LBRT: Humanity Should Establish a Space Colony by 2050. Content: 1

LBRT: Humanity should establish a space colony by 2050.

Content:

1. Background Information 2. Pro and Con Arguments 3. Timeline 4. Key Articles 5. Additional Resources

BACKGROUND INFORMATION

SOURCE: https://www.space.com/22228-space-station-colony-concepts- explained-infographic.html

SOURCE: http://www.homospaciens.org/extrasolar-colony.html

SOURCE: https://i.pinimg.com/736x/f1/05/5a/f1055a6de089b3f8abed8d81dd4a3 552--space-law-lunar-moon.jpg

SPACE SETTLEMENT BASICS

Who?

You. Or at least people a lot like you. Space settlements will be a place for ordinary people. Presently, with few exceptions, only highly trained and carefully selected astronauts go to space. Space settlement needs inexpensive, safe launch systems to deliver thousands, perhaps millions, of people into orbit. If this seems unrealistic, note that a hundred and fifty years ago nobody had ever flown in an airplane, but today nearly 500 million people fly each year.

Some special groups might find space settlement particularly attractive: The handicapped could keep a settlement at zero-g to make wheelchairs and walkers unnecessary. Penal colonies might be created in orbit as they should be fairly escape proof. People who wish to experiment with very different social and political forms could get away from restrictive social norms.

Although some colonies may follow this model, it's reasonable to expect that the vast majority of space colonists will be ordinary people. Indeed, eventually most people in space settlements will be born there, and some day they may vastly exceed Earth's population. Based on the materials available, the human population in orbit could one day exceed ten trillion living in millions of space colonies with a combined living space hundreds of times the surface of the Earth.

What?

A space settlement is a home in orbit.

 Rather than live on the outside of a planet, settlers will live on the inside of gigantic spacecraft. Typical space settlement designs are roughly one half to a few kilometers across. A few designs are much larger.

 Settlements must be air tight to hold a breathable atmosphere, and must rotate to provide psuedo-gravity. Thus, people stand on the inside of the hull.

 Enormous amounts of matter, probably lunar soil at first, must cover the settlements to protect inhabitants from radiation. On Earth our atmosphere does this job, but space settlements need about five tons of matter covering every square meter of a colony's hull to protect space settlers from cosmic rays and solar flares.

 Each settlement must be an independent biosphere. All oxygen, water, wastes, and other materials must be recycled endlessly.

Where?

In orbit, not on a planet or moon. Why should we live in orbit rather than on a planet or moon? Because orbit is far superior to the Moon and Mars for colonization, and other planets and moons are too hot, too far away, and/or have no solid surface.

For an alternate view, see Robert Zubrin's powerful case for Mars exploration and colonization. Mars' biggest advantage is that all the materials necessary for life may be found on Mars. While materials for orbital colonies must be imported from the Moon or Near Earth Objects (NEO's -- asteroids and comets), there are many advantages to orbital colonies. Advantages include:

 Earth-normal 'gravity'. The Moon and Mars have a surface gravity much less than Earth normal (which called 1g - the g stands for 'gravity'). The lunar surface is at roughly 1/6g and Mars is a 1/3g planet. Children raised in low-g cannot be expected to develop bones and muscles strong enough to visit Earth except in desperation -- it will be too painful and exhausting. For example, this author weighs 73kg (160 pounds). If I went to a 3g planet, the equivalent of moving from Mars to Earth, I would weigh 225 kg (almost 500 pounds) and would have great difficulty getting out of bed. For children raised on the Moon or Mars, attending college on Earth will be out of the question.

By contrast, orbital colonies can rotate to provide any g level desired, although it's not true gravity. Spinning the colony creates a force called pseudo-gravity, that feels a lot like gravity. Pseudo- gravity is much like what you feel when a car takes a sharp turn at high speed. Your body is pressed up against the door. Simillarly, as an orbital space colony turns, the inside of the colony pushes on the inhabitants forcing them to go around. The amount of this force can be controlled and for reasonable colony sizes and

rotation rates the force can be about 1g. For example, a colony with an 895 meter (a bit less than 1000 yards) radius rotating at one rpm (rotations per minute) provides 1g at the hull. Children raised on orbital colonies should have no trouble visiting Earth for extended periods.

 Rapid resupply from Earth. The Moon is a few days away from Earth, and trips to Mars take many months. Early colonies in Earth orbit will be only hours away. This is a huge logistical advantage for a large project like building space settlements.

 Continuous, ample, reliable solar energy. In orbit there is no night. Solar power is available 24/7. Most places on the Moon or Mars are in darkness half of the time (the only exception is the lunar poles). Mars, in addition, is much farther from the Sun and so receives about half the solar power available at Earth orbit. Mars also has dust storms which interfere with solar power.

 Great views from Earth (and eventually other planets). Space colonization is, at its core, a real estate business. The value of real estate is determined by many things, including "the view." Any space settlement will have a magnificient view of the stars at night. Any settlement on the Moon or Mars will also have a view of unchanging, starkly beautiful, dead-as-a-doornail, rock strewn surface. However, settlements in earth orbit will have one of the most stunning views in our solar system - the living, ever- changing Earth.

 Weightless recreation. Although space colonies will have 1g at the hull, in the center you will experience weightlessness. If you've ever jumped off a diving board, you've been weightless. It's the feeling you have after jumping and before you hit the water. The difference in a space colony is that the feeling will last for as long as you like. If you've ever seen videos of astronauts playing in 0g you know weightlessness is fun. Acrobatics, sports and dance go to a new level when constraints of gravity are removed. It's not going to be easy to keep the kids in 1g areas enough to satisfy Mom and Dad that their bones will be strong enough for a visit to Disneyland.

 Zero-g construction means bigger colonies. Space colonists will spend almost all of their time indoors. It is impossible for an unprotected human to survive outside for more than few seconds. In this situation, obviously bigger colonies are better. Colonies on

the Moon or Mars won't be much bigger than buildings on Earth, especially at first. However, in orbit astronauts can easily move spacecraft weighing many tons by hand. Everything is weightless and this makes large scale construction much easier. Colonies can be made so large that, even though you are really inside, it feels like the out-of-doors.

 Much greater growth potential. The Moon and Mars together have a surface area roughly the size of Earth. But if the single largest asteroid (Ceres) were to be used to build orbital space colonies, the total living area created would be approximately 150 times the surface area of the Earth. Since much of the Earth is ocean or sparsely inhabited, settlements built from Ceres alone could provide uncrowded homes for more than a trillion people.

 Economics. Near-Earth orbital colonies can service Earth's tourist, energy, and materials markets more easily than the Moon. Mars is too far away to easily trade with Earth. Space colonies, wherever they are built, will be very expensive. Supplying Earth with valuable goods and services will be critical to paying for colonization.

The best place to live on Mars is not nearly as nice as the most miserable part of Siberia. Mars is far colder, you can't go outside without a space suit, and it's a months-long rocket ride if you want a Hawaiin vacation. The Moon is even colder at night, and it's literally boiling during the day. By contrast, orbital colonies have unique and desirable properties, particularly 0g recreation and great views. Building and maintaining orbital colonies should be quite a bit easier than similar sized homesteads on the Moon and Mars. Colonies in orbit are better positioned to provide goods and services to Earth. For these reasons, orbital colonies will almost certainly come first, with lunar and martian colonization later.

Mars and the Moon have one big advantage over most orbits: there's plenty of materials. However, this advantage is eliminated by simply building orbital settlements next to asteroids. It may even be easier to mine asteroids for materials than the Mars or the Moon as there is much less gravity. Fortunately, there are tens of thousands of suitable asteroids in orbits near that of Earth alone, and far more in the asteroid belt. Early settlements can be expected to orbit the Earth.

Later settlements can spread out across the solar system, taking advantage of the water in Jupiter's moons or exploiting the easily

Interstellar travel seems impractical due to long travel times. But what if you lived in space settlements for fifty generations? Do you really care if your settlement is near our Sun or in transit to Alpha Centuri? So what if the trip takes a few generations? If energy and make up materials for the trip can be stored, a stable population can migrate to nearby stars. At the new star, local materials and energy can be used to build new settlements and resume population growth.

How?

With great difficulty. Fortunately, although building space colonies will be very difficult, it's not impossible. Building cities in space will require materials, energy, transportation, communications, life support, and radiation protection.

 Materials. Launching materials from Earth is very expensive, so bulk materials should come from the Moon or Near-Earth Objects (NEOs - asteroids and comets with orbits near Earth) where gravitational forces are much less, there is no atmosphere, and there is no biosphere to damage. Our Moon has large amounts of oxygen, silicon and metals, but little hydrogen, carbon, or nitrogen. NEOs contain substantial amounts of metals, oxygen, hydrogen and carbon. NEOs also contain some nitrogen, but not necessarily enough to avoid major supplies from Earth.

 Energy. Solar energy is abundant, reliable and is commonly used to power satellites today. Massive structures will be needed to convert sunlight into large amounts of electrical power for settlement use. Energy may be an export item for space settlements, using microwave beams to send power to Earth.

 Transportation. This is the key to any space endeavor. Present launch costs are very high, $2,000 to $ 14,000 per pound from Earth to Low Earth Orbit (LEO). To settle space we need much better launch vehicles and must avoid serious damage to the atmosphere from the thousands, perhaps millions, of launches required. One possibility is airbreathing hypersonic air/spacecraft under development by NASA and others. Transportation for milllions of tons of materials from the Moon and asteroids to settlement construction sites is also necessary. One well studied

possibility is to build electronic catapults on the Moon to launch bulk materials to waiting settlements.

 Communication. Compared to the other requirements, communication is relatively easy. Much of the current terrestrial communications already pass through satellites.

 Life support. People need air, water, food and reasonable temperatures to survive. On Earth a large complex biosphere provides these. In space settlements, a relatively small, closed system must recycle all the nutrients without "crashing." The Biosphere II project in Arizona has shown that a complex, small, enclosed, man-made biosphere can support eight people for at least a year, although there were many problems. A year or so into the two year mission oxygen had to be replenished, which strongly suggests that they achieved atmospheric closure. For the first try, one major oxygen replenishment and perhaps a little stored food isn't too bad. Although Biosphere II has been correctly criticized on scientific grounds, it was a remarkable engineering achievement and provides some confidence that self- sustaining biospheres can be built for space settlements.

 Radiation protection. Cosmic rays and solar flares create a lethal radiation environment in space. To protect life, settlements must be surrounded by sufficient mass to absorb most incoming radiation. This can be achieved with left over from processing lunar soil and asteroids into oxygen, metals, and other useful materials.

Space settlement feasibility was addressed in a series of summer studies at NASA Ames Research Center in the 1970's. These studies concluded that space settlement is feasible, but very difficult and expensive. For additional information see the bibliography.

Although we know generally how to build space colonies, we have yet to find an economic path from where we are now to construction of the first colony. One approach is to develop a series of profitable, private industries. For example:

1. Sub-orbital tourism. The key to space colonization is transportation from the Earth's surface to LEO. The key to inexpensive, economic transportation is the same as learning a musical instrument: practice, practice, practice. To date, there have been only a few thousand space launches and only a few

hundred people have been to space. Traditional uses of space, such as communication, Earth resources, military, exploration and science won't require a whole lot more in the next few decades. However, hundreds of thousands of people say they would travel to space if the price was right. Tourism is a market that may provide the necessary practice.

2. Orbital Tourism. SpaceShipOne went almost straight up 100km to get into space, and then came nearly straight down again. This sub-orbital flight is much easier than orbital flight, which requires the spacecraft to go nearly 30,000 km/hr horizontally to avoid crashing back to Earth. Surprisingly, the first paying orbital tourists have already flown. The Russians have taken Dennis Tito and Mark Shuttleworth to the International Space Station (ISS) developed by the U.S., Russia, Canada, Europe, Japan and other partners. However, even at $20 million a trip, this business only makes economic sense because the international partners spent tens of billions of dollars developing the ISS for other reasons. Nonetheless, if Rutan's prediction is correct we will see affordable orbital tourism within the lifetime of most people reading this. Successful orbital mass tourism will mean not only people, but solar power satellites can be launched from the ground to orbit affordably.

3. Solar Power Satellites. Electrical power is a multi-hundred billion dollar per year business today. We know how to generate electricity in space using solar cells. For example, the ISS provides about 80 kilowatts continuously from an acre of solar arrays. By building much larger satellites out of hundreds of solar arrys, it is possible to generate a great deal of electrical power. This can be converted to microwaves and beamed to Earth to provide electricity with absolutely no greenhouse gas emissions or toxic waste of any kind. If transportation to orbit is inexpensive following development of the tourist industry, much of Earth's power could be provided from space, simultaneously providing a large profitable business and dramatically reducing pollution on Earth.

4. Asteroidal Metals. John Lewis in Mining the Sky: Untold Riches from Asteroids, Comets, and Planets estimates that the current market value of the metals in 3554 Amun, one small nearby asteroid, is about $20 Trillion. There's $8 trillion worth of iron and nickel, $6 trillion worth of cobalt, and about $6 trillion in platinum- group metals. Once we can easily launch thousands of people into orbit, and build giant solar power satellites, it shouldn't be too

difficult to retrieve 3554 Amun and other asteroids to supply Earth with all the metals we will ever need.

Each of these steps is potentially profitable on its own merits. Once they are completed, we will be able to put people in orbit inexpoensively, generate large amounts of power, and supply ample materials from NEOs and perhaps the Moon -- all the elements needed to build the first space colony.

