Lifeboat Foundation

What would it take to create and later revive a representative biosphere from frozen stores located on the Moon?

The costs of launchers is getting low enough that we can reasonably imagine the establishment of a lunar base well within NASA’s spaceflight budget.

With the discovery of ices on the lunar poles, astronauts could provide their own life-support indefinitely (water, oxygen, food, and fertilizer). While living in a sheltered habitat, they then immediately proceed to establish other basic processes to step-wise become increasingly independent of supplies from Earth (e.g. producing their own metals and glass).

Given the increasing independence of the small colony, one begins to consider if additional steps could be taken to achieve a fully independent small colony to serve as a backup for the human species should a catastrophe destroy humanity (e.g. a large asteroid or our own self-replicating technology).

We wouldn’t want just for humans to survive, but that other species could eventually be reestablished as well. If species could be stored in their frozen single cell form, millions of individual organisms could be delivered to the Moon in each 5,000 kg payload delivery.

But this leads to some interesting questions:

1) We cannot save all species. There are just too many of them. So, which should we choose in order to have a broad representation of the biosphere?

2) In what biologic form should the frozen specimen be so that they can be most easily revived? Bacteria & protozoa — frozen. Fungi — spores. Plants — seeds. But what about birds, mammals, etc? We can freeze embryos, but how do we get the adult mother to gestate them?

3) How could we eventually establish Minimum Viable Populations? (say 1,000 individuals per species).

It seems to me that these questions could form the basis for interesting biology studies. The more these questions are studied, looking for plausible solutions, the more interest there would be for establishing actual terrestrial and lunar preserves for the biosphere.

Now, if you click on the BioPreserver link on this website, you will learn that the Frozen Ark is doing something rather similar to what is suggested above. However, they focus only on endangered species and not a representation of the whole biosphere. Despite significant affiliations, the rate at which they are securing different species is insufficient to imagine backing up the biosphere in any reasonable number of years.

So please comment on the above ideas and suggest how it could be advanced.

Perhaps the biggest obstacle to colonizing the galaxy is the huge distances between stars. The nearest star to Earth is Proxima Centauri, 4.2 light years distant. Traveling in a normal spaceship at what is currently a realistic speed of 50,000 km/hr, it would take about 91,000 years to get there. This makes the trip patently ridiculous without resorting to assuming we will achieve radical advances in spacecraft speed technology. As for proponents of suspended animation who foresee freezing (or whatever) people for 91,000 years and thawing them out afterwards, good luck! You’ll need it. Oh yeah – and once you get there, we have no evidence yet that there are any planetary bodies orbiting Proxima Centauri on which to land. So is there any way to save the concept of interstellar colonization? Perhaps.

Although stars are far apart in our neighborhood of the Milky Way, rogue, or nomad planets might be much closer. In fact, there may be 100,000 times as many such nomads floating around in space as there are stars. We just haven’t seen them. After all, nomad planets don’t shine like stars so they are hard to detect. Recent advances, however, give hope that they are out there waiting to be found by the thousands as detection technologies improve. Nomadic planets have two particularly neat characteristics. One is that, unlike a star, it is possible to land on many of them. Some are gas giants, and thus lack surfaces to land on, but even those may have landable moons. Another is that, because there are so many of them, the nearest ones are a lot closer (hence easier to get to) than the nearest stars. How close?

There are 9 stars within 10 light years of Earth. Therefore there may be 900,000 nomad planets within 10 light years. That suggests 900 nomads within 1 light year (since a sphere of space 1 light year in radius has 1/1000th the volume of a sphere 10 light years in radius, just like a cube of space 1 light year on a side has 1/1000th the volume of one 10 light years on a side. By the same reasoning, the nearest nomad planet is likely to be just over 1/10 of a light year away, a lot closer than Proxima Centauri. How long would it take to get there?

