Opening the Next Frontier
by Anthony Tate

Part 3: Where do we go next?


Oh, there are MANY places to go and things to do. Lets take a quick look at a few.

Mars: The obvious place is Mars. NASA is exploring Mars in great detail, and has found literal oceans of water. Water is like treasure undreamed of in space, finding oceans of the stuff so close by is a tremendous draw. Mars has never been touched, who knows what wonders and riches lie on the ground there, waiting to be gathered up. And think of the ROOM! Mars is a small world, but without those huge oceans to cover it, the land area on Mars is as big as all the land on Earth. What a land rush, just waiting to happen!

Luna: Yes, we've already been to the Moon, but there is treasure there, as we have recently realized. Nuclear fusion is the dream of many for clean energy here on Earth, but the best fusion fuel that we can imagine is called Helium 3. Earth doesn't have any Helium 3 to speak of, but there is lots of it on the Moon. Once we get fusion mature enough to burn Helium 3, treasure lies on the Moon. At today's energy prices, Helium 3 is worth billions of dollars per ton. The Moon has lots more than a ton. Oh, and you remember what I said about water? Well, the Moon has water, too. Not a lot, but its there.

Lagrange points: The Earth-Moon system L4 and L5 points are two stable points in space in the same orbit as the Moon, but a sixth of the way before and behind it in its orbit. They have been looked at for decades as great places to build stuff in space, such as huge solar power satellites. The power could be sent to Earth, or the Moon, or used right there. Plus, there are the L1 and L2 points. The Earth-Sun system has a different L2 point which would be perfect for deep space astronomy. As a matter of fact, we are already planning to put the replacement for the Hubble Space telescope there. Imagine how much more reliable that replacement would be if we could actually go out there and do work on it. As it currently stands, if something goes wrong, that new instrument is useless. Imagine if the same fate had befallen the Hubble, as it so nearly did!

Asteroid 1982DB: I bet you've never heard of this one. This little lump of rock and metal has the distinction of being an asteroid that is one of the easiest to get to from Earth. I pick it because we've known about it for 20 years, but it is far from alone, there are a hundred other known asteroids almost as close, or even closer. Even one small asteroid is enormously large. 1982DB has more mass than every car in the United States, and it's already in orbit above our heads, and very close by indeed. Enterprising souls have worked out how to 'nudge' 1982DB and use the Moon to capture it and bring it into an orbit around Earth. Suddenly, those astronauts on the Space Station would have plenty of stuff to work with. The dollar value of such a second moon is almost impossible to overstate. Steel, carbon, oxygen, silica, nickel, rare earths, all in huge abundance, all in space already. Plus, the few looks at asteroids we have gotten so far show us that more precious metals are there in abundance. Gold, platinum, silver, copper, all are in asteroids in huge amounts, close by, waiting for us to go and get it. Plus, mining in orbit means no pollution on Earth! Also, note that not one of the hundred asteroids I mention above is in the Asteroid Belt. We have no need to look that far afield for incredible amounts of stuff.

Jupiter: Talk about your SIGHTSEEING! The moons of Jupiter are like a whole other Solar System. There is so much to do and see at Jupiter, I can't imagine why we aren't trying to get there NOW. Plus, the resources available in the Jovian system of moons hugely exceeds everything I have described so far.

There are many other places to go and things to do, if only we can get there.

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Contents:

1: The Frontier Spirit

2: What went wrong.

3: Where do we go next?

4: So, why aren't we going?

5: Dealing with the Devil

6: A brief technical interlude

7: So how good is Nuclear, anyway?

8: Heat, temperature, and cooling.

9: But isn't this dangerous?

10: Prometheus would be proud of us.

11: Ok, that all sounds nice, but this is just fantasy, right?

12: But isn't this just too big?

13: But doesn't this thing make nuclear waste?

14: Conclusions