After Apollo, Space Settlements?

Today Alex and I are starting a discussion, will the dreams we had after Apollo, of human settlements in Space ever become reality ? And if so how? This is an open discussion so if you want to share your thoughts please do so in the comments section.

Also please take the opportunity to participate in our poll.

After Apollo, Can the dream of Solar System Settlement become reality?

Privatize the Moon

As a kid growing up in the Apollo era I confidently expected Lunar cities and Martian expeditions by now. Hey, I hoped to migrate to the Moon! Unfortunately that dream was never realized. If anything manned space exploration has taken a step back and we have been stuck in LEO since the 1970's.

Human space exploration is still largely the occupation of governments, and government programs will always be dependent on budgetary considerations. President George W Bush approved a return to the Moon and the eventual exploration of Mars, but the Obama administration is reviewing those plans and is problematic if they survive.

Now many of use see great potential in Space. We see Solar Power Satellite He3 Moon mining, orbiting Space Colonies even the terraforming of Mars. A true Solar System civilization providing enormous wealth to all people. The trouble is that wealth is locked in the future, what is required is a way to release some of that value today so it ca be used to kick start the space enterprise.

Property developers do this all the time on Earth. Undeveloped land is sold to potential future developers who may develop the real estate themselves or sell it (hopefully at a profit ) to someone else who also sees economic potential in the land.

That requires property rights. We need a way to establish property rights on celestial bodies and do it now, so that capital can be found to build the settlements we want.

Which brings me to Alan Wasser, he has proposed that the United States recognize land claims on the Moon:

But, quite deliberately, the treaty says nothing against private property. Therefore, without claiming sovereignty, the U.S. could recognize land claims made by private companies, regardless of nationality, that establish human settlements on the Moon or Mars. The U.S. wouldn't be "granting" or giving the land to anyone. It isn't the U.S.'s to give. The settlement itself says "because we are the first to actually occupy this unowned land, WE claim ownership of it" - and the U.S. just "recognizes" - accepts, acquiesces to, decides not to contest - the settlement's claim of private ownership. The proposed legislation would commit the U.S. to granting that recognition if those who have established settlements meet specified conditions, such as offering to sell passage on their ships to anyone willing to pay a fair price. Entrepreneurs could use that promise of U.S. recognition to help raise the venture capital to develop the ships needed to make the claim. The dollar value of a Lunar land claim will only become big enough to be profitable when people can actually get to the land. So Lunar land deeds, recognized by the U.S. under this plan, can be offered for sale only after there is a transport system going back and forth often enough to support a settlement and the land is actually accessible. It will finally be understood to be land in the sky, not pie in the sky.

Land claims on the Moon? Why not? They were used to open up previous frontiers. And have the great advantage of not relying on government funds. He claims the legislation would fit in with current treaties as no land grants as such would be offered. Such legislation would bound to be controversial and produce much heated arguments, but frankly, I have yet to hear of a better idea to really kick start Space development.

A Post Apollo Economic Road Map That Will Help Humanity Make a Home amongst the Stars

After Apollo, Can the dream of Solar System Settlement become reality?

The answer to that question is an unequivocal yes and the reasons have to do with economics, national prestige, national and environmental security concerns and the existential threats we face as a species.

Our species and our ancient forbearers were and remain innately a migratory species. The lure and call of distant lands and new horizons is an ancient passion. Modern science offers us tantalizing evidence of this wanderlust and has helped us weave a tale that is the stuff of legend. This migratory history is written in our genes and the fossil record. It is the story of how our species emerged out of Africa and spread out across the globe to become a planetary species.

It is a narrative that spans four million years and one hundred and sixty thousand human generations and chronicles an odyssey that has taken humanity from the rift valley of Olduvai Gorge to the Sea of Tranquility. It is a tale of survival and bravery in the face of great dangers and it is a tale of conquest and discovery.

We are a species that has faced and survived the vicissitudes of a changing global climate, the fire and ash of super-volcanism, the long chill of a volcanic winter and fire storms raining from the heavens. We survived because we were voyagers and explorers.

