How Do We Get from Here (Earth, 2012) to There (Dust, 2512)? Part III

Part I

Part II

In part I of the journey to Dust, humanity finally left the confines of Earth and planted its feet in alien soil.  In part II, we unlocked the power to travel across the stars.  In part III, the 23rd century, we will make the stars our home.  With the first steps in wormhole travel behind us, the human race can then do what it has dreamed of since the dawn of space travel – visit and live on all the worlds of our imagination.

The first extrasolar colonies will face challenges similar to those faced in the original settlement of any foreign land.  Yes, future colonies will have the benefits of modern medicine and technology to assist in their survival.  However, colonies will stay face issues with food supplies, habitats, disease, and environmental disasters that will threaten the safety of those early colonists.  Just as early American colonies collapsed so too will early extrasolar colonies.  Perhaps they’ll be wiped out by a parasitic infection.  Perhaps government bureaucracy will strangle the supply chain and the colony will collapse due to a lack of logistic support.  Perhaps the colony will be wiped out be a mega-storm the likes of which we’ve never seen on Earth.  The point is that lives will be lost and there will be plenty of people who think that this great adventure will not be worthwhile.  Just as today, the torch of exploration and colonization will be picked up by some wealthy, perhaps somewhat eccentric, enthusiasts ready to make a name for themselves by establishing a presence on another world.

While that first colony is struggling for survival, wormhole satellites will begin to arrive at other destinations in the galaxy.  The rate of expansion, while extremely slow at first, will quickly grow.  Within the first two decades of the 23rd century, humanity will gain access to another dozen solar systems.  Coupled with a burgeoning population in our native solar system, people will be eager to live on these new worlds.  People will want to leave behind the mundanity of Earth and Mars and leave for exciting frontiers.

At some point, when colonies become somewhat self-sufficient, those colonies will want autonomy.  It’s possible, probable even, that the autonomy will bring out the worst in humanity and blood will once again be shed in the name of independence.  Perhaps that’s too pessimistic and we will learn how to resolve difficult disputes without the violent revolution that has been a regular occurrence throughout history but I doubt it. Due to the pressures of a society with open communication, that conflict will be short-lived and a provisional government will be established, trade treaties will be put in place, and humanity will learn how to govern with a populace that lives light-years apart.  Thus, the First Republic of Earth will be established.

While governments evolve and people settle into their new environs, those responsible for exploration will continue to refine  their approach.  The initial beacons sent out into remote solar systems were powered by traditional propulsion.  This was to ensure safe arrival; no one wants to exit a wormhole into the middle of an asteroid field, Oort cloud, or in the path of an approaching comet.  Beacons will be placed in relatively dead regions of space, away from stars or planets which could draw in hazardous neighbors.

To speed up the rate of exploration, robotic explorers will be launched on blind jumps, travelling through wormholes that do not have a precisely calculated and calibrated exit points.  When a safe exit point is discovered, another beacon will be put in place.  Through this technique a huge interstellar highway will be constructed and journeying to other stars will be as commonplace as flying to another country.

How Do We Get from Here (Earth, 2012) to There (Dust, 2512)? Part II

Part I here.

Dust takes place on a colony of the same name established on a harsh, unforgiving world many light-years from Earth.  The single biggest hurdle that has to be overcome is how the heck do we get there?  For any story set against a backdrop of galactic exploration,  the author has to decide how the human race figures out how to travel beyond the bounds of the solar system.

There are three well-known mechanisms for this: generation ships, faster than light travel, or wormholes.  Generation ships are well within the realm of possibility but are not  conducive to my futuristic galactic Republic, so I’ll explore that topic another time.  Meanwhile the plausibility of faster-than-light travel took a blow this week, but at the moment, wormholes remain a theoretical possibility.  Do a search for wormhole experiments and you’ll find plenty of discussions on the  topic from all corners of the academic spectrum.  Currently, most of the conversation focuses on the theoretical aspects of the problem – that is is it possible to connect two different points in space-time and allow for quick transit between two points that are light-years apart?

Eventually, these discussions will move from the blackboard to the lab (which may already be happening).  Then at some point in the future, my guess here is the 22nd century, we will discover that scientific holy grail.  At that point, the frontier will be open for business.

