Space platform

“ Ever since ancient man first gazed in wonder at the stars, humanity has dreamed of traveling to outer space. Now scientists agree that space-flight may very soon become a reality.
Space Platform tells of man’s first step into outer space ... of the difficulties and dangers of reaching for the stars. It is also an exciting adventure. When young Joe Kenmore came to Bootstrap to install pilot gyros in the Platform he hadn’t bargained for sabotage or murder or love. But Joe learned that ruthless agents were determined to wreck the project. ”

“ No sane man would risk a two-per-cent chance of destroying Earth and all its people, yet [Pg 20] those reactions should be tried. In a space ship some millions of miles out in emptiness they could be. Either they’d be safe or they would not. But the only way to get a space ship a safe enough distance from Earth was to make a Space Platform as a starting point. Then a ship could shoot away from Earth with effectively zero gravity and full fuel tanks. The Platform should be built so civilization could surge ahead to new heights! ”

“ Pull out the pay load and put in a hydroponic garden and communicators and we’d be a Platform, right then! Send up another ferry rocket to join us, and it could bring guided missiles! The ferry rockets could be finished quicker than the Platform! Send up three ferry rockets with midgets as crews, an’ we could weld ’em together and have a Space Platform in orbit and working—and what’d be the use of sabotaging the big [Pg 96] Platform then? The job would be done! There’d be no sense sabotaging the big Platform because the little one could do anything the big one could! ”

“ The ship's steering-rockets were correcting the course of the vessel and—yes, there was another surge of power—nudging it to a more correct line of flight to meet the space platform coming up from behind. The platform went around the world six times a day, four thousand miles out. During three of its revolutions anybody on the ground, anywhere, could spot it in daylight as an infinitesimal star, bright enough to be seen against the sky's blueness, rising in the west and floating eastward to set at the place of sunrise.
There was again weightlessness. ”

“ This transport plane was flying to a small town improbably called Bootstrap, carrying one of the most essential devices for the Platform’s equipment. In the desert near Bootstrap there was a gigantic construction shed. Inside that shed men were building exactly the monstrous object that Joe pictured to himself. They were trying to realize a dream men have dreamed for decades—the necessary space platform that would be the dock, the wharf, the starting point from which the first of human space explorers could start for infinity. ”

“ They are harmless to people who live at the bottom of the planet's ocean of air.
But they are not harmless to the crew of a ship in space, or to the staff of that combined way station and observatory which is the Space Platform, or to the occupants of the bases on the moon. The Space Platform itself was set in orbit only three thousand miles out from Earth because of the Van Allen belts of just such particles that have been swung into paths around the earth and form invisible rings more or less resembling the visible rings of Saturn. At three thousand miles out these particles are not deadly. ”

“ Overcoming the obstacles to the apparently commonplace steps is nine-tenths of the difficulty. It had seemed to him that the most dramatic aspect of building the Space Platform had been the achievement of a design that would work in space, that could be gotten up into space, and that could be lived in under circumstances never before experienced. ”

“ A vast opening resulted, and morning [Pg 159] sunlight smote for the first time mankind’s very first space craft.
Joe saw the sunlight strike, and his first sensation was of disappointment. The normal shape of the Platform was ungainly, but now it was practically hidden by the solid-fuel rockets which would consume themselves in their firing. Also, the floor of the Shed looked strange. It was littered with the clumsy shapes of pushpots, trucked to this place in an unending stream all night long. ”

“ An expanded SMF makes possible full-scale production of space products and permits utilization of the facility for other purposes. Space platforms, pure glasses and synthetic crystals, satellites, and robots are ideal outputs. ”

“ There are other guys like me! We’ve got as much brains as full-sized people! If the big brass had figured on us small guys, they coulda made the Platform the size of a four-family house an’ it’d ha’ been up in the sky right now, with guys like me running it. Guys my size could man the ferry rockets bringin’ up fuel for storage, and four of us could take a six-hundred-ton rocket an’ slide out to Mars an’ be back by springtime—next springtime!—with all the facts and the photographs to prove ’em! ”

“ The Teleoperator Maneuvering System (TMS) is an unmanned free-flying spacegoing system designed to fit in the Shuttle Orbiter, with the capability to boost satellites into higher orbits, service and retrieve spacecraft, support the construction assembly and servicing of large space platforms, capture space debris, and perform numerous other tasks in orbit. TMS has the potential, with developing robotics technology, to greatly extend and enhance man's capabilities in space. ”

“ Supplies of energy, stored and generated, must be established if extrasolar spacecraft are to survive in the depths of interstellar space far from convenient sources of power (such as stars) for a major portion of their lives. The technologies of command, control, and communication over stellar and galactic distances ultimately also must be developed. ”

“ The satellites should them selves be designed on the modular principle, and tending them will drive development of technologies required to repair satellites in LEO and GEO, to assemble large satellites and space probes, and to provide flight support for missions conducted farther from the Earth. Build, test, and transfer to orbit large complex space stations. This capability derives from Shuttle beam building experiments and the assembly of modular structures and produces many of the products of this stage of development. ”

“ The Earth satellite vehicle will have to prove itself as a practical base, a sort of aerial aircraft carrier from which rocket ships can operate on the Earth shuttle. Before we are ready for interplanetary travel, we will have to harness some tremendous power not now available -- perhaps cosmic rays. There may have to be other space bases established as refueling stations or navigation check points. Incredible as this sounds, intelligent scientists and engineers expect to do it in a few decades. ”

