00 - Glossary & Table of Contents AU = Astronomical unit C2S2 = Commercial Cis-lunar Supply Service CFCs = Chlorofluro carbons CCP = Commercial Crew Programs CEAC = University of Arizona's Controlled Environment Agricultural Center Cis-lunar = The space between LEO and the Moon COTS = Commercial Orbital Transportation System CRS = Commercial Resupply Service Delta-v = The change in velocity needed to go from one orbital path to another ECLSS = Environmental Conrolled Life Support System EDL = Entry-descent-landing EML1 and EML2 = Gravitation balance points between the Earth and Moon FH = Falcon Heavy rocket FISO = Future In-Space Operations teleconference Gee = Gravity on Earth GEO = Geosynchronous/stationary orbit In-situ = Local materials ISDC = International Space Development Conference of the National Space Society ISS = International Space Station LCOTS = Lunar COTS LCROSS = Lunar CRater Observation and Sensing Satellite LEO = Low Earth orbit LLO = Low lunar orbit LOX = Liquid oxygen MCT = Mars Colonial Transporter MMU = Manned Maneuvering Unit MSSC = Minimally Self-Sufficient Colony MVP = Minimum Viable Population NASA = National Aeronautics and Space Administration NEAs = Near-Earth Asteroids NSS = National Space Society OTV = Orbital transfer vehicle PEL = Peak of Eternal Light on the lunar pole PhD = Phobos - Deimos Regolith = Lunar or asteroidal dirt SSP = Space Solar Power TMI = Trans Mars injection ULA = United Launch Alliance 00 - Glossary and Table of Contents 01 - Significance of Realistic Scenarios 02 - Seasons With Steady Progress 03 - Hotel Construction 04 - Possible Hotel Modules 05 - Reality TV Show 06 - The First Eight Scenario 07 - Dogs on the Moon 08 - Artificial Gravity 09 - Hotel Luna 10 - Telerobotic Missions 11 - Lunar Lander 12 - Lunar Habitat 13 - Greenhouses 14 - Cis-lunar operations 15 - Achieving a Minimally Self-Sufficient Colony 16 - Hollow Ice Sphere 17 - A Mars Flyby Mission 18 - A Phobos-Deimos (PhD) Mission 19 - Hotel Mars 20 - Beyond Deimos 21 - O'Neillian Colonies and Space Solar Power 22 - Financing 23 - Politics --------------------------- 01 - Significance of Realistic Scenarios If Hotel Celestia were to be in context of a realistic scenario for space development then it could potentially result in the beneficial effect of promoting, and to some extent directing America's and the world's space programs. Contrarily, if it follows an unrealistic scenario then it will have no greater impact than just being a form of entertainment. If Hotel Celestia were to have a context of the current standard American space program then it could be a form of promoting the program but would not generate conversation and potential controversy in the public discourse about America's space program. However, if Hotel Celestia were to have a realistic (and arguably better) context of space development then the TV series would generate a significant amount of discussion within the press as to whether NASA ought to follow the scenario of Hotel Celestia. If the scenario were more cost-effective than America's current space program while still being a reasonably safe scenario then officials would be hard-pressed to argue against it. If policy were to change in any way in the direction of Hotel Celestia's scenario then Hotel Celestia would be appropriately credited with affecting America's space program and hence making a real and positive difference. I believe, in fact, that this can be the case and is the basis behind the following write-ups. ------------------------------ 02 - Seasons With Steady Progress I propose that each year's season of Hotel Celestia be significantly different than the previous year in that each year would have a context of significant progress towards sustainable space development. The main cast could transition from a LEO (low Earth orbit) hotel to being based out of the hotel but also working throughout cis-lunar space (between the Earth & Moon), establishing a permanent base/settlement on the Moon, then moving on to Mars and beyond. Here is my understanding of the steps of sustainable space development: 1) The launch of a modular, zero-gee laboratory (could be a combination of rigid and inflatables) to LEO with the occasional space tourist visit. 2) The development of the technology and launching of the first telerobotic mission to harvest ice in the permanently shadowed craters of a lunar pole thereby initiating a cis-lunar transportation infrastructure which then facilitates all other activities within cis-lunar space and beyond. 3) The launch of odd-shaped inflatable modules to LEO. They could have "air beams" which are inflated tubes which provide a skeleton of sorts for the structures. In this way, portions of Hotel Celestia could be launched on single launches and something that looks like Hotel Celestia could be constructructed even though materials to make it fully rigid were not yet launched to it. 4) After the telerobotic operations of #2 progress to the production of enough ice to refuel the landers, delivery of water (under contract to NASA) would be delivered to low lunar orbit (LLO). This would come to about 80 metric tonnes which would be enough shielding against radiation for astronauts on the way to Mars. The reusable lunar landers would then push the 80 tonnes of water up to EML2 (Earth-Moon gravitational balance point #2) and then on into an Earth-Moon cycler orbit with a cycler passing by Earth every 2.135 years (the time when Earth and Mars comes closest to each other) 5) Using the same reusable and now proven lunar landers, the first eight settlers are sent from LEO (perhaps from Hotel Celestia) to the a lunar pole where previous teleoperated missions had delivered habitats and lunar greenhouses. Prior to the arrival of people, the relerobots would have (as best they could) got the greenhouse running and growing plants using the water and fertilizer from the ice, set up the habitats, and covered the greenhouses and habitats with enough shielding for radiation protection. In my "First 8 Settlers to the Moon" scenario, the first eight settlers form the initial settlement. See the First 8 write-up for more details. This scenario will be on the scale of Jamestown and Plymouth Rock in terms of how they will be known in history. 6) The establishment of cis-lunar transportation capabilities. Once propellant and reusable, in-space transportation is available, there is the capability of moving satellites around, fixing them, sending space tourists around the back side of the Moon and also to a Hotel Luna. An ISS (International Space Station)-sized communications complex could be established at GEO (geosynchronous orbit) which would provide work for workers based at Hotel Celestia. Any number of stories could take place within these contexts. 7) Missions leading up to the establishment of a permanent settlement on Mars. Starting with a Mars flyby mission, then a mission to the Moons of Mars - Phobos & Deimos (PhD), then establishing a settlement on the surface of Mars. 8) Materials from asteroids and the Moon could be used to construct larger orbital hotels and even huge O'Neillian colonies as well as space solar power stations. 9) Beyond Deimos, settlements could be established in the asteroid belt on the way to settlements on the Moons of the planets in the outer solar system. 10) Finally, a mission to another star system could be done using a small crew in a sleeper ship. ------------------------------ 03 - Hotel Construction One would normally imagine a space hotel being constructed piece by piece with launches from the Earth. For a large hotel, this could be a huge amount of upfront cost before the first tourist sets foot within the hotel. Realistically, this could be financially challenging for investors to bear. Alternately, one could perhaps imagine the ISS eventually being bought out by investors and that becoming the basis for an orbiting hotel. But the ISS doesn't look very pretty and it is not particularly designed to be a hotel. It is a sterile research facilitity. More realistically, an on-orbit facility could start as a private facility with a business case based upon serving "soverign clients" meaning countries who would like to participate in a space research facility but who don't want to pay the ISS prices. This is the basis for Bigelow's business model. I suspect that Peter Humphries would be willing to sell modules to government and/or private entities to suit their needs. Whereas tourists will make up a growing portion of the users of orbital facilities, it is felt that launch costs have to come way down before that market would expand to the point where it would exceed the soverign market. Yet, we see that SpaceX is actively working on reusability which is probably the way in which launch costs are most likely to come down dramatically in the near term. Elon Musk has stated that he expects the cost to orbit to drop by 75% from his already low price. So that would come to something like $3.2 million per seat which is really a very good price and could start expanding the market. He does not plan on reusing the Falcon 9 or Falcon Heavy upper stage. Another interesting possibility is for the first hotel to be a single large inflatable in which case your hotel (or at least the appearance of it) could be established in an instant. The Falcon Heavy will supposedly be able to launch 53 tonnes to LEO. The SLS could launch more but on a $/tonne basis, it would be way cheaper to go with Falcon Heavy. Inflatables have some pretty unique benefits. Obviously, they can be compressed within a fairing such that their inflated volume could be far larger than those made from rigid structures. What's more, shapes difficult to assemble in pieces could easily take shape so long as there are internal tethers to retaint hat shape once in flated. Our experience with Echo 1 (the second communication satellite in history) showed that an inflatable could be 1/6,400th that of the ISS while providing 8 times the internal volume of the ISS. I should immediately note that the walls of Echo 1 were paper thin as compared to the ISS so it's an unfair comparison. But Echo 2 was "rigidizable" meaning that, even if debris or a micrometeorize punched a hole in it, it would still retain its shape. Echo2 remained in orbit for 5.5 years. With boosting (like the ISS has) it could have remained up there much longer. If one has a large inflatable space to work within, workers in a shirt-sleeve environment could move very massive objects into place using their bare hands. They would have to be careful because, whereas you can move very heavy objects, once moving, they have a lot of momentum and therefore could be hard to stop. So one could have a slow-motion injury if you don't move your hand away quickly enough. Alternately, if you don't go with a large inflatable, you could have a CanadArm type of robotic arm and assemble the structure from the outside. Also, one could actually move pieces using craft but the mass penalty of having to use thrusters would make this an undesirable approach I would think. Al Globus has recently written a paper in which he argues that a large O'Neillian rotating colony in an equatorial orbit would be able to miss the Southern Atlantic Anomoly. This is where the radiation belts come down near the Earth. As the ISS passes through this anomoly, the ISS crew are exposed to large levels of radiation. Placing an orbiting hab in an equatorial orbit greatly reduces the radiation exposure even to the extent that he is arguing that no additional mass shielding is needed for radiation even for children. I don't know if that is entirely true but I think that he has made a strong argument that equatorial orbits are much better from a radiation standpoint. Even if the large hotel starts as an inflatable, it would need to have its insides filled with structures, equipment, supplies, etc. So, your storyline could include a significant phase where there are recurring supply ships bringing all sorts of materials and there could be ongoing construction in the background which I think could in a way add to the storyline. Ultimately, I think it would be good to start receiving material from low gravity sources such as asteroids and the Moon. If the Cis-lunar One scenario were a part of your story then this reusable transportation infrastructure could provide material from the Moon. Formed gross metal and glass structures I would think would be a big part of the exports. The cis-lunar transportation infrastructure fuelled by lunar polar ice could give your tourists a relatively low-cost flyby around the back side of the Moon. Just an educated guess, but I think that it would cost only about 1/3 the cost to do a circum-lunar flyby mission compared to the cost of going from Earth to orbit. I would think that most tourists who could afford to go to orbit would chose to spend a bit more to add the Moon as well. I sure would. Near Earth asteroids is a legitimate source of materials. I personally like the idea of bringing back whole asteroids using ion propulsion. But, alternatively, automated processes could extract ore at distance and bring only the valuable material back to orbit. Planetary Resources (rightly in my opinion) wants to extract water automatically from a near Earth asteriod at distance and then only bring the water back to LEO for use as propellant. Later on they envision extracting platinum-group metals probably as a side-product of the nickel-iron production. Your hotel could definitely use nickel-iron for structural materials. Speculatively, solar power satellites could be constructed by workers at the hotel and later boosted to geosynchronous orbit. I have a lot of skepticism about the business case for this however, once you get material from in-space sources it could only but help the business case. ------------------------------ 04 - Possible Hotel Modules Here is some thinking about different parts of the hotel. I strongly suggest that different parts of the hotel have different levels of artificial gravity. 