Why?

Growth

Why build space settlements? Why do weeds grow through cracks in sidewalks? Why did life crawl out of the oceans and colonize land? Because living things want to grow and expand. We have the ability to live in space, therefore we will -- but not this fiscal year.

The key advantage of space settlements is the ability to build new land, rather than take it from someone else. This allows a huge expansion of humanity without war or destruction of Earth's biosphere. The asteroids alone provide enough material to make new orbital land hundreds of times greater than the surface of the Earth, divided into millions of colonies. This land can easily support trillions of people.

A Nice Place to Live

A few features of orbital real estate are worth mentioning:

 Great Views. Many astronauts have returned singing the praises of their view of Earth from orbit. Low earth orbit settlements, and eventually settlements near Jupiter and Saturn, will have some of the most spectacular views in the solar system. Of course, all space settlements will have unmatched views of the stars, unhindered by clouds, air pollution, or (with some care) bright city lights.

 Low-g recreation. Consider circular swimming pools around and near the axis of rotation. You should be able to dive up into the water! Sports and dance at low or zero-g will be fantastic. For dancers, note that in sufficiently low gravity, always available near the axis of rotation, anyone can jump ten times higher than Baryshnikov ever dreamed.

 Environmental Independence. On Earth we all share a single biosphere. We breathe the same air, drink the same water, and the misdeeds of some are visited on the bodies of all. Each space settlement is completely sealed and does no share atmosphere or water with other settlements or with Earth. Thus if one settlement pollutes their air, no one else need breathe it.

 Custom living. Since the entire environment is man-made, you can really get what you want. Like lake front property? Make lots of lakes. Like sunsets? Program sunset simulations into weather system every hour. Like to go barefoot? Make the entire environment foot-friendly.

Survival

Someday the Earth will become uninhabitable. Before then humanity must move off the planet or become extinct. One potential near term disaster is collision with a large comet or asteroid. Such a collision could kill billions of people. Large collisions have occurred in the past, destroying many species. Future collisions are inevitable, although we don't know when. Note that in July 1994, the comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 (1993e) hit Jupiter

If there were a major collision today, not only would billions of people die, but recovery would be difficult since everyone would be affected. If major space settlements are built before the next collision, the unaffected space settlements can provide aid, much as we offer help when disaster strikes another part of the world.

Building space settlements will require a great deal of material. If NEOs are used, then any asteroids heading for Earth can simply be torn apart to supply materials for building colonies and saving Earth at the same time.

Power and Wealth

Those that colonize space will control vast lands, enormous amounts of electrical power, and nearly unlimited material resources. The societies that develop these resources will create wealth beyond our wildest imagination and wield power -- hopefully for good rather than for ill. In the past, societies which have grown by colonization have gained wealth and power at the expense of those who were subjugated. Unlike previous colonization programs, space colonization will build new land,

LearningLeaders – All Rights Reserved - 9/14/17 20 not steal it from the natives. Thus, the power and wealth born of space colonization will not come at the expense of others, but rather represent the fruits of great labors.

When?

How long did it take to build New York? California? France? Even given ample funds the first settlement will take decades to construct. No one is building a space settlement today, and there are no immediate prospects for large amounts of money, so the first settlement will be awhile. If Burt Rutan's prediction of affordable orbital tourism in 25 years is correct, however, it's reasonable to expect the first orbital colony to be built within about 50 years.

If the first settlement is designed to build additional settlements, colonization could proceed quite rapidly. The transportation systems will already be in place and a large, experienced workforce will be in orbit.

Unless...

Space settlement is extraordinarily expensive because launch vehicles are difficult to manufacture and operate. For example, the current (2004) cost to put an individual into orbit for a short time is about $30 million. To enable large scale space tourism by the middle class, this cost must be reduced to about $1,000-$10,000, a factor of 3 to 4 orders of magnitude. Space tourism has launch requirements similar to space settlement suggesting that a radical improvement in manufacturing technology may be necessary to enable space settlement.

One candidate for a major improvement in manufacturing technology is molecular nanotechnology. An important branch of nanotechnology is concerned with developing diamonoid mechanosynthesis. This means building things out of diamond-like materials, placing each atom at a precise location (ignoring thermal motion). Diamond is 69 times stronger than titanium for the same weight and is much stiffer. If spacecraft were made of diamonoid materials rather than aluminum, they could be much lighter allowing more payload. For an excellent analysis applying nanotechnology to space development, see McKendree 1995

Diamond mechanosythesis may enable a radical transportation system that could allow millions of people to go to orbit each year -- an orbital tower. An orbital tower is a structure extending from the Earth's surface

LearningLeaders – All Rights Reserved - 9/14/17 21 into orbit. To build an orbital tower, start construction at geosynchronous orbit. Extend the tower down towards Earth and upwards at the same rate. this keeps the center-of-mass at geosynchronous orbit so the tower stays over one point on the Earth's surface. Extend the tower all the way to the surface and attach it. then an elevator on the tower can move people and materials to and fromorbit at very low cost. There are many practical problems with orbital towers, but they may be feasible.

An orbital tower is in tension so it won't collapse, but it must be very strong or it will break. The point of greatest strain is at geosynchronous orbit, so an orbital tower must be thickest at that point. The ratio of the diameter of the tower between geosynchronous orbit and the ground is called the taper factor. For steel, the taper factor is greater than 10,000 making a steel orbital tower completely impractical. However, for diamonoid materials the taper factor is 21.9 with a safety factor the same as McKendree 1995 . Thus a diamonoid orbital tower 1 meter thick at the ground would be only 22 meters thick at geosynchronous orbit. Fullerene nanotechnology, using carbon nanotubes, may be even better than diamonoid allowing a smaller taper factor. Calculations suggest that the materials necessary for construction of such an orbital tower would require one asteroid with a radius between one and two kilometers. These calculations assume the tower is built from diamonoid material with a density of 4 g/cm^3 and the asteroid has a density of 1.8 g/cm^3 and is 3% carbon.

Thus, molecular nanotechnology may enable space settlement.

SOURCE: https://settlement.arc.nasa.gov/Basics/wwwwh.html

HOW DO YOU BUILD A CITY IN SPACE? After swingeing budget cuts at Nasa, a loose agglomeration of private companies including Elon Musk's SpaceX have revived the dormant dream of colonising other worlds May 16, 2014

Science fiction has delivered on many of its promises. Star Trek -on-demand is materialising through 3-D printing, and we have done Jules Verne one better and explored mid-ocean trenches at crushing depths. But the central promise of golden age sci-fi has not yet been kept. Humans have not colonised space.

For a brief moment in the 1970s, the grandeur of the night sky felt interactive. It seemed only decades away that more humans would live off the Earth than on it; in fact, the Space Shuttle was so named because it was intended to make 50 round trips per year. There were active plans for expanding civilisation into space, and any number of serious designs for building entire cities on the moon, Mars and beyond.

The space age proved to be a false dawn, of course. After a sobering interlude, children who had sat rapt at the sight of the moon landings grew up, and accepted that terraforming space once briefly assumed to be easy was actually really, really hard. Intense cold war motivation flagged, and the Challenger and Columbia disasters taught us humility. Nasa budgets sagged from 5% of the US federal budget to less than 0.5%. People even began to doubt that we'd ever set foot on the moon: in a 2006 poll, more than one in four Americans between 18 and 25 said they suspected the moon landing was a hoax.

But now a countercurrent has surfaced. The children of Apollo, educated and entrepreneurial, are making real headway on some of the biggest difficulties. Large-scale settlement, as opposed to drab old scientific exploration, is back on the menu.

Space cities come in three basic models. The classic one is to terraform a nearby Earth-like object, by using massive geo-engineering projects or bio-domes to create a lunar or Martian metropolis. The second is the low-Earth orbit model: this expands upon the currently inhabited region of space. Think of the International Space Station as a government fort, around which commercial trading posts, homesteads and finally urban areas develop. Then there is the free space model, basically floating cylinders with artificial gravity, surviving by digesting the natural

- person colonies, stationed at what is known as the fifth Lagrangian like a gravitational eddy where things stay put by themselves. Encouraged by fellow physicists Freeman Dyson and Richard Feynman, he posited a "planar cluster" ho comfortable, productive and attractive than is most - space.

In O'Neill's vision, cable cars would connect communities spaced at 200km intervals. Single-family spacecraft the minivans of the sky would act as recreational vehicles. On the inner surface of what would be rotating habitats, strips of land would alternate with windows to let in sunlight. That same sun would provide all of our energy needs (a much bolder statement in the 70s than it is now), while the moon would be mined for aluminum and titanium to use in habitat construction. Asteroids, containing water and other material, could be towed along behind the city in the vacuum. His idea to L5 orbital point inspired the influential L5 Society, which aimed to

not because it was inherently flawed, but because it was an idea before its time. Spaceflight infrastructure was in its infancy, and costs were prohibitive. We simply

The central challenge to building a city in space is to create a closed system that can sustain itself for the long haul. Urban areas on Earth survive only by relying on a much larger footprint than their metropolitan boundaries. The more isolated a space city is the farther from external resupply resources the more closed its oxygen, food and water loops must be. The ISS, for example, has about 40% efficiency in its oxygen recycling, and even so its ambient CO2 levels are perpetually high. (Nasa is working on how to convert that CO2 directly into oxygen.) As for food, any space-based urban plan would require rolling out high-yield agriculture on an unprecedented scale though 3D printers could, given some fresh ingredients, print a pizza.

The other big problem for a space city is how humans would function physiologically. The neighborhood gym would be a popular destination: though the human species is ill-suited for some aspects of deep space, 14 years of continuous presence on the ISS have advanced our understanding of how to adapt physically for a lifetime among the stars. Early astronauts paid for this knowledge the hard way, as it were, with their bone density. Today's ISS crew train for 2.5 hours a day on a jury- rigged zero-gravity exercise contraption in order to keep their bone density at normal levels. Still, with longer stays in zero gravity, new problems seem to crop up. For example, your cerebrospinal fluid the clear liquid found in the brain and spine drifts upward, where it

r astronaut Michael López-Alegría, who spent 215

City walls would be required to shield space citizens from the brutal radiation bomb

radiation research alone, including pharmaceutical and nutriceutical

Space Life and Physical Sciences division, believes that by 2024 his team will be able to mitigate the health risks of space.

As for actually getting people to the space cities in the first place, it won't be using rockets climb out of the gravity well along a cable anchored to the equator and held under tension by centrifugal force on a counterweight tens of produced the kind of tensile strength required for a space elevator cable even carbon nanotubes are too weak by themselves but in 2010 the Nobel prize in physics was awarded for experiments on graphene. A one-atom sheet of pure carbon that is 100 times stronger than steel, graphene is a promising candidate for space elevator cable material.

SpaceX chief executive Elon Musk (of Tesla Motors fame) told documentary- n space transport, are one of the most serious around; none of this conversation would be happening without SpaceX, and Musk is not alone in thinking of

LearningLeaders – All Rights Reserved - 9/14/17 25 colonising Mars first. But though it may be easier to generate excitement around the Red Planet, insofar as the moon feels like an achievement already under our belts, several characteristics make Mars harder to colonise.

Martian gravity is three-eighths that of Earth, making landings more -sixth gravity. On the Apollo missions, lunar dust got everywhere the crews inhaled it and got it in their eyes, and it wreaked mechanical havoc and on Mars the dust is even more problematic, because it is highly oxidised, chemically reactive, chlorinated soils would be toxic, for example, to the human thyroid gland.

There was some early speculation that a space city could be buried under the Martian surface to protect its inhabitants from radiation. Pamela Conrad, an astrobiologist with Mars Science Laboratory, contends that we would be digging from a rock into a hard place.

A lunar city, on the other hand, has the advantage of being up to a thousand times closer practically next door and as such could industries could include space tourism and titanium mining, as well as pharmaceutical factories that require microgravity. The moon is also rich in helium 3, which is rare on Earth and thought to be a potential fuel source for future fusion reactors.

And industry is very much at the top of the agenda. Today the biggest space operation in the world is neither Nasa's nor that of the US defense department, but DirecTV, valued at more than $48bn. Low-Earth orbit is quickly becoming the realm of the private sector including the loose agglomeration of companies known collectively as NewSpace, which have shaken human spaceflight progress out of a sluggish period. Using the window created by the withdrawal of public funds from space programmes, NewSpace has fostered trust with government and increasingly enjoys the blessing of the US State Department, which controls export permits for objects being launched into orbit. Public sector clients like Nasa and the Air Force Space Command purchase equipment and supplies, and depend on the ingenuity and dexterity of the market. Indeed, Nasa has an $800m program to develop the commercial space market. Costs have come down dramatically as a result.

One figure in NewSpace taking advantage of this new flexibility is hotel tycoon Robert Bigelow. In 2015, the owner of Budget Suites of America will use a SpaceX rocket to send one of his inflatable space habitat modules up for testing at the ISS. These ingenious blow-up houses are capable of operating independently as space stations, and Bigelow wants to lease them as hotel suites (no surprise there), laboratories or for whatever else you might want. Nasa, having no current plans of their own for a moon mission, have given their blessing to Bigelow to use similar inflatable modules to build a lunar base.

hereas Russia has been integrated into the global space community fairly effectively since the end of the cold war, China does not partner with the other big players. Instead, it plays its own game: in December of last year, as part of the country's 12th Five-Year Plan, China's lunar rover

China is somewhat secretive about its space progress, but among its stated goals is to establish a crewed lunar base.

