Space colony essentials: Introduction

Space colony essentials: Introduction

I am advocate of space exploration and colonization.  Eventually (likely later), humanity *has* to leave the Earth or it will face extinction.  So what exactly does a space colony require to survive?

Jamestown in space

I recently visited the Jamestown settlement and museum in Virginia.  In the museum, I read about all of the difficulties faced by the English settlers of North America.  Hundreds died and even the survivors lived miserable lives.  There is even evidence that some of the survivors resorted to cannibalism to survive during the winter seasons.

As we walked through the displays, one thought kept ringing through my head, “the people planning this expedition did not know what they were doing.”  In fact, they clearly had not thought about survival as the primary purpose of the expedition.  The people funding the expedition solely intended it to be a money making venture.  The people going on the expedition also thought of it as an adventure and had no survival training (they all were the equivalent of “city dwellers”).  No one knew what they were doing and no one had a realistic plan for the colony.

The environment around Jamestown provided shelter, food, fuel, water, air, and moderate temperatures, to the people familiar with the environment.  Space provides none of these things at least for free.  Space is an environment even harsher than that presented by Jamestown to the English settlers.

Fellow readers, welcome to Jamestown in space.

Eventually, the colonists discovered goods to trade with Europe in the environment around Jamestown (timber, tobacco, cotton, etc.).  It took the colonists years to determine which colony products were the best trade goods.  The colony needed these trade goods to pay for the technological goods the required for survival and desired for the comfort.  In the beginning of the colony, this was just about everything.

Any realistic plan to colonize space must of course include provisions for generating all of the essentials for life.  Similarly, a space colony must also provide a means eventually to repay the initial investment and an incentive to motivate people to go.  Unfortunately, we know of only a few goods unique to space that might be of use on Earth.  One goal of a space colony will be discover what space can provide.

I hope to turn this introductory entry into a series that discusses the necessities of a space colony and how that space colony might provide those necessities.  The topics I hope to cover include these:

• Shelter
• Consumables (Air, Water, and Food)
• Power
• Transportation
• Communications
• “Cash Crops”
• Reasons for going

I do not promise to discuss them in the given order though :)