“ And the next generation Internet will operate at speeds up to a thousand times faster than today.
Even as we explore this inner space, in the new millennium we're going to open new frontiers in outer space.
Throughout all history, human kind has had only one place to call home: our planet Earth. Beginning this year, 1998, men and women from 16 countries will build a foothold in the heavens--the International Space Station. With its vast expanses, scientists and engineers will actually set sail on an uncharted sea of limitless mystery and unlimited potential. ”

“ They had taken this little mission-fort down, brick by adobe brick, loaded it carefully into a spaceship, brought it here, forty two light-years away from Terra, and reverently set it up again. Then they had built a whole world and a whole social philosophy around it.
It had been the dissatisfied, of course, the discontented, the dreamers, who had led the vanguard of man's explosion into space following the discovery of the hyperspace-drive. ”

“ The Team defined a general concept of space exploration centered on the notion of an autonomous extrasolar exploratory machine system. This system incorporates advanced machine intelligence and robotics techniques and combines the heretofore separate and manpower-intensive phases of reconnaissance, exploration, and intensive study into a single, integrated mission. Such an automatic scientific investigation system should be useful in the exploration of distant bodies in the Solar System, such as Jupiter and its satellites ”

“ Under NASA's direction, the next logical step in America's space program-the space station is being planned, with development scheduled for the latter part of this decade. When it becomes operational in the early to mid-1990s, the space station will be a catalyst for expanding the peaceful uses of space for scientific, industrial, and commercial gain. ”

“ At some point in the future, major mass fractions of space facilities may be constructed of nonterrestrial matter. Space hardware should be produced in orbit at the rate of 10 kg/hr to match the 1970s and anticipated 1980s launch rates. ”

“ For from Brandon at the primary controls, through the power-room of the Sirius and the relay-station upon Mars, to the immense Interplanetary transmitter upon Earth, the greatest radio and television engineers of two planets were fighting overdriven equipment, trying to hold an almost impossible connection, in order that Nadia Newton's mother and sister might be present at her wedding, hundreds of millions of miles distant in space! ”

“ You keep in touch pretty damned good for a simple sailor. But I tell you, if we succeed, we'll literally change the way space is used. I'll be able to put a satellite into orbit for a song. Just between us, I'm building the biggest private spaceport anywhere. The French operation in Guiana won't hold a candle to it. I've already got ten geostationary orbital slots locked up with the World Administrative Radio Conference. Even NASA better keep a grip on their jockstrap. ”

“ Although interstellar exploration was identified as the ultimate goal, detailed mission analyses are not provided. The determination of technological, economic and political feasibility for such complex, expensive, and extraordinarily long-duration undertakings must wait until advanced machine-intelligence capabilities of the type required for an extrasolar voyage have been successfully demonstrated in planetary missions conducted entirely within the Solar System. ”

“ In practice, this approach might not require building totally autonomous selfreplicating automata, but only a largely automated system of diverse components that could be integrated into a production system able to grow exponentially to reach any desired goal. Such systems for large-scale space use would necessarily come as the end result of a long R&D process in advanced automation, robotics, and machine intelligence, with developments at each incremental stage finding wide use both on Earth and in space in virtually every sphere of technology. ”

“ Clearly, future large-scale American space projects should embody a fundamentally new perspective - an overall shift from the existing policy of (primarily) exploration to one of integrated and direct utility for mankind. Such a pragmatic space utilization program may demand extensive use of nonterrestrial materials and an ever-increasing dependence on automation in all its dimensions. ”

“ An extensive study of the outer solar system is recognized by us to be one of the major objectives of space science in this decade. This endeavor is made particularly exciting by the rare opportunity to explore several planets and satellites in one mission using long-lived spacecraft and existing propulsion systems. ”

“ The Telefactors Working Group, believing that robotics, computer science, and the concept of replicating systems could be of immense importance to the future of the space program, recommended that NASA should proceed with studies to answer fundamental questions and to determine the most appropriate development course to follow. ”

“ Did it ascend to the very top, to Commander Clement himself?
Fortunately, the violence of space is a controlled violence, and determined men can slip through it with tools and building materials. They can base themselves on zero-gravity construction rafts and take refuge in pressurized crevices, go floating along steel girders five hundred feet in length until there has been assembled the greatest of all miracles—a manned Space Station a thousand feet in diameter encircling Earth at a distance of fifteen hundred miles. ”

“ In the scientific arena, the past decade of experience has taught us that spacecraft are an irreplaceable tool for learning about our near-Earth space environment, the Moon, and the planets, besides being an important aid to our studies of the Sun and stars. In utilizing space to meet needs on Earth, we have seen the tremendous potential of satellites for international communications and world-wide weather forecasting. ”

“ The station will serve as a laboratory for materials processing and industrial and scientific research; as a permanent observatory for astronomy and Earth observations; as a storage and supply depot; and as a base from which to service other satellites or satellite clusters that will form the world's first space-based industrial park. Japan, Europe, and Canada have joined with us in partnerships that are designed to serve all our long-term interests.
Space exploration is little more than a quarter century old. ”

“ The focus of this stage depends to some extent on the perceived configuration of the mission vehicle. Issues related to propulsion and energy needs and appropriate launch sites (e.g., Low Earth Orbit vs vicinity of extraterrestrial resources utilized for the mission) are decided. The launch phase is conducted largely by Earth-based humans, but could benefit from machine intelligence capabilities (e.g., CAD/CAM/CAT) for testing, checkout, flight preparation, and launch support. ”