First though, we’ll need to work on stability and safety.  The first wormholes created will be highly unstable and disappear within seconds.  They will also require tremendous amounts of energy to generate and open.  It’ll take years of experimenting and practice before we can really harness this technology.

Highly technical depiction of the wormhole transit paradigm in Dust

Then there’s the problem of knowing where that wormhole will open up.  The model that I’ve established in Dust is fairly simple, satellites have been deployed throughout the galaxy and link together to form a transit network.  A wormhole can be created between any two points in that network.  The satellites are needed to keep a stable link so that we know with certainty where the wormhole will open up.

With a stable means of transit in place, now we can actually start sending things through the wormhole.  Because the loss of human life in making scientific progress is generally frowned upon, no government will approve the use of wormholes for human travel without extensive testing.  This means the first traveler through a wormhole will be a friendly, sacrificial robot.

The difficulty with beginning to use this transit system will be getting the satellites in place.  If the only way we could accurately predict the exit point of a wormhole is to physically put a satellite in that location, then it’s going to take some time to put that satellite in place through conventional means.  Right now, the closest exoplanets that we know of are roughly 10 light years away.  Even assuming we’ve advanced conventional propulsion to the point where you can travel at roughly half the speed of light or greater, it will still take 20 years to get the first beacon in place and then another ten years for the two satellites to link up.

So when the frontier finally opens, it won’t be a gold rush at first but rather the slow trickle of molasses as humanity works to put a safe and reliable network in place.  Once that network is in place, then the fun begins and humanity will establish its first outpost beyond the boundaries of our solar system.

That won’t be the last of the struggles though, because at some point, there will be an accident and lives will be lost.  When that happens, human transit will be suspended until a root cause to the problem is found and the entire system is made safer.   Those initial flights will be fraught  with risk and it will only be after the system has proven reliable that governments will grant average citizens the opportunity to travel to distant stars.

For more on how I approached building the fictional world of Dust, please see my guest  post on the book blog Alchemy of Scrawl.

How do we get from here (Earth, 2012) to there (Dust, 2512)? (Part I)

The challenge of setting any story in the future is establishing some reasonable progression of society and its technological capabilities.  Dust takes place some 500 years in the future, so I thought it would be fun to lay out a bit of a timeline of advancements needed and milestones achieved over that time.

Sometime this year or next, I expect the discovery of the first potentially habitable planet to be announced.  Exoplanet discoveries have steadily ramped up over the past year and that will only increase as more resources are devoted to deciphering data from research projects like the Kepler telescope.  The discovery of a habitable world will no doubt spark a small mention in the national conversation, but the stark reality is we will be limited in how much we will be able to learn about this world at this time.  So we will discover the world, we will no doubt listen to it and study its atmospheric composition, but beyond that there won’t be much more we can do.

On human exploration, I have to believe that at some point in the next 2 decades some man or woman will set foot on another world in our solar system.  Whether that person will be from the United States, Russia, China, Japan, Germany, Italy, India, South Korea or any other space-faring nation is ultimately irrelevant.  What really matters is that someone will do it.  That person may set foot on that world for the noble goal of exploration, due to an attempt to instill national pride, or in some misguided cold-war-style space race, but it will be done.

When that happens, I want to believe that the final hurdle will be overcome and that the floodgates for exploration will be open.  This is naive, of course.  At a minimum, I hope we have learned lessons from the incredible accomplishments of Apollo and hopefully, we will be there for more than just a brief visit.  Of course, the real gate-opener for exploration and ultimately colonization will be to find a way to make it profitable whether it’s through mining, scientific advancement, or some other unforeseen reason.  Make it profitable and companies will come.

While this exploration of the solar system will ultimately result in advances in medicine and medical technology due to the obstacles overcome in that exploration, medical advances will continue to advance due to terrestrial research.  Within the next couple of decades, the developed world will start to have access to life-extending medications.  Even without these medications, the world population will continue to increase and the ability of the planet to support the ever-growing population will continue to be stressed.  Could the world population ever become so large that humanity is forced to try and expand to another world?  Possibly, but it’s more likely that some section of society would collapse before a solution like that would be pursued.