100% - Worker bedrooms - Long-term workers will suffer health problems unless they get adequate artificial gravity. Eight hours of sleeping in full gravity may or may not stave off health problems. We really just don't know for sure yet. 100% - Public bathrooms - Gravity really helps when it comes to going to the bathroom. What guest really want to have suction applied to their buttocks or wishes to use an instrument to suck up their urine? Nuff said! 100% - Bridge - Ideally, the crew ought to have no impediment to their work. 38% - Meeting rooms - There could be several meeting rooms with different levels of gravity. A "Mars room" at 38% gravity would allow people to easily move around the room because they have enough traction yet enjoy the feeling of lightness. Everything would move slowly and gracefully at this level of gravity. 10% - Lobby - This would be the first experience that people would have in the hotel. They ought to be nearly floating yet with just enough gravity such that these newbies can still easily make it to the front desk. 10% - Guest bedrooms - A little bit of gravity to help but sleeping peacefully in minimal gravity but not requiring to be strapped down so that they don't float away. 10% - Private bathrooms - Since they're in the guest bedrooms then I suppose they's have to be at 10% gravity. Bowel movements may nor may not separate from the anus on their own! Hmmm. Bidet maybe? 10% - Spa - Very interesting. Certainly minimal gravity could be part of the stress-relieving experience. Yet, how does a massage therapist perform massage with little or no gravity? There's probably work-arounds. I bet some really interesting things could be done in a spa with little or no gravity. Imagine hot beads or oil gently sloshing around. 10% - Restaurant - Waiters and waitressing practically floating to your table. There probably ought to be some level of gravity so that you don't have to eat your food from a tube. But diners would be terribly tempted to play with their food. e.g. tossing food to your dining partner only to have them miss it. Imagine accidentally knocking over your drink yet catching it with your napkin before it hits anything. 0% - Earth and sky viewing rooms - At the top and bottom of the hotel. No gravity at all so that you can just float and enjoy the views. 0% - Zero-gravity lab - Materials and biotech scientists continuing the work stated on the ISS. 0% - Gardens (hanging) - Imagine floating past a 3-D maze of plants. Picking a tomato as you pass by. 0% - Retirement center - Elderly who can barely get around on Earth are set free in space! 0% - Satellite assembly - Could be in any gravity level. 0-100% - Lounge - Multiple lounges at different gravity levels so that you can have whatever experience you like. They could be named the Vesta Lounge, the Lunar Lounge, Lounge Mars, Earth Lounge, and the Zero Lounge. 0-100% - Equipment - Jeffries Tubes, etc which the crew would have to craw through when chasing the stow-aways. By "Variable" I mean that the room is long enough and oriented in such a way that part of the room has partial gravity whereas the other end of the room has none. Variable - Concert hall - The musicians have some gravity while their audience floats. Variable - Theater - The actors can move around (slowly) while their audience floats. Variable - Fitness center - Ranging from full gee (e.g. treadmill) to a 3 dimensional trampoline. Variable - Sport arena - Zero-gee completely new type of sports. Very high pole vault and diving board. Variable - Construction areas - Zero-gee helpful for moving heavy objects with other parts with some gravity to help when moving around. Casino, bar, & brothel - Consider the harm these things cause. The hard-earned money lost which should go to support family. What the something-for-nothing philosophy leads to. The child abuse, spousal abuse, auto accidents, cirrhosis, fights, stupidity, murders, etc. The divorces, broken families, lack of fathers, std, etc. Please consider the subtle impact your show could have if these things are displayed as normative when all of the consequences of these things harm so many people including the innocent. ------------------------------ 05 - A Reality TV Show In order to introduce some variety to the TV series, one year could be a type of reality TV show in which the main actors are realistically playing out the scenario where they are the first eight settlers on the Moon. This could be a mock-up of what a lunar polar base would be like. The context could be that the main actors are asked by hotel company if they would be willing (based upon their experience) to help establish the first permanent lunar base and so help to establish Hotel Luna. The program is a joint program between NASA (who would be funding the program) and the hotel company who has the technical experience and experienced crew needed. The actors agree to go and establish the base. They would land (the lander landing under tether by a black helicopter at night) two at a time according to the scenario in write-up #4. They would assume the work of the base including the maintenance of the telerobotic workforce, growing food, maintaining their life support processes and equipment, and making progress in becoming progressively self-sufficient. Each actor would act as though they are highly-trained in their areas of expertise (they would be trained and advised by experts in their respective specialties). They would be four couples living in cramped quarters. Things may not always go right - e.g. vital equipment breaking down. They would have a lot of day-to-day experiences such as making and eating dinner, watching movies, playing games, playing music, negotiating disputes, etc. I would like to see that the goal by the end of that year's show would be for them to demonstrate the ability to be fully independent from supply from Earth. Part of this would be the delivery of a payload of high-tech parts to last them for years. I believe that the goal of full independence is actually achievable in a fairly short period of time although it would be a pretty high challenge. But if they could achieve this demonstration then the significance of this accomplishment would be profound. Also, I would like to see a large "BioPreserve" payload delivered and stored representing a store of biologic material representing9-15much of the scientificially-described species on Earth. I believe that this is actually technically doable and would similarly be very profound. The episodes within the reality TV season could be something along these lines: 1) The "crew" returns to Earth from Hotel Celestia in order to undergo specific training for their lunar mission. 2) The preparation for the first launch with the show ending in an apparent launch of the first two crew to LEO. 3) The transfer of the crew to a reusable cryogenic lunar lander until it lands, they come out, and make their historical statement 4) From their landing to their securing of the habitat. 5) Crew Mission #2 - The first woman on the Moon. 6) Crew Mission #3 - The first couples on the Moon. 7) Crew Mission #4 - The first dog on the Moon (and yeah now the complete set of crew). 8) Everyone getting everything in place. 9) And EVA (extra-vehicular activity) with an unexpected solar flare event. 10-13) Highlights of everyone doing their thing, overcoming challenges, day-to-day living, Thanksgiving / poignent moments, exercising, etc. Making progress towards becoming more self-sufficient. Specific accomplishments on each show: first 14) A show about the setting up of a tetherball centrifuge for the dog partial gravity experiments. See Write-up #6 for more. 15) A show focused upon the role of the dogs in medical experiments. See Write-up #7 for more. 16-19) More highlights of day-to-day living and more specific progress especially the development of in-situ (from local materials) production of spare parts for all of the equipment that they need. 20) The demonstration that they are able to produce most all of the materials that they need from in-situ materials with the determination that they are now ready to receive the payload of high-tech parts making them independent from Earth. 21) The delivery of the high-tech parts (computer chips, cameras, radio equipment, etc) 22) Delivery and securing of the BioPreserve. 23) The final show - Perhaps considering the results of the partial-gee dog studies and deciding if they are ready to have children and truly establish a independent colony. ------------------------- 06 - The First Eight Scenario Here is more information about how a low-cost program could establish the first permanent off-Earth base/settlement on the Moon. Such an accomplishment would historically be on the order of Jamestown or Plymouth Rock in that these first eight settlers would be known to be the first humans to truly establish a permanent foothold off the Earth and into the solar system. By necessity, they would need to be couples with specific, different training. Because they are so uniquely different from each other and their experiences on the Moon would be so varied, they would easily be better remembered than the individuals who walked on the Moon initially. I believe that the details that I am laying out here are in fact quite a realistic scenario. As such, the portrayal of this scenario should elicit significant discussion both in the news, clasroom, and privately about whether the scenario was possible or not. I believe that it is and would be about the lowest-cost yet safe way of achieving the first permanent off-Earth settlement. Because of this, it could initiate real consideration as to whether our country should actually do what the TV show shows. - - - - - - - The case for the first people back to the Moon being permanent settlers goes like this. Before people return to the Moon, telerobots would be already harvesting lunar ice in propellant quantities. This is far more than enough for life support. Even though the amount of carbon and nitrogen is low in the ice, when you are processing propellant quantities, you have far more than enough carbon and nitrogen if you are recycling those things (e.g. compost, scrubbing and reusing CO2, etc). Also, regolith (lunar dirt) has been shoved onto the top of the inflatable habitat. So, what is the reason why the first astronauts back to the Moon would have to return? Because they are running out of life support? No. Food? No. Radiation exposure? No. About the only thing that remains is their exposure to hypogravity. But, with a good exercise program, they ought to be able to stay on the Moon