20160920 Magellan Space City Designer Planet Simulation

[tahanson43206]

497 years ago, on September 20, 1519, Ferdinand Magellan and his small fleet of five ships set out from the coast of Spain with the mission of circumnavigating the globe.

The most recent addition to this thread may be found by entering the search term: 20170717

3 years later, on September 8th, a single ship with a depleted crew of 18 Europeans and 3 Indonesians anchored off Seville, Spain.

A record of the voyage had been maintained by an Italian adventurer named Antonio Pigafetta, who had joined the expedition while it was being assembled in Seville.

The expedition set out from Seville on August 10, 1519, and made its way to the coast.

The Magellan expedition is a framework upon which I hope to build a vision of a future that might unfold in coming centuries.

Themes to be explored include what a space habitat moving away from Earth might look like. Kim Stanley Robinson's "Aurora" is an example of a vision of such an expedition.

To follow up on an earlier post in this Category in The Knowledge Forum, I hope to develop the concept of a planet constructed from available materials at a destination solar system, to provide an optimum environment for Earth life as we know it. The fact that life is evolving today and will continue to evolve in the centuries ahead is interesting but not useful for planning.

Finally, this series of posts is intended to explore how communities might be assembled on Earth today, to demonstrate both the technology and the psychology for a community of 10,000 persons which might have the stamina to persist and to thrive for 1000 years in a space habitat.

(th) 2016/09/11

[tahanson43206]

On this day in 1519, September 13, the crew of the Magellan expedition were still completing final preparations for their imminent departure.

They were anchored in Sanlucar de Barrameda.

Per Mr. Google: Sanlúcar de Barrameda

They had sailed South from Seville on the 10th of August 1519.

Reference for notes about the expedition are from:

1) The First Voyage Around the World 1519-1522
Antonio Pigafetta
Edited by Theodore J. Cachey Jr.
University of Toronto Press
(c) 2007
ISBN 978-0-8020-9370-7
(Lorenzo Da Ponte Italian Library series)
Includes bigliographical references and index.

Other books to be cited as this series of messages advances include:
2) Interstellar Migration and the Human Experience
Edited by Ben R. Finney and Erick M. Jones
University of California Press (c) 1985
ISBN 0-520-05898-4

Proceedings of the Conference on Interstellar Migration held at Los Alamos in May 1983

***
3) Doomsday Has Been Cancelled
J. Peter Vajk
Foreward by Russell L. Schweickart
Peace Press (c) 1978
ISBN 0-915238-24-1

***
4) Aurora
Kim Stanley Robinson
http://www.orbitbooks.net (c) 2015
Multiple ISBN's
hardcopy ISBN: 978-0-316-09810-6

5) Space Resources and Space Settlements
National Aeronautics and Space Administration

Technical papers derived from the 1977 Summer Study
at NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, California

Study Director
Gerard K. O'Neill
Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey

Copyright (c) 2005 by University Press of the Pacific

Reprinted from the 1979 edition.

6) Handbook for Space Colonists
G. Harry Stine (c) 1985
With illustrations by Rick Sternbach
ISBN 0-03-070741-2
Holt, Rinehart and Winston, New York, New York

7) Starship Century
Toward the Grandest Horizon
Edited by James Benford and Gregory Benford
Based on the 2011 100 Year Starship Symposium
Copyright 2013 by Microwave Sciences
under license agreement with Lucky Bat Books

8) The Millennial Project
Colonizing the Galaxy in Eight Easy Steps
Marshall T. Savage
With an Introduction by Arthur C. Clarke
Little, Brown and Company
Copyright 1992, 1994
ISBN 0-316-77165-1 (hc)
ISBN 0-316-77163-5 (pb)

9) InterstellarNet: Origins
Edward M. Lerner
FoxAcre Press, Takoma Park, Maryland
Copyright 2010 Edward M. Lerner
ISBN 0-9818487-4-5

10) Magellan and the First Voyage Around the World
Nancy Smiler Levinson
Clarion Books New York
Copyright 2001
ISBN 0-395-98773-3

***
Additional resources are to be added to this post as appropriate.
(th)

[tahanson43206]

On this day in 1519, September 20, the crew of the Magellan expedition set sail from Sanlúcar de Barrameda.


