The biggest challenge to the ‘ecosystem’ of world economics that keeps society ticking over is how to overcome our inability to regulate a sustainable economic model. In Europe at present we are undergoing the difficult measures in setting about rules of austerity to ensure that government borrowing never gets as out of hand as it has done on our watch. I post on this topic now as it is topical to me — back home here in my native Ireland we are voting on a referendum this week to ensure we no longer borrow from our children to fuel indulgences today — a referendum on rationality and responsibility.
The topical of austerity reminds me of an opinion I blogged on a crisis in the Obama administration last August on national debt in the light of striking comments from foreign figureheads amid the storm from the ‘Tea Party Taliban’. I share with you for to see if anyone cares to comment on an operandi of living like parasites off the global economy:
Living Like Parasites Off The Global Economy, originally written 3 Aug 2011:
With the US in turmoil over its national debt, and held to ransom by a ‘Tea Party Taliban’, last week China publicly mocked American democracy. Yesterday, the world witnessed the humbling of America after a trillion-dollar deal marked the end of an era for the US. The US now faces a shift in its relations with creditor nations, and it was not all too surprising to hear Vladimir Putin, the Russian Prime Minister, yesterday accusing Americans of living “like parasites off the global economy”. If America had defaulted on its international debt obligations, that is exactly what it would be. While America continues to service it’s debt, it is quite the opposite — for now at least- as is perpetually paying interest to its creditors.
However, one needs to look at the bigger picture. In 1980, the size of US debt was $1 Trillion. It stabilized in 1995 at $5 Trillion until 9/11 after which the gross military spending on combating dubious wars saw it rise to where it is now — $15 Trillion and rising rapidly out of control. An 11th hour rescue deal that was far less than the Obama administration wished for sees its debt ceiling rise further, though perhaps finally brought to account.
The US debt is the largest in the world. Purchasers of Treasury bills still reasonably expect the US economy to recover enough to pay them back and foreign investors like China and Japan, the US is such a large customer it is allowed to run a huge tab so it will keep buying exports. The debt is 95% of GDP, and interest alone on the debt was $414 billion in Fiscal Year 2010. One wonders when the US is going to pay it all back. It is reasonable to anticipate that sooner or later, an 11th hour rescue package, like the one negotiated with The Tea Party Taliban this week, will not be there to save the US from defaulting on its debt, at which point the US will have proven itself to be a parasite on the world stage — one that borrows and declines to pay you back.
The alternative scenario paints a parasitic picture of only a different hue — if the US government and similars do eventually pay back all their borrowings in recent decades via raised taxes and spending cuts, we are in a situation where ones children have to collect the invoice for the excessive indulgences of today. A falsis principiis proficisci…
High energy experiments like the LHC at the nuclear research centre CERN are extreme energy consumers (needing the power of a nuclear plant). Their construction is extremely costly (presently 7 Billion Euros) and practical benefits are not in sight. The experiments eventually pose existential risks and these risks have not been properly investigated.
It is not the first time that CERN announces record energies and news around April 1 – apparently hoping that some critique and concerns about the risks could be misinterpreted as an April joke. Additionally CERN regularly starts up the LHC at Easter celebrations and just before week ends, when news offices are empty and people prefer to have peaceful days with their friends and families.
CERN has just announced new records in collision energies at the LHC. And instead of conducting a neutral risk assessment, the nuclear research centre plans costly upgrades of its Big Bang machine. Facing an LHC upgrade in 2013 for up to CHF 1 Billion and the perspective of a Mega-LHC in 2022: How long will it take until risk researchers are finally integrated in a neutral safety assessment?
There are countless evidences for the necessity of an external and multidisciplinary safety assessment of the LHC. According to a pre-study in risk research, CERN fits less than a fifth of the criteria for a modern risk assessment (see the press release below). It is not acceptable that the clueless member states point at the operator CERN itself, while this regards its self-set security measures as sufficient, in spite of critique from risk researchers, continuous debates and the publication of further papers pointing at concrete dangers and even existential risks (black holes, strangelets) eventually arising from the experiments sooner or later. Presently science has to admit that the risk is disputed and basically unknown.
