The High Frontier: Human Colonies in Space by Gerard K. O'Neill

Author:Gerard K. O'Neill [O'Neill, Gerard K.]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Tags: Industrial Design, Non-Fiction, Space Colonies, Space Colonization, Space Science, Spaceflight, Technology & Engineering
ISBN: 9781896522678
Google: W7PuAAAAMAAJ
Amazon: 189652267X
Barnesnoble: 189652267X
Goodreads: 405001
Publisher: Apogee Books
Published: 2000-07-14T23:00:00+00:00

Power satellites in twenty-four-hour orbit stay in constant sunshine above fixed point on Earth.

The space-manufacturing site will be some distance from geosynchronous orbit. The costs of transport in space, however, are measured not in distance but in velocity interval; in those units even L5, the most distant of the possible sites, is closer to geosynchronous orbit than to the lunar surface. To move so large a mass over the required distance will require a mass-driver, and it could be identical to the one already in use on the Moon. The steady four-ton force produced by that transporter will be quite enough, over a period of months, to move the power station into its position high above a fixed point on Earth. The electric power input to the mass-driver will come from the station itself. The necessary reaction mass to carry out the transfer can be industrial slag, pulverized rock dust, or liquid oxygen, all of which will be available at L5. Return of the mass-driver to L5 for reuse can be made with the help of a small solar power plant. A power plant only about a thousandth the size of the SSPS itself will be quite enough to return the mass-driver to L5 for re-use in a month, so a mass-driver used as a tugboat for SSPS-barges can make several round trips every year.

It was pointed out to me by Mark Hopkins, a young economist from Harvard, that the economics of SSPS construction at L5 requires a fresh viewpoint. In that construction almost no materials or energy from Earth will be needed. Island One, when it is established and operating, will be self-sustaining, and its residents will be paid mainly in goods and services produced at the space community.

The economic input to a combined space community/SSPS program will be the sum of the development and construction costs for Island One, the cost of lifting the material needed from Earth for subsequent communities and for those SSPS components which cannot be made at L5 economically, a payment on Earth to the credit of each person living at L5, representing that portion of salaries convertible to goods and services on the Earth (for subsequent use on trips or, if desired, on retirement) and a carrying charge of interest paid on the outstanding balance in every year of the program.

If Island One and its sister-colonies become the main source for new generator-capacity to supply electricity for the Earth, the question of legal ownership of the SSPS plants ties in to the economics. Geosynchronous orbit is far below L5, and I suspect that any Earth nation using SSPS power will want clear-cut legal ownership of the power generating facility, once construction is finished. From then on that nation will control the power station and any maintenance operations on it, and will keep the SSPS fixed above a certain point on its own territory, where an antenna is located.

If Island One were to be independent of Earth, it would also be to the economic advantage of the workers in space to sell completed power stations rather than electric power.

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