for something like 2-3 years. Introduce a short-arm centrifuge and they might be able to stay there for say 4-6 years. That gives them enough time, in my opinion, for them to build a large indoor long-arm centrifuge. If they sleep 8 hours a day in that and exercise in that then again, what deficiency would cause them to have to return to Earth? Bringing them back home would cost money by replacing them with someone else. So, why not leave them on the Moon as long as possible? So, if we're saying that they can stay on the Moon for 6+ years, what about their social situations? If any of the first astronauts had small children back on Earth then they really couldn't stay on the Moon for much more than 12 months. Even that would be pushing it. Skyping from the Moon just isn't the same as a hug and kiss. If the first astronauts had a spouse back on Earth, likewise, they really ought not to be away from their spouse for anything more than a year. OK. What about single astronauts? Single astronauts could probably afford to stay on the Moon for 2, maybe 3 years. But eventually, they would want to get married and start a family. So again, you'd have to bring these Plymouth Rock people back to Earth which means that their role in this historic story ends. Well, if we send single males and females to the permanent base, perhaps they could hook up up there, yes? Ummm no! It is a very small a confined space. Very little social options to choose from. And, what if two guys are interested in one gal or vice versa? Talk about the potential for the breakdown of team cohesion. So, logically the solution would be to send people whose social circumstances are already resolved (i.e. they're married) yet they don't have any children. These are the types of people who could stay on the Moon for a long time. Until they decide that they want to have children that is. And so their goal is this...Develop those technical processes necessary to keep ahead of their running out of critical things. Keep advancing their situation so that they can stay longer and longer. After they have secured their situation then they turn to animal studies to determine what the "artificial gravity prescription" is for safe pregnancy and childhood. This would take something like 5-7 years (just a guess). When they determine the gravity prescription then they can ethically choose to have children. So, these astronauts should probably be in their early to mid 20s which means that their training should start right out of highschool. One of the selection factors would be that both spouses are able to contribute (through directed training) the remaining skills needed by the small initial team. I'm guessing that the question of singles and homosexuals will come up because the team that I have described so far are a few hetersexual couples. It is important to remember that the initial team is just the first of a much, much larger group to follow. In that later group will be people of rather varied backgrounds. Some will be singles with spouses and children back home and so they will return after a moderate length of time. Others will be short-term tourists. Others, those who wish to retire on the Moon. There will be homosexuals, people from various countries, some even business people starting a new venture. Just like with Jamestown and Plymouth rock, there will be the initial people but then the door will be opened to basically anyone else who wishes who has the ability to go to the Moon. But, I believe that it is important that the first people to the Moon be a small group who are going to stay for a very long time. This is the first foothold of humanity into the cosmos. There is the potential for this moment to go down into history. We ought not to miss that opportunity but realize that we are writing history and so we ought to establish the settlement in a manner cognizent of this fact. Who were the first eight people on the International Space Station? No one knows. Who will be the first eight people on the Moon? I hope that children throughout history will know their names and know their story. Since we can and should write their story, let's figure out what that story will be. Also, we will be sending small initial teams to Phobos, to Mars, the asteroids, and beyond. These teams need to be small yet sufficient in terms of the skills needed. So the first eight settlers on the Moon will develop the protocols for all of those other initial settlers to replicate. So, here's my scenario for the first eight settlers on the Moon. The telerobots are already harvesting and processing the ice including plant food. The reusable landers have delivered a complete, inflatable lunar base including indoor greenhouse space. Hopefully, everything is ready so that it is a turnkey operation. I imagine (for a specific practical reason) that there will be four couples composing the first eight people to the Moon. Just like with Apollo, I would like to send them two at a time but not as couples. Amongst the team of husbands and wives, the husbands wish to take the greater risk for their wives by going first. So, here's my scenario for each of the four crewed missions. CREW MISSION #1: Theme - Humans have returned to the Moon...and this time it is for good. - Husband #1 - Commander - Perhaps served in the military. I the only pilot amongst them. He's got leadership talent. Being the first of the team to step on the Moon, he says something that goes down into history. - Husband #2 - Engineer - His job is to make sure everything is functining for themselves and in preparation for the rest of the couples. CREW MISSION #2: Theme - The first woman on the Moon - Wife #4 - Roboticist - About 800 million school-aged girls will be watching this live. Will she be American or Chinese? It is our choice. As she steps onto the surface of the Moon, she says something that will go down into history. - Husband #3 - Machinist / metallurgist - Perhaps the hero of blue collar workers around the world. His job and that of the chemist are perhaps the key jobs to achieving material independence from Earth. From metals extracted from the regolith, he melts, purifies, casts, and then machines to produce first the bulky parts of an ever expanding telerobotic workforce followed by producing the parts for their lifesupport and other equipment. Eventually he is making pressure vessels for expanded living space. CREW MISSION #3: Theme - The first couples on the Moon. The first kiss. An all-female mission. - Wife #2: Chemist - One of the key jobs. She takes the simple organic chemicals from the ice and systematically produces ever more challenging chemicals. Weekly there would be reports of what new chemical she has now produced on the Moon. - Wife #3: Physician - She monitors the crew's health including the impact of hypogravity and determines if anyone needs to return home. She collaborates with the biologist in doing artificial gravity studies on animals. She also has some training in veternary medicine. - As these women walk across the Moon, brush off, enter the air lock, take off their suits, and then enter the habitat, they greet, embrace, and kiss their husbands. It is a very emotional moment as their husbands had been anxiously watching the screens to see if their wives would survive the landing. They have been separated from their wives for several months and it is clear that everyone is relieved and excited to be together again. Husband #1 and Wife #4 are operating cameras as the other couples kiss. Those videos would obviously go viral since everyone loves a love story. The couples agree that they are not going to live together (i.e. have sex) until everyone has their spouse. So. there is the "girl's dorm" and the "guy's dorm". CREW MISSION #4: Theme - The dog! - Husband #4: Geologist - His job is not to go outside of the habitat but rather to receive the samples that teleoperated rovers bring to him. He works with the chemist to extract metals and other chemicals from nearby rock sources. Upon arriving at the Moon, he is the first one out and waits while Wife #1 lowers her dog by tether down to him. - Wife #1: Biologist - Personal owner of the dog. The dog is so cute. It has its own doggie space suit. It is let free to run across the lunar landscape. Wife #1 calls to the dog (through their radio system) to jump and the dog jumps 6 times higher than any dog on Earth can jump! (It is trained on Earth to jump to those heights using tethers). Husband #1 (also the dog's owner) remotely drives a teleoperated rover to chase the dog and then the dog chases the robot. This definitely is a viral video. Upon entering the habitat, the dog greets and licks his owner, Husband #1. - Now, all couples are together. They cuddle with each other while talking as a team with Mission Control. It's late. They've had a big day. They bid good night to all who are watching. They each head off to their own separate rooms. Lights off. Cameras off. We all know what they're now doing! One small possibility. The first eight settlers could repeat what happened with the Pilgrams. They could meet together in their habitat and decide, by writing down on a document, how they wished to run their settlement (i.e. Mayflower Compact 2.0). This is something that America could allow which certain other countries couldn't. Pregnancy: Can any of the wives get pregnant? No. Definitely not. All four husbands have undergone vasectomy. We absolutely cannot allow a pregnancy on the Moon until the animal artificial gravity studies have been completed. Does this mean that the husbands can never have children? Not at all. Three years after vasectomy, 85% of men are fertile. So, vasectomies can usually be reversed. The physician and two of the males are trained to do that procedure. But, just to make sure that the men can have children, their sperm (before the vasectomy) has been preserved. Every week brings news reports of firsts. The first plant. The first fruit. The first plastic produced. The first silicon. The first game night. The first string quartet. The first Thanksgiving. The first puppy born. Etc. No shortage of exciting news from the Moon. This really is the first off-Earth settlement. One goal (because it is within reach) is for this settlement to attempt to become completely materially independent from the Earth. If some bio, chemical, or nanotechnology or accelerating artificial intelligence...or asteroid were to destroy life on Earth, this little colony might be able to ensure the survival of humanity. How? The colony could produce their own life support and bulky materials. A single cubic meter payload delivered from Earth could provide 10,000 Pentium-sized computer chips. This would buy the colony hundreds of years of computing power so that they would have the time to implement pre-planned technologic development until they were able to produce their own computer chips. Same for cameras, radio equipment, precision motors & joints, etc. I belive that the colony could so become sufficiently independent in about 3-4 years. The value of a "life insurance" for the human species is invaluable. Educational Impact Children around the world would not only know the names and jobs of all eight settlers but they would have several choices of occupational heros to choose from amongst those eight. What's more, children could have the real opportunity to be selected to be amongst those eight, or future eight traveling to other destinations, or any of the follow-on settlers to ever enlarging settlements. An on-line curriculum could be developed to help children from around the world identify what knowledge and skills they needed to develop in order to have a chance of being selected to become a settler. There could be tests and the best from various regions could be selected to travel to the US for further testing. The US leads here because it would be (in my understanding) US taxpayer dollars paying for this in a public-private program. So, although the young people could originate anywhere in the world, they would need to become naturalized citizens in order to become an American astronaut and settler. Originating from somewhere else in the world could well be a selective advantage because certain languages would be favored for the first eight settlers. English would be the common language. But each of the