costs.

That is, using credit checks and banking information thats freely
available its possible to determine if one can afford to pay market
rates for food or not at the time of purchase. Delivery of food to
anyone who wants it any time any place - relieves the logistical
burden of people trying to game the system for illicit gain - which
reduces costs for everyone who pays.

Furthermore, a steady supply of nutrious high quality food available
to all, improves the likelihood that everyone will participate in the
market at some point.

One could do this on Earth. I have designed a system of solar powered
green houses tended by telerobotic workers

The only place on Earth where they might operate un-fettered by
various rules is Western Sahara. Its a region about 1,100 km long and
226,000 sq km in area. Before 1976 it used to be called Spanish
Sahara. Morocco annexed the Northern 2/3 of the country in 1976 -
largely unopposed. It is inhabited by fewer than 400,000 people, half
of which are under the age of 16. No government, no hospitals, no
schools, no natural resources, literacy rate is unknown, fewer than
2,000 telephones in the entire region, a single 70 MW power plant near
the major runway.

In many ways sending people to Ceres would be preferable than sending
them here.

There are a surplus of oil tankers these days. One could buy some
tankers, fit them out with a variety of equipment built using the
factories I use to make solar panels. And build a factory system to
build tele-operated robots and other systems. Hire a crew and sail
for the Azores. Arrange and organize telerobotic drive centers in low
wage nations around the world. Train everyone with gaming sorts of
software.

Make land fall along the entire coast with a handful of ships, and
erect 10 m wide and 200 km long plastic green houses with solar
panels, water piping and so forth built in - fed with fresh water from
each of the ships. So, solar power is collected in the desert - fed
to the ship, which runs a desal plant/recycle plant, and feeds the
water back to the greenhouse interior. teleoperated robots with seed
crops and livestock proceed to work the soil, enrich it, and plant
crops. At the far end of each 200 km long greenhouse is a barn -
where livestock is fed and tended. manure is harvested processed and
used to fertilize the growing crops.

Each greenhouse is basically an optical film of coated PET that forms
a10 m wide and 5 m tall semi-circle attached to the ground and
stabilized by high pressure. The base of the circle is held in place
by a few cm of soil, and it houses water lines, power lines, and so
forth. The base of the semicircle form plastic rails that are sunk
into the Earth. Arcing over the semicircle is a mobile electrically
powered cross beam that carries things at high speed along the length
of the greenhouse. A similar system inside the green house carries
harvesters and planters and so forth - all are teleoperated by remote
workers.

Water and robots and equipment arrive from the ships moored near the
shore. Greenhouses grow food along the 1,100 km of coast line up to
200 km inland. West of the greenhouses, are barns for livestock which
are fed a portion of the food,and provide manure for the fertilizing
the food. Micronutrients are brought in from off shore East of the
greenhouses. The entire network is solar powered.

West of the livestock barns and yards are the food processing
centers. These butcher livestock and process foods - recycling wastes
- and producing finished food products. Packaging is a problem. The
system I'm describing can feed 1.1 billion people at US standard. 725
million tons of food, and about 14 million tons of packaging are
distributed each year. This means 1,600 tons per hour of packaging
materials must be delivered to the site. This means that an offshore
handling facility to receive 100 large container ships filled with
packaging must be supported. One could grow switch grass or some
other fast growing product to make a sort of paper or plastic and put
a package manufacturing system in place here. This would reduce
output about 50% - which is nuts on a world already well suited for
the production of packaging. It doubles the cost of the food however.

West of food processing and packaging area are the airfields for the
Predator-like automated aircraft. These unpiloted aircraft are fueled
by liquid hydrogen made from sunlight and water, and they are capable
of circumnavigating the Earth at 90,000 feet at 670 km/hr ground
speed, delivering 10 tons of food over their 60 hour flight that
circumnavigates the world. 2 million tons of food must be delivered
every day to 1.1 billion customers - and response time between order
and delivery is up to 60 hours - not 10 minutes - and so, lots of
aircraft, lots of food in transit. Not everyone can be served by this
system, so, lots of opportunity for conflict, and the farm, the supply
chain, and the delivery system is subject to attack anywhere by anyone
for any reason Seaborne attack, ground attack, air attack, surface
to air attack.