Eventually though, assuming there are enough well-to-do private enthusiasts and/or government funding, enough money will be poured into developing space exploration technologies that the cost-to-orbit will be lowered, advanced propulsion capabilities will be delivered, and the technical challenges related to establishing a colony on another world will be overcome.  Then finally, whether through necessity or curiosity, humanity take out an insurance policy on the Earth and begin living on another world.

Given the current rate and commitment to exploration, 50 years is probably too ambitious a time frame for this to happen.  This is where you have to recognize that even if the United States doesn’t do this, then some other country will.  With any luck, it’ll be a cooperative effort.

Once a foothold is established on another world, we will then begin the task of reforming that world into something more hospitable for us and turning it into a long-term home for our people.  Currently, these technologies and approaches are only theoretical, but we have plenty of time to turn those theories into reality.

Up next, the 22nd century…

Spaceship Design of Dust or Everything I Know about Spaceship Design I Learned from the International Space Station

In writing Dust, the first element of the setting that I defined was the Hannah, Max Cabot’s medium-class freighter that serves as the setting for a good portion of the story.  My biggest challenge when writing Dust was to not try and explain how every little thing worked in the flow of the story.  I would often have to go back and remove sections that I ultimately felt went into too much detail.  Instead, I figured I would save those details for some behind-the-scenes posts on here.

Spaceship design is something that I have been playing around with since I was about ten years old.  One year, my mom brought me home a tablet of graph paper from her civil engineering firm and I spent hours and hours drawing spaceship layouts, identifying where the ships systems were, challenging myself to come up with designs that weren’t recognizable as ships from Star Wars or Star Trek.

In college, spaceship design and function continued to dominate my creative thoughts.  It was then that I wrote the short story “The Scout” which was an attempt to write a short story where the main character was the ship itself and its journey through space.  Finally, a year after I graduated from college, I started working on the International Space Station (ISS) and I got to delve into the design of a real spaceship.

My first assignment on ISS was as an instructor for life support systems, so it should come as no surprise that the Hannnah’s systems reflect much of what I learned then.  From a life support systems perspective, the ISS is the first spacecraft that has attempted to have a close-looped system.  For a spaceship that is going to spend much of its time in space, you want an efficient system that will not waste any resources.  On ISS, an oxygen generator uses water produce oxygen and has a leftover component of hydrogen. A separate system removes carbon dioxide from the air.  The oxygen from that carbon dioxide is combined with the hydrogen from the oxygen generator to then form water, which when processed can be used to produce oxygen, and so on.  The key philosophy here is that a spaceship has to recycle everything and waste as little as possible.  The more you waste, the more you have to replenish.  ISS doesn’t have a truly closed system, but it’s taken great strides towards one.

About a third of the way through Dust, the Hannah experiences problems with rising carbon dioxide levels.  Max then embarks on a hunt to figure out why this is happening.  One of my favorite lines of Max’s is when he says that there are no mysteries on-board a spaceship.  Everything is definable; there are few variables.  Everything that happens in that closed environment has a limited set of contributors and probable outcomes.  Max knows this and immediately knows that something is amiss.

At this point, Max starts tearing apart the ship to find the source of his problem.  This reflects another lesson learned from ISS: everything breaks.  Every component on ISS has been pored over, rigorously tested, and then operated on Earth to make sure it works.  Even still, things are constantly breaking.  Before the ISS was fully complete and it didn’t have fully redundant systems, the biggest threats to having to abandon the station were that the oxygen generator would break, the carbon dioxide remover would break, or that the toilet would break.  And those three things broke with disheartening regularity in the early days of the program.

It was only natural to me then that the Hannah would constantly be having problems.  While I fully expect that in 500 years a top-of-the-line spaceship will be full of self-healing alloys, self-healing nanostructures, and other “unbreakable” components, the reality for Max is that he flies the equivalent of a 30-year-old used Winnebago.  Nothing heals itself, half the ship is replacement parts, and nothing runs for too long without breaking.  Someday, when spaceships are as ubiquitous as cars, we will have to deal with the reality that not everything is a top-of-the-line model.  When that happens, I hope the owner has a maintenance robot of their own to help with all of the repairs.

On the ISS when something breaks, the crew knows that they will be spending some time within the next couple of weeks replacing something, which means they’ll have to go digging through storage areas to find the spare parts.  Then they’ll have to spend a good deal of time cutting through clutter to get what to what they need.  Pictures of the inside of ISS, like the one below, show that the station is jam-packed with stuff.