It will not be possible to keep up this ostrich policy much longer. Especially facing the planned upgrades of the LHC, CERN will be confronted with increasing critique from scientific and civil side that the most powerful particle collider has yet not been challenged in a neutral and multidisciplinary safety assessment. CERN has yet not answered to pragmatic proposals for such a process that also should constructively involve critics and CERN. Also further legal steps from different sides are possible.
The member states that are financing the CERN budget, the UN or private funds are addressed to provide resources to finally initiate a neutral and multidisciplinary risk assessment.
Hi All, I have now uploaded Rev 1.7 of my new short paper “Micro black holes — Exploring Terra Flux of Hypothetical Stable MBH Produced in Colliders Relative to Natural Cosmic Ray Exposure”: http://environmental-safety.webs.com/mbh_terra_flux.pdf
Prompted by Prof O.E. Rossler’s recent publication of his Telemach theorem — but not dependant on it, this paper looks at the relative flux (km per km) of micro black holes through the Earth — if created by the LHC — when compared to the flux caused by cosmic ray collisions in nature. It endorses Otto’s viewpoint that if Telemach were correct, then safety assurance is solely based on the disputed neutron star & white dwarf safety arguments.
The focus of the paper however is that of relative flux — and a derived micro black hole flux ratio of almost a one million fold increase relative to that generated by natural cosmic ray collisions with the Earth. Furthermore, the alternative prospect to accretion in the case of such an elevated flux is planetary heating through Hawking Radiation — as explored by other research — a scenario in which the neutron star safety argument is irrelevant - as their survival does not prove/disprove anything in this outcome. Feedback as always welcome.
This derivation of flux is distinct from previous CERN statements which made direct comparisons to rates of collisions (a 10,000 fold increase during operations) - as I consider the flux of products as a function of kilometres of matter traversed — a more relevant metric.
Hi All, I have now uploaded Rev 1.5 of my new short paper “Micro black holes — Exploring Terra Flux of Hypothetical Stable MBH Produced in Colliders Relative to Natural Cosmic Ray Exposure”: http://environmental-safety.webs.com/mbh_terra_flux.pdf
- CERN’s annual meeting to fix LHC schedules in Chamonix: Increasing energies. No external and multi-disciplinary risk assessment so far. Future plans targeting at costly LHC upgrade in 2013 and Mega-LHC in 2022.
- COMMUNICATION to CERN – For a neutral and multi-disciplinary risk assessment before any LHC upgrade
According to CERN’s Chamonix workshop (Feb. 6–10 2012) and a press release from today: In 2012 the collision energies of the world’s biggest particle collider LHC should be increased from 3.5 to 4 TeV per beam and the luminosity is planned to be increased by a factor of 3. This means much more particle collisions at higher energies.
CERN plans to shut down the LHC in 2013 for about 20 months to do a very costly upgrade (for CHF 1 Billion?) to run the LHC at double the present energies (7 TeV per beam) afterwards.
One might really ask where this should lead to – sooner or later – without the risks being properly investigated. Many critics from different fields are severely alarmed.
For comparison: The AMS 2 experiment for directly measuring cosmic rays in the atmosphere operates on a scale around 1.5 TeV. Very high energetic cosmic rays have only been measured indirectly (their impulse). Sort, velocity, mass and origin of these particles are unknown. In any way, the number of collisions under the extreme and unprecedented artificial conditions at the LHC is of astronomical magnitudes higher than anywhere else in the nearer cosmos.
