Terraforming the dwarf planet: Interconnected and growable Ceres megasatellite world · HackerPapers discussions

Terraforming the dwarf planet: Interconnected and growable Ceres megasatellite world — mentioned by PaulHoule

Thu, 03 Jul 2025 17:17:41 GMT

Rotation. You don’t live on the surface but you build a beanstalk and build a big framework of small O’Neill’s cylinders. See https://arxiv.org/abs/2011.07487 I’d say this paper thoroughly debunks all other space colonization plans in comparison. For instance it is not sustainable to use rockets for routine transformation. The moon doesn't have enough volatiles. Who knows if gravity on the Martian surface is enough to be healthy. Even if you could take, say, Mercury, apart it would be silly to build a ‘Dyson swarm’ but rather you would build a big framework like that or a ‘Dyson foam’ (e.g.…

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Terraforming the dwarf planet: Interconnected and growable Ceres megasatellite world — mentioned by PaulHoule

Wed, 07 May 2025 17:10:13 GMT

Bezos's vision is better than Musk's. This plan to gravitationally disrupt Ceres and turn 100% of it into habitat strictly dominates all other space colonization ideas in our solar system not least that it can provide more square feet of habitat than Earth does but probably not the 0.2 km^3 of ocean per person or the 0.7 million tons of atmosphere per person that we have, areas where Biosphere 2 fell tragically short. [1] https://arxiv.org/pdf/2011.07487 [1] CO2 levels swung violently from day to night in Biosphere 2 because they didn't have enough atmosphere relative to plants and animals…

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Terraforming the dwarf planet: Interconnected and growable Ceres megasatellite world — mentioned by PaulHoule

Sun, 16 Feb 2025 01:21:20 GMT

How would we discover simple life forms elsewhere in the universe? It's not impossible the Mars rovers could have have found fossils, but it's not like we've been to the 100 million other stars in this galaxy, never mind any other galaxy. Our radio and other telescopes aren't good enough to detect life on other solar systems unless we get really lucky, though if we manage to get 1000 au out we could use the sun's gravitational lens to magnify other planets enough that would see continents, detect artifical radio sources, etc. Interstellar travel is hard, maybe not even practical. It's one…

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Terraforming the dwarf planet: Interconnected and growable Ceres megasatellite world — mentioned by PaulHoule

Sat, 24 Aug 2024 13:42:14 GMT

Where did I say I’d waste volatiles moving things around? (1) Build a solar sail factory on a CC asteroid and you can deliver sunshades to Earth-Sun L1 without wasting volatiles as reaction mass (2) If you read this paper and really thought about it https://arxiv.org/pdf/2011.07487 You’d realize that it strictly dominates all other space colonization schemes that have been proposed because it doesn’t waste volatiles for transportation. Certainly O’Neill’s ideas look infeasible in comparison (where do you get the nitrogen to fill those big airspaces? My plan for a baby Bernal sphere intended…

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Terraforming the dwarf planet: Interconnected and growable Ceres megasatellite world — mentioned by PaulHoule

Mon, 24 Jul 2023 19:42:12 GMT

… exploitation of carbonaceous asteroids. For that matter colonizing Mars is for people who think Ray Bradbury is a good sci-fi writer. Really ambitious and imaginative people know there is a lot more lebensraum in the asteroid belt: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2011.07487.pdf

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Terraforming the dwarf planet: Interconnected and growable Ceres megasatellite world — mentioned by PaulHoule

Thu, 29 Jun 2023 20:17:51 GMT

The interest in Mars shows a lack of imagination. Mars is a tiny planet and it is at best going to be a sideshow compared to Earth. This paper outlines a plan to build a habitat with a larger population than the Earth by disassembling the dwarf planet Ceres https://arxiv.org/pdf/2011.07487.pdf It is not easy but it is a much larger prize than Mars and it is a straight line to colonization of water and carbon rich outer solar system and interstellar bodies. A species that masters that and deuterium-deuterium fusion could very well make it to the next star but they might very well stop at a…

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Terraforming the dwarf planet: Interconnected and growable Ceres megasatellite world — mentioned by PaulHoule

Fri, 24 Mar 2023 18:41:20 GMT

Probably the most valuable real estate in the solar system. See https://arxiv.org/pdf/2011.07487.pdf

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Terraforming the dwarf planet: Interconnected and growable Ceres megasatellite world — mentioned by PaulHoule