settlers ought to be very fluent in another language (such as their native language). I would select the following secondary langages due to their meaning that large swaths of the world would have a language connections to the settlement through one of the settlers: Russian, Mandarin, Japanese, Indonesian, Arabic, Spanish (and the other latin languages), German, and either Korean or Swahili. On a weekly basis, news reports in those countries would have one of the settlers explaining in their own language what recently happened in the settlement. So, the world connection to the lunar settlement would be exceptionally strong. Although developed by America and based upon the principles of freedom, the entire world could rightly feel that it is their base too. Later settlers could bring additional languages to the settlement as well. BioPresere With this context comes the possibility of backing up Earth's biosphere. A consortium or regional universities and colleges could collaborate to collect samples of the scientifically-described species of the world in the forms that they could be most easily resurrected (e.g. frozen individual bacterial cells, spores, seeds, embyos, etc). If we exclude the beetles (ridiculously large number of species) and giving each species 0.2 cm3 of volume, 950,000 species could be preserved which would be all known species. For mammals and perhaps birds, there may need to later be shipments of baby female animals for about each family level from which eggs of relative species could be placed thereby laterally expanding the number of species resurrected. So, we're talking about a little zoo. But that probably couldn't be done fully until a number of years down the line. In order to ensure the minimum viable population (MVP) genetically, it may be necessary to downselect which species are preserved in order to increase the genetic diversity of those that remain although the MVP might be able to secured using diverse DNA (very small volume) for each species. ----------------------------- 07 - Dogs on the Moon Dogs could play a very important role in building support for the show and lunar program as well as for helping determine the amount of artificial gravity needed for reproduction. The first lunar dog would arrive on Crew Mission #4. It would be brought off the lander by its owner the biologist. It would look very adorable in its doggie space suit. It would be allowed to run free on the surface of the Moon and would be trained to leap to incredible heights (six times that on Earth). It would have been trained to be comfortable doing this using a harness and rock rappelling set-up on Earth. There could be an incident in which the dog plays chase back and forth between her and a telerobot operated by one of the settlers on the Moon (0 second time delay). Upon arriving in the habitat, passing through the airlock, and having its helmet removed, it would be greeted by its male human owner with licking of face and all such excitement. Most all people on Earth would know the name of the dog. At a later time, the female dog would be joined by its male dog companion who had had a vasectomy. All dogs in the settlement would be selected primarily based upon their breed and especially for their personality. It would be important that the dog not chew on things such as the habitat walls. It should also be potty trained to go to the bathroom in the designated area. The choice of breed would match the gender. For example, the female dog could be a Collie and the male dog could be a German Shephard. The dogs would be fed plant protein (like most cheap dog food) and also talapia fish. The female dog would play a vitally important role in determining how much artificial gravity would be needed for human reproduction. Although chimpanzees would be a better analogue than humans, dogs are more popular and more tame. Here's how it would work. Semen from the male dog (through electrical stimulation of his testes) would fertilize the egg of the female dog in a test tube. As the egg became fertilized and dividing it would reach the eight-cell morula stage. At this point, each cell would not have been differentiated yet and so could go on to develop into a fetus all by itself. Those eight fetuses would be identical twins of each other. By subjecting the fetuses to different environmental conditions, we can determine how the environment and artificial gravity affects gestation and early childhood. The first embryo would be implanted in the female dog, gestated in Earth's 1 gee and grow up in Earth's 1 gee. It would be the control puppy. The second embryo would be gestated in Earth's 1 gee and grow up on the Moon. It would arrive on the very next flight to the Moon after its mother. The third embryo would be gestated on the Moon and then, after birth, immediately flown back to the Moon. Meanwhile the forth embryo would be gestated on the Moon and, upon birth would be immediately flown to the Moon to be raised by the mother dog on the Moon. In this way, all four puppies would help us determine the maximum negative effects of lunar partial gravity on both gestation and growing up. All dogs would have the same biomedical tests run on then for comparison. As for the four remaining embryos, they would be gestated and/or raised in degrees of partial artificial gravity in the unshielded tetherball centrifuge described in the next write-up. Much of this experimentation would be conducted simultaneously in order to try to get to the question of how much artificial gravity is necessary as soon as possible. In reality, the experiment would probably need to be repeated on a chimpanzee before human reproduction could be safely attempted. Perhaps more than one female dog (possibly also clones of each other) could simultaneously gestate and raise puppies. Unfortunately after donating the semen, the male dog is pretty much for show and companionship as the random genetics of natural mating wouldn't help the experiment. --------------------------- 08 - Artificial Gravity It is clear from our experience on the ISS that zero gee is deleterious to one's health. It is a matter of degrees for sure but it seems that one could not go for perhaps a couple of years in zero gees without experience sufficient health consequences to require the complete termination of the experience. We know that zero gees affects many aspects of health including bone mineral density, balance/coordination, skeletal muscle mass, cardiovascular function, immune function, and visual acuity. Unfortunately we don't know how much partial artificial gravity is necessary for adequate health as we have some zero gee experience (on the ISS) plenty of 1 gee experience (on Earth) but almost no experience at anything in between (Apollo missions were too short). Centrifuges on Earth only increase the gravity experienced beyond 1 gee. We have some hints from animal studies (specifically suspending the hind legs of mice) that suggest that even Martian gravity (3/8ths = 38%) may be not much better than zero gee. Hotel Celestia could well have a partial gravity module. This would probably be a spinning module in which one gets levels of artificial gravity depending upon how close one is to the axis. However, the combination of radius and rpms needed for a full gee is likely too great to be realistically incorporated into the hotel. Alternately, a small research module could be connected to Hotel Celestia with tethers. If memory serves me well, the radius needs to be approximately 1 km if at 3 rpms. There is a fair amount of uncertainty as to whether 3 rpms is the fastest rpms that trained people can handle without dizziness and nausea. However, with some partial artificial gravity (such as during sleep) one might be able to perhaps double the length of time lived in space. As for an early lunar outpost, I have envisioned a relatively low-mass tetherball centrifuge which could be delivered in a low-volume payload delivery. It would be manually assembled and secured to the ground including with guy wires. It would be approximately the height of a cell phone tower and would have a motorized T-bar on top. From the end of the T-bar would come wires that could reach the ground and could be retracted to above the guy wires. The purpose of this tetherball centrifuge would be to provide any level of artificial gravity desired (0 to 1) for dogs only in the artificial gravity gestation and childrearing experiments. Since sufficient shielding against GCRs (galactic cosmic rays) would require at least 2 or 3 meters of water or regolith (lunar dirt) shielding, it would not be practical for the contraption to provide both shielding and artificial gravity. So it would provide only artificial gravity and no protection from radiation and hence would only be used by dogs. As for human reproduction, there would need to be a different, more massively shielded centrifuge such as those seen below. However, this would require significant metals production from in-situ materials. For a Hotel Luna, people could sleep in shielded short-arm centrifuges. On a mission to Mars, there is a relatively easy solution for the zero gravity (microgravity) namely tethering the habitat with other mass (e.g. spent upper stage, supplies, waste, etc) and then spinning the arrangment up to a full gee. I have done the calculations and the mass of the tether and the spin-up / spin-down propellant would be a modest part of the overall total mass (i.e. mass budget). ------------------------ 09 - Hotel Luna Hotel Luna would logically be the outgrowth of the initial permanent lunar base and the space hotel experience of Hotel Celestia. Just as I suggested with Hotel Celestia, large portions of Hotel Luna could be assembled based upon inflatables for maximum volume from minimum payload mass. The beauty of it is that, whereas inflatables in LEO require significant thickness due to orbital debris shielding, on the Moon, that shielding could be provided by the lunar dirt so the thickness of the inflatable habitat walls could be really quite thin. However, internal supports should be placed in case an emergency decompressive event were to occur. Alternately, the Hotel could be built from rigid modules. Ideally these modules could serve double use such as cargo modules and/or propellant tanks. If dedicated modules then they could be fitted with equipment in the exact arrangment that they would be needed. Bigelow Aerospace has a concept for an entire lunar base assembled in orbit and then landed all at once on the lunar surface - i.e. an instant lunar base. As with Hotel Celestia, Hotel Luna could serve multiple uses. It could be a hotel for high-end tourists but could also be an international research base, work center for maintaining and expanding ice-harvesting teleoperations as well as the base for a small but fully independent human colony (nearby but without people or materials going inbetween in order to ensure nothing could spread to the base). As with Hotel Celestia, famous celebrities could arrive during each show and there could also be any number of storylines involving the non-tourist operations. --------------------- 10 - Telerobotic Missions In my scenario, early on there would be an unmanned, telerobotic mission to the lunar poles to initiate a cis-lunar transportation infrastructure based upon the ice which was found there by NASA's LCROSS mission. In the context of Hotel Celestia, the propellant produced by this operation could form the logical basis for tourists adding a flyby around the backside of the Moon. It would also be the logical lead-up to the main characters establishing an initial permanent lunar base which would form the basis for Hotel Luna. I call my scenario Cis-lunar One. The "One" part of the name refers to a single launch of a Falcon Heavy (FH) rocket delivering enough telerobotic equipment to harvest enough ice to produce enough propellant to initiate a cis-lunar transportation system. Since the cost of launching propellant to LEO is approximately $5,000/kg and the cost of launching propellant to EML1 and expecially the lunar surface would be $10s - $100s of thousands of dollars, that single launch could repay all development and the launch costs with just that one mission. However, the program would involve later launches which would quickly (about 9-11 