The question now facing humanity today is whether or not this wanderlust will continue unabated - is the human species indeed poised to take its next giant leap and settle the solar system? Are we ready to voyage beyond Tranquility?

Many seem to think that there is inevitability to all of this. That space colonization and the human Diaspora out into to the solar system and beyond is humankind’s manifest destiny. Yet, this destiny is not in any way written in our stars but, in ourselves. The choice is entirely ours to make.

“…..the stars in their courses fought-A fearful tempest burst upon them and threw them into disorder”.

-Judges 5:20

But, the evidence of modern science has shown us that the fate of humanity’s long term survival is indeed determined by the stars in their courses.

Many ancient civilizations of both the old and new worlds – the Sumerians, the Old Kingdom of Egypt, the ancient cultures of the Indus valley, the Mayan, the Anastasi Indians, and the ancient aboriginal peoples of Australasia had all fallen victim to the vicissitudes of a suddenly shifting global climate. Whether these shifts were solely caused by terrestrial agencies or triggered by celestial bombardment is still a topic of great controversy. But, what ever the causes it was our intelligence, ingenuity and the fact that we were dispersed globally that helped ensure our survival as a species.

Yet, many of our fellow citizens and our political and economic leaders are not accustomed to thinking in terms of geological and cosmological timescales. Many of us have become complacent –serene in our assurance of our dominion over matter and the natural world. Nevertheless, the natural world still throws calamity our way. Be it tsunamis, the occasional global pandemic or a localized geological and climatic upheaval. Our twenty-first century technological civilization is still at the mercy of nature’s fury. And, the Cosmos still reminds us every now and then that it can wreak its own havoc on us.

Back in July, 1994 during the week of the twenty-fifth anniversary marking man's first steps on the Moon the heavens provided a massive fireworks display of its own to mark the occasion. The planet Jupiter sustained twenty individual impacts from the fragments left over from the disintegration of the comet Shoemaker -Levy 9. Any one of these impacts would have been sufficient in itself to wipe life off the face of our globe in a real Extinction Level Event (E.L.E).

Exactly 15 years later, and as if to punctuate the importance of the fortieth anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing, nature conspired again to offer up another doleful reminder that humanity’s future is indeed tied to events out in the starry ferment. On July 20th, 2009 new NASA images indicate that an object hit Jupiter. Do we need any more convincing that space exploration is vital to humanity's long term future?

We must explore and colonize space. Our long term survival as a species depends on this. Humankind faces an Extraterrestrial Imperative which is just as much a survival imperative – Colonize space or die. And, with our passing the light of human reason and thought will have been forever extinguished from the Cosmos.

Do we have to wait for a latter day Tunguska event over a major metropolitan city to convince ourselves that we are imperiled? While arguments rooted in fear do have there own intrinsic value in the short term, history has shown that people have short memories. We are quick to forget the lessons of the past. Be it the relatively recent past of one or two lifetimes ago or lessons rooted in the dim recesses of ancient history.

In the short term, over the course of the next twenty to forty years, what will drive humanity to venture forth from our planetary cradle? To answer that question lets go back a mere forty-eight years into the past to Kennedy’s “We choose to go to the Moon” speech:

".........no nation which expects to be the leader of other nations can expect to stay behind in this race for space".

"Those who came before us made certain that this country rode the first waves of the industrial revolutions, the first waves of modern invention, and the first wave of nuclear power, and this generation does not intend to founder in the backwash of the coming age of space. We mean to be a part of it--we mean to lead it. For the eyes of the world now look into space, to the moon and to the planets beyond, and we have vowed that we shall not see it governed by a hostile flag of conquest, but by a banner of freedom and peace. We have vowed that we shall not see space filled with weapons of mass destruction, but with instruments of knowledge and understanding".

President John F. Kennedy at Rice University, September 12th, 1962

Existential fears notwithstanding, what will drive the human expansion into outer space in the short term will be the same geopolitical, security concerns and economic arguments that were central and of primary importance to President Kennedy two generations ago and as recently voiced by NASA’s new administrator, former astronaut Charles Bolden:

“Today, we have to choose. Either we can invest in building on our hard-earned world technological leadership or we can abandon this commitment, ceding it to other nations who are working diligently to push the frontiers of space. If we choose to lead, we must build on our investment in the International Space Station, accelerate development of our next generation launch systems to enable expansion of human exploration, enhance NASA’s capability to study Earth’s environment.”