Rick Tumlinson is head of the asteroid mining company Deep Space Industries, which aims to be the gas station, building-supply centre and the air-and-water provider for space settlements. In the 1970s, a young Tumlinson worked at the Princeton Space Studies Institute, where he came under t

York chapter of the L5 Society. Deep Space is playing the long game out of a commitment he says he made in 1986 with several NewSpace entrepreneurs. According to Tumlinson, they pledged their lives and

Tumlinson was one of a group that leased the Mir Space Station commercially from the Russian government for a few months in 1999. Calling it MirCorp, they gave their venture a countercultural, tongue-in- cheek personality, and sent up a Jolly Roger flag with the first commercial cosmonauts. Nasa and the State Department were not amused. They placed heavy pressure on the Russians to de-orbit Mir in order to focus on the ISS, then under construction. The current crop of firey re-entry and breakup in 2001. They have learned from this and dedicate a lot of effort toward diplomacy and government cooperation.

Speaking at the Humans to Mars conference in Washington last month, Nasa chief Charles Bolden laid out a vision for bringing the US space programme out of its first stage, exploration, and into pioneering, even

- - plans to start with an asteroid capture and redirect by 2025, then pick up skills in the proving ground near Earth before venturing to a destination a thousand times farther than the moon. When humans get to Mars in the 2030s (the much-mocked Mars One group aims for the rather optimistic goal of a proper human settlement by 2024, or 10 years from now), the implication is that we will be there to stay.

If large-scale space settlement still sounds a little crazy, consider that from the passing of the Space Settlement Act 1988 until its quiet demise in the Paperwork Reduction Act of 1995, establishing extraterrestrial civilisation was the official goal of the US in space. The Space Settlement and Development Act of 2015, currently under draft, would promote economic development in space and work to reverse current strictures against property ownership in space.

Which brings us to what might be the biggest obstacle close to being hurdled: who would move to a city on Mars? Well, lots of people claim to be interested, signing up to Mars One's non-binding longlist of candidates to emigrate to the Red Planet. But López-Alegría, the former ISS resident, says that while he could imagine our space presence being experience of being in space is magnificent," he says, "but only in the conte Earth."

SOURCE: The Guardian https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2014/may/16/how-build-city-in- space-nasa-elon-musk-spacex

PRO AND CON ARGUMENTS

PRO: To prevent human extinction

Putting humans on more than one planet would better ensure our existence thousands if not millions of years from now.

PRO: To expand the human living space

One of advantages is the ability to build new land, rather than taking it from someone else. This allows a huge expansion of humanity without war or destruction of Earth's biosphere. This means a much greater growth potential in terms of expanding land mass. If the single largest asteroid (Ceres) were to be used to build orbital space colonies, the total living area created would be approximately 150 times the surface area of the Earth. Since much of the Earth is ocean or sparsely inhabited, settlements built from Ceres alone could provide uncrowded homes for more than a trillion people.

PRO: To mine for resources

An orbital colony would provide easy access to the near Earth objects (NEOs) that surround the Earth. These asteroids contain near limitless minerals useful for almost any purpose imaginable. With the ability to cheaply mine these asteroids, the scarcity of such resources on Earth would be abated.

Countries have already invested in companies and infrastructure that could one day mine minerals and water found on the moon and in

LearningLeaders – All Rights Reserved - 9/14/17 29 asteroids. Space settlers will have access to minerals that will remain for use in space. Some rare, highly valuable commodities could be brought back to Earth and the rewards would be vast where just one asteroid might contain $50 billion worth (£40 billion) of platinum. A recently released study found that space mineral resources can serve as an economic game changer, opening a vast new source of wealth to benefit humanity.

PRO: Within our human nature

Much like the voyage of Columbus into the new world, human desire to explore the unknown is in our nature. Humanity started in East Africa and now people live on literally every continent. People now live in snow, jungle, deserts, savannas, forests and have spread out about as far as humanly possible within the planet. The next step is to move to space. In the same way that a blank canvas allows one to begin developing ideas in a totally unfettered way is true about the possibilities offered by space colonization.

After passage of thousands of years human nature has not changed. Modern groups are psychologically equivalent to the tribes of ancient history. Just like other social animals, humans during their lifespan tend to form communities, tribes, or alliances for a variety of reasons. A human extraterrestrial colony would be a modern group in which individuals come together to cooperate and collaborate for ensuring the survival of the community as a whole in a harsh and hostile environment.

PRO: Technology on and for Earth

The technologies and techniques developed for space settlement will not be limited to space settlements. Rather, as has always been the case, both directly and indirectly they will provide widespread benefits to Earth economies and lifestyles, as well as providing humans with a substantially enhanced ability to protect this planet from the impacts of comets and asteroids.

Anticipated benefits from that continued investment in space activities include satellites for communication, for global positioning, navigation and timing, for remote sensing as well as commercial use and biochemical knowledge from space environment.

CON: Humans cannot survive indefinitely in space

While our current technology is allowing us to send robots and spacecraft to nearby astronomical formations, our bodies are not capable of undertaking comprehensive missions. Such long trips would have drastic consequences on spacefarers.

To function properly, humans need gravity. One of the first things to be affected in microgravity is the heart, which shrinks by as much as a quarter after just one week in orbit. Six weeks in bed leads to about as much atrophy of the heart as one week in space, suggesting that the atrophy is caused by both weightlessness and the concomitant reduction in exercise. Muscle tissues suffer the effects of weightlessness b - thighs and calves degenerate significantly when they are made redundant during space flight.

More concerning is the effect of cosmic radiation. Astronauts often passing through their brains. The ISS orbits sufficiently low for the from the worst effects of cosmic radiation. However, once in deep space on the way to the Moon or Mars, for example the dangers of lethal doses of radiation become an increasing worry and may even make long duration missions too dangerous.

CON: Massively expensive

Space settlement is extraordinarily expensive because launch vehicles are difficult to manufacture and operate. For example, the cost (as of 2004) to put an individual into orbit for a short time is about $30 million. To enable large scale space tourism by the middle class, this cost must be reduced to about $1,000-$10,000, a factor of 3 to 4 orders of magnitude.

In 2004, President Bush introduced a space exploration initiative that aimed to establish a base on the moon where costs were projected to be about $100 billion through 2020. President Obama, however, canceled the mission in 2010, because it was running behind schedule and was costing too much money. NASA's tab would have probably been much higher than $100 billion by the time it completed its mission and built a moon base, that a similar mission today could cost somewhere between $250 billion to $500 billion.

CON: Transporting a large number of people into space is not feasible

Sending a vast number people into space over such immense distances in a spaceship is seemingly impossible because a spaceship is too impoverished an environment to support humans for the time it would take. Instead of a spaceship, we would have to create some kind of space-traveling ark, big enough to support a community of humans and other plants and animals in a fully recycling ecological system. On the other hand it would have to be small enough to accelerate to a fairly radiation, and to breakdowns in the ark. Regarded from some angles, bigger is better, but the bigger the ark is, the proportionally more fuel it would have to carry along to slow itself down on reaching its destination. A smaller transport system is better, but will cause problems for resource metabolic flow and ecologic balance.

The most critical element needed for a trip to Mars is a vehicle that must safely sustain the crew for two to three years without resupply and embody all the functions of the current ISS and be a lot better. These requirements include an environmental control and life support system that monitors and controls partial pressures of oxygen, carbon dioxide, methane, hydrogen and water vapor. It must filter out particulates and microorganisms, provide thermal control and distribute air. This system must provide potable water and perform habitation functions, such as food preparation and production, hygiene, collection and stabilization of metabolic waste, laundry services and trash recycling. Waste management systems safeguard crew health, controlling odors and retarding the growth of microbes.

CON: Closed ecosystem may not be possible in space

Orbital space settlements will be located between the planets. While the sun will provide ample reliable energy, there are essentially no material resources in the immediate vicinity. All materials will need to be transported from earth, the moon, the asteroids, comets, or other planets and their moons. Thus, the space colony designer may assume ample energy but must conserve materials. Therefore, the life support system of the colony should recycle all materials. Since we would prefer a life support system consisting primarily of plants, animals, and single-celled organisms, the life support system may be described as an ecosystem. Because the space colony's ecosystem is does not import or export materials, we call it a closed ecosystem.

Perhaps the most ambitious and largest closed ecosystem humans have ever conceived is Biosphere 2. It was constructed as a materially closed system, meaning there was no exchange of atmosphere or water with the outside world, only sunlight. A $150M Biosphere 2 living experiment began in 1991, when eight men and women sealed themselves inside the complex with nothing but simple tools. The plan was to grow all of their own food and survive off the land for as long as possible. A mysterious decline in oxygen during the two-year trial run of the project endangered the lives of crew members and forced its leaders to inject huge amounts of oxygen, spoiling the idea of a self-contained ecosystem that was supposedly a way to learn about living in space.

CON: Explore the ocean first

We dream of putting humans on Mars, mining the moon, and looking for life on one of Jupiter's moons. But we forget sometimes that there are whole worlds left to explore here on Earth.

While Congress is eager to fund a $2 billion expedition to search for oceans beneath Europa, some 95% of Earth's oceans are still unexplored. Want a fallback plan for when that final environmental catastrophe occurs? Underwater or floating habitats may offer fewer - sustaining place to live when things cool down, warm up, dry out, or otherwise return to fitness for human habitation.

Exploring our oceans which are nearby and a potential source of discoveries could address concerns ranging from climate change, disease, defenses against natural catastrophes; including tsunamis and hurricanes, to creating industry jobs in Environmental Science and the interdisciplinary studies within.

TIMELINE

130 B.C: Hipparchus, a Greek astronomer, draws the first accurate map of the stars.

1869: magazine, is believed to be the first fictional account of a space colony.

1895: The space-station concept was noted from a more technical viewpoint in a science-fiction story by Konstantin Tsiolkovsky. In 1903 Tsiolkovsky expanded his description of the manned space station to include rotation for artificial gravity, use of solar energy, and even a space "greenhouse" with a closed ecological system

1918: The rocket scientist Robert Goddard lays out a plan for space

1929: Hermann Potocnik (1892-1929), also known as Herman Noordung, created the first detailed technical drawings of a space station.

Power was generated by collecting sunlight through the concave mirror in the center. This was one of three components of Noordung's space station. The other two were the observatory and the machine room, each connected to the habitat by an umbilical.

1948: Fritz Zwicky suggested use of extraterrestrial resources to reconstruct the entire universe, beginning with making the planets, satellites, and asteroids habitable by changing them intrinsically and changing their positions relative to the Sun

1958: National Aeronautics and Space Act President Eisenhower signs the National Aeronautics and Space Act, creating the National Aeronautics and Space Administration

1960: Freeman Dyson suggested an ultimate result of such planetary engineering; processing the materials of uninhabited planets and satellites to fashion many habitats in heliocentric orbits. A shell-like accumulation of myriads of such habitats in their orbits has been called a Dyson sphere.

1966: Treaty on Principles Governing the Activities of States in the Exploration and Use of Outer Space, including the Moon and Other Celestial Bodies ("Outer Space Treaty") provides that space exploration shall be carried out for the benefit of all countries, irrespective of their degree of development. It also seeks to maintain outer space as the province of all mankind, free for exploration and use by all States and not subject to national appropriation.

1969: Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walk on the moon.

1975 - 1976: In a series of studies at Stanford University, with the purpose of proposed Island One, a modified Bernal sphere with a diameter of 500m rotating at 1.9 RPM to produce a full Earth artificial gravity at the

1979: Agreement Governing the Activities of States on the Moon and Other Celestial Bodies ("The Moon Agreement") elaborates, in more specific terms, the principles relating to the Moon and other celestial bodies set out in the 1966 Outer Space Treaty. It also sets up the basis for the future regulation of the exploration and exploitation of natural resources found on such bodies.

1988: Space Settlement Act A bill to require the National Aeronautics and Space Administration to investigate and promote the development of human settlements in space and for other purposes.

1998: Construction begins on the International Space Station.

2012: Mars One announced its plan to establish a human settlement on Mars in 2023

2016: Space Exploration, Development, and Settlement Act of 2016 This bill requires NASA to encourage and support the development of permanent space settlements.

Expanding permanent human presence beyond low-Earth orbit in a way that enables human settlement and a thriving space economy shall be an objective of U.S. aeronautical and space activities.

NASA shall obtain, produce, and provide information related to all issues important for the development of a thriving space economy and the establishment of human space settlements.

SOURCES:  https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/11/getting- ready-to-move-to-mars/407845/  https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/100/hr4218  https://history.nasa.gov/spaceact.html  https://www.congress.gov/bill/114th-congress/house-bill/4752  https://settlement.arc.nasa.gov/75SummerStudy/Chapt.1.html  https://www.space.com/18262-noordungs-space-station-habitat- wheel.html  http://www.mars-one.com/news/press-releases/mars-one-will- settle-men-on-mars-in-2023  https://medium.com/space-anthropology/three-visions-of- human-space-settlement-cfd64a6fe7c6  http://www.un.org/events/unispace3/bginfo/gares.htm

ARTICLE 1

GETTING READY TO MOVE TO MARS home. BY: Alana Semuels SOURCE: The Atlantic https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/11/getting-ready- to-move-to-mars/407845/ November 2015

One day, when earth is destroyed by war or rising seas or a wayward asteroid, humanity will be extinguished - and along with it reality television, baseball stadiums, and thousands of recipes for guacamole, with and without peas.