missions later) lead to the establishment of a crewed base. Here's how the first Cis-lunar One mission would work. It starts with a lunar polar prospecting mission. This is already planned by NASA for 2019. The purpose is to characterize the location (including depth) and nature of the icy dirt known to exist at the poles. Next, a single launch of a Falcon Heavy rocket (SpaceX's first FH launch will be early 2015) has a large (larger than a 737) cylindrical lunar lander in place of its upper stage. It boosts into a trans-lunar injection (TLI) trajectory. Three days later it arrives at low lunar orbit (LLO) where it deploys several relay communications satellites into 86 degrees polar orbit (stable). It then deorbits to the rim of Hinshelwood Crater at the north lunar pole where there is a "Peak of Eternal Light" (PEL) which has exposure to sunlight about 85% of the 29-day lunar day. Upon landing, solar panels are dischared from the cargo bay and a dexterous telerobot (a humanoid robot such as NASA's Robonaut 2, John Hopkin's RoboSally, or Germany's Justin sets up and connects the solar panels. A small rocket is fired from the rim down to a specific point in the permanently-shadowed crater below. This rocket trails a wire including a large section of superconducting tape. In this way, a permanent supply of electricity is supplied to the worksite at the crater floor. Then the lander boost off from the crater rim and hops down to end of where the wire landed. The dexterous telerobot connects the lander to the wire. A large ice harvester is discharged from the lander. It moves a few feet away and immediately begins steaming out volatiles. Alternately, depending upon the findings of the prospecting mission, probes could be drilled down into the dirt and microwaves steam out the volatiles through the tube. The volatiles are collected into tanks on the excavator, chilled using radiators, and condensed. When the tanks are full, the excavator transports the volatiles to the lander where they are transferred into a holding tank. Equipment onboard the lander distills the volatiles, electrolyzes the water into hydrogen and oxygen, and chemically reacts to ultimately produce methane and liquid oxygen. These are the propellants which will be used. --------------------------- 11 - Lunar Lander The details about the reusable, cryogenic lunar lander may not be particularly relevant to the Hotel Celestia or Hotel Luna TV series but I am including this write-up for completeness sake. It could be either a ULA (United Launch Alliance) Centaur upper stage modified by Masten Space Systems or it could be a new vehicle produced potentially be a new company (since SpaceX seems completely uninterested in the Moon). This second vehicle could be the diameter of the Falon Heavy fairing stretched to just above the lateral boosters and using a Chase-10 methane engine (South Korean only $3 million per engine). The lander could be configured to either land on its belly (ULA-Masten) or on its tail (modified SpaceX technology). Belly landing would have the advantage of the easier discharge of payload whereas tail landing might be simpler to adapt existing technology to. My favorite is belly landing. The lander must use cryogenic fuels as performance requires this and the lunar ice cannot easily produce anything other than cryogenic propellants. Liquid hydrogen is the easiest fuel to produce from lunar ice however many people (not all) consider the handling, storage, and transfer of liquid hydrogen to be a real bear. Although there is a bit of performance hit, I prefer liquid methane. The lander could be fairly easily modified into two other necessary forms. Remove the legs and engine, add multiple layers of mylar, a cryostat, or a refrigerator and you have a propellant depot. Remove the legs and add a pop-out heat shield and you have an orbital transfer vehicle (OTV) traveling between a depot (at EML1 or EML2) and to LEO where the propellant (or more likely the propulsion service) is needed the most. Just like SpaceX's Dragon capsule is first being used for cargo and later will be human-rated to take crew to the ISS, likewise this lander could first take teleoperated equipment and spare parts to the lunar surface. Each launch from Earth could result in numerous flights and hence it wouldn't take very many Earth launches before the lunar lander could be human rated. The vehicle would be computer controlled and so humans would travel largely as cargo in a module within the cargo bay with the option for manual override (very rare). An interesting geology expecition scenario could be as follows. As the lander is fully refuelled, it could perform suborbital hops on the lunar surface to geologically interesting sites. The lander could carry a teleoperated geology rover which could examine and sample rocks and then climb back into the lander for another hop. By my calculations, a fully refuelled lander could get between 5-6 hops before needing to return to the polar ice worksite. I am not a lunar geologist but I think that approximately 8 or so such missions could largely explore the hottest geology sights across the lunar surface. A caveat is that an equivalent ice harvesting operation would need to be set up at the other lunar pole else one could only get about 2-3 hops per mission into the other hemisphere. My nomenclature for the various in-space craft are as follows: - Eagle = Lunar Lander (like the Apollo program -- or Raptor) - OTV = Condor (long-distant flyer) - PROpellant DEpot = Proteus (ProDe) - Hollow Ice Sphere = Aquarius (the water bearer) ---------------------- 12 - Lunar Habitat As mentioned before, the initial lunar habitat could be either inflatable or dual-purpose rigid structures. I prefer thin-wall inflatables because of the great volume per payload mass. Rather large habitats / greenhouses could be established fairly easily in my opinion. This would be simply pulling them out of the lander, opening a valve to a compressed air tank, let it inflate and thereby unfold itself. Deflate it so that it is flat, and then telerobotically pile lunar dirt on top of it. The inflatable could have little plastic walls around the edge of the roof to keep the regoligh on the roof from sliding off the edge. After piling on something like two meters of regolith (dirt weights only 1/6th on the Moon compared to the Earth), the habitat could be reinflated now covered on top. Telerobotically, more dirt could be piled on the sides for complete shielding and lateral support. The telerobots could enter in through an airlock, and emplace verticle supports to support the roof in the event of a catastrophic depressurization event. The internal walls, ceiling, and floors could have high-resolution printing to provide the appearance of being outdoors (e.g. forest scenes). Waterfall and animal sounds could add to the ambiance. For living quarters, I believe it important for each couple to have their own private "homes" which could be sections of a single large habitat or could be separate connected by short corridors. I think it important that the couples have privacy (sound proof) for their bedrooms and that they have private space from each other within their "home". I also believe it important that those parts of the habitat where people spend significant quantities of time (e.g. sleep quarters, office, kitchen) be especially shielded. Perhaps they could be up against a hill and be rigid structures supporing up to 7 meters of lunar dirt for purposes of protecting against radiation. It is important that total radiation exposure be kept to a minimum. Unprotected exposure on the surface of the Moon means that the crew could only stay on the Moon for about 3.2 years before they would exceed their career limits. With mild shielding (e.g. 51.6 cm thick) and with sleeping in more shielding rooms, I believe that could be extended to about 8 years. This would give more than enough time to build up the amount of shielding throughout the habitat necessary to live on the Moon indefinitely (from a radiation standpoint). However, outdoor excursions should be kept to a minimum. Geologic exploration should be done primarily by telerobots with samples brought back to the habitat. Broken down telerobotic equipment should be telerobotically loaded onto the lander, hopped to the crewed base, and telerobotically brought into the habitat first to a "dirty room" where it can be cleaned of dust and then into the shielded "garage" where a settler in short-sleeves can do the careful repair work. ------------------------------ 13 - Greenhouses The University of Arizona - Tucson has a Controlled Environment Agricultural Center (CEAC) which studies ways of improving greenhouses. It has received grants for the development of a lunar and antarctic greenhouse. The research is ongoing but that have made real progress. Their goal is to develop a single greenhouse which could provide all of the caloric, water, and oxygen processing needs of a single astronauts. As it stands, they have succeeded from the water and oxygen perspective but have only achieved 1/2 of the caloric production needs. They are also looking at recycling of materials which is very important. It may be that with the current Administration's policy turning away from the Moon, their funding has been jeopardized. Highlighting in-space greenhouses in Hotel Celestia might help generate support for funding the lunar greenhouse research. Dr. Gianconelli (UA-Tucson CEAC) told me that they have calculated that the greenhouse would only need a meter of lunar dirt for radiation shielding. Again, on the Moon, this weighs only 1/6th the weight as on Earth. In a Hotel Celestia, it could weigh nothing and the ISS has been growing plants in zero-gravity and little shielding. Because of the need for adequate radiation and micrometeorite shielding, greenhouses whether in orbit or on a planetary surface will not likely get sunlight through windows. The exception is that mirrored light tubes could take a circuitous route throught the covering lunar dirt thereby bringing in light yet not providing a direct path for radiation. But more likely in my opinion is that the plants would grow via lamps connected and powered electrically via external solar panels. In-space greenhouses tend to be more hydroponic rather than soil-based. In zero-gravity, the roots could be sprayed thereby delivering nutrients to the plants. I believe that greenhouses could serve not only the life-support needs of Hotel Celestia, Lunar, and Mars but would also provide an important psychologic reprieve from the constructed environment. I think that it could be advantageous to have the greenhouse walls be clear so that one could be in a living room and be next to a green area. Whereas greenhouses form an important part of ECLSS (Environmental Control Life Support System), I personally believe that initally, life support will probably be a combination of ECLSS and chemically-based life support as the most efficient approach. The lunar greenhouse could have a couple of firsts: - the first plant growing on the Moon - the first fruit produced on the Moon (e.g. tomato) Also, there would be quite a long list of culinary firsts. For example, imagine what it would take to produce the first spaghetti dinner. The settlers would have to grow their own grain and make their own pasta. So it would be quite an accomplishment. As for meat, fish could probably do pretty well growing in zero gravity. I understand that talapia is a productive edible fish. I think that beef, lamb, etc is out of the question as it would take too much to grow and maintain them. Chicken is borderline - probably not worth it. However, soybeans could be grown and veggie meats could perhaps be based upon that. On a mission to Mars, I have done a fairly comprehensive analysis of what types of food could go into the walls of a hollow food sphere. The large percentage of all foods could be available in various forms such as powder, refrigerated, "canned", and dry. I believe that the astronauts could have quite a wide variety of foods. Fresh produce would be somewhat of a problem but I think that they could get some such as sprouts and lettuce. ---------------------------- 14 - Cis-lunar Operations Cis-lunar is the space between LEO and the lunar surface. Critically important to the