The likely distance in astronomical units (one AU is the distance from the Earth to the Sun) is about 6,600 AU, or just under a trillion miles. At a speed achievable with today’s spacecraft of 50,000 km/hr, it would take about 2,200 years to get there. This is bad, though not as bad as the 91,000 years to get to Proxima Centauri, and at least there would likely be a place to land. If we can just get travel speeds up by a factor of 100, it would be a 22-year trip. It would be easier to hopscotch through the galaxy, colonizing nomad planets about 6,600 AU apart, than it would be to jump from star to star, since stars are so much farther apart.

A major problem, of course, is that since these nomads are so far from any star, their surfaces are exceedingly cold. What is needed is drilling technology that would enable “mining” heat from under the surfaces of these interstellar nomads. Heat can be used to generate electricity and other forms of energy needed to manufacture nutrients and otherwise sustain human life, however dreary living underground and eating artificial food might be (soylent gray, anyone?) . Such drilling technology is clearly within our grasp on Earth, although exporting it to another planet just as clearly requires some advances.

Colonizing nomad planets is not likely to occur in our lifetimes, though the important first step of finding them is. That may be just as much fun (or more) than eking out a life on one of them. So what are we waiting for?

Reference

“In fact, there may be 100,000 times as many such nomads floating around in space as there are stars, but we just don’t know about them.” L. E. Strigari, M. Barnabe, P. J. Marshall, and R. D. Blandford, Nomads of the Galaxy, draft paper, available at arXiv, 1201.2687v1, 2012.

It is of course widely accepted that the Greenland icesheet is melting at an alarming rate, accelerating, and is an irreversible process, and when it finally does melt will contribute to a rise in sea levels globally by 7 meters. This is discounting the contribution of any melt from the West Antarctic ice sheet which could contribute a further 5 meters, and the more long term risk of East Antarctic ice sheet melt, which is losing mass at a rate of 57 billion tonnes per year, and if melted in entirety would see sea levels rise by a further 60 meters.

In this light it is rather ‘cute’ that the site here dedicated to existential risks to society is called the Lifeboat Foundation when one of our less discussed risks is that of world-wide flooding of a massive scale to major coastal cities/ports & industries right across the world.

Why do we still continue to grow our cities below a safe limit of say 10 meters above sea level when cities are built to last thousands of years, but could now be flooded within hundreds. How many times do we have to witness disaster scenarios such as the Oklahoma City floods before we contemplate this occurring irreversibly to hundreds of cities across the world in the future. Is it feasible to take the approach of building large dams to preserve these cities, or is it a case of eventually evacuating and starting all over again? In the latter case, how do we safely contain chemical & nuclear plants that would need to be abandoned in a responsible and non-environmentally damaging procedure?

Let’s be optimistic here — the Antarctic ice sheets are unlikely to disappear in time scales we need to worry about today — but the Greenland ice sheet is topical. Can it be considered an existential risk if the process takes hundreds of years and we can slowly step out of the way though so much of the infrastructure we rely on is being relinquished? Will we just gradually abandon our cities to higher ground as insurance companies refuse to cover properties in coastal flooding areas? Or will we rise to a challenge and take first steps to create eco-bubbles & ever larger dams to protect cities?

I would like to hear others thoughts on this topic of discussion here - particularly if anyone feels that the Greenland ice sheet situation is reversible…

As we all know, Venus’s atmosphere & temperature makes it too hostile for colonization: 450°C temperatures and an average surface pressure almost 100 times that of Earth. Both problems are due to the size of its atmosphere — massive — and 95% of which is CO₂.

The general consensus is that Venus was more like that of the Earth several billion years ago, with liquid water on the surface, but a runaway greenhouse effect may have been caused by the evaporation of the surface water and subsequent rise of greenhouse gases.

It poses not just a harsh warning of the prospects of global warming on Earth, but also a case study for how to counter such effects — reversing the runaway greenhouse effect.

