Difference between revisions of "Colonization of asteroids"

Revision as of 02:12, 29 July 2021

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Advantages of asteroids:

Easy diggability (piles of loose regolith & gravel)
Perfect shielding against space radiation even with just a few meters of rock (in contrast to O'Neill cylinders)
Large open volumes with low risk of rupture even in the case of larger meteorite impacts (in contrast to O'Neill cylinders)
Eventual minability all the way down to the the (weightless) core – at least for the smaller asteroids

Disadvantages and challenges of asteroids:

Big communication lags due to speed of light => Big data-caches replicating Earth's internet
Risk of "gravel gas" Kessler syndrome? Strategies against this issue?

Environment optimized for human well being / human psychology – the "zero gravity cavern park":

what would be the optimal cavern size?
– probably pretty darn big to give an open air feeling
– but probably not as big as O'Neill cylinders making crossing the cavern with an microgravity locomotion suit unpleasantly slow and possibly even dangerous
shape of the cavern – not too simple not too complex e.g. big bean shaped main body with some places tapering down into somewhat branching tunnels
putting plants on the walls of the cavern
putting ladders on the walls of the cavern
lighting choices in the caverns – at times full brightness artificial sunlight
emulated weather? – wind?, rain???
"open air" restaurants as half open slowly rotating relatively small centrifuges in the walls of the much bigger cavern
"open air" playgrounds, sports-grounds, art & educational galleries, ...
entry points to the passenger transportation system
Living quarters "underground" – also in small centrifuges big enough to not cause nausea
centrifuge ponds??
how would pets get around???

(wiki-TODO: this needs an atmospheric illustration)

space sports
space tourism
mining? perhaps unlikely given advancing automation by then likely needing minimal to no human presence
having been born there
...

Widely varying in the main asteroid belt – located at a good distance from the sun
Silicate rich, carbon rich, metals rich, and even some water ice
Resources not in the form of more easily processable gasses or liquids available
– well Ceres might have some liquid brine water underground