Wikipedia (as of 2016/09/20) offers a summary of the voyage of the Victoria, which completed the voyage, and returned to Spain September 6, 1522.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victoria_(ship)


Reference 2: Introduction to Resources: Human, Technological, and Cosmic (p1-p12)

In 1985 Ben R. Finney and Eric M. Jones edited a volume containing papers given or arising from a conference on Interstellar Migration held in 1983. The introduction brings the work of Dr. Gerard O'Neill to our attention, and then introduces the authors of three papers of the five in this section:

William K. Hartmann
G. D. Brin
David R. Criswell

My hope is that this book will provide useful insights for this undertaking, which seeks to develop plans to be undertaken immediately, in order to define a future in which interstellar migration occurs.


Reference 3: Forward by Russell L. Schweikart, Astronaut

The forward to Peter Vajk's book also mentions the influence of Dr. Gerard K. O'Neill. Mr. Schweikart poses the choice to be covered by the book, whether to open the future or to close it off in despair.


Reference 4: Chapters 1 and 2 Pages 1-73

Mr. Robinson provides a useful model for one possible future scenario for human space migration. While the novel is obligated to pose challenges for the protagonists, which may or may not be part of futures that will actually unfold in centuries ahead, Mr. Robinson does set forth a plausible undertaking. The vessel imagined for the voyage to Tau Ceti consists of two Stanford Torus habitats, mounted parallel to each other on a central shaft which itself points in the direction of motion.

The habitat is spun to simulate .83 Earth gravity.

Dr. O'Neill, in the largest cylindrical habitat design, proposes a standard gravity to be achieved by rotation at the rate of 1 revolution per minute.


Reference 5:

Dr. Gerard K. O'Neill was the Study Director

It is my hope the papers in this study will provide useful facts and insights for the current series

Reference 6:

G. Harry Stine's dates are March 26, 1928 – November 2, 1997

I remember him primarily for his constant presence in Analog Science Fact and Fiction, where his science and science fiction articles appeared over many years.

It is highly likely this book (and other works by Stine) will find application in the current series.


The objective of the current series is to explore:

1)A habitat suitable for long term human migration away from Earth
2)A constructed planet suitable for a wide variety of solar systems
3)An Earth based concept for communities to train for and fund migration

(th) 2016/09/20

[tahanson43206]

2016/09/27 On this day in 1519, the Magellan expedition had arrived at the first of many islands they would visit.

Per Ref(1):
Begin Quotation Page lix:
26 September 1519: The fleet reaches Tenerife in the Canaries (28).
End Quotation.

https://www.google.com/maps/place/Tener ... 831203,9z/

***

[tahanson43206]

2016/09/27 On this day in 1519, the Magellan expedition had arrived at the first of many islands they would visit.

Per Ref(1):
Begin Quotation Page lix:
26 September 1519: The fleet reaches Tenerife in the Canaries (28).
End Quotation.

https://www.google.com/maps/place/Tener ... 831203,9z/

***

[tahanson43206]

2016/10/03 On this day in 1519, the Magellan expedition completed its stay at the Canary Islands, and set out for the East coast of South America.

Per Ref(1):
3 October 1519: The fleet departs Tenerife and follows a south-west course down to latitude 27 degrees North, then changing to south by south-west.
End Quotation.

Recently, in 2016, an entrepreneur named Elon Musk has announced tentative plans to transport as many as 100,000 people to Mars. Mr. Musk and his team have been hard at work, designing a rocket system potentially capable of delivering as many as 200 people at a time to Mars.

Reference #4 describes a space mobile habitat holding 2122 people (Page 12)

Reference #2 provides a number of estimates of the population of humans that might be sufficient to establish a viable (growing) settlement:

Page 110: "A much more reasonable figure would involve ten persons..."

Page 141: "A ship's crew as small as ten is possible;..."

Elsewhere I recall seeing a figure of 10,000 estimated as a viable number of people with whom to staff a slow moving star travelling habitat.

After thinking about that figure for a while, I've come to the conclusion that the challenge posed by Dr. Dartnell, of sustaining, let alone rebuilding civilization, is best achieved by starting out with a much larger population. In thinking about the myriad specializations which have come into being to establish the civilization we have now (such as it is, considering the uneven distribution of wealth, education and capability), I think that Elon Musk's estimate of 100,000 persons is a minimum.

For that reason, I have changed my thinking from considering the 10,000 population for a space moving habitat, to a cluster of such habitats moving in a convoy, so that the average population remains at the 100,000 figure or so.

If individual habitats are built to comfortably hold 10,000 people, then the convoy would consist of 10 such habitats plus as many more as might seem appropriate to hold agricultural environments, or perhaps even such extravagant indulgences as forest or ocean habitats which would be visited by humans occasionally, but primarily allowed to develop without interference.