In the foreseeable future economics, national prestige, national and environmental security concerns will drive humanity’s settlement of the solar system in incremental steps. The development of the mineral and energy resources of the Moon and near Earth space will be the driving force that will one day take us to Mars and realize our long term dream of settling the solar system.

Our natural satellite the Moon processes vast untapped mineral and energy wealth that can help humanity solve many of its present day and future environmental and economic concerns for generations to come. Developing the industrial scale infrastructure that will help humanity develop this wealth will be the first major step in transforming our present planetary based civilization into a spacefaring civilization ready to make its home amongst the stars.

The nations of the Old Worlds of Europe and Asia, foremost amongst them China, see these vast new opportunities out in the new frontier of space and are willing to commit themselves to this challenge. The United States must lead in this pursuit.

Those of us involved in space advocacy can transform the post Apollo dream of Solar System Settlement into a reality by educating and convincing our fellow citizens and our economic and policy makers that space is a vital part of humanity’s future economic activity and a crucial element of our nation’s long term economic and political vitality.

At the 44th Robert H. Goddard Memorial Symposium presidential science advisor John Marburger made a powerful and profound policy statement on why we must explore and develop the space frontier. In his keynote address Marburger stated empathically and concisely one of the most important priorities of NASA’s current space vision.

“As I see it, questions about the vision boil down to whether we want to incorporate the solar system in our economic sphere, or not.”

The Space Study Institute’s director Dr. Lee Valentine and the late Dr. Gerard K. O’Neill (founder of the Space Studies Institute and author of The High Frontier) both provide a broad vision of incorporating the solar system into humanity’s economic sphere and ensuring global environmental security.

Our space program must also be directed to the long term goal of maintaining the health and vitality of this planet in all its realms – land, air and sea. All of which are integral to the long term habitability of our world. It must also commit itself to reversing the tide of global environmental and climatic degradation and a long term program of planetary defense from the possibility of cometary and asteroidal impact.

Nearly five decades after Kennedy we must reassess and reaffirm this nation’s commitment to the high frontier of space and link that commitment to the present political realities we face as a nation in the post 9/11 world. Our present national space objectives must reflect and address our current short and long range national and global security concerns. And, in order to do this we must choose to return to the Moon and do the other things and state clearly what those other things are precisely.

The Cold War is not quite over yet and as a nation we face new adversaries and with some of our former adversaries old habits die hard. Communism and tyranny have not gone away and we face many new political and economic dangers in this new millennium.

We can no longer remain a nation held captive by our political and ideological foes by solely relying on the strategic mineral and energy resources controlled by nations and despotic regimes which neither share our democratic values nor our love for individual human liberty. A common definition of a strategic mineral is a mineral that would be needed to supply the military, industrial, and essential civilian needs of the United States during a national emergency. Furthermore, they are not found or produced in the United States in sufficient quantities to meet this need. We can no longer allow ourselves to remain bound by this status quo.

Nor should we relinquish nor endanger our leadership as defenders of the free world by making political and diplomatic compromises with these same nations. And, neither should we allow ourselves to be forced to engage in reckless military actions, that would compel other nations to question our real commitment to democratic values throughout the rest of the world, in order to secure our hold on these resources.

Our nation and its allies must commit themselves to a long term program of energy independence and give up their debilitating addiction to Mid-eastern oil and its dependency on strategic minerals located in the most politically unstable and volatile regions of the World.

A crucial first step in meeting these objectives is to embark and commit our nation to a long term post-Apollo space program with the clear objective of developing the mineral and energy resources of the Moon and cis-lunar space (the space situated between the earth and the moon). We must also develop the technologies that will allow us to capture and utilize the vast mineral wealth contained in the Near Earth Objects (NEOs) that cross our planet’s orbital path and threaten our existence and thus at the same time embark on a program of planetary defense from the possibility of cometary and asteroidal impact.