There were many talks on machine safety at the Chamonix meeting. The safety of humans and environment obviously were not an official topic. That’s why critics turned to CERN in an open letter:
———————————————————– Communication on LHC Safety directed to CERN
For a neutral and multidisciplinary risk assessment to be done before any LHC upgrade
—————————- Communiqué to CERN —————————-
Dear management and scientists at CERN,
Astronomer and Leonardo-publisher Roger Malina recently emphasized that the main problem in research is that “curiosity is not neutral”. And he concluded: “There are certain problems where we cannot cloister the scientific activity in the scientific world, and I think we really need to break the model. I wish CERN, when they had been discussing the risks, had done that in an open societal context, and not just within the CERN context.”
Video of Roger Malina’s presentation at Ars Electronica, following prominent philosopher and leading constructivist Humberto Maturana’s remarkable lecture on science and “certainy”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DOZS2qJrVkU
In the eyes of many critics a number of questions related to LHC safety are not ruled out and some of them have concrete and severe concerns. Also the comparability of the cosmic ray argument is challenged.
Without getting into details of the LHC safety discussion – this article in the well-recognized Physics arXiv Blog (MIT’s Technology Review) states: “Black Holes, Safety, and the LHC Upgrade — If the LHC is to be upgraded, safety should be a central part of the plans.”
Similar to pragmatic critics, the author claims in his closing remarks: “What’s needed, of course, is for the safety of the LHC to be investigated by an independent team of scientists with a strong background in risk analysis but with no professional or financial links to CERN.” http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/arxiv/27319/
The renowned Institute for Technology Assessment and Systems Analysis (ITAS) in Karlsruhe and other risk researchers have already signalized interest in cooperation. We think, in such a process, naturally also CERN and critics should be constructively involved.
Please act in favour of such a neutral and multi-disciplinary assessment, maybe already following the present Chamonix meeting. Even if you feel sure that there are no reasons for any concerns, this must be in your interest, while also being of scientific and public concern.
In the name of many others: […] ————————– LHC-Kritik / LHC-Critique www.LHC-concern.info
“LHC-Kritik/LHC-Critique – Network for Safety at experimental sub-nuclear Reactors”, is a platform articulating the risks related to particle colliders and experimental high energy physics. LHC-Critique has conducted a number of detailed papers demonstrating the insufficiency of the present safety measures under well understandable perspectives and has still got a law suit pending at the European Court of Human Rights.
Info on the outcomes of CERN’s annual meeting in Chamonix this week (Feb. 6–10 2012):
In 2012 LHC collision energies should be increased from 3.5 to 4 TeV per beam and the luminosity is planned to be highly increased. This means much more particle collisions at higher energies.
CERN plans to shut down the LHC in 2013 for about 20 months to do a very costly upgrade (CHF 1 Billion?) to run the LHC at 7 TeV per beam afterwards.
Future plans: A High-Luminosity LHC (HL-LHC) is planned, “tentatively scheduled to start operating around 2022” — with a beam energy increased from 7 to 16.5 TeV(!).
One might really ask where this should lead to – sooner or later – without the risks being properly investigated.
For comparison: The AMS experiment for directly measuring cosmic rays in the atmosphere operates on a scale around 1.5 TeV. Very high energetic cosmic rays have only been measured indirectly (their impulse). Sort, velocity, mass and origin of these particles are unknown. In any way, the number of collisions under the extreme and unprecedented artificial conditions at the LHC is of astronomical magnitudes higher than anywhere else in the nearer cosmos.
There were many talks on machine safety at the Chamonix meeting. The safety of humans and environment obviously were not an official topic. No reaction on the recent claim for a really neutral, external and multi-disciplinary risk assessment by now.
Official reports from the LHC performance workshop by CERN Bulletin:
Famous Chilean philosopher Humberto Maturana describes “certainty” in science as subjective emotional opinion and astonishes the physicists’ prominence. French astronomer and “Leonardo” publisher Roger Malina hopes that the LHC safety issue would be discussed in a broader social context and not only in the closer scientific framework of CERN.
The latest renowned “Ars Electronica Festival” in Linz (Austria) was dedicated in part to an uncritical worship of the gigantic particle accelerator LHC (Large Hadron Collider) at the European Nuclear Research Center CERN located at the Franco-Swiss border. CERN in turn promoted an art prize with the idea to “cooperate closely” with the arts. This time the objections were of a philosophical nature – and they had what it takes.