Anyway, with 10 tons of food cargo per plane and a 60 hour flight
cycle, each plane delivers 4 tons of food per day. 2 million tons of
food are produced and delivered, this requires 500,000 planes.
Allowing for ground maintenance of the planes - 700,000 planes. There
are 2,500 airstrips all running east to west - spanning the 1,100 km
length of the country. There is a landing or take off at each strip
every 9 minutes. Each plane is directed to one of 7 vectors assigned
to each strip. The northern most strip is directed due north. The
southern most strip is directed due south. There is a 7 degree band of
directions assigned to each strip. As the plane flies its assigned
great circle route, is releases its cargo to land JDAM style near the
delivery point specficied.

You can see by not being on orbit the logistics have increased
dramatically. First off, you have to load 10 tons of food in the
right order. Second, you have to deliver food to a place someone
specified 60 hours or more earlier. Third, you have to worry about
people not getting food they paid for - since in this supply chain is
vulnerable - and that means you've got to add more costs and
logistical headaches to the system.

You could just fire food packages to end users - in a way similar to
that indicated for the satellites. While this has the same terminal
flight problem, the initial flight is quite different. That is,
deorbiting a package requires very little energy. Tossing a package
from one point on Earth to the antipodes - requires nearly orbital
velocity. This is hundreds of times more energy than needed in the
orbital case - and so, requires another solution - like a high flying
aircraft. Think about it this way. Its cheaper to harvest asteroids
with nuclear pulse rockets than toss 4.3 billion tons of food
ballistically around the world each year. It takes about 8 km/sec
ideal delta vee imparted on a mass to toss it to the antipodes. It
takes about 5 km/sec ideal delta vee imparted to a mass to bring it
from Ceres to Earth orbit.

Getting a bag of groceries from the air twice a week at about the same
cost as it costs today, might be something that's workable. But its
inferior in many ways to building agsats as I've already described.

If Morocco and Mauritania, Algeria and Mali could be persuaded to join
Western Sahara in this scheme, we could expand this system to feed the
entire world. This will require the addition of 3 million long range
hydrogen powered aircraft - to arrange 60 hour delivery. One could
use off shore loading of foods on cargo ships- and deliver through the
existing system - but this restricts what can be grown and sold to
what is in short supply in the market - not what is needed by the bulk
of humanity outside the market - and it undercuts the ability to use
the market to reduce logistical costs which now dominate food
production..

Another possibility, which others have looked at are floating
greenhouses in the ocean, again solar powered, that are supplied
materials by robot subs mining the floor of the ocean - with submerged
free floating processing centers.

The advantage of this sort of system is that it can be erected
piecemeal near consumers and flight times can be reduced dramatically
to about 6 hours in most cases - which reduces the size of your air
fleet.

The disadvantage is that large regions far from oceans will not be
served by this system, and it is still subject to seaborne attack.

All terrestrial systems also suffer from disease, weather, pests, and
so forth.

G. L. Bradford

Posted: Sat Apr 26, 2008 5:12 am

Guest

Posted: Sat Apr 26, 2008 7:04 am

At 23.5 metric tons to 53 metric tons per person - and 4 metric tons
per year - and a cost of $150,000 per metric ton - using highly
reusable chemical rockets - the cost of establishing and maintaining a
person on the moon $3.5 million to $8.0 million and cost $0.6 million
per year.

This is within the capacity of approximately 3 million of the
wealthiest people.

Lighter weight, less pervasive structures massing 8 to 12 tons per
person, using 1 ton per person per year - would cost $1.2 to $1.8
million to build and $150,000 to maintain.

This is within the capacity of approximately 7 million of the
wealthiest people.

I have written elsewhere how a small fleet of highly reusable chemical
rockets, developed initially for deployment of ultralight power
satellites - could be adapted to maintain thousands of people on the
moon and hundreds of people on Mars.

The original fleet along with the satellite build infrastructure would
cost roughly $30 billion. Adapting a portion of this capacity to
lunar and mars settlement would cost less than $10 billion.

The revenue produced from space based power could mount into the
trillions of dollars per year.

The revenue from space base communications can exceed $100s billions
per year.

BradGuth

Posted: Sat Apr 26, 2008 8:07 am

Guest

On Apr 26, 3:12 am, "G. L. Bradford" <glbra...@insightbb.com> wrote:

Quote:

Right on. Pay no attention to the $25,000/kg cost of LEO space grown
food, or that of WWIII, WWIV and the future coming of WWV to end all
such terrestrial wars.

