Commentary: Saturn in the context of my Orion’s Arm future history. A commentary on the logical rational for independent space faring civilizations arising as a consequence of terraforming Mars. Why Saturn? Terraforming Mars via the Resource Importation Method would be the longest coordinated sustained endeavor in human history. Spaceflight to recover the necessary resources (Methane, Ammonia, and Nitrogen) would require thousands of flights between Mars and the moons of Jupiter and Saturn over a span of approximately 500 years. Building pyramids pales by comparison to the level of effort and technological innovation required. Such long term and sustained transportation of materials would necessarily require infrastructure at both ends, on Mars, in Martian orbit, and in and among the moons of Jupiter and Saturn. As a direct consequence independent industrial space faring civilization is established at both locations. Once humans start going to a location to harvest resources, we tend to keep going there, (building ever more efficient means of transport as the years, decades, and centuries pass) and we tend to settle there, mining outposts become mining towns and then cities, and of course all the associated industry required to support the primary endeavor (not to mention franchises to entertain and feed the growing population) spring up around it – the process has been repeated on Earth for thousands of years (yes, even before the industrial era) and likely will continue – once you commit to building (large scale space habitats, in this case) there is no real reason to stop doing so. This is how entire economies (with layers of sciences and industries) are formed. Saturn has the most important resource for a space faring civilization: water ice – available in abundance. Water ice to provide oxygen to breath, to provide hydrogen as reaction mass for your spacecraft, water for humans to drink and grow crops (in large scale space habitats). All that is required are hydrogen/oxygen cracking plants and an abundance of nuclear power. Among the moons of Saturn Hohmann delta V requirements are quite reasonable. This contrasts with the excessive Hohmann requirements for, say, travel among the asteroids – although men will go there as well – to mine metals. Saturn's radiation belt is far weaker than Jupiter's blue glowing field of radioactive death, being more on par with Earth's Van Allen belt. (Although an argument for Jupiter is that once you commit to building large scale heavily shielded vehicles like Orion – the cost of the shielding weight is merely the price of doing business – but more on Jupiter in a later post.) Why human crewed vessels not automated/robotic systems? Philosophically my Martians are accomplishment oriented – if they had been content to live life second-hand they would have stayed at home on the couch rather than facing the adversity to carve out a civilization on a hostile world in the first place. For my Martians the process is integrated philosophically, being as much about the human accomplishment and endeavor as it is about the end result, following this they send human crewed vessels (at first isolate voyages with crews as small as fifty on three-year missions into a desolate wilderness) and use automations performing programmed tasks only as necessary. Enceladus Statistics Enceladus is the sixth-largest of Saturn’s moons. It was discovered in 1789 by William Herschel. Enceladus orbits Saturn at a distance of 147,886 miles from the planet's center and 111,846 miles from its cloud tops, between the orbits of Mimas and Tethys. It is the fourteenth satellite when ordered by distance from Saturn. In mass and diameter Enceladus ranks sixth, after Titan 3,200 mi, Rhea 950 mi, Iapetus 894 mi, Dione 695 mi, and Tethys 652 mi. Enceladus is an oblate spheroid with a mean diameter of 314 mi. Equatorial surface gravity: 0.114 m/s² (0.011 3 g). Escape velocity: 0.239 km/s

Great models and overall presentation...the lighting and background Saturn really make this image...a fave my friend!

Fantastic image and modeling! Great lighting. Corrie

Nice! Great image. (but check the spelling on the title). Two question: 1. Why not NTR all the way? Even if you went with water for propellant, you could probably get 350-380isp, and triple that for pure hydrogen. 2. Why not mine Centaurs and Kuipers for ices? The trip is farther, but there's less delta-V requirements when you don't need to dive deep into a gas giant's well.

I like your vision. Unfortunately, today's human race can't plan beyond next quarter's profit and loss statement and this week's stock prices. Unless there's an immediate return on investment and it makes a few people a whole lot of money, we won't be bothered. A pity...instead of becoming the Federation, we've become the Ferengi... :_(

Great design of the models. Good job.