In a thought provoking presentation Maturana addressed the limits of our knowledge and the intersubjective foundations of what we call “objective” and “reality.” His talk was spiked with excellent remarks and witty asides that contributed much to the accessibility of these fundamental philosophical problems: “Be realistic, be objective!” Maturana pointed out, simply means that we want others to adopt our point of view. The great constructivist and founder of the concept of autopoiesis clearly distinguished his approach from a solipsistic position.
Given Ars Electronica’s spotlight on CERN and its experimental sub-nuclear research reactor, Maturana’s explanations were especially important, which to the assembled CERN celebrities may have come in a mixture of an unpleasant surprise and a lack of relation to them.
During the question-and-answer period, Markus Goritschnig asked Maturana whether it wasn’t problematic that CERN is basically controlling itself and discarding a number of existential risks discussed related to the LHC — including hypothetical but mathematically demonstrable risks also raised — and later downplayed — by physicists like Nobel Prize winner Frank Wilczek, and whether he thought it necessary to integrate in the LHC safety assessment process other sciences aside from physics such as risk search. In response Maturana replied (in the video from about 1:17): “We human beings can always reflect on what we are doing and choose. And choose to do it or not to do it. And so the question is, how are we scientists reflecting upon what we do? Are we taking seriously our responsibility of what we do? […] We are always in the danger of thinking that, ‘Oh, I have the truth’, I mean — in a culture of truth, in a culture of certainty — because truth and certainty are not as we think — I mean certainty is an emotion. ‘I am certain that something is the case’ means: ‘I do not know’. […] We cannot pretend to impose anything on others; we have to create domains of interrogativity.”
Disregarding these reflections, Sergio Bertolucci (CERN) found the peer review system among the physicists’ community a sufficient scholarly control. He refuted all the disputed risks with the “cosmic ray argument,” arguing that much more energetic collisions are naturally taking place in the atmosphere without any adverse effect. This safety argument by CERN on the LHC, however, can also be criticized under different perspectives, for example: Very high energetic collisions could be measured only indirectly — and the collision frequency under the unprecedented artificial and extreme conditions at the LHC is of astronomical magnitudes higher than in the Earth’s atmosphere and anywhere else in the nearer cosmos.
The second presentation of the “Origin” Symposium III was held by Roger Malina, an astrophysicist and the editor of “Leonardo” (MIT Press), a leading academic journal for the arts, sciences and technology.
Malina opened with a disturbing fact: “95% of the universe is of an unknown nature, dark matter and dark energy. We sort of know how it behaves. But we don’t have a clue of what it is. It does not emit light, it does not reflect light. As an astronomer this is a little bit humbling. We have been looking at the sky for millions of years trying to explain what is going on. And after all of that and all those instruments, we understand only 3% of it. A really humbling thought. […] We are the decoration in the universe. […] And so the conclusion that I’d like to draw is that: We are really badly designed to understand the universe.”
The main problem in research is: “curiosity is not neutral.” When astrophysics reaches its limits, cooperation between arts and science may indeed be fruitful for various reasons and could perhaps lead to better science in the end. In a later communication Roger Malina confirmed that the same can be demonstrated for the relation between natural sciences and humanities or social sciences.
However, the astronomer emphasized that an “art-science collaboration can lead to better science in some cases. It also leads to different science, because by embedding science in the larger society, I think the answer was wrong this morning about scientists peer-reviewing themselves. I think society needs to peer-review itself and to do that you need to embed science differently in society at large, and that means cultural embedding and appropriation. Helga Nowotny at the European Research Council calls this ‘socially robust science’. The fact that CERN did not lead to a black hole that ended the world was not due to peer-review by scientists. It was not due to that process.”