I have wondered if anyone has given serious thought to chemical processes which could be set in motion on Venus to extract the carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. The most common gas in the Universe is of course hydrogen, and if sufficient quantities could be introduced to the Venusian atmosphere, with the appropriate catalysts, could the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere be eventually reversed back into solid carbon compounds, water vapor and oxygen? The effect of this would of course not only bring down the temperature, but return the surface pressure, with 95% of its atmosphere removed, to one more similar to that of Earth. Perhaps in adding other aerosols the temperatures could be reduced further and avoid a re-runaway effect.

I’d like to hear others thoughts on this. It would be a long term project — but would perhaps make our closest planet our most habitable one in the future — one we could turn into a habitat that would be very accessible, with ample oxygen, water and mineral resources… The study of such a process would also greatly benefit Earth in the event that theorized runaway greenhouse effects start to occur on our own planet, the strategies learned could save it. Other issues to address regarding Venus: lack of magnetic field and  its slow rotation would have to be considered, though hardly off-putting, and 150ppm sulfur dioxide in the atmosphere would need to be cleansed — surely not insurmountable.

There has been a lot of discussion about a lunar colony or at least a base as a precursor to sending humans to Mars. The advantages cited are its proximity to Earth, the use of telerobotics for construction, and the fact that we’ve been there before. My position is that it would be far easier to establish a self sufficient colony on Mars with existing technology.

One thing everyone agrees on is that local resources will have to be used. We now know that There has been a lot of geological and hydrological activity on Mars that has segregated and concentrated useful ore bodies that can be exploited with current extractive technology. One type of mineral of interest is the occurrence of iron and magnesium carbonate formations on the surface. Magnesium carbonate is easily converted by heating to magnesium oxide, the primary component of a type of cement that I am researching as a construction material for Mars. The widespread occurrence of sulfate salts also gives reason to believe that metal sulfide ore bodies are also available there. This type of ore can easily be refined with simple electrolytic equipment. The same metal refining on the Moon would require grinding and processing basalt with a lot of heavy equipment.

I would argue that Mars also has a more friendly environment. First, it has higher gravity than the moon, at 38% of Earth’s gravity. This may prove to be significant in minimizing the health effects of reduced gravity. The higher gravity would also aid in many industrial processes such as ore separation and concrete consolidation. Mars also has an atmosphere, however thin. While 4 to 8 millibars may not sound like much, it is enough to burn up a lot of micrometeorites before they reach the surface, reducing the danger of micrometeorite damage. It may also help reduce the danger of galactic cosmic rays, but that will need to be tested. One thing that is certain from my own research is that the thin atmosphere is enough to allow magnesium oxychloride cement to cure before a significant amount of water has evaporated from it, and prevent boiling during the curing process. On the airless Moon, this type of cement would boil violently and the water would evaporate before it would cure. The total lack of atmosphere on the Moon would preclude the use of any cement that depends on water for curing.

Dust will be the biggest challenge to machinery in either place, and I argue that it is much less of a challenge on Mars. We have already studied lunar dust, and it is composed of fractured particles that retain sharp edges and points, with no mechanisms for smoothing the surfaces such as wind or water movement. This makes Moon dust very abrasive to machinery (and air seals) and very irritating to human tissues on contact. Mars has annual wind storms that blow dust around the planet, and has had flowing water recently in it’s history. This would serve to smooth out Martian dust particles to something more closely resembling the kind of material found on Earth, which we can more easily deal with. As further evidence, we have had rovers survive multiple dust storms and keep operating. I would say this is as much a testament to the Martian environment as it is to NASA engineers. Additionally, the dust has been found to be largely magnetic, meaning that magnetic filtration could be used to keep it out of habitable spaces.

Some would argue that solar power is more abundant on the Moon, but the problem there is that it intermittent. 14 days on, then 14 days off. Power either has to be stored for two weeks at a time, or produced from other sources. On Mars, you just need to get through a single night. The dust storms can cause problems of course, but that is at most a month out of every 22.