Pay no attention as to the rad-hard genetic mutations required of such
food grown in space, especially if going anywhere near our expanding
SAA, or for that matter of just having to always hide behind Earth
from those pesky halo CMEs. (that's a neat LEO trick, if there ever
was)
.. - Brad Guth

BradGuth

Posted: Sat Apr 26, 2008 8:14 am

Guest

On Apr 26, 10:04 am, Willie.Moo...@gmail.com wrote:

Quote:

China CATS is more than ready whenever you are, although fully expect
to pay at least ten fold as much as you think is possible, because
them smart Chinese are not exactly dumb and dumber about doing
international business, or much less with Earth/moon related stuff,
especially since they'll be in charge of the moon's L1 and quite
possibly in charge of Venus L2.
.. - Brad Guth

Guest

Posted: Sun Apr 27, 2008 5:39 am

On Apr 25, 2:12 pm, "Mike Combs"
<mikeco...@nospam.com_chg_nospam_2_ti> wrote:

Quote:

"G. L. Bradford" <glbra...@insightbb.com> wrote in messagenews:rvednRohRvcqBIzVnZ2dnUVZ_oWdnZ2d@insightbb.com...

Several blue tuna fishery-stations in space the size of space colonies --
but customized to the specific purpose -- would serve a purpose you're
aren't thinking about but should be.

Oh, I've dreamed about these kind of things too.

Well then trouble yourself to look at the numbers

Quote:

I've even thought about
O'Neill Cylinders which are nothing but tree farms.

Yes, figure out what it must cost in order to be competitive

Quote:

Early space settlers
will doubtless get very clever with wood substitutes,

Why?

Quote:

but long-term I expect
they'll want to take advantage of wood construction, and certainly paying
for wood from Earth will be a non-starter.

True. But the market is on Earth! There are 3.3 billion people with
butkas. Give them a job and pay them with a portion of the output you
let them create and you'll be rich beyond imagination!

I looked up the numbers before for wood. I seem to recall that 20
cubic feet per acre year is what might be extracted for most woods.
This varies by hardwood and softwood. That's about 1.4 cubic meter
per year per hectare. Which is about 700 kg - depending on the
wood. Americans use the most per person 240 kg per year - in
softwoods - 120 kg per year in hardwoods. So, two people consuming at
the American rate may be supported per hectare.

Now, in the end, we're talking something along the lines of 40 tons of
fixed assets of station and forest for every ton per year.

Now, I showed that using boron and protium fueled nuclear pulse
technology to move stuff from the asteroid belt it would cost $100 per
ton - at most - to get stuff into LEO. This could drop by a factor
of 10 or more.

Henry Ford showed that with the right kind of factory, all you pay for
is material costs by using labor and capital very very efficiently.
Telerobotics is a HUGE opportunity waiting to happen!

So, we're talking about $0.20 per day - for each man woman and child
on Earth to provide them with wood, dropping to $0.10 per day as
propulsion systems become more efficient (by handling larger payloads
and mining boron in the asteroid belt)

The fixed cost is $1,440 per person - and the recurring cost is $36
per year - with appropriate discount rates - that's $0.20 per day.

Quote:

Yes, I'd even allow that a space habitat built for the purpose of a tuna or
shrimp farm might be in several ways less complicated, given that it would
only have to provide an environment which would keep tuna or shrimp happy.

Correct -

the fundamentals are - cost of momentum and mass flow rate.
secondary - labor rates

Quote:

--

Regards,
Mike Combs
----------------------------------------------------------------------
We must be staunch in our conviction that freedom is not the sole
prerogative of a lucky few, but the inalienable and universal right of all
human beings... It would be cultural condescension, or worse, to say that
any people prefer dictatorship to democracy.

Ronald Reagan at Westminster Abbey, 1982

Guest

Posted: Sun Apr 27, 2008 5:40 am

On Apr 25, 8:08 pm, BradGuth <bradg...@gmail.com> wrote:

Quote:

On Apr 25, 11:12 am, "Mike Combs"

mikeco...@nospam.com_chg_nospam_2_ti> wrote:
"G. L. Bradford" <glbra...@insightbb.com> wrote in messagenews:rvednRohRvcqBIzVnZ2dnUVZ_oWdnZ2d@insightbb.com...

Several blue tuna fishery-stations in space the size of space colonies --
but customized to the specific purpose -- would serve a purpose you're
aren't thinking about but should be.

