Tag Archives: Mars

This Note will put forth 50 reasons why the Crater Cap Colony Concept is a good and important idea. The Crater Cap Colony Concept involves building a cap on the crater of other worlds such as the Moon and Mars most of all. It also involves a specific and effective from of development under the caps. In addition to all of the other things that are part of the model there is a program for mining which is specific to the model as well.
The crater cap colonies also represent both a great deal of risk and an enormous engineering challenge. This note will seek to promote the benefits of the concept and plan and to show the contrast with other schemes. However, there is no doubt that this remains a staggeringly great challenge. In addition there have been many things that were designed to fail and many efforts undertaken to preserve something that would have been threatened by a successful design, thus in order for this to succeed it would not only have to be done well by a sustained and great effort but avoid being derailed by a false effort.
One through Twenty-Five: Craters are Special
1. The progress of human technology needs to be shaped and directed not only by war and the marketplace but also by a grand and meaningful project. The development of craters on the Moon and Mars are the right places for such a focus of development. Recognizing the special and unique importance of these craters and the potential of other craters for the human race is an important part of the chance for human progress.
2. Craters are special because they occur on the Moon, Mars, the other terrestrial planets and on the major asteroids. They cannot be ignored as a great commonality of features across the solar system.
3. Craters are also special because of the efficiencies implicit and distinctive to a crater cap as the means of instituting a colonial environment. With a crater cap one can spend the great bulk of the resources and energy of the development on the completion one dimension in a shape which also provides other dimensions of enclosure which are pre=made at no additional cost. These dimensions are able to adapt in a way which the cap cannot. Mines can be operated readily on and through the floor while the cap is improved, made more substantial and kept in a state of restricted access.
4. Craters also have numerous qualities which tend to make them good places to plant a colony. The craters are visible and distinct features with well-defined autonomous edges and a large area where air can be held under a cap and the large views over the crater itself will allow for a sense of freedom space and abundance which create real and perceived priority. Other reasons in this list will return to many of these specific reasons. But this number four reason has to do with the synergy and efficiency of combining all of these factors in the whole which is the crater as a colony site. This is even more notable when compared to how bad it would be to develop the other features of these planets as early colonies.
5. Craters offer intrinsic security in a harsh extraterrestrial environment. The crater will provide a great deal of buffering and blockage as regards to the hostile of effects of solar wind, micro-meteors, cosmic radiation and allows heat management in the environment in a way which protects from the terrors and dangers of extreme heat and cold.
6. Craters provide good visible features for navigation, comparison and planning. The craters have many common features which will allow people and agencies in varied places to learn about many common challenges and benefits from a variety of colonial sites at the same time.
7. Craters provide enormous psychological benefits. If properly conceived and managed the mines will provide security if and when the cap is breached and controlled wall dugouts and sub-floor mines will house most people and activities in such a way that the craters themselves will provide an open air space reserved for agriculture, aquaculture and recreation. The principal benefit of the space will be to allow people to see large expanses and then return to the confined spaces of daily activity. Surface areas around the crater will be utilized for astronomy, solar power generation and other activities but will not be a hospitable environment which offers a sense of real freedom of movement.
8. Craters allow for ideal multiple use planning.
9. Craters allow for a really terraformed placement of colonies without extravagant expense. Craters already tend to align to the center of gravity in a certain way and to produce numerous relatively constant parameters which colony planners, environmental specialists, technology designers and engineers can rely upon to effect their colony’s optimum performance.
10. Craters allow for species variety and ecosystem balancing early in colonial development. This is because of the ability to hava a floor, a central pond or lake , air space and mines in a particular array which is conducive to the success of biological systems.
11. Craters are truly unique in that they provide a possibility for effective thermal management. In the case of the Moon, Mars, large asteroids and any large body which is not geologically active the mines will have access to unlimited relatively cold material. Proper planning will allow the energy used in mining and living as well as the heat from lighting and other systems to balance a micro climate in the crater and still have access to a broad face for emergency thermal venting.
12. Craters are remarkably stable. For the purpose of brevity I will leave this as an assertion supported by observed facts.
13. The behavior of volatiles in craters has remarkable benefits in the case of a meteor strike. In places like the Moon, Mars and other places with very little or no atmosphere the air will rush out of a breached cap into the relative vacuum outside as will some of the water while colonists shelter in the mines. This will mitigate the destructive force of a strike already broken up before entering the crater.
14. The behavior of volatiles in craters has remarkable benefits in choosing a site. The preservation of volatiles such as water in all its forms and other gasses that can be activated by heating is a property of craters which makes them suited to be colonial sites.
15. Craters allow independent mine shaft systems for greater security of all kinds and yet links them all to a central open space which can be readily observed and monitored for defects and allows for ready movement of large groups and resources.
16. Craters are readily identified for planning and travel negotiations and discussions between parties not constantly cooperating.
17. Craters come in vastly different sizes to match the resources available to very different colonial efforts.
18. Craters can be modeled and studied to a significant degree from the craters on earth.
19. Craters offer the chance to create a very complex design and environmental system that starts with a very simple plane positioned in a predictable place and in a place where it can be easily improved.
20. Transporting energy from solar panels (and windmills in the case of Mars) to the lights, pumps and heaters on the lower face of the Cap is a very efficient position for such transfer.
21. Maintenance of features on the Cap’s plane itself has many efficiencies compared to almost any other configuration.
22. The atmosphere being created in the colony will itself help to support the great plane of the Cap for the colony. This is because of atmospheric pressure below and near vacuum above and the force of gravity being lower than Earth’s gravity.
23. Craters allow us to use many old and well established Earthly technologies.
24. Craters have no exposed elevation and reduce the incidence of meteor strikes which a colony elsewhere increases as it develops.