Finally, there is the question of water. On the Moon, water ice is probably at the bottom of some deep craters near the poles. It can probably be mined beneath the surface, we are just not sure how far down we need to go. On Mars, snow has been observed made up of water ice, and water ice has been seen just beneath the surface in rover tracks. It appears to be everywhere, just below the surface.

The Moon may be closer as the bird flies, but in terms of energy to get there, Mars is not much further. The biggest challenge will be getting humans there alive, but once that is done the learning curve once we get there is much shorter. Instead of developing new and untested industrial processes to exploit lunar resources, we can use proven technology to exploit Martian resources with much less effort. The prize is there for the taking, and there is no point in stopping on the way to build a temple to Luna.

Recently, Newt Gingrich made a speech indicating that, if elected, he would want 10% of NASA’s budget ($1.7 billion per year) set aside to fund large prizes incentivizing private industry to develop a permanent lunar base, a new propulsion method, and eventually establishing a martian base.

THE FINANCIAL FEASIBILITY OF A LUNAR BASE
Commentators generally made fun of his speech with the most common phrase used being “grandiose”.  Perhaps.  But in 1996 the Human Lunar Return study estimated $2.5 billion from NASA to send and return a human crew to the Moon.  That was before SpaceX was able to demonstrate significant reductions in launch costs.  One government study indicated 1/3 of the cost compared to traditional acquisition methods.  Two of SpaceX’s Falcon Heavies will be able to launch nearly as much payload as the Saturn V while doing so at 1/15th the cost of the same mass delivered by the Shuttle.

So, we may be at the place where a manned lunar base is within reach even if we were to direct only 10% of NASA’s budget to achieve it.

I’m not talking about going to Mars with the need for shielding but rather to make fast dashes to the Moon and have our astronauts live under Moon dirt (regolith) shielding while exploiting lunar ice for air, water, and hence food.

IS A SMALL COLONY WITHIN REACH?
But the point of this post is this.  If a small lunar base is within our reach, how much more would it take to achieve something that most of us realize would be the single most important step in ensuring the survival of the human species should a truly existential event strike Planet Earth.  So I’m describing a small, self-sufficient colony.  I would say that the difference between a base and a self-sufficient colony is fairly small.  Small enough to make it worth our while to attempt to achieve.

THE MOST ESSENTIAL REQUIREMENTS
So, what are the requirements for a self-sufficient colony?  The most critical would be air, water, and food.  But understand, oxygen and water can be produced from the 600 million metric meters of water ice estimated to exist at the north lunar pole.  So there’s no shortage.  And with recycling, the amount of daily required input could be pretty small — small enough to easily be within a day’s task for mining.  But food also requires fertilizer.  Fortunately for us, the LCROSS results showed that there is also methane and ammonia in the ice and the regolith contains other minerals such as phosphorus and potassium.  So, the most critical components for a colony would already be present with a manned base at a lunar pole.

HABITATS
Besides this, the colony would also need protection from the vacuum and cosmic radiation — i.e. a sealed habitat.  This should not be too difficult.  For a base, options include inflatable habitats and using fuel tanks as durable, sealable compartments.  Radiation protection is as simple as piling regolith over the structures or even digging trenches or caves into the sides of hills or craters.  That’s fine for a base.  But a self-sufficient colony requires that future colonists be able to construct their own habitats.  This could be achieved in the intermediate term by simply caving out habitats, supporting them, and then inflating a liner.  Many such liners could be delivered in a single 5,000 kg payload.  In the long term, such liners could be produced as plastics from volatiles resulting from the production of water from lunar ice.  Broken liners could be patched or even melted to produce new liners.  Alternately, metals can be fairly easily produced from the regolith.  Run a permanent magnet through the soil, extract iron, melt it using solar concentrating mirrors and then process the molten metal to sheets, wires, cast forms, etc.  Glass could be made the same way along with fiberglass.  Natural lighting could supplement electrical power by using aluminum mirrors and glass.  Supplemental heat could be provided in a similar manner along with locally derived insulation.