Troutman, a senior technologist at NASA

That idea may sound far-fetched, but scientists are working hard to make it a reality. What would it take, and how might we use the engineers, entrepreneurs, and researchers to find out what our future in space will look like, in the near term and in centuries to come.

1. Fast Flights

Private aerospace companies are developing reusable spacecraft, which

for example, is on the brink of launching a reusable spaceship. Such vessels may soon make commercial spaceflight possible: Companies such as Virgin Galactic and Xcor are already accepting reservations for suborbital flights.

Such flights will be quick Xc Campen, a spokesman for Xcor, told me. Passengers can expect to be in zero gravity within five minutes of takeoff. After floating for another five

LearningLeaders – All Rights Reserved - 9/14/17 37 or so minutes, they will descend back to Earth, experiencing 30 seconds of teeth-gnashing 4G reentry about the same as on an intense roller- coaster ride before gliding to the ground. These flights will take off and land in the same spot, but within a few decades, spaceflight could become the fastest way to travel internationally making it possible to get from New York City to Tokyo in 90 minutes, Campen said.

2. Crowded Skies

As the cost of launching rockets comes down, more people will be able to participate in aerospace ventures. Already, universities and research groups can send up CubeSats satellites about the size of a bread box for as little as $100,000, a fraction of the tens of millions of dollars a satellite launch usually costs.

As more organizations send satellites into space, however, collisions become more li objects (satellites, used rockets, and debris) were orbiting Earth; now there are more than 20,000, according to Colonel John Giles, the commander of the Joint Space Operations Center, which identifies and tracks objects in space. A two-centimeter piece of debris can cause as much damage to a satellite in space as a speeding Jeep would on Earth, a radarlike system expected to be operational by 2018 to warn of impending collisions and beginning to plan for a time when adversaries might try to take out satellites that are crucial for GPS and communications.

3. Men on the Moon

Though no American has set foot on the moon since 1972, China recently landed a rover there and plans to eventually set up a permanent lunar base. In many ways, the moon is a good place for a colony it has water, and its soil could be mined for minerals and oxygen. The moon would also make a good jumping-off point for exploring the rest of the solar system. Its gravity is about one-seventh that of Earth, so launching spacecraft there would require much less energy.

Chris Impey, an astronomy professor at the University of Arizona and the author of Beyond: Our Future in Space, thinks we may one day build launches even easier. The idea sounds like something out of a Roald Dahl book: A giant tapered cable made of superstrong material would reach 35,000 miles into space. Solar-powered elevator cars would climb

4. Missions to Mars

Many scientists think Mars, which has large underground glaciers, could be our best bet for a permanent colony on another planet. But the

ake farming difficult. Solar radiation is another problem, and sending messages to Earth (via radio waves traveling at the speed of light) can take more than 20 minutes, depending on where the planets are in their orbits.

Still, scientists, architects, and engineers are brainstorming ways to overcome those obstacles. ZA Architects, a Ukrainian firm, has drawn up plans for structures made out of Martian soil; robots could be sent tubes underground caverns likely formed by volcanoes since the tunnels also provide protection from solar radiation and dust storms and would keep the temperature relatively constant. And nasa is testing an inflatable habitat that could be deployed on the surface of Mars.

If a group of humans were to live on Mars for centuries with little or no contact with Earth, they would likely evolve, eventually becoming a different species, Impey told me. Because Mars has less gravity, scientists believe humans would slowly grow taller and their

controlled diet might result in smal an untested proposition.

5. ... And Beyond

points, where an object is pulled neither to the moon nor to Earth. A space station orbiting one of these points could stay in place for a long time without floating away.

Eventually, Pat Troutman told me, one of those areas could serve as a harbor for ships going out farther into the universe, a sort of Rotterdam of the solar system. Resupplying and refueling would be costly from Earth, but, aided by robots, astronauts could pull a large boulder from

The dwarf planet Ceres, the largest object in the asteroid belt, may have big reserves of water, making it a potential base for more refueling, Troutman told me. And if Mars turns out to be uninhabitable, the Jovian system Jupiter and its moons might be a good alternative, he said. It,

The universe contains an almost incomprehensible number of stars our galaxy alone has hundreds of billions, and there exist hundreds of billions of galaxies and an even greater number of planets. Current be habitable or already inhabited, Sara Seager, a professor of planetary science and physics at MIT, told me. But our view of the galaxy could become a little clearer in 2018 with the launch of the $9 billion James Webb Space Telescope. It will sit 1 million miles from Earth, where it will search for gases that look out of place in the atmospheres of other planets, signaling vapors that might be produced by other life-forms.

Sending a probe is likely the only way to know for sure whether extraterrestrial species exist. But even traveling at one-tenth the speed of light, which some physicists believe might be possible, getting to the nearest star 25 trillion miles away would take about 43 years. (Getting to the moon at that speed, by comparison, would take about 13 seconds.)

Some physicists theorize that humans could one day get to far-off stars faster by warping space-time essentially pushing a spacecraft forward by rapidly expanding the empty space behind it. The theory is unproved, and the process would require massive amounts of energy. Still, many scientists remain optimistic about the possibility of a manned miss

ARTICLE 2

THE FUTURE OF SPACE COLONIZATION TERRAFORMING OR SPACE HABITATS? BY: Matt Williams SOURCE: Phys.org https://phys.org/news/2017-03-future-space-colonization- terraforming-habitats.html March 10, 2017

The idea of terraforming Mars aka "Earth's Twin" is a fascinating idea. Between melting the polar ice caps, slowly creating an atmosphere, and then engineering the environment to have foliage, rivers, and standing bodies of water, there's enough there to inspire just about anyone! But just how long would such an endeavor take, what would it cost us, and is it really an effective use of our time and energy?

Such were the questions dealt with by two papers presented at NASA's "Planetary Science Vision 2050 Workshop" last week (Mon. Feb. 27th Wed. Mar. 1st). The first, titled "The Terraforming Timeline", presents an abstract plan for turning the Red Planet into something green and habitable. The second, titled "Mars Terraforming the Wrong Way", rejects the idea of terraforming altogether and presents an alternative.

The former paper was produced by Aaron Berliner from the University of California, Berkeley, and Chris McKay from the Space Sciences Division at NASA Ames Research Center. In their paper, the two researchers present a timeline for the terraforming of Mars that includes a Warming Phase and an Oxygenation Phase, as well as all the necessary steps that would precede and follow.

As they state in their paper's Introduction:

"Terraforming Mars can be divided into two phases. The first phase is warming the planet from the present average surface temperature of - 60° C to a value close to Earth's average temperature to +15° C, and recreating a thick CO² atmosphere. This warming phase is relatively easy and quick, and could take ~100 years. The second phase is producing levels of O² in the atmosphere that would allow humans and other large mammals to breath normally. This oxygenation phase is

Before these can begin, Berliner and McKay acknowledge that certain "pre-terraforming" steps need to be taken. These include investigating Mars' environment to determine the levels of water on the surface, the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and in ice form in the polar regions, and the amount of nitrates in Martian soil. As they explain, all of these are key to the practicality of making a biosphere on Mars.

So far, the available evidence points towards all three elements existing in abundance on Mars. While most of Mars water is currently in the form of ice in the polar regions and polar caps, there is enough there to support a water cycle complete with clouds, rain, rivers and lakes. Meanwhile, some estimates claim that there is enough CO² in ice form in the polar regions to create an atmosphere equal to the sea level pressure on Earth.

Nitrogen is a also fundamental requirement for life and necessary constituent of a breathable atmosphere, and recent data by the Curiosity Rover indicate that nitrates account for ~0.03% by mass of the soil on Mars, which is encouraging for terraforming. On top of that, scientists will need to tackle certain ethical questions related to how terraforming could impact Mars.

For instance, if there is currently any life on Mars (or life that could be revived), this would present an undeniable ethical dilemma for human colonists especially if this life is related to life on Earth. As they explain:

"If Martian life is related to Earth life possibly due to meteorite exchange then the situation is familiar, and issues of what other types of Earth life to introduce and when must be addressed. However, if Martian life in unrelated to Earth life and clearly represents a second genesis of life, then significant technical and ethical issues are raised."

To break Phase One "The Warming Phase" down succinctly, the authors address an issue familiar to us today. Essentially, we are altering our own climate here on Earth by introducing CO² and "super greenhouse gases" to the atmosphere, which is increasing Earth's average temperature at a rate of many degrees centigrade per century. And whereas this has been unintentional on Earth, on Mars it could be re-purposed to deliberately warm the environment.

"The timescale for warming Mars after a focused effort of super greenhouse gas production is short, only 100 years or so," they claim. "If all the solar incident on Mars were to be captured with 100% efficiency, then Mars would warm to Earth-like temperatures in about 10 years. However, the efficiency of the greenhouse effect is plausibly about 10%, thus the time it would take to warm Mars would be ~100 years."

Once this thick atmosphere has been created, the next step involves converting it into something breathable for humans where O² levels would be the equivalent of about 13% of sea level air pressure here on Earth and CO² levels would be less than 1%. This phase, known as the "Oxygenation Phase", would take considerably longer. Once again, they turn towards a terrestrial example to show how such a process could work.

Here on Earth, they claim, the high levels of oxygen gas (O²) and low levels of CO² are due to photosynthesis. These reactions rely on the sun's energy to convert water and carbon dioxide into biomass which is represented by the equation H²O + CO² = CH²O + O². As they illustrate, this process would take between 100,000 and 170,000 years:

"If all the sunlight incident on Mars was harnessed with 100% efficiency to perform this chemical transformation it would take only 17 years to produce high levels of O². However, the likely efficiency of any process that can transform H²O and CO² into biomass and O² is much less than 100%. The only example we have of a process that can globally alter the CO² and O² of an entire plant is global biology. On Earth the efficiency of the global biosphere in using sunlight to produced biomass and O2 is

0.01%. Thus the timescale for producing an O² rich atmosphere on Mars is 10,000 x 17 years, or ~ 170,000 years."

However, they make allowances for synthetic biology and other biotechnologies, which they claim could increase the efficiency and reduce the timescale to a solid 100,000 years. In addition, if human beings could utilize natural photosynthesis (which has a comparatively high efficiency of 5%) over the entire planet i.e. planting foliage all over Mars then the timescale could be reduced to even a few centuries.

Finally, they outline the steps that need to be taken to get the ball rolling. These steps include adapting current and future robotic missions to assess Martian resources, mathematical and computer models that could examine the processes involved, an initiative to create synthetic organisms for Mars, a means to test terraforming techniques in a limited environment, and a planetary agreement that would establish restrictions and protections.

Quoting Kim Stanley Robinson, author of the Red Mars Trilogy, (the seminal work of science fiction about terraforming Mars) they issue a call to action. Addressing how long the process of terraforming Mars will take, they assert that we "might as well start now".

To this, Valeriy Yakovlev an astrophysicist and hydrogeologist from Laboratory of Water Quality in Kharkov, Ukraine offers a dissenting view. In his paper, "Mars Terraforming the Wrong Way", he makes the case for the creation of space biospheres in Low Earth Orbit that would rely on artificial gravity (like an O'Neill Cylinder) to allow humans to grow accustomed to life in space.

Looking to one of the biggest challenges of space colonization, Yakovlev points to how life on bodies like the Moon or Mars could be dangerous for human settlers. In addition to being vulnerable to solar and cosmic radiation, colonists would have to deal with substantially lower gravity. In the case of the Moon, this would be roughly 0.165 times that which humans experience here on Earth (aka. 1 g), whereas on Mars it would be roughly 0.376 times.

The long-term effects of this are not known, but it is clear it would include muscle degeneration and bone loss. Looking farther, it is entirely unclear what the effects would be for those children who were born in either environment. Addressing the ways in which these could be mitigated (which include medicine and centrifuges), Yakovlev points out how they would most likely be ineffective:

"The hope for the medicine development will not cancel the physical degradation of the muscles, bones and the whole organism. The rehabilitation in centrifuges is less expedient solution compared with the ship-biosphere where it is possible to provide a substantially constant imitation of the normal gravity and the protection complex from any harmful influences of the space environment. If the path of space exploration is to create a colony on Mars and furthermore the subsequent attempts to terraform the planet, it will lead to the unjustified loss of time and money and increase the known risks of human civilization."

In addition, he points to the challenges of creating the ideal environment for individuals living in space. Beyond simply creating better vehicles and developing the means to procure the necessary resources, there is also the need to create the ideal space environment for families. Essentially, this requires the development of housing that is optimal in terms of size, stability, and comfort.

In light of this, Yakolev presents what he considers to be the most likely prospects for humanity's exit to space between now and 2030. This will include the creation of the first space biospheres with artificial gravity, which will lead to key developments in terms of materials technology,

These habitats could be serviced thanks to the creation of robotic spacecraft that could harvest resources from nearby bodies such as the Moon and Near-Earth Objects (NEOs). This concept would not only remove the need for planetary protections i.e. worries about contaminating Mars' biosphere (assuming the presence of bacterial life), it would also allow human beings to become accustomed to space more gradually.

As Yakovlev told Universe Today via email, the advantages to space habitats can be broken down into four points:

1. This is a universal way of mastering the infinite spaces of the Cosmos, both in the Solar System and outside it. We do not need surfaces for installing houses, but resources that robots will deliver from planets and satellites.

2. The possibility of creating a habitat as close as possible to the earth's cradle allows one to escape from the inevitable physical degradation under a different gravity. It is easier to create a protective magnetic field.

3. The transfer between worlds and sources of resources will not be a dangerous expedition, but a normal life. Is it good for sailors without their families?