By choosing to return to the Moon, this time to stay, we will have taken a bold step towards attaining the goal of making the dream of Solar System Settlement a long term and viable certainty.

From Olduvai Gorge to the Sea of Tranquility

By far the two most remarkable photographs of the twentieth century are the ones shown above. For they encapsulate the whole evolutionary and cultural history of humanity and its possible destiny.

In 1978, paleontogist Mary Leaky and her team discovered the earliest hominid footprints (dated to be three and a half million years old) preserved in the volcanic ash at Laetoli, forty-five kilometres south of Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania. They belong to one of our proto human ancestors - Australopithecus afarensis. The picture above shows one of these fossil footprints next to the boot print left by Neil Armstrong in the volcanic soil of Mare Tranquilitatis (the Sea of Tranquillity).

It is very symbolic of the giant evolutionary leap forward we have taken as a species. From Olduvai Gorge to the Sea of Tranquillity, we humans have travelled very far.

Exploration has always been vital to the survival of our species and an integral component of our evolutional heritage and survival imperative. The lure and call of distant lands and new horizons is rooted in our very genes.

The descendents of Australopithecus afarensis – Homo Erectus eventually migrated out of Africa some two million years ago and were to disperse throughout the old World. This was the first of four major waves of human migration from Africa culminating in the last major migration some sixty thousand years ago of fully modern humans (Homo sapiens, sapiens).

Since April 2005 through the efforts of Dr. Spencer Welles and the National Geographic Society’s Genographic Project we have begun to map out the migratory story of the human Diaspora out of Africa out onto a wider global stage. This evolutionary step and the migrations that preceded it were vital to humanity’s long term survival in the face of the vicissitudes of a changing global climate.

Eventually the descendents of this last major migration would spread out from the Old Worlds of Europe and Asia into the New Worlds of the Americas and Australia.

It was during this phase of the human story that we became a planetary species. Eventually we discovered agriculture, built the first cities, developed culture and writing and became the pioneers of a totally new domain of evolution.

We are the pioneers of a whole new form of evolution which is distinctly non-biological. This new realm of evolution is Cultural Evolution. It is this new dominion of evolution that has made us the most dominant life form on this planet and has set us on a trajectory that will one day take us out amongst the stars.

In this epoch of human history we face many dangers both old and new. The past has shown us that many species have been wiped off the evolutionary stage because of catastrophic climatic shifts, super-volcanism and asteroidal bombardment. Our species is no different. Some seventy-five thousand years ago our species barely survived a long volcanic winter triggered by the supereruption of Lake Toba on the island of Sumatra in Indonesia. And, at least one ancient culture – the Clovis people of North America, may have met their demise as a result of the celestial equivalent of a 9/11 event. Some thirteen thousand years ago a comet exploded over North America, wiping out the mega fauna of that continent, and the people who hunted them, off the face of the Earth.

Today we still face the threats of climate change (both natural and anthropogenic), resource depletion and the products of our own technological folly: environmental degradation, resource depletion, total nuclear warfare, and biological terrorism. Our intelligence and the fact that we were disperse globally helped ensure our survival as a species.

Yet, our species is curious, brave and shows much promise. We are graced with a towering intellect that stands poised on its next evolutionary leap that may one day take us beyond the Sea of Tranquillity and ensure our long term survival.

Neil Armstrong’s one small step for [a] man was the culmination of the greatest scientific, technological and cultural advance in human history. It was indeed a giant leap for mankind. It proved, beyond any question of doubt, that humankind had taken the first evolutionary stride in becoming a multi-planetary species. The time has now come to venture further out on this vast new ocean of space and to chart humanity’s Diaspora out amongst the stars.

We must return to the Moon, this time to stay. We must learn to utilize the vast untapped energy and mineral treasures of the Moon and the Near Earth Asteroids. We must eventually settle the entire solar system from the planet Mars and out to the edge of the solar system. One day our species will continue its migration out into the Milky Way Galaxy. But, this is very far from being our assured manifest destiny. The choice is entirely ours to make. Humans have labelled their species “Homo sapiens, sapiens” - wise, wise man. The time has now come to use our double measure of wisdom to climb out of planetary cradle and take our evolutionary destiny into our own hands and transform ourselves from Homo sapiens, into Homo Stellaris and find our home among the stars.