permanent opening of the solar system to humanity is to establish a low-cost, reusable transportation infrastructure within this space. I personally believe that propellant from lunar sources could play a significant role in minimizing the cost of such a transportation system although there are interesting arguments that propellant from asteroids, reusable launchers from Earth, and/or ion propulsion could substitute for lunar propellant. From my perspective, reusable launchers would be ideal to launch non-bulk materials to LEO (e.g. people & high-tech hardware) but that propellant and bulky material (gross metals and food) would best be produced from in-space resources. In my Cis-lunar One scenario, propellant would be produced on the Moon and then shipped throughout cis-lunar space. The craft involved in this could also push cargo and people from LEO to all other destinations including towards Mars. Within cis-lunar space, there are some interesting and economically productive uses of such a transportation system. The first that comes to mind are all of satellites that need boosing from LEO to GEO. This represents a several billion dollars a year business. Bryan Benedict (FISO telecon 13Nov13) gave a talk describing in some detail the market opportunities with in-orbit servicing. Telerobotic in-orbit servicing would be the safest and most cost-effective approach although for the sake of the TV show, in-person repairs could be possible and more interesting. In-orbit servicing could include the replacement of station-keeping propellant, replacement of batteries, and the upgrading of electronics. Secondly, and also significantly, are the occasional mishaps when a launched satellite or interplanetary probe (e.g. Russia's Phobos-Grunt) experiences an anomaly thereby jeopardizing the entire value of the mission. A windfall opportunity would be available. It is said that this happens about two times a year. The value of a typical geostationary satellite is about $400 million plus lost revenue. I'm not sure if this includes launch cost or not. Anomalies could include a stuck fairing (rocket shroud) or stuck antenna or solar panels. --------------------- 15 - Achieving a Minimalist Self-sufficient Colony (MSSC) Here are some of my definitions: - Outpost = A makeshift site providing only the bare necessities. Unlikely to have a family there. - Base = A worksite where people are present only so long as they have work there. Crew may be living there but they intend to move away when their job is finished. They haven't settled there. They are employees of whoever owns the base. - Settlement = Some of the people living there are intending to establish their homes there long-term. However, technically they are largely dependent upon outside supply but may be able to afford that based upon some productive trade with the outside world. - Colony = Also a place where people are settling and establishing their homes but is noted for its degree of technical / material independence from the outside world. Yes, they may do some trading but they are needing to produce much of their sustenance because it is too expensive to rely on the outside world. - Self-supporting - Providing some but not all of one's own needs. - Self-sufficient - Have sufficient stocks of key supplies to last long enough to become self-sustaining. - Self-sustaining - Able to produce all of one's needs for one's self. - Minimally Self-Sufficient Colony (MSSC) - The smallest size of colony that has enough processes and supplies to buy itself enough time that it should be able to develop the technology necessary to produce all of one's needs including replacement of the supply stocks. Why is achieving a self-sustaining colony important? The risk of human civilization being ended by a comment or asteroid is really quite small. It is perhaps less than 1/10 million chance per century. On the other hand, it is highly likely that, by the end of this century, our own normal technologic development will place potentially existentially-powerful technologies within the hands of the typical grad student regardless of their mental state/philosophy. These technologies include: biotech, self-replicating chemicals, nanotech, and accelerating artificial intelligence. It would be prudent to be good stewards of the human species by achieving a self-sustaining colony as soon as possible. I believe that the Moon, Mars, and the asteroids provides the necessary elements upon which to develop a fully self-sustaining colony. However, this is theoretical but a difficult engineering challenge -- but perhaps not as difficult as many might suspect. For example, the LCROSS results show that the lunar polar ice contains not only water but carbon monoxide, ammonia, and other chemicals. The rocks from the Apollo program showed that the lunar regolith contains the non-volatile chemicals needed for plant and human health. A telerobotic lunar operation to harvest this ice for propellant would, as a beneficial side-effect of its operations, produce far more than enough carbon and nitrogen needed to replace the losses of a colony. If the colony could extract metals from the regolith (iron-nickle meteorite bits) and produce glass and ceramics along with producing organic compounds from the lunar ice, then in relatively short order a settlement could become at least 90% mass independent of Earth. This would greatly reduce the cost of resupply to the settlement and move it significantly towards becoming a materially independent colony. So, how could an MSSC be achieved? After the colony became 90% mass independent, the goal would be for the colony to become fully independent of the Earth. One could possible achieve self-sufficiency by delivering from Earth a modest amount of high-tech supplies including computer chips, cameras, radio equipment, precision motors and joint, etc. Consider, a Pentium computer chip measures about 2x.5x.5 centimeters. A cubic meter box could hold 10,000 computer chips. Computer chips typically last on the order of a decade or two. Most computers are thrown out not because the chip stops working but simply because it isn't keeping up with the latest technology. So, a single box could supply a small colony with enough computing power for perhaps centuries. This could give the colony the necessary time to develop the technology (perhaps a simpler, 1940s-like technology) to perform similar basic functions. The colony would not necessarily have to reinvent the technology but rather could have large amounts of selected information (such as from the Internet) printed onto indexed microfiche to ensure enduring access to critical information so that they could leapfrog technology development. The challenge rather is to reproduce the pieces of equipment which provide life-support, habitat, and perhaps telerobotic equipment (unless underground, shielded mining were feasible). It may be moderately easy to produce the metal parts for this equipment from in-situ metal materials. But there will likely be unique parts (carbide bits, catalytic metals, special filers, seals, & lubricants) which would have to have special processes to produce. My preference is that the initial colony be confined to the first eight settlers (four couples) and that follow-on payload deliveries deliver more and more equipment and supplies until it is highly likely that one has achieved an MSSC. The question comes up about the genetic diversity of the colonists. Perhaps, eight settlers is not a sufficiently large number to ensure the genetic survival of a population. So there is this concept of the MVP (minimum viable population) needed to ensure that humans have enough genetic diversity to survive. Exactly what number this is ranges dramatically depending upon who you ask. I can range from dozens to 20,000. I suspect that part of the confusion centers around whether the population is related to each other or not. If not then I think that the number needed could be quite a bit smaller. I actually believe that it could be as low as eight because often times species starts as just a few individuals such as the so-called bottleneck effect of founding populations on islands. None-the-less the solution is pretty straight forward. One could simply have a container with a thousand frozen embryos. I believe that there have been frozen embryos that proven viable after about 30+ years now. I think that I read that the failure rate of embryos shows no increase over time when stored cryogenically. What about the rest of the biosphere? If you exclude beetles (about 20 million species) I have estimated that there are about 950,000 scienfically-described species. This is everything from bacteria, to fungi, to amphibians, to birds, to mammals. That may sound like a lot (or it may not) but if one grants two cubic millimeters to each species, it could be contained within a couple of lunar payload deliveries. Imagine that! Depending upon how one selects and the forms of the species (e.g. single-cell baceria, spores, frozen embryos, seeds, etc) one could eliminate very similar species and have multiple individuals within the same sample to increase genetic diversity. One could also select critical (e.g. keystone) species although it may be challenging to determine which species are critical to other species. Unfortunately, when it comes to those species that have large eggs or require a mother to gestate, one may have to have at least a small zoo and to cross-species implantation or nuclear transfer in order to resurrect them. It would seem to me that this may not be realistic in the near-term. Rather, it may be that their DNA would need to be preserved and wait for distant biotechnology to figure out how to resurrect them from DNA alone perhaps using ectogenesis (e.g. external uterus constructed using stem cells) or something of the like. Such concepts get a bit weird and perhaps are best left for the future to consider. ------------------------------ 16 - Hollow Ice Sphere When the first telerobotic lunar operations are initiated, the first product produced and delivered to a customer would be water for NASA for use as shielding for astronauts in a mission to Mars. So, after the reusable lunar lander is fully refuelled and loaded with a payload of water (takes perhaps about 2 months), the lander boost up to LLO where the water is pumped out into a non-elastic bag. The lander then returns to the lunar surface where the process is repeated. In about a couple of trips, about 80 metric tonnes of water are delivered to LLO. Next, a fuelled lander arrives again at LLO and then pushes this bag of water up to EML2 (Earth-Moon gravitation point #2). Inside the water bag is another bag which is then inflated. There are 50 cm tethers between the inner and outer bags. The result is a hollow sphere of water which the lander can push into an Earth-Mars cycling orbit to largely solve NASA's radiation shielding problem for missions to Mars. If the outside surface of the outer sphere were reflective (white or mirror) then potentially the hollow water sphere could be turned to ice. This would be desirable from a micrometerite standpoint as well as the ease of pushing it around. However, these advantages would be balanced with the disadvantage of requiring internal insulation and external radiators to reject the heat produced by the humans and equipment inside. Water for a hollow ice sphere doesn't necessarily have to come from the Moon. Rather, it could be launched from the Earth on Falcon Heavies at a very reasonable cost ($270 million launch costs). Ion propulsion could efficiently move the hollow ice sphere from LEO to EML2. Alternatively, instead of water, the hollow sphere could consist of dried food which could also serve as a safe form of shielding and double as a source of food for multiple missions to and from Mars. However, water from the lunar poles still needs to be produced in order to cost-effectively expand the size (volume and shielding thickness) as well as to provide cost-effective propellant for any number of operations throughout and beyon cis-lunar space. ------------------------ 17 - A Mars Flyby Mission I believe that we (neither space advocates nor national policy makers) should have to choose between the Moon, Mars, or asteroids as our primary destination. Rather, I think that there