When people think of the inevitable spread of humanity to space and the colonization of it, they tend to think of people living on the Moon and Mars.
The problem with colonizing the various moons and planets is that they are huge gravity holes. We are having far too much trouble climbing out of Earth’s gravity hole in order to go and fall into other holes and set-back our achievement. Not only that, we are limited to the native gravity of the moon or planet. The moon only has a gravity of 0.16 gees. Mars only has a gravity of .38 gee. Our bodies do not fare well in a micro-gravity environment and tend to suffer health problems and bone loss. It is likely they will do poorly on the Moon and Mars.
Fortunately, we can generate full 1 gee gravity with asteroids. The trick is to spin the asteroid and then live inside it, the outward centripetal force can substitute for gravity. As it turns out, larger asteroids don’t have to be spun as fast to generate the an artificial gravity of 1 gee. The rotation rate affects the dizziness and the body’s health, 2.5 RPM is the recommended maximum and 1 RPM or less is considered ideal. This translates into asteroids that are at minimum 140 meters in radius and ideally bigger than 890 meters in radius.
Another advantage of asteroids is there are asteroids that come closer to the earth and have a lower delta-v than getting to the moon or mars. The delta-v determines the energy cost required to get there. In fact, some asteroids come near the earth and then swing back out to the asteroid belt. Wouldn’t that be a great way to colonize the asteroid belt? Jump on a NEA (Near Earth Asteroid), and ride it out to the belt and hop off and colonize all those asteroids?
The microgravity environment and the resources of the asteroid belt are huge pluses for industry. Microgravity would be useful in so many ways, in terms of shuttling resources around, and for science and technology processes. Mining would likely be a very low energy endeavor once established and the various metals will be quite easy to extract.
The ease of getting to asteroids, the ability to generate necessary gravity from spinning, the ability to ride the asteroid out to the asteroid belt, the greater accessibility of resources and access to microgravity environment makes asteroid colonization a clear winner. Lets forget about colonizing anything else. Sure, it is romantic to colonize the moon or mars, but it is a waste of resources when we can achieve much greater freedom and capabilities with asteroids.
I agree that NEA colonization is by far more practical than any other form of space colonization. However, I predict that once established, it won’t be very long before Lunar colonization becomes popular. Settling the moon will be relatively cheap compared to the launch from Earth, and many people will like living on such a big, obvious landmark. They will feel more like Earth won’t forget about them there. Perhaps this will become the new Hollywood, the place for the rich and famous extroverted types.
Normal gravitation can be simulated in a lunar environment as well by constructing large rotating rings with sloped floors, magnetically suspended above the ground to prevent friction losses. Also, launch from the lunar surface could be performed much more cheaply than from earth with a magnetic mass-driver, thanks to the hard vacuum and the lower gravity.
Belt asteroids will probably not be nearly as popular initially due to speed of light delays and huge travel times. There won’t be decent internet access or real-time phone calls. The commercial motivation of asteroid mining may outweigh this, particularly if too many regulations on NEA mining are enacted, and some people will of course want to get away from earth government for ideological reasons. Internet caching stations may make surfing more bearable, as disk space availabilty is increasing — but conquoring the speed of light barrier is impossible under current understandings of physics. Travel times to and from the belt will be enormous as well, so the development of good life support and ways to keep psychological health up would be necessary prerequisites.
The asteroid belt is so large that its inhabitants won’t be able to have a single internet where you can talk in real-time. Only caching will let belters access the majority of sites. Perhaps there will be different governments defined by speed-of-light factors. Of course, it’s only a matter of hours to send a message anywhere in the inner solar system, so it may not be enough to stop the determined spread of bureaucracy. For that, you may need to head for the Oort cloud.
One big concern that space travellers will need to confront is that an asteroid can be accelerated or steered to create a really fearsome impact weapon. Anti-impact measures will need to be developed and implemented by any colony, as well as earth itself.
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Dunno what that’s about, but I fixed your comment.