ELECTRICITY
Thin film solar panels can provide > 1,000 W/kg.  So a 5,000 kg payload could provide a very large amount of onging power (if my math is correct, enough for perhaps 500 colonists).  Excessive solar panels could be stored under ground and then used as needed thereby giving the colony decades of power.  Eventually, a self-sustaining colony would need to produce its own power from silicon in the regolith.  Storage of energy during the lunar night could be accomplished through the use of electrolysis of water to oxygen and hydrogen.  These could then be recombined in a fuel cell to produce electricity and heat. Alternately, the colonists could simply travel every two weeks to the other side of the hill near the pole to another sunlit habitat.

CLOTHING
Again, to buy the colony time to be able to develop the ability to produce its own space suits, many years’ worth of thin airproof liners to space suits could be delivered in a single 5,000 kg payload.  Again, a self-sustaining colony would need to eventually produce their own.  Between the use of fiberglass, metals, and locally produced plastic or silicon sealants, eventually the colony could produce their own.  Of course plants could be grown to provide fibers for clothing.

EQUIPMENT
To avoid day-long exposure to cosmic radiation while mining surface ice, mining could either be conducted underground or telerobotically.  But regolith is very gritty and can wear out teleoperated mining equipment.  But if a colony is able to produce its own metals and had machining equipment which could be used to produce more machining equipment, then the colony could stay ahead of equipment wearing out. 

High-tech equipment (computer chips, cameras, and radio equipment) is certainly useful but I believe that there are ways around needing them.  Still, in the interim, a single 5,000 kg payload delivery could provide centuries worth of computer chips, camera chips, and critical radio equipment components.  For example, the Voyager craft have been exposed to 30+ years of 360 degree space radiation yet still work fine.  So, an apple box worth of computer chips could last centuries.  Eventually the colony would need to produce its own high-tech equipment.  Perhaps they could use 1940’s technology such as vacuum tubes.

GRAVITY & PREGNANCY
The Moon’s 1/6 gravity is probably not enough to prevent bone and muscle loss.  Experiments on the international space station (ISS) show that an exercise program can do much to prevent bone loss.  A recent study indicates that Fosamax prevents bone loss in astronauts.  A 5,000 kg payload could give 83 million doses of Fosamax.  Stored in a permanently shadowed area, it could provide for a very large number of future colonists.  But also, a basic centrifuge or even a tether ball-like contraption could provide artificial gravity for colonists for part of the day.  Trenches dug along its path could provide partial protection from cosmic rays.  Alternately, space forums have discussed completely underground centrifuges using various ingenious approaches.

Of particular concern is how fetal children would develop given limited gravity.  Studies of animals on the ISS indicates that this is a real concern.  We don’t know enough about this issue.  Perhaps pregnant women would need to spend significant amounts of time in a centrifuge perhaps in all trimesters.

ADDITIONAL REQUIREMENTS
I have started with the most essential requirements and have worked down.  I propose that there are technologic solutions for each of the requirements but perhaps I have been unrealistic in one or more areas or perhaps have neglected to address an important requirement.  Feel free to comment below.

GENETIC DIVERSITY
For a truly self-sustaining colony, for humans, the Minimum Viable Population (MVP) is in the realm 1,000.  I personally suspect that it is actually less than that but a solution here could be for a single payload delivery of frozen embryos for surrogate parenting to be frozen long-term in permanently shadowed areas.  Although this may strike some as being unethical, these would only be needed in the event of a truly existential event on Planet Earth. 

PRESERVING THE BIOSPHERE
I envision the colony as not only securing the human species but a good representation of Earth’s entire biosphere.  But discussing the details of that topic would extend this post much longer than it has already become.  More on that later.

Readers, let’s have at it. What do *you* think?