4. The probability of death or degradation of mankind as a result of the global catastrophe is significantly reduced, as the colonization of the planets includes reconnaissance, delivery of goods, shuttle transport of people and this is much longer than the construction of the biosphere in the Moon's orbit. Dr. Stephen William Hawking is right, a person does not have much time."

And with space habitats in place, some very crucial research could begin, including medical and biologic research which would involve the first children born in space. It would also facilitate the development of reliable space shuttles and resource extraction technologies, which will come in handy for the settlement of other bodies like the Moon, Mars, and even exoplanets.

Ultimately, Yakolev thinks that space biospheres could also be accomplished within a reasonable timeframe i.e. between 2030 and 2050 which is simply not possible with terraforming. Citing the

LearningLeaders – All Rights Reserved - 9/14/17 46 growing presence and power of the commercial space sector, Yakolev also believed a lot of the infrastructure that is necessary is already in place (or under development).

"After we overcome the inertia of thinking +20 years, the experimental biosphere (like the settlement in Antarctica with watches), in 50 years the first generation of children born in the Cosmos will grow and the result, terraforming will be canceled. And the subsequent conference will open the way for real exploration of the Cosmos. I'm proud to be on the same planet as Elon Reeve Musk. His missiles will be useful to lift designs for the first biosphere from the lunar factories. This is a close and direct way to conquer the Cosmos."

With NASA scientists and entrepreneurs like Elon Musk and Bas Landorp looking to colonize Mars in the near future, and other commercial aerospace companies developing LEO, the size and shape of humanity's future in space is difficult to predict. Perhaps we will jointly decide on a path that takes us to the Moon, Mars, and beyond. Perhaps we will see our best efforts directed into near-Earth space.

Or perhaps we will see ourselves going off in multiple directions at once. Whereas some groups will advocate creating space habitats in LEO (and later, elsewhere in the Solar System) that rely on artificial gravity and robotic spaceships mining asteroids for materials, others will focus on establishing outposts on planetary bodies, with the goal of turning them into "new Earths".

Between them, we can expect that humans will begin developing a degree of "space expertise" in this century, which will certainly come in handy when we start pushing the boundaries of exploration and colonization even further.

ARTICLE 3

ELON MUSK: A MILLION HUMANS COULD LIVE ON MARS BY THE 2060s The SpaceX plan for building a Mars settlement includes refueling in orbit, a fleet of passenger ships, and the biggest rocket ever made. BY: Nadia Drake SOURCE: National Geographic http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2016/09/elon-musk-spacex- exploring-mars-planets-space-science/ September 27, 2016

In perhaps the most eagerly anticipated aerospace announcement of the year, SpaceX founder Elon Musk has revealed his grand plan for establishing a human settlement on Mars.

between Earth and our smaller, redder neighbor sometime within the next decade or so. And not too long after that perhaps 40 or a hundred years later, Mars could be home to a self-sustaining colony of a million people.

s, this is about becoming minimizing existential risk and having a tremendous sense of

bitious, and that's something he readily acknowledges.

pretend that it was going to be easy and that they were going to do it chnologist

And for those wondering whether we should go at all, the reason for Musk making Mars an imperative is simple.

ally going to bifurcate along one

interview fo that premieres worldwide on November 14.

MARS FLEET

humans could begin flying to Mars by the mid-2020s. And he thinks the plan for getting there will go something like this - SpaceX Interplanetary Transport System. (animation of Elon Musk's vision for how to send humans to Mars)

It starts with a really big rocket, something at least 200 feet tall when fully assembled. In a simulation of what SpaceX calls its Interplanetary Transport System, a spacecraft loaded with astronauts will launch on top of a 39-foot-wide booster that produces a whopping 28 million pounds of thrust. Using 42 Raptor engines, the booster will accelerate the assemblage to 5,374 miles an hour.

Over V, the biggest rocket built to date, which carried the Apollo missions to the moon. Perhaps not coincidentally, the SpaceX rocket would launch from the same pad, 39A, at Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida.

The rocket would deliver the crew capsule to orbit around Earth, then the booster would steer itself toward a soft landing back at the launch pad, a feat that SpaceX rocket boosters have been doing for almost a year now. Next, the booster would pick up a fuel tanker and carry that into orbit, where it would fuel the spaceship for its journey to Mars.

Once en route, that spaceship would deploy solar panels to harvest energy from the sun and conserve valuable propellant for what promises to be an exciting landing on the Red Planet.

As Musk envisions it, fleets of these crew-carrying capsules will remain in Earth orbit until a favorable planetary alignment brings the two planets close together something that happens every 26 months.

Musk says.

The key to his plan is reusing the various spaceships as much as ny way to have a self-sustaining

Musk anticipates being able to use each rocket booster a thousand times, each tanker a hundred times, and each spaceship 12 times. At the beginning, he imagines that maybe a hundred humans would be hitching a ride on each ship, with that number gradually increasing to more than 200.

By his calculations, then, putting a million people on Mars could take anywhere from 40 to a hundred years after the first ship launches.

And, no, it would not necessarily be a one- sk says.

COLONIZING MARS

After landing a few cargo-carrying spacecraft without people on Mars, starting with the Red Dragon capsule in 2018, Musk says the human phase of colonization could begin.

For sure, landing a heavy craft on a planet with a thin atmosphere will to the surface, and at 2,000 pounds, that payload weighed just a developing supersonic retrorockets that can gradually and gently lower a much heavier spacecraft to the Martian surface, using his reusable Falcon 9 boosters as a model.

Martian atmosphere at supersonic speeds will test even the most heat- that can withstand a heated entry and propulsive landing and then be refueled and sent back to Earth so it can start over again.

The first journeys would primarily serve the purpose of delivering supplies and establishing a propellant depot on the Martian surface, a fuel reservoir that could be tapped into for return trips to Earth. After that depot is set up and cargo delivered to the surface, the fun can (sort of) begin. Early human settlers will need to be good at digging beneath the surface and dredging up buried ice, which will supply precious

As such, the earliest interplanetary spaceships would probably stay on Mars, and they would be carrying mostly cargo, fuel, and a small crew:

While there will undoubtedly be intense competition and lots of fanfare over the first few seats on a Mars-bound mission, Musk worries that too much emphasis will be placed on those early bootprints.

xt, what really matters is being able to send a large number of people, like tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands of people, and ultimately millions of tons of few trips.

In short, his vision for establishing a settlement on Mars is more an endurance sport than a sprint.

ROCKET MAN

But Musk is used to that. In 2001, he founded SpaceX with one goal in mind: put humans on Mars. At the time, he recalls, he found himself thinking about why, after the successful Apollo missions to the moon, or reached very far into space at all.

should have had a base on the moon, and we should have had space

Instead, resources devoted to space exploration were scarce, and sk that a private endeavor could tolerate. With an accumulated fortune from his time at Paypal, Musk founded a company dedicated to building rockets and vastly improving the vehicles that form the foundation of an interplanetary journey.

Contracts with private clients and the U.S. government followed, and now SpaceX is working on a version of its Dragon capsule that can send humans to the International Space Station.

Over the years, the company has had many high-profile successes including landing the first suborbital reusable rocket stages on land and at sea and its share of failures, with rockets exploding on the launch pad or en route to orbit.

humans on Mars is a completely different challenge from sending just a few casual trips.

ver

FUNDING MUSKVILLE

-sustaining habitat for humans in the solar system is grand and lofty, but by no means unique. What and out from centuries of science fiction is that he might actually be able to make it happen if he can bring costs down to his ideal levels.

gs like supersonic retrograde the IAC.

"I think we can quibble over the numbers and the dollars and the on the international stage today and just laid it all out on the line," Braun adds. "I found it refreshing."

But for Mars to be a viable destination, Musk says the cost of the trip needs to come down to about $200,000, or the average price of a house in the Unit current cost estimates.

to Howard that some sort of synergistic relationship between governments and private industry will be crucial.

dedicated to the cause, and then get as much as possible in the way of government resources, so that if one of those funding sources

But combining different management styles, abilities to assume risk, sources of funding, and working with old institutional road maps will be a challenge, to say the least.

John Logsdon, professor emeritus at The George Washington

For instance, reaching Mars in the 2020s will require a bit of a kick in the pants for SpaceX on the technology front. The massive rocket featured in the simulation is much more powerful than anything in the gargantuan stepping stone known as the Falcon Heavy, has already been delayed for years.

These types of delays are one of the reasons why space policy experts murky at best.

Logsdon s

If humans do manage to touch down on Mars, Musk thinks the momentum from such an achievement will propel additional developments, just as early explorers searching for glory, gold, and spices drove improvements in ship technology and global industry.

Ultimately, Musk believes this kind of endeavor will bring Mars out of the realm of science fiction and transform it from a world fraught with difficulty and danger to one that humans might actually enjoy living on including Musk.

ARTICLE 4

WE COULD BE LIVING ON THE MOON BY 2022 : NASA CLAIMS CHEAP $10 BILLION LUNAR BASE WILL BE READY FOR HUMANS IN JUST SIX YEARS BY: Richard Gray SOURCE: Daily Mail http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-3507665/Could-living- moon-2022-Nasa-scientists-reveal-plans-build-lunar-base-six-years-10- billion.html March 24, 2016

It is widely regarded as one of the greatest human achievements ever made, but putting a man on the moon was no cheap undertaking.

The Apollo missions to send just 12 men onto the dusty lunar surface cost £25 billion (£17 billion) estimated to be worth around $170 billion (£120 billion) in modern monetary value.

But it appears we may be able to send humans back to our rocky satellite and set up a permanent base where they could live for just a fraction of the cost.

A group of NASA scientists has calculated it may be possible to return to the surface of the moon within the next five to seven years for a total cost of just $10 billion (£6.4 billion).

Indeed, they say it may be possible to build a base that can support up to 10 astronauts for more than a year by 2022 as many of the technologies needed already exist today.

While the US currently has no firm plans to return to Mars, the European Space Agency, Russia and China have all expressed interest in building a base there.

This has led to fears that Nasa risks being left behind in a new era of space exploration by focusing its efforts on a mission to an asteroid before going on to Mars.

But many believe establishing a base on the moon is an essential step towards future manned missions to the red planet.

Writing in a special edition of the journal New Space, Chris McKay, an astrobiologist at Nasa's Ames Research Centre in California, along with John Cumbers, a synthetic biologist at Nasa, and Alexandra Hall who also works at Nasa Ames, said: 'For a variety of very good reasons, it is time to go back to this moon, this time to stay, and funding is no longer the main hurdle.'

In a series of papers, a number of spaceflight experts argue the costs of building a lunar base are much lower than expected and that there is substantial commercial value there.

They said a lunar base could double as a commercial mining base to allow the moon's resources to be exploited.

Furthermore, competition between private space companies could help to reduce the costs further and open up new business opportunities with a presence of a manned base on the moon.

Dr McKay and his colleagues said: 'When the cost of a short stay on the moon drops into the tens of millions of dollars per person, it starts to tap into the same market that has given us private spaceflight participants to the International Space Station.

'The presence of a government base is also the presence of a customer on the moon - a factor that can stimulate the development of services, supplies, and technology to the benefit of all.'

The researchers hope their papers can persuade Nasa to invest some of its annual $19 billion budget on sending humans back to the moon.

It comes less than a year after a study by the National Space Society and the Space Frontier Foundation estimated it would cost $10 billion for two competing companies to send astronauts back to the Moon in cooperation with Nasa.

It concluded a permanent lunar base could be established for around $38 billion (£24 billion).

But a paper by Lynn Harper, lead of astrobiology advanced missions and technologies at Nasa Ames Research Centre's Space Portal, along with colleagues from the University of Notre Dame in Indiana, said the technology to support human life on the moon already exists.

Self-driving cars and green toilet technology being developed on Earth could be adapted while many technologies on the International Space Station could also be used on the moon.

They say sites for the lunar base could be selected by sending survey robots to the moon's surface to characterise the terrain, resources and any hazards that may exist.

Astronauts could then initially be landed for a few days and then weeks to begin construction of a lunar base before it can then be occupied by 10 people.

This could then be expanded to encompass a settlement of 100 people within a decade.

They say water and air recycling systems that provide much of the life support on the International Space Station could be employed to make this base habitable.

They suggest food and water could initially flown from Earth, but this would be expensive.

Instead they say vertical farming methods, which farm tilapia fish in aquaponic systems could be used. The waste produced by them would then be used to provide nutrients for plants.

They warn, however, that water ice in craters close to the lunar poles may prove to be challenging as it may need processing before it can be used.

But they conclude that perhaps the most important resource available on the moon will be near continuous sunlight.

They said: 'While more efficient technologies would certainly benefit the settlement, we have access to sufficient life-support technologies to support implementation of the first human settlement on the moon today.'

The special edition of New Space was published following a workshop held in 2014 that aimed to develop low-cost solutions to allow humans to settle on the moon.

A third paper claims many of the costs of building a lunar base could be offset by establishing industrial activities on the moon.

Alexandra Hall and Charles Miller from NexGen Space LLC in Arlington, Virginia, argue a base of four private sector astronauts could produce 200 metric tonnes of propellant per year for Nasa.

They said: 'A permanent commercial lunar base might substantially pay for its operations by exporting propellant to lunar orbit for sale to NASA and others to send humans to Mars, thus enabling the economic development of the moon at a small marginal cost.'

To build structures on the moon, the Dennis Wingo, from spacecraft manufacturer SkyCorp, said materials from meteors and the lunar soil could be used as construction materials.

