Our industrial future in space

[citanon]

Lately, I've been doing a bit of thinking about humanity's future in space, in particular, whether there can be a robust economic driver for going to space and staying there on a massive scale. I had the following idea:

Our neighborhood in the solar system is nice for biological life, but is it necessarily the best location for industrial activity? In contrast to Earth orbit, the inner solar system has significantly greater solar energy flux, and the Asteroid Belt has far greater mineral resources. Is it possible to bring the resources of these two regions together for economic gain?

Specifically, can we economically transport mass from the Asteroid belt to the inner solar system for solar thermal powered industrial processing? For example, what if we could "strap rockets" onto small asteroids with the right mineral composition, and gently nudge them along gravitationally optimal paths to settle into stable heliocentric orbits in the inner solar system? Could we then build solar powered factories on those asteroids using the mass that they possess, and then the factories to extract and process the mineral resources of the asteroid into refined materials and other products?

If so, there could be at least three advantages:

First, at higher solar energy fluxes available in the inner solar system, solar thermal energy generation could be highly efficient using simple to construct mechanisms. This allows harnessing of virtually infinite amounts of energy from the sun for the production of high energy content materials (eg high quality silicon and GaAs crystal ingots, diamonds, carbon nanotubes, exotic metal alloys), and energy demanding industrial products that are cost prohibitive today. Massive amounts of such products could manufactured with no practical limits on the scale of industrial expansion for hundreds of years. The refined products could then be shipped back to Earth and landed on the surface of our planet allow us to benefit from space industrial [roduction in space without having lifting raw materials out of Earth's gravity well.

Secondly, much of the pollution associated with industrial production will also be moved off-world. Among other things, high efficiency multi-junction single crystal solar electric cells could be fabricated with zero terrestrial energy input and zero green house emissions, then brought on-world to offset terrestrial energy demand.

Thirdly, in low gravity, with sufficiently well develop construction technologies, it should prove possible to construct structures that are far more massive than what's possible on Earth. To what end is still unclear, but it opens enormous possibilities.

A civilization that's able to fully realize the advantages above would be on its way to achieving Type II status on the Kardashev scale.

What's stopping us from doing this? Are we beginning to have the pieces to get there?

[Parihaka]

Lately, I've been doing a bit of thinking about humanity's future in space, in particular, whether there can be a robust economic driver for going to space and staying there on a massive scale. I had the following idea:

Our neighborhood in the solar system is nice for biological life, but is it necessarily the best location for industrial activity? In contrast to Earth orbit, the inner solar system has significantly greater solar energy flux, and the Asteroid Belt has far greater mineral resources. Is it possible to bring the resources of these two regions together for economic gain?

Specifically, can we economically transport mass from the Asteroid belt to the inner solar system for solar thermal powered industrial processing? For example, what if we could "strap rockets" onto small asteroids, and gently nudge them along gavitationally optimal paths to settle into stable heliocentric orbits in the inner solar system. Could we then build solar thermal powered factories on the asteroids to extract asteroid mass for processing in situ into refined materials and other products?

If so, there could be three principal advantages:

At higher solar energy fluxes available in the inner solar system, solar thermal powered industrial processes could be very efficient and economical. With these factories in place, high energy content materials (eg high quality silicon and GaAs crystal ingots, diamonds, carbon nanotubes, exotic metal alloys), and energy demanding industrial processes could become far cheaper. Large amounts of such products could manufactured, maneuvered into Earth orbit, and ultimately landed on the surface of our planet without any of the raw materials having to be lifted out of Earth's gravity well.

Secondly, highly polluting or dangerous industrial activities could be moved off world and green house emissions may become a none-issue. Among other things, high efficiency multi-junction single crystal solar electric cells could be fabricated off world with zero terrestrial energy input and zero green house emissions, then brought on-world to satisfy terrestrial energy demands.

Lastly, in low gravity, with sufficiently well develop space construction technologies, it should prove possible to construct structures that are far more massive than what's possible on Earth. To what end is still unclear, but it opens enormous possibilities.

A civilization that's able to fully realize the advantages above would be on its way to achieving Type II status on the Kardashev scale.

