Scientists work to colonize space
Hurdles loom before Hawking's goal realized
Needs include oxygen, water, food at outpost
Jun. 19, 2006. 07:31 AM
SCOTT SIMMIE
FEATURE WRITER
It sounds more than a little like a science fiction flick.
Human beings, colonizing a distant planet, in order to escape a potentially doomed Earth.
Last week, one of the world's most renowned astrophysicists outlined precisely that scenario. Speaking in Hong Kong, Stephen Hawking said, "It is important for the human race to spread out into space for the survival of the species."
Within 24 hours, his comments had prompted more than 2,000 responses on
http://www.thestar.com — with people split fairly evenly on whether this was a good or bad idea. Some were skeptical.
While there are no immediate plans (nor is there the technology) to "colonize" some distant planet in the way Hawking described, some of the stepping stones for a long-term presence on the surface of the moon and beyond are the subject of serious scientific efforts.
Just last fall, NASA released a major report outlining the architecture required for its goal of establishing "a continuous human presence on the lunar surface to accomplish exploration and science goals ...
"The primary purpose of the mission is to transfer up to four crew members and supplies in a single mission to the outpost site for expeditions lasting up to six months. Every six months, a new crew will arrive at the outpost, and the crew already stationed there will return to Earth."
The space agency hopes to be able to accomplish this shortly after 2020 — when the first manned expedition is set to return to the moon.
Before this can happen, however, there are massive technological hurdles to overcome. It's not so much about getting there — we were able to do that in 1969. It's about staying there.
"To put a human colony of four or five scientists on the moon for any extended period of time, it's necessary to figure out how to produce the oxygen and water and propellant that might be required for simple life support, largely because it's too darned expensive to get it all the way from Earth and stockpile it there," says Dale Boucher, director of research and development at the Sudbury-based Northern Centre for Advanced Technology.
"So we have to figure out a way to do that. And right now, the only way to do that is to mine it out of the ground — out of the sub-surface sections of the moon."
It's known as In Situ Resource Utilization. Without it, a long-term human presence on another planet is considered unlikely, if not impossible.
To that end, the technology centre has been instrumental in linking some of the key players in Canada's mining industry with some of the top minds on space. Earlier this month, its annual Planetary and Terrestrial Mining Sciences Symposium attracted some 100 delegates to Sudbury, including experts from the Canadian Space Agency, NASA and the European Space Agency. Main sponsors of the event included giants INCO and Falconbridge.
"There's not a direct connect between space exploration and mining, until it's explained that mining is a requirement for any kind of human colony," says Boucher.
The technology centre has been working with NASA on a technique to extract water and hydrogen (needed as propellant) from simulated lunar "regolith," or fake moon dirt. NASA is also offering a $250,000 (U.S.) prize for anyone who can squeeze 2.5 kilograms of oxygen out of 100 kilograms of the same stuff.
But where do you find that fake dirt?
Melissa Battler, doing a masters in planetary geology at the University of New Brunswick's Planetary and Space Science Centre, has been working more than two years with the technology centre and others to produce a terrestrial version of dirt nearly identical to what's found on the moon's highlands.
"There are lots of people studying this, and lots of progress being made," she says.
Okay. Water you can drink. Hydrogen you can use as fuel. But you can't eat moon rocks.
"Food drives the equation for how long and how far away you can go from Earth," says Mike Dixon, professor and chair of the biology department at the University of Guelph.
"Mars is six months away, so you've got to take enough groceries for two or three years." And that, he says, is impossible.
Yet here, too, work is being conducted that may enable long-term human habitation. Dixon is also director of the Controlled Environment Systems Research Facility at Guelph, where plants are grown in hypobaric chambers that can simulate the lower (or non-existent) atmospheric pressures found outside of Earth's cocoon.
"The main question we're asking is: `How can you grow food crops in the strange environments that we will encounter when we go to the moon and Mars?'" he says.
Dixon has already found that plants can be grown down to 10 per cent of Earth's atmospheric pressure.
Melissa Battler believes there's another reason for colonizing space that transcends Hawking's rationale.
"My biggest personal reason is because — and this sounds cheesy — it's almost our destiny to do so," she says. "We're humans. We're explorers. This is what we do."
Login
Register
FAQ
Search