New 3D printing technologies could also be used to robotically create structures using the lunar soil while broken components could also be replaced by printing, saving the need to launch spares to the moon.

Alternatively inflatable habitats, like those being developed by Bigelow Aerospace, could also be used on the Moon to provide shelter to astronauts.

Mr Wingo said the best possible site for the first lunar base could be a Peary Crater close to the Moon's north pole.

The area is extremely flat while it also receives considerable amounts of sunlight and may have abundant levels of minerals.

He said: 'The moon, perhaps at Peary Crater, is the first significant development step, and this industrial development will enable human civilization to expand to Mars, and beyond.'

ARTICLE 5

5 UNDENIABLE REASONS HUMANS NEED TO COLONIZE MARS

BY: Jessica Orwig SOURCE: Business Insider http://www.businessinsider.com/5-undeniable-reasons-why-humans- should-go-to-mars-2015-4 April 21, 2015

Establishing a permanent colony of humans on Mars is not an option. It's a necessity.

At least, that's what some of the most innovative, intelligent minds of our age Buzz Aldrin, Stephen Hawking, Elon Musk, Bill Nye, and Neil deGrasse Tyson are saying.

Of course, it's extremely difficult to foresee how manned missions to Mars that would cost hundreds of billions of dollars each, could benefit mankind. It's easier to imagine how that kind of money could immediately help in the fight against cancer or world hunger. That's because humans tend to be short-sighted. We're focused on what's happening tomorrow instead of 100 years from now.

"If the human race is to continue for another million years, we will have to boldly go where no one has gone before," Hawking said in 2008 at a lecture series for NASA's 50th anniversary.

That brings us to the first reason humans must colonize Mars:

1. Ensuring the survival of our species

The only home humans have ever known is Earth. But history shows that surviving as a species on this tiny blue dot in the vacuum of space is tough and by no means guaranteed.

The dinosaurs are a classic example: They roamed the planet for 165 million years, but the only trace of them today are their fossilized remains. A colossal asteroid wiped them out.

Putting humans on more than one planet would better ensure our existence thousands if not millions of years from now.

"Humans need to be a multiplanet species," Musk recently told astronomer and Slate science blogger Phil Plait.

Musk founded the space transport company SpaceX to help make this happen.

Mars is an ideal target because it has a day about the same length as Earth's and water ice on its surface. Moreover, it's the best available option: Venus and Mercury are too hot, and the Moon has no atmosphere to protect residents from destructive meteor impacts.

2. Discovering life on Mars

Nye, the CEO of The Planetary Society, said during an episode of StarTalk Radio in March that humanity should focus on sending humans instead of robots to Mars because humans could make discoveries 10,000 times as fast as the best spacecraft explorers we have today. Though he was hesitant to say humans should live on Mars, he agreed there were many more discoveries to be made there.

One monumental discovery scientists could make is determining whether life currently exists on Mars. If we're going to do that, we'll most likely have to dig much deeper than NASA's rovers can. The theory there is that life was spawned not from the swamps on adolescent Earth, but from watery chasms on Mars.

The Mars life theory suggests that rocks rich with microorganisms could have been ejected off the planet's surface from a powerful impact, eventually making their way through space to Earth. It's not a stretch to imagine, because Martian rocks can be found on Earth. None of those, however, have shown signs of life.

"You cannot rule out the fact that a Mars rock with life in it landing on the Earth kicked off terrestrial life, and you can only really test that by finding life on Mars," Christopher Impey, a British astronomer and author of over a dozen books in astronomy and popular science, told Business Insider.

3. Improving the quality of life on Earth

"Only by pushing mankind to its limits, to the bottoms of the ocean and into space, will we make discoveries in science and technology that can be adapted to improve life on Earth."

British doctor Alexander Kumar wrote that in a 2012 article for BBC News where he explored the pros and cons of sending humans to Mars.

At the time, Kumar was living in the most Mars-like place on Earth, Antarctica, to test how he adapted to the extreme conditions both physiologically and psychologically. To better understand his poignant remark, let's look at an example:

During its first three years in space, NASA's prized Hubble Space Telescope snapped blurry pictures because of a flaw in its engineering. The problem was fixed in 1993, but to try to make use of the blurry images during those initial years, astronomers developed a computer algorithm to better extract information from the images.

It turns out the algorithm was eventually shared with a medical doctor who applied it to the X-ray images he was taking to detect breast cancer. The algorithm did a better job at detecting early stages of breast cancer than the conventional method, which at the time was the naked eye.

"You can't script that. That happens all the time this cross pollination of fields, innovation in one, stimulating revolutionary changes in another," Tyson, the StarTalk radio host, explained during an interview with Fareed Zakaria in 2012.

It's impossible to predict how cutting-edge technologies used to develop manned missions to Mars and habitats on Mars will benefit other fields like medicine or agriculture. But we'll figure that out only by "pushing humankind to its limits" and boldy going where we've never been before.

4. Growing as a species

Another reason we should go to Mars, according to Tyson, is to inspire the next generation of space explorers. When asked in 2013 whether we should go to Mars, he answered:

"Yes, if it galvanizes an entire generation of students in the educational pipeline to want to become scientists, engineers, technologists, and mathematicians," he said. "The next generation of astronauts to land on Mars are in middle school now."

Humanity's aspirations to explore space are what drive us toward more advanced technological innovations that will undoubtedly benefit mankind in one way or another.

"Space is like a proxy for a lot of what else goes on in society, including your urge to innovate," Tyson said during his interview with Zakaria. He added: "There's nothing that drives ambitions the way NASA does."

5. Demonstrating political and economic leadership

At a February 24 hearing, Aldrin told the US Senate's Subcommittee on Space, Science and Competitiveness that getting to Mars was a necessity not only for science, but also for policy.

"In my opinion, there is no more convincing way to demonstrate American leadership for the remainder of this century than to commit to a permanent presence on Mars," he said.

If Americans do not go to Mars, someone else will. And that spells political and economic benefit for whoever succeeds.

"If you lose your space edge," Tyson said during his interview with Zakaria, "my deep concern is that you lose everything else about society that enables you to compete economically."

ARTICLE 6

WHY SPACE IS THE IMPOSSIBLE FRONTIER BY: Theunis Piersma SOURCE: New Scientist https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20827860-100-why-space-is- the-impossible-frontier/ November 10, 2010

At a news conference before his first experience of weightlessness in 2007, theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking said that he hoped his zero-gravity flight would encourage public interest in space exploration. He argued that with an ever-increasing risk of wiping ourselves out on Earth, humans would need to colonise space.

Hawking has since argued that we must do this within two centuries or else face extinction. He was no doubt encouraged by US President send people to Mars by 2030.

Hawking, Obama and other proponents of long-term space travel are making a grave error. Humans cannot leave Earth for the several years that it takes to travel to Mars and back, for the simple reason that our biology is intimately connected to Earth.

To function properly, we need gravity. Without it, the environment is less demanding on the human body in several ways, and this shows upon the return to Earth. Remember the sight of weakened astronauts emerging after the Apollo missions? That is as nothing compared with what would happen to astronauts returning from Mars.

One of the first things to be affected is the heart, which shrinks by as much as a quarter after just one week in. Heart atrophy leads to decreases in blood pressure and the amount of blood pushed out by the heart. In this way heart atrophy leads to reduced exercise capacity. Astronauts returning to Earth after several months in the International Space Station experience dizziness and blackouts because blood does not reach their brains in sufficient quantities.

Six weeks in bed leads to about as much atrophy of the heart as one week in space, suggesting that the atrophy is caused by both weightlessness and the concomitant reduction in exercise.

Other muscle tissue suffers too. The effects of weightlessness on the muscles of the limbs are easy to verify experimentally. Because they - calves degenerate significantly when they are made redundant during space flight.

Despite the best attempts to give replacement exercise to crew members on the International Space Station, after six months they had still lost 13 per cent of their calf muscle volume and 32 per cent of the maximum power that their leg muscles could deliver (Journal of Applied Physiology, vol 106, p 1159).

Various metabolic changes also occur, including a decreased capacity for fat oxidation, which can lead to the build-up of fat in atrophied muscle. Space travellers also suffer deterioration of immune function both during and after their missions (Aviation, Space, and Environmental Medicine, vol 79, p 835).

Arguably the most fearsome effect on bodies is bone loss (The Lancet, vol 355, p 1569). Although the hardness and strength of bone, and the relative ease with which it fossilises, give it an appearance of permanence, bone is actually a living and remarkably flexible tissue. In the late 19th century, the German anatomist Julius Wolff discovered that bones adjust to the loads that they are placed under. A decrease in load leads to the loss of bone material, while an increase leads to thicker bone.

It is no surprise, then, that in the microgravity of space bones demineralise, especially those which normally bear the greatest load. Cosmonauts who spent half a year in space lost up to a quarter of the material in their shin bones, despite intensive exercise (The Lancet, vol 355, p 1607). Although experiments on chicken embryos on the International Space Station have established that bone formation does continue in microgravity, formation rates are overtaken by bone loss.

What is of greatest concern here is that, unlike muscle loss which levels off with time, bone loss seems to continue at a steady rate of 1 to 2 per cent for every month of weightlessness. During a three-year mission to Mars, space travellers could lose around 50 per cent of their bone material, which would make it extremely difficult to return to Earth and its gravitational forces. Bone loss during space travel certainly brings

Bone loss is not permanent. Within six months of their return to Earth, those cosmonauts who spent half a year in space did show partial recovery of bone mass. However, even after a year of recovery, men who had been experimentally exposed to three months of total bed rest had not fully regained all the lost bone, though their calf muscles had recovered much earlier (Bone, vol 44, p 214).

Space agencies will have to become very creative in addressing the issue of bone loss during flights to Mars. There are concepts in development for spacecraft with artificial gravity, but nobody even knows what gravitational force is needed to avoid the problems. So far, boneless creatures such as jellyfish are much more likely than people to be able to return safely to Earth after multi-year space trips. For humans, gravity is a Mars bar.

The impossibility of an escape to space is just one of many examples of how our bodies, and those of our fellow organisms, are inseparable from the environments in which we live. In our futuristic ambitions we should not forget that our minds and bodies are connected to Earth as by an umbilical cord.

ARTICLE 7

THE MARTIANS ARE COMING - How settling Mars could create a new human species. BY: Scott Solomon SOURCE: Nautilus http://nautil.us/issue/41/selection/the-martians-are-comingand-theyre- human October 27, 2016

In the upcoming Hollywood movie, The Space Between Us, a child is born to an American astronaut on Mars. The mother dies in childbirth, but the baby survives, and is raised by a small colony of astronauts on Mars. In the trailer, a somber voice-over intones the central conceit of

if we choose to leave Earth, will our descendants ever be able to return?

red planet in 30 years, Elon Musk in 10 first perhaps, just to visit, but eventually, to create self-sustaining Martian cities. In a September 2016 eventual extinction event. The alternative is to become a spacefaring civilization, and a multi-

If and when we do reach Mars, the conditions will be unlike anything on Earth. Adjusting to the weaker gravity, intense radiation, and a total lack of microbial life would cause generations of Martian colonists to undergo some of the most dramatic evolutionary changes in the human lineage since we started walking upright and developed our oversized brains.

The first evolutionary changes might be quick and subtle. Because the number of initial colonists would inevitably be small spaceship would carry 100 people the Martian colonists would experience a phenomenon known as the founder effect. The founder effect occurs any time a new environment, like a volcanic island freshly burst forth from the ocean, is colonized by new arrivals. The few individuals that establish themselves in the new place, however they got there, are not likely to be representative of the larger population from

If we sent 100 colonists to Mars, the chances that they would accurately represent all humans on Earth in terms of height, hair color, propensity to develop diabetes or breast cancer, ability to wiggle their ears, or any number of other genetic factors, is extremely low. Whatever traits happen to be present in the original colonists would be passed on to their children and so, even without natural selection, the growing Martian colony would become somewhat distinct from the people back on Earth. So, for example, if all the astronauts we sent to Mars were redheaded, Mars would be the red planet in more ways than one.

The founder effect is, of course, not unique to Mars or interplanetary travel. It could happen in any isolated or selective population. But as the generations on Mars accrued, more pronounced and distinctive changes could take place. With just one-third the gravity of Earth, pregnancy and childbirth might be much more difficult on Mars. A study on embryonic development in mice found that fewer mouse mothers gave birth to live pups from embryos formed under simulated microgravity than at normal gravity. Interestingly, fertilization performed in vitro did not appear to be affected by decreased gravity, but some of the resulting embryos did not develop as well as embryos created under normal gravity. The reasons for this are not yet clear but the results suggest that mammals, including humans, might experience more complications during pregnancy on Mars than on Earth. This would have the potential to present a new evolutionary selection pressure not found on Earth.

The low gravity would also cause bone mass to decline at a rate of about 1 to 2 percent per month. Settlers might lose half of their bone mass after two or three years perhaps even faster for pregnant women, since gestation requires large amounts of calcium. Bone density loss makes people more prone to injuries, especially fractures of the hip and spine. Because such injuries could be devastating on Mars, people who naturally have higher bone density more similar to ancestral humans than to modern humans might be more likely to survive and pass on their genes. Therefore, after many generations, Martian people could end up with naturally thicker bones than their forebears, lending them a more robust appearance.

