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Could A Floating Asteroid Belt Colony Save All Of Humankind?

Four years ago Stephen Hawking gave us 100 years to move off the planet. Here's how it's going so far.

By Silek Sat 23 Jan, 2021 2:12 PM - Last Updated: Sat 23 Jan, 2021 10:35 PM
In May of 2017, Stephen Hawking updated his prediction on the survival of humanity. Only a year before he had warned us that humanity had less than 1000 years to leave Earth and find an additional home, and now he was stressing that the situation had become more dire. In his estimation, humanity now had less than 100 years to make our home somewhere off the planet.
Colony55aa
Ceres is the largest object in the
main belt between Mars and Jupiter

For years the conventional thought on expanding humanity's presence in our Solar System through colonization and even terraforming, has revolved around the big red planet, Mars. This month astrophysicist Pekka Janhunen with the Finnish Meteorological Institute in Helsinki published his paper,'Terraforming the dwarf planet: Interconnected and growable Ceres megasatellite world' suggesting the best path forward might lead us to the dwarf planet Ceres, and not our more, planetary, neighbor.

Janhunen's paper outlines a plan for thousands of cylindrical shaped 'habitation pods' magnetically connected to each other creating a 'mega-satellite' permanently orbiting Ceres. Each of these cylinders would be five miles in diameter and twenty miles long. They would be designed to accommodate 50,000 people, support an artificial atmosphere, and provide Earth-like gravity through it's rotation. Colony3a4a
This megasatellite would consist of
interconnected O'Neill cylinders, with
a massive mirror on each side.
Three long strips of land, capable of supporting an agricultural economy with five foot beds of soil derived from raw material retrieved from Ceres, alongside a residential/semi-industrial one, would be permeated by three long windows, which would be covered and opened to help simulate the night cycle.

This type of orbital habitation is often referred to as an O'Neill Cylinder. Although popularized by American physicist Gerard O'Neill in his 1976 book The High Frontier: Human Colonies in Space, the idea of such a construct can be traced back to 1954 and German scientist Hermann Oberth's book Menschen im Weltraum: Neue Projekte für Raketen und Raumfahrt (People in Space: New Projects for Rockets and Space Travel) wherein he describes the use of gigantic habitable cylinders for travel in space.

Building on this idea, Janhunen's proposal looks to to the dwarf planet Ceres, the largest object in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, nearly 328 million miles from Earth. On some of the benefits of orbital colonization as opposed to a Mars surface colonization, Janhunen told Live Science, "My concern is that children on a Mars settlement would not develop to healthy adults (in terms of muscles and bones) due to the too-low Martian gravity, Therefore, I searched for (an) alternative that would provide (Earth-like) gravity but also an interconnected world." Colony2
A NASA illustration shows what the
interior of an O'Neill Cylinder could
look like.


Ceres also brought another big ticket item to the table: Nitrogen. With the amount of nitrogen that Ceres is thought to have, any habitation project would immediately begin extracting and using this material to sustain and grow the colony. Although other resources will be needed, Janhunen believes having a steady, easily accessible supply of this will make creating an artificial atmosphere possible and is a big part of what the paper suppositions.

Janhunen's plan also calls for the extensive use of space elevators connecting the habitat to the dwarf planet 600 miles below. He writes, “Lifting the materials from Ceres is energetically cheap compared to processing them into habitats, if a space elevator is used.” He believes creating this network will be one of the first priorities for colonists once their initial setup is complete.

In addition to this infrastructure, one of the biggest components allowing survival will be two large glass mirrors reflecting just enough natural light into each habitat. Light will be regulated in agricultural and forested areas to allow optimal growing conditions. For the human population, light will be regulated through the use of these mirrors and shutters that can open and close over the long rows of windows.Colony1
A NASA illustration depicting an
O'Neill Cylinder structure orbiting
an alien planet.


Any plan of this scope and magnitude will have it's detractors, and even after publishing just a few days ago, Janhunen's is no exception as big questions remain to be answered about it's viability.

Manasvi Lingam, assistant professor of Astrobiology at the Florida Institute of Technology finds the proposal 'plausible' but questions the time table proposed by Janhunen and the feasibility of accomplishing it with available technology. In his proposal he suggests the the first set of orbital habitats should be completed twenty two years after mining has begun on Ceres. Lingam thinks that this may be possible under optimal conditions with no delays or issues but realistically, she says it, “isn't inconceivable, but shouldn't be taken for granted. Concerns over the technological requirements of this proposal have also been voiced. The mining of Ceres will take a great amount of technological prowess and without real world experience in an environment likely to be encountered Lingam adds, “Technologically speaking, we just aren't there yet.”

The debate will continue between Mars and an orbital future for humankind. In this type of research competition, the real winner is usually revealed as the recipient of government research grants or University checks showing up in the mail. In today's climate however, where a billionaire's whim and investment could lead to billions in pounds and dollars following, the human race might to find this endeavor spearheaded by private industry, bringing a whole new level of concern when deciding who gets to go live on a thriving habitat, and who gets left behind on a dying planet.

If it ever gets to that.


Do you think our best hope for 'Off World' habitation is on Mars, or floating above the surface? Let us know in the comments below.


WRITTEN AND EDITED BY Silek
5 Comments
Sat 23 Jan, 2021 2:15 PM
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Sat 23 Jan, 2021 2:35 PM
Awesome
Sat 23 Jan, 2021 2:45 PM
I have to say, there's definitely scope for both a colony on Mars but also in orbit of the sun as well.

I can understand the apprehension about people not growing correctly on Mars due to the lack of gravity, however the human race is very adaptable, so I don't think it'd cause that much of a problem in the long term
Sat 23 Jan, 2021 8:51 PM
About 4 years ago now I had the opportunity to attend a talk by Dr. Stanley Love, a NASA scientist and astronault, on the logistics of sending a manned mission to Mars. To send just a small crew there and back again, we'd need a spacecraft roughly the size of the International Space Station (or bigger if launched from Earth and not orbit), extremely precise timing to hit the appropriate launch windows, and assuming the crew hit the first launch window back it would still be a mission lasting about a year and a half. That is a LONG time to be stuck with the same handful of people with negligible privacy. Extended space missions have also identified problems with muscle loss, vision damage and other things we're still trying to figure out too. Whether it be Mars, Ceres, or something else, we have a lot of work to do to make anything large scale happen.
Fri 19 Feb, 2021 5:10 PM
Fantastic