Only then can we ensure the long term survival and immortality of humanity.

Island One - Settlements in Space

A friend of mine posted this wonderful video on FaceBook. It is a short introductory film about the Island One space settlement concept. This conceptual space colony is also referred to as a Bernal Sphere, after the space visionary James Desmond Bernal, who first proposed it back in 1929 in his book “The World, the Flesh and the Devil”.

This ideal was later championed by Gerard K. O'Neill in his book “The High Frontier.” This presentation is a concise, yet very informative look at O’Neil’s central ideas relating to the settlement and colonization of space and what that might mean for humanity.

Gerard K. O’Neill’s vision has long suffered years of neglected and deserves to be reexamined by a new generation of space policy makers.

There is much in O’Neil’s High Frontier vision that can help us take the first crucial steps towards creating a space program which is both economical sustainable and politically justifiable in the short term and that will facilitate the long term goal of creating a spacefaring civilization.

O’Neil provided a unifying vision in the 1970s that demonstrated convincingly and clearly, that the resources of the solar system can indeed be incorporated into the economic sphere of human existence. And, that any serious discussion concerning humanity’s long term sustainable future here on Earth must look towards a future where people made a home for themselves amongst the stars.

Island One - Settlements in Space









Video Credits:
Presented by Max Emerson
Written by Adam Manning
With thanks to Aron Sora

Goodbye Walter Cronkite

Earlier today I was elated with the news that the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter provided us with photographic proof that humans landed on the Moon. Now all of a sudden I feel a profound sadness on reading the news of Walter Cronkite’s death. Walter Cronkite was an important fixture of my childhood. I remember distinctly his CBS news broadcast of our first fleeting steps, as it happened, on another world. Now, just three days before the fortieth anniversary, he has left us. And that's the way it is today, Friday July 17th, 2009. Good bye Mr. Cronkite, the world will never be quite the same without you.

Then and now

Forty years ago this month the human race left the planet of its birth and humans strode the moon.




Today we lock six people in a tube and call it a Mars mission:

Six European volunteers have emerged from a simulated space capsule in Moscow after spending more than three months locked inside.

They were part of an experiment into how astronauts might deal with the very cramped conditions and prolonged isolation of a journey to Mars.

As to the Space Station, NASA is preparing to dump it into the ocean:

Despite nearing completion after more than a decade of construction, and recently announcing some upcoming improvements to accompany its full crew of six astronauts, NASA plans to de-orbit the International Space Station in 2016. Meaning the station will have spent more time under construction than completed.

However there is some hope, the private sector is making progress:

SpaceX Successfully Delivers First Payload to Space

After three years just as many failed launches, and a couple of lost satellites, private rocket company SpaceX successfully delivered its first payload into orbit yesterday using their Falcon 1 rocket.

The rocket launched from Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands, and reached space after a ten minute flight. The payload consisted of a Malaysian satellite named RazakSAT, which will take high resolution pictures of Malaysia (think Google Earth).

THE MOON FOR ALL MANKIND – THE MALTA MOON

Author’s Note:

It gives me great pleasure to present a guest article on Discovery Enterprise by two members, Mr. Leonard Ellul-Mercer and Dr. Gordon Caruana Dingli, of Malta's Organising Committee for the International Year of Astronomy concerning the activities being organised in Malta to commemorate the International Year of Astronomy and the fortieth anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing.

The Malta Moon

The moon is our closest celestial body and by far the brightest object in the night sky. It has fascinated man since antiquity.

The International Year of Astronomy 2009 celebrates the four hundred year anniversary since Galileo Galilei turned his telescope towards the night sky. He was the first to observe our moon in detail and some of the maps have been preserved.

The year 2009 is also the fiftieth anniversary of the first unmanned lunar landing and also the fortieth anniversary of the first manned landing.