Thanks Gierla, I don’t know how I lost that “e” – I appreciate your finding it for me, many thanks! My previous posts depict a system designed to do precisely what you suggest (mining the Centaurs and Kuipers for water ice) see links below: Link: Mosquito Link: Mosquito – Mining The Ice Water being one of the most valuable of resources required by space faring industrial civilization, many competing (and certainly profitable) methods would be devised to acquire it … Competition lowers costs by increasing supply. Large scale inhabitation in around the moons of (both Jupiter and Saturn) evolved naturally from the resource requirements of the Martian terraforming – this happens over a span of hundreds of years. Men are living in and among the moons of Jupiter and Saturn in my future history having been drawn their by the resource requirements of the Martian terraforming. They are already living deep inside the gravity well, and their presence is a logical outcome of the terraforming. The initial voyages are individual vehicles with crews as small as fifty designed to operate in complete isolation for three-year mission spans. Each of these vehicles are accompanied by unmanned mission-support vehicles, among these is a drill-rig landing craft with an integral hydrogen-oxygen cracking plant for in-situ resource exploitation – see links below: Link: Mars Terraforming Program Vehicle Class Chart Link: Callisto Production Field Link: Discarding Stages Here I am depicting a later stage of industry where there is already a large native population base in and among the moons of Jupiter and Saturn and the opportunities breed many competing corporations and systems. In regards to using NTR’s: In principle there is no reason I could not go with NTR’s entirely – in this case it is a practical consideration. In this design the loading operation would require a ground crew to work in close proximity to the primary landing thrusters – and in the case of NTR’s there is significant radiation exposure involved in being in such close proximity. This could be mitigated by portable shielding carried on powered wheeled vehicles – and this was a consideration with an alternate design, a nuclear powered flat-lifter, or VTO/L version of the tanker. ΔV's needed to take off from the surface of a satellite and go into circular orbit around it, or to land from a circular orbit are as follows: Iapetus: 360 m/s Rhea: 422 m/s Dione: 333 m/s Tethys: 258 m/s Enceladus: 112 m/s Mimas: 92 m/s Janus: 26 m/s Epimetheus: 15 m/s Note: Titan excluded as the relevant design under discussion here is not a spacecraft designed to enter a planetary atmosphere. Chemical rockets can manage all of the above ΔV requirements. In this case I’ve chosen to go with chemical systems for take-off/landing. Many competing commercial systems and designs are a characteristic of the over-all arc of image and story behind my future history. Now you’ve inspired me to complete work on my all nuclear flat-lifter model Geir and perhaps show the ground-crew in operation – thanks!

Amazing Work from a Bryce Legend William you are a pure Bryce Genius. Well Done 5+ and a Favourite Karl

JeanneDeau, The Federation is a plot device, as are the Ferengi. Need I say more? I think not. The apparent fact you dismiss in your reference to “next quarter's profit and loss statement and this week's stock prices” is the very element which drives human endeavor. My Martians are humans who settled Mars by choice with the vision to build a new society. Their vision is one where men are constrained only by the limits of science and nature and not by the edicts and demands of any criminal State, or predatory activist mob or collective of other men. Their purpose is to build a better life for themselves, for their own benefit.

