Do we really want to dive down another Gravity Well?

Do we really want to dive down another Gravity Well?

Postby Dave Z » Mon Feb 15, 2021 7:43 pm

Seems like it's taken us ~4B years to begin fighting our way up and free of the Earth's gravity well... are we so sure we want to go dive down another one?

How 'bout, instead, we stay free and flexible among the asteroid clouds and belts, and/or rings of Saturn and the like?

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Re: Do we really want to dive down another Gravity Well?

Postby tahanson43206 » Tue Feb 16, 2021 2:29 pm

For Dave Z re Gravity Well

There's an interesting proposal from a gent in one of the Scandinavian countries, to build a full sized O'Neill habitat at Ceres! There's a lot to be said for the proposal. Ceres has a wealth of valuable material that can be traded down-system for finished goods, somewhat the way the Americans traded timber for finished goods with the Europeans back in the day.

The subject was discussed in a recent interview on The Space Show. You can see the list of interviews going back almost 20 years at The Space Show dot Com.

On the other hand, the proposal has never been tested in practice, and there are most definitely going to be ** lots ** of technical details to overcome before the O'Neill habitat becomes a common feature in the Solar System.

In fact, as the recent discussion of design of a large rotating space ship in the NewMars forum illustrates, there isn't even consensus on what the design of a practical rotating ** space ship " would look like, let alone a full sized habitat.

However, I am ** all ** in favor of the (relatively recent) proposal to build the "Voyager" rotating hotel in LEO, and am hoping that project will receive ample funding. The organization involved is planning to build a mockup on Earth, which I also think is an excellent idea!

To your point however ...; humans don't even have experience living off Earth in partial gravity that is NOT rotating. I'm sympathetic to the view that for ordinary folks, a nice solid planet or at least a large moon is a better place to start experimenting with off-planet living.

Nice to see you back on the board.

(th)
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Re: Do we really want to dive down another Gravity Well?

Postby Cererean » Fri Jul 14, 2023 4:07 pm

Tbf, our gravity well is one of the hardest to escape from. Most rocky/icy (spherical) worlds could be escaped from in a Terran suborbital rocket.

The tradeoff is: harder to leave, BUT ready access to large amounts of material, including dirt for radiation shielding and water ice and in the case of Mars, CO2. Construction of habitats is far simpler too.

There's no reason to build a habitat orbiting Ceres when we can build one *in* Ceres, angled so as to ensure the gravity is pointed directly at the floor, as it should. Dig a deep tunnel, install the track, build the habitat and spin it up. No worries about radiation shielding then (except for the cap I suppose). Use space elevators for getting on and off world. Ceres could be dotted with such centrifuge villages, perhaps with a mass transit system through their centres to connect them. The ice and clay could be exported off world cheaply enough, to pay for it all (and for greenhousing the planet 8-) ).
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Re: Do we really want to dive down another Gravity Well?

Postby Dave Z » Thu Dec 21, 2023 9:42 pm

Very good points! Ceres (and somewhat smaller bases) are certainly what I was picturing, though I see that I didn't articulate it very well, and asteroid belts (vs moons and smaller satellites) present their own challenges. In particular, I was musing over my reluctance to tackle Mars or one of the other substantial planetary bodies.

I cede the floor to those better informed than myself. :oops:

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