is a low-cost way that most all of our goals in space can be achieved. The solution doesn't, in my opinion, require an increase of NASA's budget (although I certainly wouldn't object to that). Rather, it is primarily a matter of adopting a smart plan. One approach would be to have a two-track approach to exploration or rather, sustainable space development. One track is the standard track which would be a government-international track towards Mars. One can imagine the near-term development of the Moon and asteroids from a commercial perspective whether circum-lunar tourism or water for propulsion in cis-lunar space. As for Mars, it doesn't seem like a money-maker in the near-term. If we are going to either explore or establish a base there, it seems as though it would require government financial assistance for quite some time. But the second track, that being for the development of a cis-lunar transportation infrastructure is ideal for a public-private program in which NASA helps commercial companies develop the transportation system and then transitions to becoming just one of several commercial buyers of products and services. Please see Write-up #14 for the market potential of cis-lunar operations. However, the public track to Mars should not so dominate NASA's budget that it leaves insufficient room for the public-private development of a cis-lunar transportation infrastructure. Nor should the development of this infrastructure be put on the critical path to Mars. If the development of in-space resources is available by the time the Mars landing program occurs then great. But if not, we should proceed to Mars anyhow, just with more launches from Earth. Both paths need to be done in a smart way that keeps both programs well within budget. Fortunately, there is a path to Mars which doesn't need to wait and also doesn't break the budget. It involves four steps: 1) A Mars flyby mission 2) A Phobos-Deimos (PhD) mission 3) Landing a craft on the Martian surface to produce return propellant from the Martian atmosphere 4) A manned Martian landing with a focus on establishing a permanent Martian base using lessons learned from the lunar base I believe that the first two missions can be done at a relatively low cost and hence NASA's budget could allow for enough funding during those years for developing the cis-lunar transportation infrastructure based upon the harvesting of in-space water for propellant. Dennis Tito initially proposed a 501-day Mars 2018 flyby mission but then later changed that to a 589-day Mars 2021 flyby mission. If we miss the 2021 window then we will have to wait until something like 2035 before such a window reopens. I would propose that we aim for the 2021 window. There is a fair debate about whether the interplanetary radiation is too great for this mission. In truth, a 589-day mission would be at the bleeding edge of what is the current standard for the career limits for an astronaut. Interplanetary radiation has been measured at 1.9 millisieverts/day. For a 589-day mission this comes to 1,119 millisieverts total. The astronauts involved would have to be approximately 50 years old, preferrably male and have had no history of having been exposed to radiation on a previous mission to space (at least not for very long). And the interplanetary radiation exposure will be continuous rather than intermittent. So it really is at or beyond the bleeding edge of the current standards. A fair argument is made by some that the criteria are too strict given the importance of such a mission -- that greater risks should be allowed and that individuals should be allowed to take such risks for themselves. There is some evidence that, from an ethics perspective, that this thinking is being considered. Also, Robert Zubrin of the Mars Society has pointed out that, statistically, the risk of early cancer for such a mission is less than that assumed by smokers. Humorously, select smokers for the mission, send them without their cigarettes and you may well be reducing their risk of cancer. Alternately, one could imagine the hollow ice sphere approach described in write-up #16 for all of the Mars missions. By my calculation, it would reduce the radiation exposure for a Mars flyby mission to 38% of that without shielding which surely seems well within accepatble limits even without changing the current standards. The Mars flyby mission should not be viewed as a stand alone mission. It must be viewed as an irreversible first step on a four-step journey to eventually sending humans to the surface of Mars in a sustainable and permanent manner. ----------------------- 18 - A Phobos-Deimos (PhD) Mission The second step towards Mars should be a single mission to both of Mars' moons, Deimos and Phobos. Deimos is the outermost of Mars' moons. Sufficient propellant would be needed to slow down a hollow sphere shield to enter into a highly eliptical orbit around Mars. This orbit requires the least amount of propellant to enter and exit from the vicinity of Mars. Once in Mars orbit, the astronauts could leave their shielded sphere and, with much less propellant match the orbit of Deimos. Once next to Deimos or Phobos, those bodies would provide significant shielding while Mars itself would also block a portion of the sky. The astronauts would therefore gain significant protection during their explorations of both moons. These moons are so small that they have very little gravity. The astronauts wouldn't be walking on their surfaces but rather skimming over the surface using MMUs (Manned Maneuvering Units). These are like jetpacks. Since the moons are relatively small, I would imagine that they could be thoroughly explored and sampled. After finishing the exploration of Deimos, it would only take a small delta-v (and hence a small amount of propellant) to move the astronauts from Deimos to Phobos. I e-mailed one of the leading scientists who advocates the exploration of the Martian moons and he confirmed that this was feasible. Phobos is considerably closer to Mars and so, when on the surface of Phobos, Mars takes up 38% of the entire sky. It would be very impressive. One side of Phobos always faces Mars so, if an inflatable habitat were to be placed on the Mars-facing side of Phobos, by my calculations, it would only get about 33% of the space radiation as compared to being in free space. Phobos is sufficiently close to Mars that there is speculation that Martian rocks from various geologic strata should be found on its surface. Some advocate that the astronauts on the Martian moons or in Martian orbit could teleoperate rovers on the surface of Mars in near real-time. After completing the exploration of Phobos, the crew would burn a small amount of propellant to get up to their craft or hollow sphere in the highly eliptical Mars orbit, reenter their craft and then fire the engines at the right time in order to start heading back on a trajectory back to Earth. Yes, humans will have "been to Mars". But, upon completion of the Phobos-Deimos mission, the next agreed-upon step would be the next mission which will prepare the way to sending humans to the surface of Mars ---------------------- 19 - Hotel Mars Here I describe not just what a hotel on Mars might be like but specifically the context in which it might logically be established and designed. In the scenario I have laid out, in the previous two write-ups, I propose that humans landing on the surface of Mars be preceeded by a Mars flyby mission and a Phobos-Deimos (Phd) mission. The next logical mission, included in the modern reference design mission for humans to Mars would be to first send a lander to Mars with the equipment necessary to produce return propellant from the Martian atmosphere. It would also serve as a proof that the landers could then send the crew on the next mission. The propellants would consist of methane and liquid oxygen (LOX). Mars' atmosphere contains primarily CO2. Hence there is a source of oxygen for the LOX and the carbon for the methane (CH4) but not the hydrogen for the methane. Yes, Mars contains continents worth of subsurface glaciers. But harvesting that ice for water, while doable, is not as easy as just bringing along the relatively low-mass hydrogen in the lander. It is a small percent of the total mass. Now there is the dread Mars EDL (entry-descent-landing) problem unique to Mars. The Martian atmosphere is just thick enough to cause real problems with heating but too thin to really slow down the craft sufficiently. So craft headed to the Martian surface tends to heat up and then smack into the Martian surface at high speeds. To date, we have landed no scientific package greater than a ton. But for a human mission, we will need to land craft in the tens of tons. So how can we do this? It is still an unsettled question but perhaps there could be a combination of inflatable heat shield thereby greatly increasing the air resistance so as to slow down the craft, I understand that supersonic retropropulsion is still needed, perhaps some supersonic parachutes, and then landing propulsion for the last step. Alternately, if we had plenty of propellant available in cis-lunar space, one could use that to so slow down the Mars-bound craft that it could be dropped to essentially suborbitals speeds which would reduce the amount of onboard propellant needed to land on the Martian surface. There are other ideas as well. So first, the propellant lander lands, a little rover with a nuclear generator drives a bit away, and then powers the production of the methane and liquid oxygen. Then it sends a signal that it has the return propellant ready. So then the crewed mission lauches from Earth utilizing the cycling hollow sphere depending upon whether or not it is available at the time. The crew arrives at Mars and conduct the same EDL that the previous propellant lander conducted. The crew must land near the propellant lander because that is their return propellant. This ought to be relatively easy because the propellant lander would have a beacon and we have been getting better and better placing Martian rovers near our target point. At this point, my perspective diverges somewhat from the common reference mission. Whereas the common imagination of a Mars landing is to step on the surface, plant and salute the flag, and then begin a geology expedition, I think that it would be considerably better to focus first on establishing a permanent base. It's not that geology expeditions are a bad thing but I believe that teleoperated robots can stand the radiation better, are at less risk, and can be in far more interesting locations throughout Mars for the same cost as having humans at each of those locations. If microscopic and chemical evidence of life cannot be found telerobotically going though whole swaths of layers then we've got more serious issues that humans are not likely to resolve. Does it seem likely that the layers would leave no microscopic or chemical evidence of life but that only a human-tended drilling rig pulling up water would? I personally think that unlikely. On the other hand, do I think it important to establish a permanent, shielded Martian base as soon as possible? Yes I do. So I actually believe that the focus of the effort of the crewed mission should be to inflate and shield a habitat very much like was done on the Moon. They too should get the greenhouse going and begin the same steps taken on the Moon to become as materially independent of Earth a possible. Indeed, I would propose a step further. I would like to see the first human mission to the Martian surface have the option of being a one-way mission. Yes, the fully-fuelled return vehicle is there. But, if in the period of time that the crew are on the Martian surface they are able to harvest local ice and start producing their own water, oxygen, fertilizer, etc (just like was done on the Moon), why not give them the option of not returning to Earth but rather staying on Mars for another cycle at least. The key is to secure local life support and get the habitat shielded from radiation. This initial Martian base could then grow very similarly to the lunar base and from this could come the Hotel Mars. Hotel Mars would not be that much different than Hotel Luna. They would receive visitors albeit at a much less frequent pace than Hotel