Space Settlements: A Design Study

Engineering & Transportation

O'Neill, Gerard K.

N. A. S. A.

Engineering

University Press of the Pacific

<p>This report grew out of a 10-week program in engineering systems design held at Stanford University and the Ames Research Center of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration during the summer of 1975. The project brought together nineteen professors of engineering, physical science, social science, and architecture, and two co-directors. This group worked for ten weeks to construct a convincing picture of how people might permanently sustain life in space on a large scale. The goal of the summer study was to design a system for the colonization of space. This report, like the design itself, is intended to be as technologically complete and sound as it could be made in ten weeks, but it is also meant for a readership beyond that of the aerospace community. Because the idea of colonizing space has awakened strong public interest, the report is written to be understood by the educated public and specialists in other fields. It also includes considerable background material. The technical director, Gerard K. O'Neill of Princeton University, made essential contributions by providing information based on his notes and calculations from six years of prior work on space colonization and by carefully reviewing the technical aspects of the study.</p>

<p>This document describes a program to establish a permanent scientific research base on Mars. We present a Mars base as the much needed long-term focus for the space program. A permanent base was chosen rather than the more conventional concept of a series of individual missions to different sites because the permanent base offers much greater scientific return plus greater crew safety and the potential for eventual growth into a settlement. The Mars base will strive for self-sufficiency and autonomy from Earth . Martian resources will be used to provide life support materials and consumables. The Martian atmosphere will provide a convenient source of volatiles: CO2, N2, and water. Rocket propellant (for returning vehicles), fuels, breathable air, and fertilizers will be manufactured from Mars air. Food will be grown on Mars using Martian materials as plant nutrients. A permanent human presence will be maintained on Mars beginning with the first manned landing via a strategy of crew overlap. This permanent presence will ensure safety and reliability of system through continuous tending, maintenance, and expansion of the base's equipment and systems. A permanent base will allow the development of a substantial facility on Mars for the same cost (in terms of Earth departure mass) as a series of temporary camps. A base equipped with surface rovers, airplanes, and the ability to manufacture consumables and return propellant will allow far more extensive planetary exploration over a given period of years than would an approach that featured a series of short exploration missions such as the Apollo Moon program.</p>

The Case for Mars: Concept Development for a Mars Research Station

Science & Math

Astronomy & Space Science

CONTENTS: Foreword, The Legacy of Science, James Burke, Accomplishments of Science by the Year 2000, Jules Bergman, Our Future in the Cosmos---Computers, Isaac Asimov, Our Future in the Cosmos---Space, Isaac Asimov,

The Impact of Science on Society

et.al.

Asimov,Isaac

History & Philosophy

It is a beginning. Over forty-five years have elapsed since the X-15 was conceived; 40 since it first flew. And 31 since the program ended. Although it is usually heralded as the most productive flight research program ever undertaken, no serious history has been con-assembled to capture its design, development, operations, and lessons. This monograph is the first step towards that history. Not that a great deal has not previously been written about the X-15, because it has. But most of it has been limited to specific aspects of the program; pilot's stories, experiments, lessons-learned, etc. But with the exception of Robert S. Houston's history published by the Wright Air Development Center in 1958, and later included in the Air Force History Office's Hypersonic Revolution, no one has attempted to tell the entire story. And the WADC history is taken entirely from the Air Force perspective, with small mention of the other contributors. In 1954 the X-1 series had just broken Mach 2.5. The aircraft that would become the X-15 was being designed to attain Mach 6, and to fly at the edges of space. It would be accomplished without the use of digital computers, video teleconferencing, the internet, or email. It would, however, come at a terrible financial cost-over 30 times the original estimate. The X-15 would ultimately exceed all of its original performance goals. Instead of Mach 6 and 250,000 feet, the program would record Mach 6.7 and 354,200 feet. And compared against other research (and even operational) aircraft of the era, the X-15 was remarkably safe. Several pilots would get banged up; Jack McKay seriously so, although he would return from his injuries to fly 22 more X-15 flights. Tragically, Major Michael J. Adams would be killed on Flight 191, the only fatality of the program. Unfortunately due to the absence of a subsequent hypersonic mission, aeronautical applications of X-15 technology have been few. Given the major advances in materials and computer technology in the 30 years since the end of the flight research program, it is unlikely that many of the actual hardware lessons are still applicable. That being said, the lessons learned from hypersonic modeling, simulation, and the insight gained by being able to evaluate actual X-15 flight research against wind tunnel and predicted results, greatly expanded the confidence of researchers. This allowed the development of Space Shuttle to proceed much smoother than would otherwise have been possible. In space, however, the X-15 contributed to both Apollo and Space Shuttle. It is interesting to note that when the X-15 was conceived, there were many that believed its space-oriented aspects should be removed from the program since human space travel was postulated to be many decades in the future. Perhaps the major contribution was the final elimination of a spray-on ablator as a possible thermal protection system for Space Shuttle. This would likely have happened in any case as the ceramic tiles and metal shingles were further developed, but the operational problems encountered with the (admittedly brief) experience on X-15A-2 hastened the departure of the ablators.

Hypersonics Before the Shuttle: A Concise History of the X-15 Research Airplane

Jenkins, Dennis R.

From virtually the beginning of the twentieth century, those interested in the human exploration of space have viewed as central to that endeavor the building of an Earth-orbital space station that would serve as the jumping-off point to the Moon and the planets. Always, space exploration supporters believed, a permanently occupied space station was a necessary outpost in the new frontier of space. The more technically minded recognized that once humans had achieved Earth orbit about 250 miles above the surface---the presumed location of any space station---the vast majority of the atmosphere and the gravity well would have been conquered, and then human beings were about halfway to anywhere they might want to go. Space station advocates also recognized that the scientific and technological challenge of building an Earth-orbital space station was daunting and that pooling the resources of many of the spacefaring nations of the world would maximize the probabilities of success. Thus, when the space station project was born in the in the mid-1980s, it almost immediately became an international program. This monograph describes the process of conceptualizing the international partnership and crafting its contours.

Together in Orbit: The Origins of International Participation in the Space Station (Monographs in Aerospace History)

Logsdon, John M.

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Books by N. A. S. A.

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Space Settlements: A Design Study

Space Settlements: A Design Study

The Case for Mars: Concept Development for a Mars Research Station

The Impact of Science on Society

Hypersonics Before the Shuttle: A Concise History of the X-15 Research Airplane

Together in Orbit: The Origins of International Participation in the Space Station (Monographs in Aerospace History)