From CNN: No sooner does Astronaut Heidemarie Stefanyshyn-Piper return from 12 days at zero gravity on the space shuttle Atlantis and the International Space Station than she starts collapsing repeatedly at the podium while giving a speech, and has to be escorted out. This highlights what we should have known all along: humans weren’t built for space. In fact, it may be impossible to grow up in a zero-g environment, because gravity is necessary for the formation of healthy bones and organs.

In Marshall Savage’s book The Millenial Project, he argues that we’ll all live in 3D space bubbles because it’s such a better use of space than a 2D space station. In principle, he’s correct - but in practice - our bodies just can’t stand it, if we want to transition gracefully from space life to earth life, anyway. Therefore, it’s best to build rotating space stations, like the O’Neill cylinders of yore, which unfortunately are very resource-hungry. I’m partial to the Lifeboat Foundation’s Ark I design, as pictured below:

The current cost of getting a metric ton of material to orbit is $10 million, and as Ark I can reasonably be estimated to weigh about 10,000 tons, the price tag of getting all that stuff up there would be $100 billion. Not impossible, but certainly quite expensive. Obviously, we need affordable spaceflight before we can build colonies suitable for extended human stays. To lower the costs even further, atomic spaceships should be perfectly acceptable in the shorter term of solar system exploration. Using that technology, we could’ve had people on Mars in the 70s!

Meanwhile…

Bigelow announced at lunch that he will be putting up a three-person space station in late 2009 or early 2010, about fifty percent bigger than an ISS module. He is putting up a destination in hopes that the transportation will come along (and in order to spur the transportation providers). Station will last for several years. Will be executing contracts in 2008 for transportation contracts to Sundancer. Expects between four and eight trips (people and cargo) per year, after six-month shakedown. Then trips will commence whenever transportation becomes available. 2012 will see the launch of another module providing 500 cubic meters of habitable volume. Will support sixteen launches a year for full utilization (again, cargo and people). Minimum three-week stay, but market limited at ten million, so wants to establish private astronaut program for other nations (this is not news). Make sixty instead of eleven countries with an astronaut corps. Could represent on the order of a billion a year in revenue. Launch estimates from fifty to a hundred million per flight. About time to take human spaceflight from the exclusive domain of governments. Will be changing that in the next half decade.

Also, NASA recently reshuffled its budget, eliminating many side programs in favor of a central focus on the lunar program. Many space enthusiasts have intensely complained, but honestly - I don’t mind a Lunar Focus, and neither do many scientists. It’s all fun and good to study asteroids, use inferometry to look for exosolar planets, poke around Europa, and the like, but does it actually help get our butts off this rock in the next few years? Not really, and that should be our main priority - putting our eggs in more than one basket.

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