Celestia or Hotel Luna (if one stick to the reality of orbital dynamics). Perhaps one could imagine a nuclear thermal rocket being built which would reduce the travel time down to a couple a months and thereby create a longer "season" whereby visitors (more likely settlers) would arrive. Since Elon Must has so publicly set his sites on sending people to Mars, I would like to see the TV show make his "Mars Colonial Transporter" (MCT) be the main ships by which people arrive at Mars. Some talk about terraforming Mars which means something like pumping CFCs into the atmosphere thereby warming it up. The frozen CO2 at the poles would sublimate thickening the atmosphere (currently at about 1% the pressure of Earth's atmosphere). Later, the frozen water would then start melting and producing oceans and then thickening the atmosphere yet more. Eventually, one could walk outside without a pressure suit but only a mask for breathable air. I personally think that this won't happen. Typically the scenarios imagine this transformation happening over a period of centuries or more like millenia. A far more economic approach is called "paraforming" in which one constructs a shielded greenhouse extending from the habitats. You pump atmosphere into this space and process it into breathable air. Extend the greenhouse as the population grows. At any point in time you have large garden space which the colonists can walk around in freely. The end result of this is called a "worldhouse" where you can walk or drive anywhere on the planet. Hotel Mars could act as a receiving point for new settlers. It could also serve as a base for workers replicating shielded living spaces in other parts of Mars. Bob Zubrin also suggests that Mars, because of its proximity to the asteroid belt, could serve as a servicing location for that mining operation. Perhaps there could be some intrigue as people start forming separate political identies with questions as to whether Mars will remain as a single country or not. Interesting. ----------------------- 20 - Beyond Deimos I did a presentation at ISDC regarding ideas that I have for establishing settlments beyond Mars. I chose Deimos as an example of an asteroid-like moon (i.e. little gravity) which could serve as an example of a water-poor body which none-the-less could be settled provided that it could be supplied with volatiles from elsewhere. The advantage of asteroids for settlement is that they have an immediate source of shielding (their regolith) and also that their low amounts of gravity could provide an ideal environment for spinning up a full-gee habitat. Once a permanent settlement were established, how much more flight time would it take to go yet further? My calculations is that one could go further out to Vesta (the second largest asteroid in the solar system) in less time than it would take to do a round trip to Mars. So, why not go to Vesta. Next could be Ceres. Ceres is the largest asteroid in the solar system. We now know that it has water. Going from Ceres to the Moons of Jupiter would be a significant jump. By that time though we will likely have nuclear thermal propulsion (at the least) which could reduce the travel time Jupiter to more like what it now takes to go to Mars. Also, we certainly ought to be able to send large quantities of water shielding during transit so that radiation issue should be taken off the table. Could there be a Hotel Vesta, a Hotel Ceres? Why not? --------------------------- 21 - O'Neillian Colonies and Space Solar Power Gerard O'Neil was perhaps the leading advocate of space colonization in the 1970s. His advocacy led the the establishment of the L5 Society which later merged with the ______ Society to form the National Space Society (NSS). His book, "The High Frontier" is famous for advocating the establishment of huge, rotating colonies in free space. Some of those colonies are now referred to as O'Neil colonies. The advantage of the O'Neil colonies are that, since they are in free space, they can rotate and so ensure the ideal one-gee environment which we know is healthy for children and adults alike. A modern conceptualization of the O'Neil colony is Kalpana One which would possibly be the smallest such colony. It could house about 10,000 people. The disadvantage of the O'Neil colonies is that they are truly massive and require material resources not immediately at hand. To raise children one perhaps needs not only a full-gee of artificial gravity but very large quantities of shielding to protect them from the radiation in space. In the immediate aftermath of the Apollo program, O'Neil envisioned a "mass driver" which would use magnets to launch material from a base on the Moon to a "catcher's mitt" of sorts in orbit. By shooting an ongoing stream of mass one could envision large amounts of mass being accumulated in orbit thereby providing the construction and shielding materials needed for a huge O'Neil colony. As we have learned more about near-Earth asteroids (NEAs) the modern conception of the O'Neillian colony is that their materials would probably come from asteroids rather than from being launched from the Earth or from mass drivers on the Moon. Large asteroids could theoretically be brought from further out although it would take some doing. Needless to say, such visions, although grant, strains one's imagination. Upon hearing of this vision, one senator reportedly said, "Not one penny for this fantasy". None-the-less, O'Neillian habitats could only benefit from the transportation and supply of propellant and material resources delivered from the Moon and/or asteroids. Space solar power (SSP) is likewise a vision of very large solar panels collecting constant sunlight energy and then beaming it in the form of microwaves to locations on Earth. There are variants of this concept. Again, the vision of moving humanity to this form of clean energy could only be helped by the development of lunar and asteroid resources. In the context of a Hotel Celestia or a Hotel Luna, beginning work could be done on these projects. Indeed, Hotel Celestia could eventually look like the hotel in the drawings if these material resources were available from these sources. Likewise the challenges of these megaprojects in space could provide a context for stories. --------------------------- 22 - Financing One would normally think about the financing for the development of a space hotel coming from private investors. Yes, it could. Realistically, the first space hotel is going to be a huge financial risk. Something the size of what you drew (assuming it contains a lot of mass in its walls) would probably require 200 Shuttle-sized launches. It took 37 Shuttle launches (including supply missions) and a number of Russian launches. Even at Falcon Heavy partial reusability costs, I estimate that it would come to about $3.2 billion to construct such a hotel. I don't know what you think of that cost. I think that it might be within the range of doability in terms of raising funds but I think it might be "too rich" even for any one billionaire. Investment or infrastructure banks have that sort of capital but they probably have much safer alternative investments to put their money into. Probably, the way it could be financed would be a few billionaires (lets say three) and perhaps pre-registrations by hotel guests to provide some guarantee of income. Also, it would be very smart to start with a small hotel and then add on to it in a master plan so that you can get income along the way in order to afford the full hotel. From my perspective, the cis-lunar transportation infrastructure could be established in exactly the same way that the commercial orbital transportation service (COTS) was established. This was a public-private partnership in which both the government and private companies benefitted by having such a transportation infrastructure. It was developed very successfully and a NASA - Air Force study found that this new public-private approach with fixed prices and payments only for milestones achieved cost the government between 1/3rd and 1/8th what it would normally cost. So I would say that you wouldn't have to develop your own transportation infrastructure, it could be assumed to exist independently. Same thing with transportation around the back side of the Moon as well as the lunar surface. Using this system to get materials from the Moon might be able to cut your construction costs lets say about in half. Normally hotels don't have this but there could be an industrial part to the facility where people are receiving material such as from asteroids and producing bulky items. I personally would hate to see gambling, sex, and alcohol as part of your hotel because of the terrible harm it causes in society but I have the feeling that when we see real hotels in orbit that probably they will highlight those things. I don't believe that Helium-3 is a realistic source of income on the Moon. One has to process about 1 billion tonnes of lunar regolith to obtain just 3 tonnes of Helium-3. It doesn't matter how much the Helium-3 is worth, the cost of extracting it will cost more than what it's worth. I think that the hotel as a base for construction of solar power satellites is more plausible but not a lot more in my opinion. Tourism and transportation (boosting satellites, servicing satellites, boosting interplanetary probes and settlers) this is what I think will be the major revenue sources for the foreseeable future. --------------------------- 23 - Politics Not sure what I was going to say here. None-the-less... It would seem inappropriate for tax dollars to go towards the construction of any space hotel anywhere. That should be done privately. None-the-less, there could well be an important mutually beneficial arrangement between private hotel builders / owners and government. First and foremost, transportation systems are fundamental to all space operations. Prime evidence of this is how NASA funded the development of launch systems by several companies in the COTS, CRS, and Commercial Crew Programs. Yes, those rockets could take tourists to a Bigelow "hotel" and the government could have helped to fund the development of those rockets but it would be OK because there were other, legitimate, public benefit reasons for those rockets to be developed. Hotel Celestia would be primarily a private operation but one could easily imagine government researchers working in some part of it. Also, government astronauts could go to Hotel Celestia prior to departing to the Moon, Mars, or an asteroid. As for the development of a cis-lunar transportation infrastructure, our current public-private programs have been so broadly recognized as successful, it seems to me fairly easy for a presidential administration to repeat that success with a "Lunar COTS" program which I am advocating with my LunarCOTS.com petition. Right now would be a very opportune time for the next president to head this direction. It is broadly recognized that our current direction in space is sort of floundering -- this week's launch of the Orion capsule not withstanding. Any incoming president whether Democrat or Republican will want to put their own stamp on the space program but they also want it to be clearly successful and inspiring. So, establishing a low-cost (no more than 5% of NASA's budget) program to have American commercial companies establish reusable craft to the poles of the Moon where are the most important resources seems to me to be a real winner. Again, a president of either party wouldn't want to be seen as reducing our contry's space ambitions and so aiming to sent humans to Mars would still be in the picture. So, doing a Mars flyby sooner than later could legitimiately make the case that we are on our way to Mars all the while not leaving the Moon for the Chinese but instead pursuing this very exciting Lunar One scenario. I would think that any president would want to be associated with that. From your Hotel Celestia perspective, this gives a very interesting opportunity to illustrate in the public environment a plausible and very positive view of a way forward. Should a presidential administration choose to have "reality immitate art" then Hotel Celestia could rightly be credited with having influenced our space program as no other media program has.