4.0 Long Duration Seclusion
In 1982 Cosmonaut Valentin Lebedev, about five months into his 211-day mission on the Salyut 7 space station, began to notice that as his time spent aboard the station grew longer, the state of his mental health grew worse. In his journal, he described counting the days until the mission was over, becoming increasingly irritable with his fellow crew members and mission control[1]
In efforts to combat this type of mental struggle and interpersonal conflict, modern day astronauts such as Canadian astronaut David Saint-Jacques spend long duration training sessions in facilities such as the NASA Extreme Environment Mission Operations, or NEEMO, an undersea research station.
The benefits of such long duration training when applied to a small “colony” of secluded individuals is obviously productive, but not applicable to a colonial venture. The number of people on the ISS or in earth orbit at any one time is quite small while the number of people required for a colonization effort would far exceed the space limitations of current long duration training facilities.
4.1 Orbital
Colonies
Near earth orbital colonies have long been associated with the concept of colonizing space with both science fiction writers and scientists’ exploring the possibilities. The technologies are now available to realize the development of such goals, and the ISS is in reality a near earth orbital colony.
Land based colonies could be made large enough to train, condition or accommodate the numbers required to colonize or effectively extract resources from an asteroid or other celestial body while modifying the human condition in a safer environment and at much less cost.
4.2 Lagrangian
Points
In celestial mechanics, the Lagrangian points are the points near two large bodies in orbit where a smaller object will maintain its position relative to the large orbiting bodies. There are five such points, labeled L1 to L5, with L4 and L5 being stable, which implies that objects can orbit around them in a rotating coordinate system tied to the two large bodies. The Lagrangian points have been proposed for uses in space exploration.[2]
4.3 Gerard K.
O'Neill
I add this section on Gerard Kitchen O'Neill (February 6,
1927 – April 27, 1992) as he was an American physicist and space activist. As a
faculty member of
1. a device called the particle storage ring
2. a magnetic launcher called the mass driver
3. developed a plan to build human settlements in outer space
4. a space habitat design known as the O'Neill cylinder
5. Founded the Space Studies Institute, an organization devoted to funding research into space manufacturing and colonization.
6. wrote "The Colonization of Space", his first paper on the subject
7.
held a conference on space manufacturing at
8. Built his first mass driver prototype with Professor Henry Kolm in 1976. He considered mass drivers critical for extracting the mineral resources of the Moon and asteroids. His award-winning book The High Frontier: Human Colonies in Space inspired a generation of space exploration advocates.
All this is important to note
because it was devotees of Gerard O”Neill who founded
the L5 Society that influenced the vote in the
4.4 The Hohmann
Transfer
The lowest energy transfer to Mars is a Hohmann transfer orbit[3], which would involve an approximately 9 month travel time from Earth to Mars, about five hundred days at Mars to wait for the transfer window to Earth, and a travel time of about 9 months to return to Earth. (About 2 years and 10 months in duration.)
Considering these types of time frames, the development of a large scale earth based “colony” would be a solution to the current limited NEEMO type of training facility. Such a facility would temper or modify the human condition to the seclusion of long duration IPF and / or colonization.
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