What's stopping us from doing this? Are we beginning to have the pieces to get there?

It's what the moon is for. You can set up factories on it and drop any number of asteroids on it, it provides low but useful gravity, polute it however you like and it's a short distance to move any refined/manufactured goods back to earth.

[ArmchairGeneral]

What's stopping us from doing this?

Hmm...just to start:
1) Prohibitive lift costs (still need to lift some stuff to get the ball rolling).
2) Bootstrapping. Closely related to the above, i.e., needing stuff to get the ball rolling. We're not really set up to do bootstrapping on the necessary scale- you need to be able to build a huge amount of industrial infrastructure from the minimum amount of starting machines, to reduce lift costs. What core components of the world's industrial capacity are necessary to rebuild that capacity, and how much can those components be slimmed down further? That's something that we just don't think about here on Earth- self sufficiency is not necessary.
3) An added difficulty to the bootstrapping program, and to the whole deal, is that we'd prefer to have most of the work done by robots, given the hostile environment. That adds another layer of bootstrapping, plus we're just not that good at making robots yet (that's probably one of the more minor issues).

[Monash]

Citanon,
While a great idea in theory I can't see the need for the (extensive) industrialisation of space any time in the foreseeable future (i.e the next 100 years or so). As has been pointed out above and barring some revolutionary breakthrough in propulsion physics lift capacity is prohibitively expensive. As a side issue Earth's total population is expected to peak somewhere between 2040 and 2050 based on current estimates so assuming we can make it through the next few decades without total economic and social collapse the need for extra planetary resources should diminish accordingly. Assuming continued reductions in total population levels into the next century accompanied by continued technological development in areas like power generation and recycling the "need" for the economic development in space (i.e the expoitation of raw materials) might disappear for some considerable time (leaving out special cases like demand for Helium 3 mining from the Moon for fusion as an example).

Personally I am actually in favour of developing the economic resources of the solar system but I suspect if it does occur it would in most cases be for “domestic" consumption only i.e. Martian colonists exploiting local raw materials for their own needs with "Venusians", Jovian and Saturnian (moon) colonists doing the same. Trade would probably be confined to "information" and some rare high tech goods that couldn’t be fabricated locally.

Projecting futher ahead ie 100 to 100 years who know?

[snapper]

In theory I see nothing wrong with the idea. There would be many technical, financial and time barriers but in theory at least it should work.

[citanon]

Well gentlemen I've been quite busy at work and haven't had the time to think more deeply about the issues you raised. I did have time to quickly look up launch costs:

Today, the cheapest platforms for launch to LEO cost ~$4500 per kg. In the near term, the Falcon X heavy rocket has a marketed LEO launch cost of $2500 per kg. Cost to geostationary transfer orbit is currently ~10x higher. However, high specific impulse plasma rockets like the Ad Astra Vasimir could reduce costs considerably by ferrying cargo from LEO to GTO or lunar orbit under solar power.

LEO lift costs appear to be dominated by the cost of the hardware and not fuel costs. Assuming evolutionary development and economies of scale can take LEO launch costs to $1000 per kg and GTO costs to $5000 per kg, how much mass can we lift?

This question is tied to the question of how much we are willing to spend as a society for a venture into space. A handy chart helps us put the cost of historical national enterprises in the context of the size of the US economy:

GDP-Real (Adjusted) United States

The last time the US went to space in a big way, the Apollo program cost ~$170 billion dollars total over ~10 years. The US GDP in the 1960s was approximately $4 trillion dollars. Assuming that we spent $17 billion per year for 10 years, the fraction of GDP was approximately 0.5 %.

For the Manhattan Project, ~$30 billion was spent over the course of 5 years, with an annual expenditure of ~0.35% of real GDP.

The Vietnam War cost ~ $700 billion over 20 years, at annual expenditure of ~1% of GDP.

Operations in Iraq since 2003 has cost approximately $850 billion dollars with annual expenditures of ~0.6% GDP.

Obama's "stimulus" program spent a staggering $787 billion dollars over rough 3 years, equivalent to ~%1.8 of GDP.