A consideration is the need to have living persons on board the convoy capable of understanding the technology that exists at the time the fleet sets sail, AND to be able to understand new technology that will be invented each and every day back on Earth, and the digital representation of which would be transmitted to the fleet by the support team on Earth.

(th)

[tahanson43206]

2016/10/10 On this day in 1519, the Magellan expedition had been at sea for a week since leaving the Canary Islands.

According to Reference #1 (Page lx) the expedition next reached land on the 29th of November.

The scribe Antonio Pigafetta reported that the expedition left Seville with 237 people.

According to Note 8 (Page 131), more personnel were added in the Canary Islands, so that the total count of personnel was between 260 and 280.

***

[tahanson43206]

2016/10/10 On this day in 1519, the Magellan expedition had been at sea for a week since leaving the Canary Islands.

According to Reference #1 (Page lx) the expedition next reached land on the 29th of November.

The scribe Antonio Pigafetta reported that the expedition left Seville with 237 people.

According to Note 8 (Page 131), more personnel were added in the Canary Islands, so that the total count of personnel was between 260 and 280.

***

Because this thread is intended to study alternate futures for human migration away from Earth in coming centuries, current publications which relate to this theme will be included.

http://arstechnica.com/science/2016/10/ ... forgotten/

This article by Annalee Newitz - 10/5/2016, is focused on Martian settlements, but it covers the entire range of future settlement options.

Because this is the "Knowledge Forum" created by Dr. Dartnell, it is also appropriate to note that Ms. Newitz is an author of a similar (sounding) book.

Begin Quotation:

ANNALEE NEWITZ
Annalee Newitz is the Tech Culture Editor at Ars Technica. She is also the author of Scatter, Adapt, and Remember: How Humans Will Survive a Mass Extinction, and her first novel will be published in 2017.
EMAIL annalee.newitz@arstechnica.com // TWITTER @annaleen
End Quotation.

***
Reference #2: Page 15

Drs. Finney and Jones open their Chapter “The Exploring Animal” with the line:
Begin Quotation:
We Home sapiens are by nature wanderers, ...
End Quotation.

While I like this bold opening line, I note that the race has a wide range of proclivities, of which an impulse toward exploration is just one, and (in my opinion) that proclivity is not distributed equally.

By my observation, for much of human history, and even in much of the world today, there is a strong tendency to stay close to home. It seems likely (to me at least) that the oft noted tendency of people to not stray more than 25 miles from home is less likely to prevail in the industrial age.

However, from the point of view of one contemplating slow propagation of human civilization out away from Earth for thousands of years, it seems to be that the ability to find satisfying lives within 25 miles or so of one's birth place is vitally important, and FAR more important than the impulse to explore.

***
On 2016/10/13, I'd like to add a thought to this thread, that I have not seen anywhere before.

I'm introducing the thought that a community of humans away from Earth might establish a policy that any technology that is in use must be supported by a person who understands it.

In multiple science fiction stories I've read over the years, the authors have described cultures which are using technology that came to them from an advanced civilization, and which they do not understand.

That situation describes the human race for most of its history, if agriculture, animal husbandry, and human life itself are considered technologies.

My computer workstations are running a combination of Linux and Windows operating systems, and other devices have a variety of Android operating systems. The Linux and Windows systems just asked for permission to install updates, and I granted approval.

In granting approval, I reflected that I have no idea what the folks behind the updates are doing. I trust them to be doing things on my behalf, or at least things that will not be injurious.

Still, I DO have the impression that there are groups of people who are able to understand the operating systems they are supporting, and that for each update, at least ONE person understands what is to be done, and what problem it is intended to address.

The Amish are famous for trying to maintain their "civilization" at an 18th Century level, but at the same time, younger members of this group are (apparently) willing to use wireless telephone/computers.

I would guess that it might be possible that no ONE person on Earth understands an object such as a modern iPhone or the competitive equivalent.

(th)

[tahanson43206]

2016/10/17 on this day in 1519, the Magellan expedition has completed another week at sea, since leaving the Canary Islands.

Per Reference#1 (Page lix);
Begin Quotation:
18 October 1519: The fleet experiences a series of storms off Sierra Leone (32).
End Quotation.

Per Reference #1 (Page 7):
Antonio Pigafetta reported seeing sharks during this part of the voyage, as well as incidents of St. Elmo's Fire during the prolonged storms.

***
Reference #3 (Preface):
Begin Quotation:
...I was involved in nothing less than the conscious and deliberate creation of the future. More and more it became clear to me that the creation of the future is in the hands of those who can clearly identify their own values, conceive goals which embody those values, and devote their best efforts toward achieving those goals.
End Quotation.