Oh, I've dreamed about these kind of things too. I've even thought about
O'Neill Cylinders which are nothing but tree farms. Early space settlers
will doubtless get very clever with wood substitutes, but long-term I expect
they'll want to take advantage of wood construction, and certainly paying
for wood from Earth will be a non-starter.

Yes, I'd even allow that a space habitat built for the purpose of a tuna or
shrimp farm might be in several ways less complicated, given that it would
only have to provide an environment which would keep tuna or shrimp happy.

Keeping lord Mook happy and his offshore bank accounts stuffed with
our hard earned loot is so very important. Whatever it takes for
keeping us focused away from the whole truth and nothing but the
truth.
. - Brad Guth- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

When someone pays me money and receives value for it, the money
becomes mine. That's another thing you don't get.

Guest

Posted: Sun Apr 27, 2008 5:45 am

We will work with the nation-states we're stuck with. The markets and
opportunities are on Earth. Sure, those that are in power will pull
every trick they can think of to secure their position - but that
shouldn't stop us, any more than it stopped their forebears from
promoting change.

While successfully shipping food and wood and clothing and homes and
cars and energy and telephone and internet services to every person on
Earth at very low cost directly from space - will be seen as a good
idea to many, there will be those whose rice bowls will be broken. We
must go forward anyway for our good and the good of our customers.

There will be early adopters, as I've said now for 20 years. What
isn't as obvious, is that the 3.3 billion of the poorest of us, will
gain employment and move off world as soon as it benefits them to do
so. Just the way the Irish left Ireland for America after the great
famines there. So too space development will be seen as a great
opportunity for getting ahead in the face of hard times on Earth.

As I mentioned, by the end of the 21st century more people will be
living off world than on world. And nearly all of us will be
supplied by off world assets and resources.

BradGuth

Posted: Sun Apr 27, 2008 8:02 am

Guest

On Apr 25, 6:19 pm, Willie.Moo...@gmail.com wrote:

Quote:

http://www.drtomorrow.com/lessons/lessons7/20.html

The last time land sold in Tokyo it sold for $7.8 BILLION per acre.

Central park is worth over $600 million per acre

http://ask.yahoo.com/20070202.html

Farmland in Iowa costs $4,000 per acre

Farmland in California can cost over $200,000 per acre.

With access to global markets, and 20x productivity advantage, and
zero very low logistical and transportation costs - space farms make
sense.

Using my nuclear pulse approach costs of building a NASA style habitat
and adapting it to agriculture would cost $90,000 per acre. Building
a custom purpose agriculture satellite along NASA designs, reduces
that cost to about $5,000 per acre - which would dramatically
transform agriculture. Lowering it further, with learning curve
reductions in nuclear pulse efficiency - reduces it to $600 per acre.
At this price everyone moves off world.

Basically there are 3.3 billion people who earn less than $2 per day.
Those people are offered homes in 66,000 cloud nine cities each
housing 50,000 - they all have jobs on orbit, producing massive
quantities of things from asteroidal feedstocks, including - space
homes - which they buy after 10 to 12 years of steady labor - so, we
reduce Earth's population by half - and another 2.5 billion middle
income folks join them - to improve their lot. These people grow
rich, just as Americans grew richer than Europeans - and spread across
the solar system

You can still buy entire cities or townships within India for $1/acre/
yr.

I bet there are countless acres throughout northern Canada that $10/
acre/yr would give us rights to utilize until hell freezes over, and
because of our AGW and that pesky GW moon of ours, northern Canada is
never again going to freeze solid.

Put a few of those failsafe thorium reactors on site and go for it.
.. - Brad Guth

G. L. Bradford

Posted: Sun Apr 27, 2008 2:04 pm

Guest

You've got it backward. The mass, energy, space and overall wealth of
opportunity will be out there right from the beginning of colonization AND
OPENING. And, will be here on Earth but only from and because of that GOING
outland frontier. The Old World only becomes a brand new frontier when the
New World Frontier is breaching (opening wide open).

What is the literal definition of entropy? The literal definitions --
literal meanings -- of the words 'en' and 'trope'?

GLB

Williamknowsbest

Posted: Sun Apr 27, 2008 9:43 pm

Guest

On Apr 27, 3:04 pm, "G. L. Bradford" <glbra...@insightbb.com> wrote:

Quote:

All explorers brought gold back from the new world to the old world
and sought to become rich IN the old world, and failing that, rich IN
the new world.