******* After posting her comment JeanneDeau revealed (in a literal barrage of e-mails) that, while she values her material possessions, she is an anti-capitalist – apparently one who is fully unaware of the contradiction between her values and her ideology. What this individual proposed in her rather strange manifesto is that all art, all literary works, all broadcast performance of any type (television, movies, ect.), all broadcast news, all science, all mathematics, all design, all technologies derived from science – be declared “Common” and removed from the field of industry and human production, so that no man anywhere might profit. The individuals who conceived this scheme are either remarkable in their deception (of others) or are notable for their irrationality; since you cannot have effects without causes so you cannot have the abundance of our modern world without the industry which produces it. Nor will you have the innovations of technology and science which have given birth to every new evolution of technology without the freedom of men to pursue these ends. If all these things were declared “common” and off-limits to profit – then who might manage these “common” holdings – no matter what organization is devised, it’s functions (including enforcement) would be indistinguishable from government – a rather dictatorial government in fact, one with rather broad police-powers. Since man cannot sustain any civilization without production – then all production would become the sole property of the State. There is a name for the kind of State which controls all industrial production – it is called Fascism. Note: Ayn Rand observes that the difference between [socialism and fascism] is superficial and purely formal. More in regards the technical distinction is to be found at the following link, Fascism/Nazism and further expanded in the links below. It should be quite obvious that advocating this concept of “Commons” is no different from advocating Slavery as practiced in the Confederate Southern States prior to the Civil War in the United States. For if (as this notion proposes) man is not permitted to own (and set the value for) that which he creates, and sell the product of his creativity for his own benefit – then he is nothing other than a slave. The only distinction between the Slavery of the Southern States and this latter day manifestation is that (under this notion of “Commons”) every man would be enslaved (to an all-powerful fascist State) and not just one particular race. Of course – this would first require the establishment of an oppressive Police-State the likes of which humanity has never seen. It’s not very likely to happen for that very reason. I was quite astonished that someone in this enlightened era could be so easily deluded into advocating slavery – however I was unsurprised (regardless of how sad the fact is) that there is a Wikipedia page devoted to the noxious concept this individual embraces. This is (of course) so far removed from the realm of reason that no response is required – this discourse does, however, legitimately arise from response to the philosophical ground on which I construct the basis of my future history – regardless of the irrationality of argument offered by this specific individual. I did query how this individual thought our current civilization with all of its abundance might survive the tyranny required to bring this about, and how she imagined the consequence might differ from fascism … to which (of course) she had no cogent response. Rather than reason I received a barrage e-mails proclaiming the glory of human enslavement, delivered as slogans – uttered without a trace of cognitive awareness of the nightmare world implementation of such slogans would bring. I can only imagine that this level of delusion might be accompanied with a hallucinatory visitation by Ricardo Montalbán in the company of a dwarf. Tribalists, who have self-arrested their awareness by willingly courting an Anti-Conceptual Mentality have lost the capacity to realize “what” it is that they would willingly surrender (this being their own freedom of course) when they embrace ideologies designed to enslave men. ******* In terms of the philosophical ground on which I construct the basis of my future history there is some value in discussing the fad of anti-capitalism in the context with which my future history is concerned. The Subjectivist mind-set which gives rise to the Tribalism we see running rampant in the world around us today is one of the conditions which I propose leads to the collapse of man’s magnificent technological industrial civilization in my future history – retarding Earth’s progress for over 300 years while the Martian’s go on to terraform Mars and establish permanent habitation and industry throughout the moons of Jupiter and Saturn. Philosophically, tribalism is the product of irrationalism and collectivism. If men accept the notion that the individual is helpless, intellectually and morally, that he has no mind and no rights, that he is nothing, but the group is all, and his only moral significance lies in selfless service to the group—they will be pulled obediently to join a group. In this context, a brief discussion of the alternatives to a free society under Capitalism is relevant: 1. Anarchy, which would dissolve orderly societies into a chaos of localized petty criminal kingdoms where the strong enslave the weak and murder becomes the common means of settling dispute, where terror and not reason become the means of persuasion – such society could not maintain the magnificent technological civilization we currently possess, let alone mount any grand venture to settle other worlds. 2. Fascism, which is far too concerned with controlling the individual actions of its citizens to engage in such a venture. Note: See Also Fascism and Communism/Socialism 3. Collectivism. The reason Collectivist States will not engage in such an endeavor so bold as terraforming Mars and establishing industry elsewhere in the solar system is that no system of slave labor, which requires brutality as a matter of course, could compel men to labor to the degree of precision required to engineer the systems necessary to accomplish such a task. Men under compulsion (under threat of force) will only labor to the degree necessary to produce the price of the whip that keeps them enslaved. The direct consequence of Collectivism and Fascism is the end of all innovation – such systems tend to limit and narrow the possible range of human endeavor to address the immediate, innovation and invention are relegated to the category of the superfluous under such regimes. I sincerely doubt any national government would engage in an endeavor of such scale that it results in widespread habitation and industrialization of the solar system. National governments are possessed of a tightly constrained, narrow, range of the moment vision in regards to such matters. National governments tend to be too utilitarian and too tightly immersed in the immediate present to engage in such vast undertakings – as evidence I cite the space programs of both the United States and the former Soviet Union.* *This could be an entire essay in itself but I will leave that to another time in order to deal with the main point. The fact I indicate here is that both the U.S. and the former Soviet Union researched and designed advanced cost-effective options to boost larger payloads (payloads between 1 and 2 million lbs per single launch) to orbit than could be carried on the heavy boosters which existed at the time – then failed to implement these systems, forcing reliance on more costly systems of lesser capability. Citation 1. In relevance to the expense of the ISS I point to the Convair Nexus conventional booster which would have been capable of lifting the entire structural mass of the International Space Station into orbit in a single launch, total expense: $185 million (projected single-launch expense not adjusted for inflation) – instead the U.S. abandoned its heavy booster program and proceeded with the development of the Space Shuttle which was never intended to perform as a stand-alone single-route to orbit (its initial acceptance and funding included a separate heavy booster based cargo platform – the development of which was later abandoned). Subsequently the launch and construction of the ISS was achieved at an expense $150 billion dollars – this includes 36 shuttle flights at $1.4 billion each and more than 1,000 hours of EVA activity (and shuttle crewmembers using the SSRMS and EVA’s) over a span of 13 years between November 20, 1998 when the first component was launched and June 5, 2011. Contrast this with the cost of a single Convair Nexus carrying the entire structural mass of the ISS into orbit – $185 million versus $150 billion and you start to see my point. Citation 2. In the particular case of the U.S. thermonuclear rocket program, a tested, working, production-ready nuclear rocket engine with performance characteristics which outstripped by a wide margin the performance of more expensive (in terms of payload ratio to fuel mass) to operate chemical propulsion systems was produced at a development expense of $1.1 billion. The propulsion system would have increased the effective scientific return of all missions after its production if implemented in 1971 – the increased payload capability would have benefited even non-crewed robotic probe missions launched after 1971. Imagine the increased scientific return of more robust Viking Mars Landers, Voyager probes with vastly increased science packages, Cassini-Huygens with a more capable orbiter and a more robust lander – or even a rover, still alive and transmitting from the surface of Titan – rather than the short-lived one-shot probe which was delivered. The only reason the Phobos II nuclear thermal rocket was not placed into service is the limited scope of vision I refer to in my argument. As a secondary cause we may note the irrationalism of predatory activists. Nation’s will not conquer the solar system – groups of individual men will. Industrialists, inventors, investors, men driven to produce the means to a better life, for themselves, for their own benefit, and not others – men such as these will conquer the solar system. Such men will gather others to their course as direct partners – these being men possessed of skill knowledge and talent, engineers, and scientists, specialists in propulsion, life support systems, and an array of other sciences. Groups of individuals will conquer the solar system. Nation’s as such will not initiate such things – perhaps, once the water is tested, nations might attempt to leverage some benefit, riding on the backs of the men who went there first.