Wed, 15 Mar 2023 00:50:16 GMT

Leaves out the argument that interstellar travel is hard, that is, the distance between the stars is the filter. If you think interstellar civilizations are based around stars and inner solar system planets it is very hard. Some lucky civilization might pull it off once (say they had an 0.5 ly hop) but doing it again and again and again is a different thing. It's hard enough to do that "people" might not care. Self-reproducing VN probes wouldn't bear fruit in my lifetime or my children's lifetime so why would I care? The most plausible route for interstellar travel I think is developing a D-D…

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Terraforming the dwarf planet: Interconnected and growable Ceres megasatellite world — mentioned by PaulHoule

Mon, 16 Jan 2023 16:38:07 GMT

Not like we can count on it, but most of the living space in the universe is not on the surface of planets but rather could be built out of carbon and water rich asteroids (though it is Nitrogen that looks like the hardest thing to get right now) https://arxiv.org/abs/2011.07487 is a plan to build a structure that could support a population larger than the Earth. (I'd read that paper not just as boosterism or science fiction but also as a criticism of other space colonization schemes whose problems it addresses.) That kind of colony would be a solar economy but with deuterium-deuterium fusion…

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Terraforming the dwarf planet: Interconnected and growable Ceres megasatellite world — mentioned by PaulHoule

Thu, 19 Aug 2021 17:13:37 GMT

I think it's interesting to work the problem through backwards. Imagine that a population was settled in some situation like https://arxiv.org/abs/2011.07487 and they were interested in visiting the Earth after 1000 years of not doing so. Alternately imagine some species with an interstellar lifestyle based on oort cloud objects and D + D fusion wanting to do the same. They could have highly developed technology in many respects but they might find the process of developing a "space shuttle" that can enter the Earth's atmosphere with a full load of fuel, then SSTO back to space to be…

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Terraforming the dwarf planet: Interconnected and growable Ceres megasatellite world — mentioned by PaulHoule

Fri, 23 Jul 2021 17:57:57 GMT

I would go back to Gerard K O'Neill who didn't indulge in the full-fledged transhumanism of Timothy Leary, et al. (e.g. if you're grown-up you don't need personal immortality) I think Mars is for the birds, cutting up a carbonaceous or wet asteroid to construct a solar-sail factory that can deliver sunshades to earth-sun L1 is a more interesting project. Something halfway to Niven's ringworld seems like a possible endpoint. (see https://arxiv.org/abs/2011.07487) As I see it the problems are half chemical engineering, half "building a ship outside a bottle from the inside of the bottle" and…

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Terraforming the dwarf planet: Interconnected and growable Ceres megasatellite world — mentioned by PaulHoule

Mon, 28 Jun 2021 15:01:03 GMT

What resources and where to? People living on astronomical body X will use what they can in place. It's hard to see that anything could be profitably mined on the moon and shipped to Earth (most competitive markets for anything in the Solar System) and Mars is worse. Even the O'Neill colonies look bad because delivering something to a point in space means spending fuel to stop. (The mass driver probably fits on a Starship these days, you can buy one off the shelf today but it wouldn't last 1000 shots. A plausible catcher is still absent) Mars is rich in stones, just like the Earth, and it is…

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Terraforming the dwarf planet: Interconnected and growable Ceres megasatellite world — mentioned by PaulHoule

Sun, 30 May 2021 17:57:03 GMT

(1) You need a much better telescope to see evidence of alien life. Something like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FOCAL_(spacecraft) could plausibly pick up accidental EM emissions from civilizations on Earth. (2) Most of the habitable places in the universe with liquid water by far are smaller bodies that are heated by tidal or geothermal energy. The average "gas giant" seems to have tide locked moons producing situations like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Io_(moon) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Europa_(moon) geothermal heat and pressure probably cause liquid water in Pluto. In fact, an…

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Terraforming the dwarf planet: Interconnected and growable Ceres megasatellite world — HN submission

Tue, 09 Feb 2021 01:09:37 GMT

Terraforming the dwarf planet: Ceres megasatellite world

2 points; 0 discussion replies on HN. Paper and source history. A submission is not an endorsement.

Terraforming the dwarf planet: Interconnected and growable Ceres megasatellite world — HN submission

Thu, 21 Jan 2021 21:33:18 GMT

Terraforming the dwarf planet: Ceres megasatellite world [pdf]

1 point; 2 discussion replies on HN. Paper and source history. A submission is not an endorsement.