I wrote: “without faster-than-light travel and/or communication, meaningful interaction with intelligent aliens seems unlikely.”

Gary Church responds on January 22, 2012 12:39 pm:
I disagree Jared,
Since the power requirements go up in a sharp curve after about a third of the speed of light, consider .3c to be the practical speed limit for, let’s say, most of the next century. Considering acceleration and decelleration, let’s call it 4 years for every light year. “Meaningful” depends upon your own personal interpretation. Both life extension and cryopreservation will most likely redefine what is meaningful for most people– perhaps in the very near future. It might very well become meaninful for both of us.

The most likely form of star travel for the next millenium after a century of technological development is small singularity propulsion– perhaps near the end of the next century. This will boost speeds close to light where time dilation will make trips only a few years long (ship board time).
Though simplistic, my rough prediction is this century spent on colonizing the solar system and building up an infrastructure capable of manufacturing sleeper ships, the next century spent building up an infrastructure capable of manufacturing small singularity starships, and the third century will find us expanding into the galaxy in massive migrations.

We just need to consider longer time scales– and possibly living much longer. At least our children or their grandchildren may find intelligent life out there and interact with them in a meaningful way. But not considering them could mean stagnation– much like the often used example of the Chinese empire.
And of course, the reason for this blog; the possibility we might destroy ourselves or be destroyed.

There’s the Fermi Paradox and the Drake equation, which many readers are familiar with. There is also lots of action in the astronomy community currently on discovery of new planets. Potentially habitable ones in the “Goldilocks zone” (not too hot, not too cold, juust right!), are hitting the national news periodically these days. For example Kepler-22b, Gliese 581 d (only 20 light-years away which is really close but, also, really far…), HD 85512 b, and some “KOI” planets are pretty intriguing.

Really, astronomy is just getting started. Now we know there are many billions of planets in our galaxy, so there must be lots that *could* support life. Even Titan (a moon of Saturn) might possibly have life of some sort; at least it has lots of organic molecules and more petroleum than we could ever burn, and we have actually landed there and taken pictures from the surface! (See http://www.astronomy.org/StarWatch/January/1-05-titan-huygens.jpg.) I keep one of those pics framed in my office.

In my view the next major step in habitable planet discovery is to detect oxygen in their atmospheres. That is a sure-fire sign of photosynthesis, i.e., extraterrestrial life.

Twenty years ago, way back in the primordial soup of the early Network in an out of the way electromagnetic watering hole called USENET, this correspondent entered the previous millennium’s virtual nexus of survival-of-the-weirdest via an accelerated learning process calculated to evolve a cybernetic avatar from the Corpus Digitalis. Now, as columnist, sci-fi writer and independent filmmaker, [Cognition Factor — 2009], with Terence Mckenna, I have filmed rocket launches and solar eclipses for South African Astronomical Observatories, and produced educational programs for South African Large Telescope (SALT). Latest efforts include videography for the International Astronautical Congress in Cape Town October 2011, and a completed, soon-to-be-released, autobiography draft-titled “Journey to Everywhere”.

Cognition Factor attempts to be the world’s first ‘smart movie’, digitally orchestrated for the fusion of Left and Right Cerebral Hemispheres in order to decode civilization into an articulate verbal and visual language structured from sequential logical hypothesis based upon the following ‘Big Five’ questions,

1.) Evolution Or Extinction?
2.) What Is Consciousness?
3.) Is God A Myth?
4.) Fusion Of Science & Spirit?
5.) What Happens When You Die?

Even if you believe that imagination is more important than knowledge, you’ll need a full deck to solve the ‘Arab Spring’ epidemic, which may be a logical step in the ‘Global Equalisation Process as more and more of our Planet’s Alumni fling their hats in the air and emit primal screams approximating;
“we don’t need to accumulate (so much) wealth anymore”, in a language comprising of ‘post Einsteinian’ mathematics…

Good luck to you if you do…

Schwann Cybershaman