Martian settlers will also need to adjust to high levels of radiation. Without a magnetosphere or atmosphere to protect it, Mars is bombarded by high-energy cosmic rays, intense ultraviolet radiation, and solar particles. After 500 days, a person on the surface of Mars

LearningLeaders – All Rights Reserved - 9/14/17 66 would be exposed to a dose of radiation equivalent to six times the maximum annual amount allowed for employees of the United States Department of Energy. A limited amount of protection could come from spacesuits or from building living quarters underground, but doubtless crops, erecting buildings, and so on.

Radiation damages DNA, creating the sort of mutations that lead to cancer. While this might mean higher cancer rates for Martian settlers, it could also accelerate the evolutionary process by jump-starting the creation of random genetic variation, including traits that are beneficial in the Martian environment.

Those genetic variations could include ways to protect our bodies from radiation damage. On Earth, our skin produces melanin, a pigment that acts as a natural sunscreen. Skin pigmentation has evolved in human populations in a balancing act between the danger of excess radiation, which disrupts the production of DNA, and the danger of too little radiation, which prevents bones from properly forming. Many other organisms use melanin to protect themselves from radiation, including dark colored fungi found growing at the site of the nuclear meltdown at Chernobyl. The form of melanin that provides the most protection from solar radiation in humans is eumelanin, which creates dark brown or black skin. Humans with much more eumelanin in their skin may better tolerate the extreme radiation on Mars, leading to Martians with darker skin than anyone on Earth.

On the other hand, the intense radiation on Mars might favor the evolution of new skin pigments. Carotenoids the orange pigments that give carrots their color are produced by many plants and microorganisms to protect against solar radiation. Although many animals have carotenoids, most get them from their diet. One exception is the pea aphid, a small insect that is usually green, but is in some cases red because of carotenoids it produces. Genome analyses revealed that pea aphids acquired the genes to make carotenoids from a fungus, suggesting that in rare circumstances animals can borrow the machinery for pigment production from other organisms. The harsh conditions on Mars might make such unlikely events more probable if the outcome say, bright orange skin was very beneficial.

Recent studies suggest that high levels of radiation also affect the brain, altering spatial memory and risk-taking behavior of some, but not all, mice and rats. Such impairments could pose a serious threat to the success of a Martian colony. Yet if the same variation in sensitivity to radiation seen in rodents exists among humans settling on Mars, natural

LearningLeaders – All Rights Reserved - 9/14/17 67 selection would favor those individuals who are less affected. Later generations could evolve resistance to the harmful effects of radiation on the brain, making them better adapted to the Martian environment and more capable of further space exploration, perhaps even to more distant habitable planets like Proxima b.

T bacteria and other tiny organisms that grow in and on our bodies and profoundly affect us. These microbes are acquired throughout our lives, beginning with those that we pick up from our mothers during birth. Early childhood is an important time for developing a healthy microbiome, as children acquire additional microbes from their parents, siblings, friends, and environment. Children on Mars would not be exposed to the full plethora of microbes found here on Earth, and while scientists still hope to find microbial life on

The loss of beneficial microbes could lead to adverse physical and already seen a decline in microbial diversity in the microbiomes of people living in urban environments, where we do our best to sterilize our bodies and our environments to prevent the exchange of disease. In many ways this has been a good thing once-common diseases like smallpox have been eliminated thanks to the development of vaccines, and improvements in sanitation and the availability of antibiotics have confined other diseases to particular regions. But an unintended consequence of our war on microbes has been the persecution of microbial species that are beneficial to our health, including some that have been with us for millennia and are now threatened with extinction.

Mars might be a step too far for these microbes, and losing them altogether would almost certainly be detrimental. People with low diversity in their microbiomes are more likely to develop obesity, Type I diabetes, and possibly other conditions, including allergies, asthma, Celiac disease, and certain cancers. Experiments in which mice and rabbits are raised in sterile environments that prevent them from developing any microbiome at all provide a grim outlook. Their immune and nervous systems do not develop properly, and their ability to recover nutrients from their food becomes compromised.

The microbes that live in our guts play important roles in digestion, so the diets of Martian settlers will need to be modified if their microbiomes are entirely lost. Scientists could create specifically engineered foods that include only simple sugars, proteins, and fats so that they are easier to digest without microbial assistance. On the other hand, should some beneficial microbes accompany us to Mars, the

LearningLeaders – All Rights Reserved - 9/14/17 68 microbes themselves may evolve along with us. Because of their short generation times some bacterial species reproduce every 30 minutes microbes evolve much faster than humans, allowing them to adapt quickly to changing environments. Radiation would affect them, too, increasing their mutation rate and further accelerating their evolution.

The same processes would happen to any plants or animals we brought along with us, and to the microbes living in and on these species. In other words, establishing a Martian colony would sow the seeds of new type of ecosystem. Terraforming Mars deliberately altering the Martian environment to make it more Earth-like could lead to the evolution of ecosystems unlike anything we have on Earth.

The good news is that infectious diseases might not be a problem on Mars. As is true for our microbiome, the only viruses, pathogenic bacteria, and other disease-causing microorganisms would likely be the ones we bring with us. The long trip from Earth to Mars could serve as a quarantine, limiting the chances of accidentally introducing an infectious disease to Mars. The majority of infectious diseases that affect humans are the result of infections we acquired from animals, particularly birds and mammals. Many, like anthrax and rabies, come from domestic animals like sheep, cattle, and dogs. Others, like Lyme disease, largely come from wild animals. On Earth we are constantly faced with new diseases, like Ebola and Zika, in part because these microbes regularly jump from infecting animals to infecting humans. We could avoid this problem on Mars by not bringing any birds or mammals, opting instead for insect livestock, which are less likely to carry infections that can jump to human hosts (and require less feed).

On the other hand, living without the threat of infectious disease could cause the immune system of Martian colonists to atrophy, becoming a vestige like the appendix, or perhaps disappearing entirely. This atrophy could be driven by more than the lack of disease: Astronauts often experience immune system suppression during spaceflight, which has largely been attributed to the stress of takeoff and landing and of being in a confined space, but some evidence suggests that microgravity plays a role as well.

Immune-compromised Martians would face life-threatening illness if they were to return to Earth, and people from Earth would risk wiping out the entire Martian colony if they brought any diseases with them. The risks associated with carrying a disease without showing symptoms, as commonly happens with sexually transmitted infections such as HIV or chlamydia, would be great. Close personal contact like sex between Earthlings and Martians would be very risky.

Take this all together no sex between Earthlings and Martians, founder effects, changes to the microbiome, natural selection in the harsh Martian environment, and low gravity and the message is clear: Settling Mars could eventually lead to the evolution of an entirely new human species. This happens routinely to animals and plants isolated on islands islands can take thousands of years, the accelerated mutation rate on Mars and the stark contrasts between conditions on Mars and Earth, would likely speed up the process. In just a few hundred generations perhaps as little as 6,000 years a new type of human might emerge.

In 1950, Ray Bradbury published a series of linked short stories called had been long ago colonized by humans, who have subsequently lost all interest in and connection to Earth. The Martians have brown skin and well, if there are people living on

rescient. Should some disaster occur on Earth, colonizing Mars might be necessary for our long-term survival. Yet the strategy meant to preserve our species might ultimately change us forever.

ARTICLE 8

WHAT WILL IT TAKE FOR HUMANS TO COLONIZE THE MILKY WAY? It's a common theme in science fiction, but migrating to planets beyond our solar system will be a lot more complicated and difficult than you might imagine BY: Kim Stanley Robinson SOURCE: Scientific American https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/what-will-it-take-for- humans-to-colonize-the-milky-way1/ January 13, 2016

The idea that humans will eventually travel to and inhabit other parts of our galaxy was well expressed by the early Russian rocket scientist been a staple of science fiction, and thus become part of a consensus the century since this vision was proposed, things we have learned about the universe and ourselves combine to suggest that moving out

The problem that tends to underlie all the other problems with the idea is the sheer size of the universe, which was not known when people first imagined we would go to the stars. Tau Ceti, one of the closest stars to us at around 12 light-years away, is 100 billion times farther from Earth than our moon. A quantitative difference that large turns into a distances in a spaceship, because a spaceship is too impoverished an environment to support humans for the time it would take, which is on the order of centuries. Instead of a spaceship, we would have to create some kind of space-traveling ark, big enough to support a community of humans and other plants and animals in a fully recycling ecological system.

On the other hand it would have to be small enough to accelerate to a radiation, and to breakdowns in the ark. Regarded from some angles bigger is better, but the bigger the ark is, the proportionally more fuel it would have to carry along to slow itself down on reaching its

and others, smaller is better, but smallness creates problems for resource metabolic flow and ecologic balance. Island biogeography suggests the kinds of problems that would result from this than that of any island on Earth. The design imperatives for bigness and smallness may cross each other, leaving any viable craft in a non- existent middle.

The biological problems that could result from the radical miniaturization, simplification and isolation of an ark, no matter what size it is, now must include possible impacts on our microbiomes. We are not autonomous units; about eighty percent of the DNA in our bodies is not human DNA, but the DNA of a vast array of smaller creatures. That array of living beings has to function in a dynamic balance for us to be healthy, and the entire complex system co-evolved

-up, atmosphere, insolation, and bacterial load. Traveling to the stars means leaving all these influences, and trying to replace them artificially. What the viable parameters are on the replacements would be impossible to be sure of in advance, as the situation is too complex to model. Any starfaring ark would therefore be an experiment, its inhabitants lab animals. The first generation of the humans aboard might have volunteered to be experimental subjects, but their descendants would not have. These generations of descendants would be born into a set of rooms a trillion times smaller than Earth, with no chance of escape.

In this radically diminished enviroment, rules would have to be enforced to keep all aspects of the experiment functioning. Reproduction would not be a matter of free choice, as the population in the ark would have to maintain minimum and maximum numbers. Many jobs would be mandatory to keep the ark functioning, so work too would not be a matter of choices freely made. In the end, sharp constraints would force the social structure in the ark to enforce various norms and behaviors. The situation itself would require the establishment of something like a totalitarian state.

Of course sociology and psychology are harder fields to make predictions in, as humans are highly adaptable. But history has shown that people tend to react poorly in rigid states and social systems. Add to these social constraints permanent enclosure, exile from the planetary surface we evolved on, and the probability of health problems, and the possibility for psychological difficulties and mental

any such society staying stable.

problems outlined so far might be solved, and that people enclosed in an ark might cross space successfully to a nearby planetary system. But if so, their problems will have just begun.

Any planetary body the voyagers try to inhabit will be either alive or dead. If there is indigenous life, the problems of living in contact with an alien biology could range from innocuous to fatal, but will surely require careful investigation. On the other hand, if the planetary body is inert, then the newcomers will have to terraform it using only local resources and the power they have brought with them. This means the process will have a slow start, and take on the order of centuries, during which time the ark, or its equivalent on the alien planet, would have to continue to function without failures.

planet is alive or dead, as is true for us now with Mars. They would still face one problem or the other, but would not know which one it was, a complication that could slow any choices or actions.

So, to conclude: an interstellar voyage would present one set of extremely difficult problems, and the arrival in another system, a different set of problems. All the problems together create not an outright impossibility, but a project of extreme difficulty, with very poor chances of success. The unavoidable uncertainties suggest that an ethical pursuit of the project would require many preconditions before it was undertaken. Among them are these: first, a demonstrably sustainable human civilization on Earth itself, the achievement of which would teach us many of the things we would need to know to construct a viable mesocosm in an ark; second, a great deal of practice in an ark obiting our sun, where we could make repairs and study practices in an ongoing feedback loop, until we had in effect built a successful proof of concept; third, extensive robotic explorations of nearby planetary systems, to see if any are suitable candidates for inhabitation.

Unless all these steps are taken, humans cannot successfully travel to and inhabit other star systems. The preparation itself is a multi-century project, and one that relies crucially on its first step succeeding, which is the creation of a sustainable long-term civilization on Earth. This achievement is the necessary, although not sufficient, precondition for our own world, there is no Planet B.

ARTICLE 9

HOW WE SETTLE MARS IS MORE IMPORTANT THAN WHEN BY: Joelle Renstrom SOURCE: The Space Review http://www.thespacereview.com/article/3057/1 September 6, 2016

One of the next major space frontiers is the settlement of Mars. NASA has announced plans to send humans to Mars by the 2030s (depending on the budget, of course). Elon Musk has announced that SpaceX will start unmanned missions to Mars by 2018 and manned missions by 2025, and is scheduled to release more details about his plans at a conference in Mexico later this month. Dutch nonprofit Mars One, meanwhile, has begun the process of selecting a crew to inhabit the Red Planet in 2027.

In the race to put people on Mars, scientists must address myriad technological and financial challenges, which seem to leaves little bandwidth for considering the ethical and philosophical questions inherent in settling another planet. Such questions are difficult to we live on other worlds. Colonizing Mars will be a huge milestone for the human race, but how we go about it, rather than how soon, exemplifies who we are as a species and may ultimately determine the -term success.

Stephen Hawking argues that we need to colonize space as a backup nuclear war or global warming, will befall the earth within a thousand

disasters he names are human-made. Man can induce disaster anywhere. Unless Mars is populated by pacifists and environmentalists who learned their lessons well on Earth, history may very well repeat itself.

shifts

carried six empty bottles and dropped them one by one into the deep blue canal waters. They made empty, hollow, drowning sounds as they imagine. Settling another planet could provide an excuse to continue destructive behaviors with few immediate consequences. If Mars or any other planet is a safety net for a race that kills itself, each other, and/or the planet that supports it, are we setting ourselves up for a long-term future of planet hopping from one ruined world to the next?