Malta is an archipelago of small islands in the Mediterranean with a population of just over four hundred thousand people. It has a rich history and is home to the oldest free standing stone structures in the world. It is claimed that these temples, which are thousands of years old, were aligned to the solstice and so there has been a strong astronomical tradition in Malta since antiquity.

The IYA 2009 Malta committee has been very busy organising several astronomy events and it has also put an emphasis on the moon and its exploration by robotic and manned spacecraft. This included the issue of a stamp set commemorating Galileo, Apollo 11 and Lassell’s famous telescope in Malta. A highlight of the activities was a very successful visit to Malta by the Apollo 17 lunar module pilot, the geologist Senator Harrison Schmitt. There have been several talks, seminars, exhibitions and observing sessions.

During the early meetings of the committee the chairman Dr Gordon Caruana Dingli proposed that Malta should co-ordinate an international project for the IYA 2009. Mr. Leonard Ellul Mercer, who is a keen astrophotographer, had long wished to produce an astronomy image involving various countries and after discussions with Dr Alex Gatt, Gordon proposed forming an image of the moon composed of images taken by countries all over the world. Leonard then divided an image of the moon into numbered segments and all IYA 2009 single points of contact with an email address were invited to take part. The response was overwhelming with 40 countries submitting images from all five continents, one country for every year that has passed since Apollo 11 landed on the moon! We have also included an image from the European Union’s Smart-1 spacecraft. Most of the images were taken during the May or June full moons of 2009 but some were older and Italy’s was a four hundred year old sketch by Galileo Galilei. These images were painstakingly processed and pasted as a collage on the background of an image of a full moon imaged by Leonard. This took up many hours of Leonard’s time especially after he decided to produce an audiovisual production of the project. The music of the animated feature is specifically composed and played for the project by Lynn Faure.

The project commemorates the Russian Luna 2 which was the first unmanned spacecraft to land on the moon. We also commemorate the Apollo project which reached Kennedy’s goal with the first manned lunar landing on 20th July 1969 followed by another five landings. Other countries that have launched spacecraft to the moon are Japan, Europe, China and India. These probes are also featured in the image.

The font used in the project is Futura which was used on the plaque that was fixed to the Apollo 11 lunar module Eagle, this read:

“HERE MEN FROM THE PLANET EARTH FIRST SET FOOT UPON THE MOON JULY 1969, A.D. WE CAME IN PEACE FOR ALL MANKIND”

This was the inspiration for our project “THE MOON FOR ALL MANKIND”

Leonard Ellul-Mercer

Gordon Caruana Dingli

International Year of Astronomy 2009 Malta Committee

1421: The Year When China Nearly Discovered America and the World

Today marks the two hundred and thirty third anniversary of the founding of the United States of America. History tells us that the America continent was discovered by Christopher Columbus on October 12, 1492. But, a nascent naval power had the ability to discover and colonize this new world some seventy years before.

The year 1421 could have been a pivotal year in world history and would make a magnificent point of divergence in many an alternate history novel. 1421 could have been the year when Ming dynasty China could have set into motion a series of events that would have led the Chinese to discovery the Americas some seventy years before Christopher Columbus, circumnavigate the globe and transform Imperial China from merely a regional power into a major naval superpower of global extent on which the Sun would never have set. Instead China chose to abrogate its appointment with destiny and retreated into a long period of isolationism. The conquest of the world and control of the oceans were left to the countries of a Europe just awaking from a long period of intellectual slumber. Eventually the new emerging maritime powers of Europe found their way to the shores of the Dragon’s lair and were in due course to carve the carcass of this impotent giant between themselves.

The story of the voyages of Zheng He is a wonderful and cautionary tale of lost opportunity and “might have beens” in the annuals of global history. Zheng He was the admiral of seven major ocean expeditions, that were to voyage as far as Indonesia, India, the Middle-east, the east coast of Africa and as far as Arabia. These voyages took place over the course of the first three decades of the Fifteenth Century (1405-1433). Zheng He’s fleet consisted of three hundred ships and a crew of twenty-eight thousand men. The ships of this majestic fleet dwarfed the exploratory vessels of Portugal, Spain and England during all the Great Age of European Exploration of the latter part of the Fifteenth Century and well into the Seventeenth Century.

