Cities in Space

Why Asten?

Asten is an alternate name for the Egyptian god Thoth, who was tasked with maintaining the balance between Good and Evil, and was the master of divine and physical law. He is said to have directed the motion of the heavenly bodies, and the Egyptians credited him with as the author of all works science, philosophy and magic.

Similar to Thoth, the space station Asten seemingly directs the heavenly bodies in its location orbiting Earth, and opens up multiple possibilities in extending our knowledge and application of science. And who knows, perhaps there is some magic involved too.

Eric Yam, Asten Space Station Proposal

Today's rant finds its roots in a visit to Jeff Russell's Starship Dimensions. Ever wonder what the size relationship is between all of the various aliens, monsters and spaceships that you've ever seen? Jeff Russell has invested what has to have been a frightening amount of time and effort in assembling a fairly comprehensive collection of all the bits and pieces, ranging from Yoda (.66 metres) to Larry Niven's Ringworld (299,300,000 kilometres in diameter).

I happened to notice that Mr. Russell had just added the winning entry from NASA's annual Space Settlement Design Contest, which I'm pleased to say was a Canadian creation, entered by Eric Yam from Northern Secondary School in Toronto. If you visit the competition web site, you can download the 93 page entry and have a look at Mr. Yam's vision for what is essentially a city in space.

Okay, a small town, more accurately. By the standards of Jeff's site, Eric's Asten space station isn't huge - 1700 metres tall, and a thousand metres in diameter, with a planned population of 22,400 people. That doesn't sound like a lot, but given that the current International Space Station measures in at 80 metres and is maxed out with six people on board, it would represent a quantum leap forward.

I won't claim that I read the entire contest entry, but a quick overview suggests that Eric's proposal is comprehensive and realistic. However, here's the detail that jumped out at me:

As with any megaproject, finding the money to pay for the construction of the space station will be extremely difficult. Due to the magnitude of the project, costs could run upwards of over 2-3 trillion dollars. With this staggering cost, financing could take decades, maybe even centuries.

Now, I won't argue - two trillion dollars is a lot of money to build a small town, and there are a lot of factors in play that contribute to the cost of the process. The difficulties of construction in a vacuum have yet to be fully explored, and of course all the materials either have to come up the gravity well or be brought in from the Moon or the asteroids (and yes, Eric discusses that, along with the fact that all the labour has to have access to a shirt-sleeve living environment).

My first thought about the price tag was that it represented the sort of investment that has to be made in order to explore space - go big or go home, and we have to be prepared to deal with that.

My second thought was to wonder what a city actually costs. What do you think New York "cost"?

Third? A funding timeframe of a hundred years would result in a project which would be obsolete before it was fully started, as technology moved forward and the underlying strategies became outmoded. Italian architect Paolo Soleri started construction of Arcosanti, an attempt to build the first arcology, as he calls his architecturally and ecologically integrated urban environment, in 1970. Although arcologies have become a mainstay of the science fiction urban landscape, the actual project itself, chronically underfunded, has been limping along for nearly 40 years with no sign of completion.

Last - ha, only two to three trillion? The only thing that stands in the way of something like the Asten space station is our desire to create it. The United States has spent almost $700 billion dollars on the war in Iraq, and nearly $200 billion on fighting terrorism in Afghanistan. Guess what, stand on tiptoe and you can see a trillion dollars just over the horizon.

- Sid