One of Malina’s main arguments focused on differences in “the ethics of curiosity”. The best ethics in (natural) science include notions like: intellectual honesty, integrity, organized scepticism, dis-interestedness, impersonality, universality. “Those are the believe systems of most scientists. And there is a fundamental flaw to that. And Humberto this morning really expanded on some of that. The problem is: Curiosity is embodied. You cannot make it into a neutral ideal of scientific curiosity. And here I got a quote of Humberto’s colleague Varela: “All knowledge is conditioned by the structure of the knower.”
In conclusion, a better co-operation of various sciences and skills is urgently necessary, because: “Artists asks questions that scientists would not normally ask. Finally, why we want more art-science interaction is because we don’t have a choice. There are certain problems in our society today that are so tough we need to change our culture to resolve them. Climate change: we’ve got to couple the science and technology to the way we live. That’s a cultural problem, and we need artists working on that with the scientists every day of the next decade, the next century, if we survive it.
Then Roger Malina directly turned to the LHC safety discussion and articulated an open contradiction to the safety assurance pointed out before: He would generally hope for a much more open process concerning the LHC safety debate, rather than discussing this only in a narrow field of particle physics, concrete: “There are certain problems where we cannot cloister the scientific activity in the scientific world, and I think we really need to break the model. I wish CERN, when they had been discussing the risks, had done that in an open societal context, and not just within the CERN context.”
Presently CERN is holding its annual meeting in Chamonix to fix LHC’s 2012 schedules in order to increase luminosity by a factor of four for maybe finally finding the Higgs Boson – against a 100-Dollar bet of Stephen Hawking who is convinced of Micro Black Holes being observed instead, immediately decaying by hypothetical “Hawking Radiation” — with God Particle’s blessing. Then it would be himself gaining the Nobel Prize Hawking pointed out. Quite ironically, at Ars Electronica official T-Shirts were sold with the “typical signature” of a micro black hole decaying at the LHC – by a totally hypothetical process involving a bunch of unproven assumptions.
In 2013 CERN plans to adapt the LHC due to construction failures for up to CHF 1 Billion to run the “Big Bang Machine” at double the present energies. A neutral and multi-disciplinary risk assessment is still lacking, while a couple of scientists insist that their theories pointing at even global risks have not been invalidated. CERN’s last safety assurance comparing natural cosmic rays hitting the Earth with the LHC experiment is only valid under rather narrow viewpoints. The relatively young analyses of high energetic cosmic rays are based on indirect measurements and calculations. Sort, velocity, mass and origin of these particles are unknown. But, taking the relations for granted and calculating with the “assuring” figures given by CERN PR, within ten years of operation, the LHC under extreme and unprecedented artificial circumstances would produce as many high energetic particle collisions as occur in about 100.000 years in the entire atmosphere of the Earth. Just to illustrate the energetic potential of the gigantic facility: One LHC-beam, thinner than a hair, consisting of billions of protons, has got the power of an aircraft carrier moving at 12 knots.
This article in the Physics arXiv Blog (MIT’s Technology Review) reads: “Black Holes, Safety, and the LHC Upgrade — If the LHC is to be upgraded, safety should be a central part of the plans.”, closing with the claim: “What’s needed, of course, is for the safety of the LHC to be investigated by an independent team of scientists with a strong background in risk analysis but with no professional or financial links to CERN.” http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/arxiv/27319/
Australian ethicist and risk researcher Mark Leggett concluded in a paper that CERN’s LSAG safety report on the LHC meets less than a fifth of the criteria of a modern risk assessment. There but for the grace of a goddamn particle? Probably not. Before pushing the LHC to its limits, CERN must be challenged by a really neutral, external and multi-disciplinary risk assessment.
Video recordings of the “Origin III” symposium at Ars Electronica: Presentation Humberto Maturana:
Communication on LHC Safety directed to CERN Feb 10 2012 For a neutral and multidisciplinary risk assessment to be done before any LHC upgrade http://lhc-concern.info/?page_id=139
More info, links and transcripts of lectures at “LHC-Critique — Network for Safety at experimental sub-nuclear Reactors”:
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…
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.
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…
