Space colonization is possible using materials from the Moon and near-Earth objects, with solar energy being abundant. The main obstacles are microgravity health risks and high launch costs. A space colony would need to rotate to create artificial gravity and be constructed using robots and materials from space. The growing space tourism industry may speed up the process.
Extensive NASA and independent studies have found that all the materials needed for space colonization are available from the Moon and near-Earth objects, and that solar energy is abundant in space. Fundamental scientific breakthroughs won’t be needed to build space colonies – though they sure couldn’t hurt – the challenge is mostly a matter of engineering and cost. Numerous space colonies have been designed to varying degrees of detail, but all are prohibitively expensive in terms of today’s economy. However, we can expect this to change as technology improves. Many see space travel and colonization as humanity’s destiny.
The two biggest obstacles to building space colonies today are the health risks of microgravity and the high launch costs.
Living in a microgravity environment is difficult. Frequent exercise is necessary to maintain muscle mass, some people suffer from “spacesickness”, similar to seasickness, the face swells and most visitors to space suffer from uncontrollable flatulence. Any crumbly foods are off-limits, lest they float up and get into the electronics and create a mess that’s hard to clean up. For long-term space habitation for large numbers of people, microgravity makes no sense. A real space colony would have to rotate to create artificial gravity. Thus, most space colonies will likely be cylinders or toroids.
A space colony the size of a small city, about 2,000 inhabitants, would have to weigh about one million tons and be about 1 km (0.6 mi) long to have enough space for laboratories, machine shops, fire stations, police stations , private residences, gardens, swimming pools, food and water storage, radiation shielding, docking facilities, a robotics bay, and a small hospital—basically, enough amenities to make life in space tolerable and safe. By comparison, the Empire State Building weighs 370,000 tons, is 1,250 feet (381 m) tall, and has enough office space for 22,000 employees.
The two main challenges of building a million-ton structure in space are the construction work, which would be best done by robots capable of building other robots from raw materials, and getting all that material into orbit, which would be too much expensive if it was all launched from the earth’s surface. At today’s prices, launching a million tons of material out of the atmosphere would cost several trillion US dollars. The trick is to use Near Earth objects or materials dropped from the surface of the Moon, where gravity is much lower and launches are much cheaper. The largest Near-Earth asteroid, 1036 Ganymed, is 31 km (19 mi) wide and has a mass of 3.6×1013 tons, enough to build thirty million small space colonies.
Because of all the dangerous work involved, robots would take the lead in construction, landing on a near-Earth object, tearing off pieces, driving it into Earth orbit, and turning it into scaffolding materials. Once a sealed torus or cylinder was created, pumped full of oxygen, and spun, human workers could build the interior as they pleased. Most of the structural materials and technologies could be built on site from raw materials.
No one really knows when a space colony will become possible, but it looks like the growing space tourism industry will certainly speed things up. At least two companies have already announced plans to build space hotels, and one company, Bigelow Aerospace, already has a test module in orbit.
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