So, my procedure says to follow the white wire...

For this, I gave Max a bit of an advantage as he gets to use a 3D printer to generate replacement parts.  I had to do something to cut out the piles of stuff that would otherwise be lining the floor.  I did however try to preserve the concept that there is no wasted space aboard the ship.  Behind every panel is some vital piece of equipment.  Throughout the story, Max is forced to worm and weasel his way into and out of tight spaces all in the name of making a living.

So through the Hannah’s systems and operation, I tried to reflect a realistic spaceship environment.  That realism though means the entire ship is one big pain-in-the-ass for Max to run by himself which is what ultimately leads Max to trying to hire on some extra help.  I could have made the ship less of a junker, but I’m confident that Max wouldn’t have had it any other way.

Dust is available in the Amazon Kindle store for $3.99 and is free for Amazon Prime members.

Introducing ‘Dust’, Now Available in the Amazon Kindle Store

Dust, my first published novel, is now exclusively available in the Amazon Kindle store.  Currently it is available in eBook format only, but will be available in paperback in the coming weeks.

What is Dust about?

Dust is a science fiction adventure set in deep space, hundreds of years in the future.  The story follows a young man, Nick Papagous, as he runs away from his rich, luxurious homeworld and journeys to the rough and tumble frontier.

Nick is running away from home to escape the control of his father, a top official in the Marshall Conglomerate.  The Conglomerate produces everything needed to help maintain a safe and secure society.  They serve the people and in so doing they serve the Republic.  Or so his father says.   Nick, though, has found something rotten in his father’s work and he can no longer live with the man he once admired.

Nick is forced into the employ of Max Cabot, an old, weathered freighter pilot who does supply runs to the last colony humanity has established, the colony on Dust.  Max has been on this route for ten years, trying to put his tragic past behind him.  The Republic has turned a blind eye to Dust, an inconsequential world that isn’t worth maintaining. However, Dust has plenty of secrets beneath its shifting sands, secrets that will challenge everything Nick believes.

What is my writing background?

Dust is the second novel I’ve written but the first I’ve published.  My first novel, Crusade of the Warrior King, will be released later this year.  I’ve also written many short stories, several of which are also available on Amazon.com, Smashwords, iBooks, and other sites.  Check the Hutt Publishing tab for details.

Who or what influences my writing?

I’ve read more science fiction novels than I can remember, but my favorites are Isaac Asimov’s Robot novels, Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card, Jack McDevitt’s Omega series, and Stephen King’s Dark Tower series.  I prefer fiction that has a bit grittier feel, that has a bit of an edge to it.  I’m not a big fan of happy endings, which is probably why I like King’s work as much as I do.

I do love space opera and the grand sweeping stories of the original Star Wars trilogy or the Star Trek movies.  They’ve romanticized flying through the stars, fighting super-villains, and the rogue-ish hero.  There’s no denying the influence that movies like that or shows like the ill-fated Firefly have had on me.

I’m also a big fan of Ben Bova and his series of novels that explore the colonization of the solar system.  Bova’s fiction falls under the category of hard science fiction, rooted in real-world science wherever possible.  While I prefer adventures that allow humanity to travel from star to star, I still try to root the story in some form of reality.  I hope that some of my twelve years working for NASA on the International Space Station shine through in an entertaining manner.

I hope you enjoy the novel and I am open to any and all feedback you may have, positive or negative.  I’m also happy to answer any questions about the story.  I’ll be following this post up with a few other posts on some aspects of the story including the technology, comparisons to real space vehicles, etc.

Dust is available for $3.99 from the Amazon Kindle store and is free for Amazon Prime members who own a Kindle.  I’ll post an update when the paperback is available.  Please rate and leave feedback.  If you enjoy it, please pass it on.  I appreciate any and all support.

What is the endgame in the search for Exoplanets?

Exoplanet illustration via Wired

One of the most interesting areas in Astronomy at the moment is the search for Extrasolar Planets, or Exoplanets.  These are planets that exist outside of the Solar System.  To date, 551 Exoplanets have been confirmed, with the possibility of over 1200 more recently announced by the NASA Kepler team.  Most exciting, a team of French Researchers announced yesterday that they have confirmed that the first exoplanet which could support life has been discovered.

