NationStates Jolt Archive

I was wondering what size would be accurate for a space colony using PMT tech, whether in orbit around the planet or on the moon. Creating artificial gravity is pretty simple, and with a space ladder theres not much stopping the creation of em...

So what do you think would be a good size for something like that?

Bump. Hmm I've always thought PMT tech was anything up to Mars Colonies...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Island_3

If anything they are MT considering since that design in particular was designed in the 70's I beleive.

Hmm they're a bit large. But they remind me of Gundam, thus I shall perhaps go about building one eventually. I'll call that Government Plan C.

Where do you think they got them from? The show may have come slight inaccuracies but apart from that they are an accurate representation, if somewhat loose in time frame, if a nation seriously put effort into constructing one it could propably done by the end of the century, if not considerably earlier.

i feel this is more of a near future tech (NFT) idea. you still need to get people and supplies up to the station and that means having cheap reusable spaceships.

the international space station may be around but its not exactly a place to raise a family.

i feel this is more of a near future tech (NFT) idea. you still need to get people and supplies up to the station and that means having cheap reusable spaceships.

the international space station may be around but its not exactly a place to raise a family.

What do you think the X-Prize is for? Last I heard, they had a winner.

Or in any case, the standard MT Space Shuttle could be used to get into orbit.

If such a colony were large enough it could be possible to house farmland, I actually have a space station experiment project that devotes large amounts of space to developing artificial gravity and viable space borne farming methods.

Well theres always the space elevator project the government was looking into. That would make the creation of space craft far cheaper than it is now, even with the X-Prize Champ, since you could circumvent the gravity well.

Yurka will probably work on the construction of some space colony in the near future. Our Space Craft currently more or less use nuclear power.

Off Topic: Space Industry Scheme. What I am thinking of is developing a super cheap way to build a large space station. It would use a railgun to launch inflatable modules. (I have a railgun capable of launching up to 1000 KG payloads). I was thinking of a satellite shell with a few manueverability rockets around the core of a self inflating module. The shell would split in half inflating. The metal part of the satellite would be the airlock entrances. They would have small rockets attached to them and a docking ring to allow them to link and maneuver together. A manned rocket would be built using decommissioned ICBMs. Mationbuds helped me design and launch a two person vehicle which is currently in orbit. It should return tomorrow. There seem to be a lot of ICBMs in this world. I am working on the design of the inflatable modules. Off topic: This is a link to a program that is doing this in real life... http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6576359/ From my understanding these cost about $200 million apiece-- the ISS modules cost $50 billion each.

I haven't figured out how to attach the modules together if they are launched from a railgun. The satellite shell might work, I'm not sure of this. They would be very far apart. Then a space elevator would be attached to the ground when there was a large enough structure. ( I don't have the design of a space elevator yet. ) It would be for scientific research, manufacturing, and rich tourists. Eventually when enough money was generated, an effort to build an asteroid mining tug would be initiated. To defray costs it would be an international effort. There are huge amounts of metal in asteroids. The objective would be to defray costs until they could get the massive amount of metal for sale in the asteroid and make a fortune. You would eventually have a de facto colony if the industry succeeded.

Alright. I'll use all of these ideas as evily as possible.