While Peter Vajk was inspired by Dr. Gerard O'Neill's vision of rotating habitats for future human social constructs away from Earth, I am inspired by O'Neill and many others, to envision an entire sequence of steps by which representative subsets of the civilization (such as it is) that we have (in spots) on Earth today will be able to move (slowly) away from Earth, and ultimately to build planets out of raw materials they find in remote star systems. Such planets can be optimized for human life, and for all of the other life forms we hold dear.

In this vision, designer planets will offer one gravity, comfortable atmosphere, radiation protection by magnetic field, and freedom from volcanic eruptions and earthquakes due to movement of tectonic plates.

It will take thousands of years for such futures to unfold, but humans have millions of years to slowly expand into the galaxy. There are some who eagerly anticipate miraculous advances of knowledge, and considering how miraculous the scientific discoveries and engineering achievements of the late 19th and early 20th centuries have been, I do not discount the possibility they will greatly accelerate the process of human expansion away from Earth into the galaxy. However, the slow pace I envision will require miracles enough to challenge even the most ambitious.

1) Fusion power is a prerequisite for O'Neill habitats which would move away from the Sun

Dr. O'Neill planned his designs to use abundant solar power from the Sun, and I am sure that plenty of variations of his designs will come into being. However, solar power will become of limited and eventually no value as habitats move slowly away from the Sun. While the apparatus to support gathering of solar power will no doubt become useful once again, as a destination star becomes closer, there will be many centuries during which fusion power will be needed to provide for all the needs of the life forms in the travelling habitats.

I do not discount the value of fission power, and expect it will be an important backup for fusion systems which must be maintained throughout the centuries, and occasionally rebuilt entirely.

2) Non-Solar lighting for agriculture

Some early experiments have achieved some success on Earth in 2016, to support a limited number of plants using incandescent lighting, and lately even LED lighting.

An announcement recently reported success growing soy beans using LED lighting. In searching for that source, I found this encouraging report:

http://advancedledlights.com/use-led-li ... -soybeans/

3) Atom assembly as an evolution of 3D Printing

Eric Drexler wrote about the kinds of machines and techniques that will be required, in his 1986 book "Engines of Creation"

A pdf copy of his book is (apparently) available for download.

My expectation is that atom assemblers are likely to operate at about the speed of natural plant growth. A tomato plant can yield fruit over a few months, and a full sized oak tree will require decades to achieve mature size. It seems likely to me that future in-space manufacturing will combine atom assembly and robotic assembly to try to achieve faster delivery of complex systems such as computer tablets and hand sets. However, assembly of entire systems, such as a new fusion reactor or a planet lander is going to require decades of patient atom-by-atom placement.

(th)

[tahanson43206]

2016/10/24 On this day in 1519, the Magellan expedition has completed another week at sea.

Per Reference #1(Page 7):
Begin Quotation:
[13] During those storms the Holy Body, that is to say St. Elmo, 29) appeared to us many times in the form of light [38].
End Quotation.

The expedition would not see land again until the 29th of November 1519

A map showing the route of the expedition is included as a link in the powerpoint presentation at Rockcreek Schools, at the Google link here:
https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&rct=j&q ... 0915942767

***
An activity which may be relevant to this thread is a Mars City Design Competition organized by Vera Mulyani

https://marscitydesign.com/

http://www.thespaceshow.com/guest/vera-mulyani

Winners of the 2016 competition are listed here:
https://marscitydesign.com/the-winners- ... ition-2016

***
Reference #4, Page 3

Kim Stanley Robinson opens "Aurora" with a description of two characters sailing a small boat in a lake in one of 24 biomes, this one called Nova Scotia.

The ship's design is outlined on Page 46. Thus, "Novia Scotia" is 4 kilometers long, comprising a section of a torus.

Interesting aspects of Robinson's imagination include:

Page 3: "...an onshore wind blows hard almost every afternoon"

Given that the characters are described as having to tack into the wind, I deduce the visualized wind is moving along the torus section from the end away from the sailboat launching point.

It occurs to me to wonder how the wind is created.

Later on Page 3, Robinson introduces the feature of a "year" and seasons. The season depicted in the opening is fall, and the leaves of the trees are described as appropriate for fall in Nova Scotia on Earth.

On Page 4, Robinson introduces the feature of the lake as tasting like pasta, which implies a salt water environment appropriate to Nova Scotia on Earth.

(th)