There is no real evidence to support Gavin Menzies thesis that Zheng He's fleet went on to round the Cape of Good Hope to then enter the Atlantic Ocean and eventually discover and settle the Americas. And neither is there any compelling evidence that the fleet circumnavigated the world.

In fact, Gavin Menzies should have aptly named his book “1421: The Year When China Nearly Discovered America and the World and Nearly Became a World Power”

China had the technology and the navigational skills to accomplish these feats and become a major global power. But, China did not. Why not? The simple answer to that question is that Imperial China chose not to.

When Emperor Yongle died in 1424, factions within the imperial court who opposed the expeditions won the day. Eventually the emergent European powers seized the opportunities afforded to them by engaging in maritime exploration and trade. China eventually fell prey to their domination and was dominated and colonized by them.

The moral of this tale is a simple one- If you do not seize a golden opportunity for success others will. When a great power makes the decision to turn away from a new frontier, it does not mean that that frontier has closed. It only means that other powers will exploit the wealth that lies in wait to be had.

As we enter the second act of the Space Age will the United States heed this lesson of history and establish a new “Celestial Empire” and reap the benefits of the vast treasure troves of the mineral and energy wealth that awaits us out amongst the stars. Or will we leave this golden opportunity to others in our stead?

Solar power for a new frontier

Lockheed's Vulture design

The Near Space regions are one of the Earth's last great unexplored frontiers. Its that part of the atmosphere too high for conventional aircraft to reach but too low for satellites to orbit, between 65000 and 325000-350000 feet (20 to 100 km) . High altitude balloons can reach the region but have no control over their mobility. An airplane would be ideal but the air is to thin at these altitude to burn fuel. What is required is an engine that does not require fuel or oxygen.

Now such an aircraft is being built and the man behind it carries one of the most legendary names in exploration: Piccard.

solar impulse

Bertrand Piccard is the grandson of Auguste Piccard and son of Jacques Piccard. In 1999 he and Brian Jones become the first areonauts to circumnavigate the world in a balloon. Now he is planning a new adventure, the first round the world flight in a airplane without fuel. Recently he unveiled the prototype:

A solar-power aircraft theoretically capable of flying at night was unveiled by a Swiss adventurer yesterday as he announced plans to circumnavigate the globe using alternative energy.

Bertrand Piccard said that he would take science and aviation to a new frontier with the €66 million (£56 million) project revealed at a Swiss military airfield.
The Solar Impulse will have its maiden flight this autumn when Mr Piccard, 51, a psychiatrist, will put six years of research into practice. The first stage will involve short flights to test the capacity of the 11,628 monocrystalline silicon cells needed to generate enough energy for the four motors, each generating 10hp, to get the Solar Impulse off the ground.

After that Mr Piccard and André Borschberg, his partner, will need to check that the lithium polymer batteries store sufficient energy to stay airborne at night and that the ultra-light, carbon-fibre honeycomb structure is as resistant as they believe......

Of course the Solar Impulse will be flying well below Near Space but solar aircraft can go much higher. In fact NASA has shown leadership here with Pathfinder and Helios but more on NASA's efforts in a future article.

Perhaps the most astonishing Near Space project comes from DARPA. The DOD agency Vulture program will be a high altitude aircraft capable of staying aloft for five years:

The objective of DARPA's Vulture program is to develop a fixed-wing aircraft with pseudo-satellite capability that can sustain uninterrupted flight for over five years at 60,000-90,000 feet with a 1,000lb (450kg) payload, 5kW of onboard power and perform intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance and communication missions while remaining in the required mission airspace 99 percent of the time.

The initial 12-month analytical phase of the program will see the exploration of various vehicle configurations, concluding with a concept design review of sub-scale and full-scale demonstration vehicles. Key technologies to be investigated include innovative in-flight energy collection and reliable propulsion systems using photovoltaic cells and high specific energy fuel cells....

Aurora's Odysseus concept for DARPA's Vulture