25. Craters are efficient in that a huge amount of energy has been expended in creating most of the design features by nature itself.
Twenty-Six through Forty: Colonizing Space is Vital
26. Space Colonization is vital to being who our species is as explorers, survivors etc. Outer space is that portion of the universe that is farther from the center of the Earth than the highest reaches of the Earth’s atmosphere. It makes up more than 99.99999999999999% of the universe which we can physically perceive.
27. Space Colonization is a necessary process if humanity’s leaders are to be able to command the respect of thinking people when difficult choices and allocations of resources must be made. Some reasonable hope for a better future given that ff we were to divide up all of the physical space we can see or detect equally among all the inhabitants of the Earth the amount of space occupied by all humans alive today would make a minute and entirely insignificant portion of the share belonging to each person.
28. Space colonization in the craters is vital in that it links the vastness of space to the real abundance that come from hard work and capitalizing on opportunity So that humanity’s constituents can understand that most of virtually limitless space is dark empty and has hardly any atomic particles in it and it is so far away that physically using those particles in any way in the next 100 generations can’t be reasonably imagined yet hard work and careful choices can create real opportunities in a few nearer places.
29. Space colonization is vital because despite how tiny it is in the universe of visible light the dimensions of our solar system alone would allow us to use a fraction of more than 99.99999999999999% of the space being somewhere other than the surface of the Earth.
30. Even in our solar system which some of our traveling craft have left behind in the voyager project most of the raw natural resources are not on the Earth’s surface. The crater cap colonies which operate in low gravity wells would allow us to reach these vast resources and supply them to Earth much more cheaply than operating from Earth would.
31. By far most of the oxygen in the solar system is in outer space and ships operating from bases in 1/6 and 1/3 Earth’s gravity could better reach those resources.
32. Most of the carbon is in outer space and ships operating from bases in 1/6 and 1/3 Earth’s gravity could better reach those resources
33. Most of the hydrogen is in outer space and ships operating from bases in 1/6 and 1/3 Earth’s gravity could better reach those resources.
34. Most of the helium is in outer space and ships operating from bases in 1/6 and 1/3 Earth’s gravity could better reach those resources.
35. Most of the metals we call precious are almost certainly there and ships operating from bases in 1/6 and 1/3 Earth’s gravity could better reach those resources.
36. Most of the exotic metals and silicates we need for specialized purposes are there and ships operating from bases in 1/6 and 1/3 Earth’s gravity could better reach those resources.
37. Most of the Methane which could be burned to power a civilization for thousands of years is out there in the solar system and ships operating from bases in 1/6 and 1/3 Earth’s gravity could better reach those resources.
38. It is almost certain that there is more liquid water under the ice of Jupiter’s moon Europa than there is on Earth and ships operating from bases in 1/6 and 1/3 Earth’s gravity could better reach those resources.
39. Our space history has already proven that nothing between the Sun and the orbit of Pluto is intrinsically beyond the reach of our own basic technology to reach, tag and return from robotically. Humans operating from colonial bases in the craters would be primed to utilize these spaces.
40. Space colonization follows a chain going from observation, to exploration, to travel and exploration and then to stationing. After these things comes colonization. Space colonization has the chance to be the biggest change in human economy since the development of agriculture. The coming of agriculture was not an unmixed blessing but it was one of the most justifiable of all social changes in human history.
Forty-one through Fifty: This is the Concept
41. These Crater Cap Colonies are the key to unlocking a future of promise for humanity. Like the rise of agriculture they are the essential innovation supporting all others.
42. Some bad things by any measure will come of these colonies as they did from agriculture but it is just as essential to make the change. Had humanity not become agricultural sooner or later things would have become much worse than they have gotten so far. The Crater Cap Colonies will allow a vast new array of needed resources and very bad results are the alternative.
43. Our science and technology up to now has shown that Space can be explored. Now it must be colonized. These colonies will allow multiple models of a new human dynamism. They will allow us to address as many varied social and environmental experiments as we may choose. Life and humanity today await at a crossroads as great as that of the first rise agriculture. These colonies will have an effect as great or greater than the first great works of irrigation for large scale agriculture created the mighty powers that ruled ancient China and Egypt.
44. Like the surpluses and changes created by agriculture these colonies will create societies that could pour wealth into the extended economy and transform it at the same level that the first agricultural changes that enabled other peoples to change from nomadic hunting or nomadic herding to a combination of nomadic herding and carrying trade goods thus our non space industries would also find new opportunities.
45. In their similarity to the ancient farms these colonies will enable space industries not involved in colonization to progress just as agricultural societies enabled fisherfolk to increase their population by adding waterborne trade to their fishing economy.
46. These colonies could promote peace while at the same time creating new security and defence sector challenges and opportunities just as early agriculture enabled warrior bands to enter int0 long-term contracts with landholding kings and to earn a living partly from keeping the peace.
47. These colonies would transform our society and future just as agriculture really made a different human world and remade much of the world as well. The best hunter-gatherers were actually richer, healthier and freer than the new farmers but in the end the choice of the species as a whole to emphasize agriculture was a choice vital to both survival and any real chance of prosperity. I think that space colonization requires a similar leap and offers similar sets of consequences.
48. Space Colonization will restore a sense of wisdom and virtue not available in much of human society today. For instance, I don’t really expect to live to see a working colony on the Moon or Mars. However, as long as I do live I will apply some of my energy to that transition humanity must make towards becoming a space colonizing species.
49. Space Colonization allows for a growing human population over time and the survival of real biodiversity on Earth.
50. Space Colonization allows for a path of reasoning which is both optimistic and sane and other long term plans do not allow for this. These colonies can be cost effective and supportive of what is going on here on Earth in a very unique way.