There will be a two way flow. People into the solar system.
Material and great wealth to all - including Earth. This will have an
immediate and powerful impact on the geopolitical conditoin. Kennedy
saw it. No one else since that time has seen it. That's why he
wanted America to be first. Eisenhower saw in the Russian interest in
space - the potential of the US being tricked by the Russians to give
up their missile and nuclear secrets. Kennedy saw in the Russian
interest in space - the potential of the US being left behind as they
were totally outclasse by the Russians in a new and vital frontier.
Eisenhower's vision won out during the Nixon administration.
Kennedy's vision died with him.

Now, the facts are technical so they're easily appreciated. Their
meaning perhaps is not.

To use rockets to project payloads to the anti-podes requires a delta
vee after gravity and air drag losses of about 7 km/sec. Trip times
42 minutes

To fly the same payload subsonically by jet aircraft the same distance
takes more energy - due to gravity and air drag losses. Trip times
24 hours..

Using boron-protium ICF rockets to impart the same momentum reduces
costs by a factor of 100 dropping to a factor of 1000 over time - 42
minutes.

To float the same payload across the ocean by freighter the same
distance - reduces costs by a factor of 50 over that of aircraft.
Trip times 60 days.

Now consider that to bring payloads from Ceres or anywhere in the
asteroid belt to Earth's surface requires a delta vee of 5 km/sec.
HALF the energy it takes to boost it there by rocket..

Using ICF powered rockets - along minimum energy orbits Ceres is
closer to US Soil than Japan or China - possessing 10,000s of dwarf
planets - all of which are movable using ICF pulse units - trip times
18 months. (sailing ship periods) .

Using ICF powered rockets - at constant gee - Ceres is closer to the
US than China by air - trip times 3 days (steamship crossing times of
the Atlantic)

So, this gives us a rough idea of the economics and logistics of
building a society that spans the solar system.

Here's a business plan;

Recruit about 20,000 'scouts' to wrangle rich asteroidal fragments
into sun synch polar orbit, and erect tele-operated factories on their
surface once safely in a stabvle orbit. Then hire the 3.3 billion
poorest people on Earth to operate the telerobotic systems - after a
period of training using virtual software - and pay them with the
output of 3/4 of what they produce - keeping 1/4 for your trouble in
setting the system up. Arrange financial services and banking
software so that they all reitre in luxury - and have an inheritance
to give their kids by the time the releoperated robots are
autonomous. To avoid difficulty among the political regimes these 3.3
billion find themselves, build and deploy 'cloud nine' floating cities
- and supply them from space - and arrange deals with Indonesia
(12,000 islands similar to Hawaii- uninhabited) and Chile (a pacific
coastline as beautiful as any California coast - 4 times the size of
california - against a backdrop of mountains bigger than the rocky
mountains) to house a billion of the retirees - but with longevity
research success, and experience aboard the hot air cities - and deep
distrust of any terrestrial governments - many of the 3.3 billion
retirees - will elect to build their own space ranches - and live
their with their families. This will be the first mass exodus,
against which the 10 million early adopters already inhabiting the
solar system - will be as nothing - and this will set the stage for
much of the political wrangling in the 21st and 22nd century.

Williamknowsbest

Posted: Sun Apr 27, 2008 9:55 pm

Guest

An average industrial worker will CREATE about $200,000 per year.
Allocating $150,000 of that toward worker maintenance - which includes
pay, maintaining capital equipment and so forth (a non standard
accounting but useful in social planning) - this provides a tremendous
return - and you recapture this as you sell workers stuff that they're
building. The $50,000 per worker year goes in your pocket as creator
fo the system. So, there are 3.3 billion people available to work in
this system. So, that's $660 trillion of which $165 trillion goes in
your pocket.

Now, the world today produces about $70 trillion per year and about $3
trillion per year goes in the pockets of all the world's richest
people.

So, you can see we're talking HUGE transformative effects. The
opportunities created in space for the 9.5 million millionaires who
have $38 trilion fixe in liquid assets - far and away outclass
anything they might want to protect. Against this opportunity, the
2.1 billion working poor in the world, also gain by supporting this
system, even while older systems are displaced.

Why didn't the buggy whip manufacturers organize to stop the new
fangled horseless carriage? Well, some did! lol. But, their efforts
were a fools errand. In the end, the buggy whip manufacturers made
antennae and steering wheel covers - and made MORE money doing it than
they ever made in buggy whips.

Same here.

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