The vast quantities of resources on Mars are a compelling reason to establish a presence there, but they also might perpetuate behaviors that could negatively affect the planet. Mars Society president Robert soil as permafrost, as well as vast quantities of carbon, nitrogen, food and water, but of plastics, wood, paper, clothing, and most importantly pport a mean we should do anything we want on Mars, especially if it means stripping the planet bare.

Zubrin argues that a successful settlement on Mars would require

This strategy, which he likens to that of the Eskimos who have to make do with what their environment offers, makes more sense than shuttling all necessary resources to Mars, but Eskimos are invested in the long- term sustainability of their practices, as depleting those resources would have fairly catastrophic consequences.

Given the astronomical cost of setting up a colony on Mars, Zubrin also cerium, rhenium, samarium, gallium, gadolinium, gold, palladium, iridium, rubidium, platinum, rhodium, [and] eu deuterium, a heavy isotope of hydrogen that exists in vast quantities on requires sustainable practices, and mining for profit, which can sucker us into acting as though such resources are infinite.

Mars, then I believe we should do nothing to disturb that life. Mars then belongs to the Martians, even if they are microbes. The existence of an independent biology on a nearby planet is a treasure beyond assessing, and the preservation of that life must, I think, supersede any other

-centric one. He has a profound and even spiritual connection to Mars, and in his vision of the future, Mars settlers will share it:

recognized we have to carefully move small asteroids around to avert the possibility of one impacting the Earth with catastrophic - recognize that if there are human communities on many worlds, the chances of us being rendered extinct by some catastrophe on one science that can be done there the gates of the wonder world are

c impulse built into us by the evolutionary process, we come after all, from hunter gatherers, and for

here. And I wish I was with you.

Sagan exemplifies the union of ethics and science, which is part of the reason he remains both relevant and beloved. His belief that life on Mars a microbial survivors of ancient Martian life continue to persist; they would also represent oases providing abundant water supplies and ch touts practicality to the exclusion of other considerations.

In 2000, Zubrin argued that the threat of back contamination from Mars

happened already given how much of Mars comes our way), but in addition to using incendiary language to describe those concerned about back contamination, planetary scientist David Grinspoon points

t preclude the possibility that we could be mistaken:

Sagan. Dismissiveness suggests a lack of readiness more dangerous than gaps in technology or funding, as it leaves no room for ac we may not even

Grinspoon argues against value neutrality, particularly in astrobiology, societal issues created for a marriage of science and ethics, particularly pertaining to planetary help, because we must somehow learn to do science that is guided by

contamination or ethics, nor should it dictate our treatment of the Martian ecosystem. Theoretically, we could make Mars habitable on a grand scale by terraforming, which would help produce more oxygen, raise the atmospheric pressure, and establish an ozone layer. Even Sagan suggests releasing the Martian atmosphere from the polar ice caps by covering them with genetically engineered, heat-retaining plants. But Bradbury raises the possibility of a selfish Johnny Appleseed via a character whose struggle with the thin Martian air threatens his fight against the very thing that might prevent his staying there. He

-serving, whether it benefits one person or mean that part of the discussion about terraforming should include considerations of the consequences on the native environment and its microbial life. But who gets to make such decisions?

One of the more complicated logistical and ethical questions about Mar mining. Who would own those resources? Who would own, or be responsible for (which may or may not be the same thing) the colonies and structures on Mars? Would the first humans on the planet stick a flag in it, and even if they did, what would that mean?

The Outer Space Treaty of 1967, which was ratified by 102 countries, holds that:

 The exploration and use of outer space shall be carried out for the benefit and in the interests of all countries and shall be the province of all mankind;  Outer space shall be free for exploration and use by all states;  Outer space is not subject to national appropriation by claim of sovereignty, by means of use or occupation, or by any other means;  States shall not place nuclear weapons or other weapons of mass destruction in orbit or on celestial bodies or station them in outer space in any other manner;  The Moon and other celestial bodies shall be used exclusively for peaceful purposes;  Astronauts shall be regarded as the envoys of mankind;  States shall be responsible for national space activities whether carried out by governmental or non-governmental entities;  States shall be liable for damage caused by their space objects; and  States shall avoid harmful contamination of space and celestial bodies.

Prohibiting ownership of space by a nation seems like a solid idea, and perhaps one rooted in ethical considerations, but turning humans loose The treaty provides a foundation, but without additional guidelines, it raises more questions than it addresses. One area it fails to address is private companies. These days, private companies are doing everything from transporting cargo to and from the International Space Station to developing rockets and spacecraft for travel to other planets. The treaty says states are responsible for the activities of non-governmental entities in outer space, which likely means that the actions of private companies need to be authorized and supervised by the appropriate nation but what exactly does that mean?

the bounty among Mars settlers, but would authorities on Earth presumably, the government(s) responsible for the settlers who found goods establishing trade practices between Martian colonies to meet the demands of long-term settlement. Over time, though, would that lead to the same scenario that currently exists on Earth: that uneven resource distribution causes certain areas to boom and others to languish, and their inhabitants along with them?

described by Ray Bradbury:

in its place, when everything was safe and certain, when the towns were well enough fixed and the loneliness was at a minimum, then the sophisticates came in from Earth. They came on parties and vacations, on little shopping trips for trinkets and photogra study and apply sociological laws; they came with stars and badges and rules and regulations, bringing some of the red tape that had crawled across Earth like an alien weed, and letting it grow on Mars wherever it cou began to instruct and push about the very people who had come to

Perhaps someday Mars could be independent, but for the foreseeable future, Mars colonies will rely on Earth, which will likely subject them to subject to taxation (or other bureaucratic machinations) without representation?

The consideration of such questions has to be undertaken carefully, though by whom may depend on what organization sends the colonists to Mars. If NASA sends a group of astronauts, then it would seem the US government should be responsible for them. But if Mars One, a Dutch nonprofit, establishes the first settlement on Mars, what state, if any, is responsible for oversight? Would responsibility transfer to the ESA, or would the relatively new and small Netherlands Space Office assume managerial duties? More importantly, would we trust private companies with something as high stakes as establishing a settlement on another planet?

argues that space is too dangerous, expensive, and unknown. Over history, governments have undertaken those missions, paving the way private company will establish the first Mars settlement, it would seem that the most practical solution would be for governments to collaborate. If governments do work together to establish settlements responsibility ahead of time.

Since Mars One has the most developed timeline of any Mars colonization mission and recently narrowed down its field of applicants some of the logistical and ethical questions surrounding a Mars colony. Mars One lays out its encouraging stance on planetary protection, and religious activity and beliefs will be purely a matter of individual choice astronauts will be facing the task of determining how to organize themselves politically in order to ensure fair and reasonable decision- mak knowledge about human social organization to assist in that process as be, but there are some aspects about daily life that need to be more carefully considered, particularly when it comes to the mental health of the astronauts.

Interpersonal conflicts will be inevitable, as will isolation, loneliness, cabin fever, anxiety, and depression. Settlers may be able to use robotic counselors to help them deal with such problems, and could email or even text their friends and relatives on Earth. Those interactions would take tens of minutes for each message, but it beats the Pony Express.

ut the psychological issues that might trouble astronauts is problematically flippant. The people who go to Mars will be both self-selected and panel- plenty busy most intelligent and stable people becoming a little unhinged by a seven-month flight to Mars and the prospect of spending the rest of a reathe the air.

psychologists support the plan. Mars One chief medical officer Norbert Kraft assured attendees of one question-and-answer session that he -day stint in an isolation chamber; thus, colonists on Mars will be fine. This kind of dismissiveness boundary-breaking, frontier-pushing experiment, thus not everything can be known or planned ahead of time. Ethics apply not just to the planet itself, but also to the people doing the work. Riding a rocket to

lking about crews of four living in tiny pods, protected from air and radiation that would otherwise kill them. The Hi-SEAS (Hawaii Space Exploration Analog & Simulation) program just completed a one-year Mars simulation, which include psychological monitoring, and Mars One announced a couple years ago that it has begun work on simulation outposts, both of which will hopefully lead to more targeted and substantive planning.

The most worrisome aspect about Mars One is its funding proposal, which primarily relies on income generated from broadcasting the mission. They liken their television marketing revenue to that of the Olympics, but that raises a slew of new and troubling questions. The multi-year selection process for the mission is now also a casting pr high for such antics or crew-rigging, if Mars One relies so heavily on TV- related revenue, then who knows? Will the show be edited, or even scripted? How much will be filmed? Continuous broadcasting is both unrealistic and unethical given the stresses the colonists will encounter; stroy the cameras if they got tired of having their travails aired like so much dirty laundry.

People will die during the colonization mission, whether from natural causes or mission- it is a reason historic and heroic actions or to witness drama on another planet. The families of the settlers will watch too. This has been true for astronauts who have flown to the Moon or the ISS, as well as for astronauts who tragically never reached their destinations. But even those of us who shuttle.

What Mars One is proposing is an inside look at the training, launch, flight, colonization, and daily lives of these crews. If we had possessed voyage (just think of the revenues!) But think of how much we would re heroes, partly because we generally judge them on their natives that they will then try to enslave, convert, or sell for gold, but if stress no matter how capable they are. Those moments (provided

talk about them around the water cooler and dissect them on the Internet, reducing their mission to

-TV scheme may be one of the most persuasive arguments for a government-led mission, or even for waiting to colonize Mars until we can do it in a way that situations in human history.

planets, we have to grapple with what may seem like a rhetorical or even a stupid question: -term survival a worthy goal? The obvious answer is that no goal is more worthy. But if we ruin ourselves and/or our planet, then might that sugg of another world an attempt to prove we are fit? Some people seem to believe humans should use Earth (or any other place) for what we need: some people see it as a right, if not a destiny, which is why w position Stephen Hawking describes. If we do settle on Mars, hopefully survival will come at a price one that, in all good conscience, we

Again, Carl Sagan puts it best:

And our small planet, at this moment, here we face a critical branch- point in the history. What we do with our world, right now, will propagate down through the centuries and powerfully affect the destiny of our descendants. It is well within our power to destroy our civilization, and perhaps our species as well. If we capitulate to superstition, or greed, or stupidity we can plunge our world into a darkness deeper than time between the collapse of classical civilization and the Italian Renaissance. But, we are also capable of using our compassion and our intelligence, our technology and our wealth, to make an abundant and meaningful life for every inhabitant of this planet. To enhance enormously our understanding of the Universe, and to carry us to the stars.

missions to Mars should appeal not just to entitlement, greed, or

LearningLeaders – All Rights Reserved - 9/14/17 82 security, but to the yearning that makes kids unable to tear their eyes from the sky, the desire that has inspired thousands of backyard rocket aliens and time travel and warp speed, space stations and space colonies, the grandeur of the cosmos and the way Earth looks from space. If we can take those feelings with us to Mars, we stand a chance of creating not Earth 2.0, but a better version of what we have here.

ARTICLE 10

BIOENGINEER ASPIRES TO COLONIZE THE SEA BY: Alex Pasternack SOURCE: CNN http://edition.cnn.com/2011/US/01/11/vbs.sea.colonization/index.html January 12, 2011

Dennis Chamberland doesn't just want to live underwater: he wants anyone to join him. And he's determined to make that a reality within a decade.

Chamberland joined NASA as a bioengineer in the mid '80s, just as the manned space program was starting to thunder forward. But rather than looking up to the stars, he began looking down - deep down. As a developer of the agency's Advanced Space Life Support Systems, which monitors the safety for all off-planet habitation pursuits, Chamberland soon became a lead proponent of research on an idea being floated by NASA at the time: using the sea as a testbed for space exploration. Before long, this homegrown explorer would become one of the country's leading proponents of undersea habitation, and an advocate for what he calls the "space-ocean analog."

An aquanaut and Mission Commander on seven NASA underwater missions, Chamberland has also pursued landmark research in bioengineering and become a prolific writer of science books and sci-fi novels. But it was his work for NASA that resulted in his harvesting of the first agricultural crop in a manned habitat on the sea floor, and led to his designing and construction of the Scott Carpenter Space Analog Station, a two man undersea habitat off Key Largo. The little permanent submarine has been visited by a range of curious futurist explorers, including James Cameron and TV producer Rod Roddenberry, Jr.

Chamberland's next goal, he explains in this episode of Motherboard: colonizing the sea. To move humans to an underwater "Aquatica," as he calls the habitable regions of the ocean, he launched the Atlantica Expeditions, which are attempting to build the first underwater settlement for permanent human colonization. This isn't a glossy sci- architectural lark or a toe-dip. Starting with the premise that nearly three quarters of our planet's largest biome have long remained invisible - and are increasingly endangered - the Atlantica project seeks "a human colony whose primary purpose it is to monitor and protect

LearningLeaders – All Rights Reserved - 9/14/17 84 this most essential of all the earth's biomes. Soon, beneath the sea, families will live and work. Children will go to school. A new generation of children will be born there - the first citizens of a new ocean civilization whose most important purpose will be to continuously monitor and protect the global ocean environment."

Set to commence by next year, the first expedition will be initiated by the submersion of the Leviathan, a small underwater habitat that can house up to four people. He's not only certain that the colonization of the ocean floor is imminent; he's making it happen.

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3. Stephen Hawking Warns We Must Colonize Another Planet Soon - Here's Why He's Wrong https://www.forbes.com/sites/ericmack/2017/05/03/stephen-hawking- mars-colony-moon-space-elon-musk/#1f2f3d9f6537

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