Gliese 581d, first discovered in 2007 with seven times the mass of Earth and roughly twice its size, has a carbon dioxide atmosphere.  This is the first of what could be millions of potentially habitable planets in the galaxy.

Consider that to date, the majority of planets discovered are large gas giants as big or bigger than Jupiter.  It makes sense that as we first look for planets in the cosmos, that we will find the largest of them.  Consider also that several of the popular techniques for detecting planets favor finding planets that have short orbital periods (Kepler has yet to confirm a planet with an orbit longer than 40 days).  As we refine our techniques for planet detection, we will find more and more smaller, Earth-like planets.

The question becomes, then what?

Once a planet is found, we can analyze the light produced as it passes through that planet’s atmosphere to get a rough idea of the gases that make up that atmosphere.  We can tell if a planet has a nitrogen rich atmosphere.  We can also tell how far a planet is from its sun and whether or not it resides in its system’s habitable zone, where a planet can potentially maintain water on its surface.

So in a decade, we’ll have potentially discovered hundreds of planets that could maintain life.  This is where things really start to get interesting.  Once we know a planet could support life, the question becomes is there intelligent life?  Is there a developed society?  On the fringe of things are a couple of researchers who believe we should be able to detect the evidence of asteroid mining.  This would be a sign of a fairly advanced civilization, especially considering we don’t yet have the capability to do that, though I would argue hat’s mainly because we don’t put the money into it.  Once Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos figure out how to reap the profits from asteroid mining, I have no doubt we’ll be there, but that’s another post for another time.

Of course, another possible method of determining if there’s a civilization there will be through just listening.  SETI has been using radio telescopes for years to try to listen for signals from alien worlds.  We have been unintentionally sending signals to space since the dawn of radio.  SETI has been listening for years to see if it could pick up the those signals from another world.  They scan the sky without much guidance as to where to look.  With the discovery of potential life-supporting exoplanets, you now have the ability to do a more guided search.

So, we can discover planets.  We can tell if those planets could support water and whether or not they have an atmosphere.  We have a small chance of being able to tell if there’s an advanced civilization there.  What do we do after we suspect there’s life in them there planets?  Do we just say ‘hey, that’s pretty neat’ and stop there.  I have a hard time seeing that.

I imagine the next step will be what I’ll call the Hawking debate: do we risk alerting a potentially far superior alien civilization to our existence and the risk that they would wipe us out or do we trust that they will be benevolent in their intentions once we send them the “we are here” broadcast.  I do imagine there will be real scientific debate about this, but I think the desire to push the boundaries and explore the universe will win out.

This is where a planet like Gliese 581d becomes really interesting.  Gliese 581d is a relatively scant 20 light years away.  A signal in that direction would only take 20 years to get there and 20 years back.  40 years is a lifetime, but it’s certainly a plausible length of time for an experiment of this magnitude.  Many experiments last for decades or more.  Something like this would be low-cost and low overhead; we would just need to remember to keep listening at the right time.  So we could try to let that civilization know we are here.

So what do we do after that?  Do we send a probe a la the Voyager spacecraft?  Right now, the fastest spacecraft in existence, Helios 2, travels along at a snail’s pace of ~150,000 mph, which doesn’t quite match the 670,616,629 mph that light travels at.  So, without some substantial breakthroughs in the speed of spacecraft, sending any type of probe to Gliese 581d will take a really, really, really, really long time.  My question is, if we know there’s a civilization in this system, is that the impetus needed to devote research dollars to develop new propulsion systems?  Or to go really out there, lead to more research into wormholes, a theoretical mode of travel fairly common in science fiction.

Of course, the ultimate dream would be to actually send someone there, but that’ll have to come after the invention of the wormhole generator and interstellar travel.  So, the best bet for this option may be cryogenically freezing yourself and see how far technology has progressed in about say 300 years.  Maybe then we’ll be able to get a firsthand glimpse of Gliese 581d.  Sure, other science fiction hypotheses exist such as a generation ship, which families would theoretically live in for hundreds of years and cross the cosmos and a more traditional rate of speed, but I’m fairly confident we’re a ways off from that technology, too.

So, we won’t be visiting the alien worlds that are being discovered any time soon, but contact would definitely not be out of the question.  The question there is, should we?