How much "stuff" can we get into orbit if we spent as much money to shoot things into orbit as we spent on some of our past projects? Assuming $1000/kg to LEO:

In dollar amounts:
Apollo program ($170 billion) = 170,000 tons (2 Nimitz aircraft carriers)
Manhattan program ($30 billion) = 30,000 tons (large cargo ship)
Vietnam war, Iraq War, Obama stimulus (~$800 billion) = 800,000 tons (~8 aircraft carriers)

In annual GDP:

0.5% real 2011 GDP (~$14 trillion) = 70,000 tons per year
1.8 % real GDP (stimulus) = 252,000 tons (2 entire carrier battle groups)

In comparison, the International Space Station has a mass of ~500 tons.

So, I think the lesson here is that, yes, launch costs are expensive, but, on the other hand, we also have lots and lots of money, and our economy will continue to become larger and larger for a long time into the future. The sustainable cost of an elective national enterprise appears to be ~0.5% of GDP. Assuming that we could use just 1/10 of this expenditure for lift costs, and assuming modest reductions in launch costs, we would be able to lift enough mass to construct 10 International Space Stations in Earth orbit, every single year.

So, it appears that we can put plenty of stuff into orbit, if we knew what we wanted to build, and had the technology to build it there.

[Monash]

A very informative post Citanon. Based on your figures the costs of getting into GTO (and from there to the rest of solar system) are not exceedingly high. That said the question is what do we do with the mass we do actually boost into orbit. I see two obvious uses:

1) We can construct stations as a start/end points for intra solar missions and possibly even for the assembly of space craft in orbit;
2) We can launch missions directly to other planets directly from Earth.

There are pros and cons to both.

Either way though I'm not sure of the extent to which we can industralise Earth Orbits. Industrialisation would imply a steady two way trade between Earth and space in a situation where most of what was sent "down" would have to be sent "up" in the first place. That calls for one hell of a lot of value adding in space.

Even if we "mined asteroids" that favourite pastime beloved of SF writers it still would'nt make economic sence to send the end products back to earth - better to use them where they are up in space.

We may very well wish to colonise Mars for instance at some time in the future but how much cheaper would it be for colonists to produce physical goods locally vs importing them from Earth (or for that having matter future "Martian" colonists shipping goods back here). I don't see much prospect for significant 2 way trade in physical goods. So perhaps our orbital "mass" is better invested in ships and a limited amount of infrastructure required to assemble them in orbit. That would give us the maximum amount of "solar" lift capacity.

I see the situation as somewhat analogous to the situation the first European colonists were in when establishing footholds in the new world. The colonists had to take a limited amount of essential goods with them when they left and then manufacture everything else they needed locally as the cost of importing goods from back "home" was prohibitive. The first colonies were not viable economic entities in the sense that they traded successfully with their parent countries. Until their populations and production capacity reached key tipping points the movement of cargos (people and goods) was largely one way - ignoring the Spaniards and the gold and silver reserves they stripped out of South America as an exception.

So I don't see us industrialising extensivly for some time to come. :)

[Parihaka]

I'd still argue for using the moon as a platform rather than industrialising in orbit above earth. It's got lots of acreage, raw materials and has gravity. The ideal is that virtually the only thing you need to lift off Earth is humans. Obviously the machines needed to make this possible have to come off Earth but with the aim of near self-sufficiency on a two or three decade plan. The moon also makes it a lot easier to shield from solar rays and micrometeorites by having underground facilities. The Apollo ALSEPs proved that it's ideally geologically stable.

[Parihaka]

I do see the need for one or two HEO stations as way points. Lift to there and then to the moon. I remember one of the Apollo astronauts proposing a constantly shuttling platform that used the orbits of Earth and Mars to trek between the two over a three year cycle with minimal fuel use, i'd imagine much the same could be used between Earth and the Moon.

[Monash]

Parihaka,
I agree with the idea of the moon being our prime objective for the next 20-30 years. In effect it's a ready made "space station" only only 3 days travel time away even with current technology. If we can establish a base there it will give us the opportunity to develop the expertese and technology needed before we can establish outposts elsewhere in the solar system. Plus it has local recources (including water) that could be potentialy exploited.