by Larry Niven
Options:
A Moonbug might benefit from three or four operators running different systems or tools. This permits groups and even families to become proficient.
Low-cost access to space will allow sample return from the moon periodically. Therefore, during your time on the rover, you can collect your personal moon rock for an additional cost. Or collect one for the government for an extra five minutes!
Winner could write whatever he wished on the moon: his name, or Sally Loves Fred, or Think of It As Evolution in Action. Each rover remembers where it has been and leaves the writings intact…For perhaps the next billion or so years.
Corporate sponsorship. Moonbugs displaying company logos, or custom Moonbugs in the shape of company logos.
We intend ultimately to develop a lunar colony. We will hard-land a warehouse of modular components. For continuous power and a high probability of water, we may initially land at the pole. Our Moonbugs and trained operators will do the building:
Signal Relay Stations (for transferring signals to rovers away from the poles or on the “back” side).
Exploration. We want water if we can get it. The midcentury will want Helium3.
Observatory.
A habitat (involves mainly digging).
Build and deploy solar collectors. It will be some time before we can fabricate photovoltaics on-site, so some form of heat engine might be preferred.
Serious applications. There are many things to do on the Moon.
Mining.
Fabrication.
Geological exploration.
Principal industries will eventually include: manufacturing and launching orbital fuel. Hydrogen will be in short supply, but aluminum and oxygen are plentiful, and can make a moderately energetic fuel.
What we’re building here is a subculture that will outlast anyone now alive. When the cost of transport to the Moon drops, and an audience of millions has announced itself, we’ll see competition. Expect a demolition derby in Clavius Crater, run from the Luxor Hotel, with robots to be designed and operated by the competitors and lofted at Luxor expense.
Expect human teleoperators, originally teens who won a lottery, to travel to Mars orbit, where the familiar second-and-a-half delay won’t interfere with the exploration of Mars, and the construction of Marsport City.
Learning to Love the Space Station
I’ve been losing my arrogance, my faith in my own wisdom.
That’s hard on a science fiction writer.
Last year I wrote six articles for SPACE.COM, then ran out of inspiration. That was before the World Trade Center fell; it was even before the stock market fell from its amazing zenith. We were supposed to have cities on the Moon by now—and labs for our more dangerous biological experiments. My problem was that we were getting nowhere in space.
But that’s a wrong perception, isn’t it?
There’s a lot going on in space! New domains I can write about! We’ve found free-floating planets, and weird superjovians that huddle right up against their parent stars. (“Free Floaters,” written with Brenda Cooper, soon in Analog.) Archeologists find evidence that the Earth has been frozen from pole to pole, four times over, and recovered. (“Ice and Mirrors,” with Brenda Cooper again.) We find hints of a universal negative gravity effect. From quantum physics “entanglement” comes possible faster-than-light communications. There’s been an endless run of discoveries, from comets and trans-Neptunian objects to the edge of the universe, so many that I have trouble keeping up.
We don’t have a Moonbase, no, but there are men in space. The International Space Station is in place, and working, and growing.
In the 1980s, Ronald Reagan’s science advisor was one of Dr. Jerry Pournelle’s top students. Jerry gathered fifty-odd good men and women at the Niven house in Tarzana, to work out a proposed space program, with costs and schedules, to put before the President. We met four times during the Reagan Administration and twice since. One result was SDI—“Star Wars”—and the collapse of the Soviet Union. Another was the DC-X1, which landed on its tail and could be flown again the next day, and might have led to a single-stage ground-to-orbit spacecraft.
In one of these first meetings, we were persuaded to support Space Station Freedom.
Dr. Pournelle later told me that this was our worst mistake. Freedom became a great bleeding wound in the economy, sucking up most of the funding that might have gone to something real. The space station became a stack of designs and specs and changes that might have reached the Moon itself.
I have a T-shirt from that date. On the front, a design for Freedom, now many years obsolete. On the back,
“9 years
9 billion dollars
and all we got was this lousy shirt.”
For all those years humanity had one station in space, and that was Mir. We’re told that most activity aboard Mir was to keep Mir habitable. When the USSR went bankrupt, newly freed political entities argued among themselves while their astronaut was marooned in orbit. Mir was the best we had.
You can’t build a political space station. We (various of the Citizens Advisory Council) had watched them build the Shuttle. Stories came down of the compromises between politics and design. Devices mounted on the rocket motor itself, subjected to that much stress, rather than fight through another contract. Clumsy designs intended to keep thousands of employees doing a job the DC-X1 did with three. If building a political spacecraft is that close to impossible, if the result is that close to unflyable, what would a political space station look like?
And they changed the design with every administration! I listened to a NASA man laying out possible new designs after Clinton took office. He had a beaten look. He showed hardware that would have to be thrown away.
I came to believe that we should have been launching a space station every time some purpose required one. You can’t build a political space station; you have to build a dozen.
With all of that as background, it takes effort to realize that my T-shirt is obsolete. It’s been many more than nine billion dollars, and more like twenty than nine years, but the damn thing is up there and doing its job!
I may be preaching to the converted here. I never did read minds worth a damn. If you already love the space station, don’t let me bring you down. My viewpoint is special.
I’m sixty-three.
During the golden age—when I would have been twelve, but I grew up a little slow—an issue of Analog included a Von Braun spacecraft for a cover, and an article called “Rocket to Nowhere.” Until then, even most science fiction writers had not perceived the value of “near Earth orbit”—an empty domain, with nothing there but what we might bring with us.
Von Braun’s “The Conquest of Space” converted us all. We all fell in love with Werner Von Braun’s wheel-shaped space station.
What would we sixty-odds think of the array of plumbing work they’re putting together in orbit today? It doesn’t spin! Even for fans of science and science fiction, it’s hard to fight a prejudice. But Von Braun’s wheel is obsolete.
The bigger the circumference, the more closely spin resembles gravity. Given too small a circle, sitting or standing requires a velocity change: it feels like you’ve been kicked in the head. Why not use a tether instead of a ring? You get a much bigger radius. That idea is as old as the Von Braun wheel.
Good design work has been done on tethers, particularly by Robert Forward. There’s a gravity gradient in near Earth orbit. Spin isn’t even needed if you don’t mind low gravity, and you can use a long conducting cable to pick up electrical power too…or pump power in or out to change altitude.
Or you live with microgravity and fight it with exercise and diet supplements. We’ll see how that works out. I need to keep better track of what they’re doing up there.
From Earth you can’t see footprints on the Moon, but you can see the ISS in orbit—a dot to the naked eye, more to binoculars—and it gets brighter as they make it bigger. A fool can s
till disbelieve in mankind in space, but it takes a conscious effort now. The fool dares not look up.
Once you’re in orbit you’re halfway to anywhere.
In an earlier article I wondered if virtual travel would become the normal mode; if real travelers, tourists, would become a few highly paid professionals wired to record their experiences for mass-market sale. We would see the Taj Mahal on the Geographic channel, the way we expect to see Mars. The events of September 11 may have brought that about.
Let’s find out. I’m pretending the world is normal and I’m flying to New York, then on to a science fiction convention in Albany. Afterward I’ll report what flying is like for the likes of me and us, after the airlines adjust to the new reality.
Autograph Etiquette
Autographing isn’t the fun part.
In my lust to bring order out of chaos, I have created a set of rules for authors and autograph hunters. Feel free to disagree with any of this. It’s only one man’s opinion.
For Writers
You’re not a movie star. You have to go to a convention or a bookstore if you want to sign autographs. You won’t be accosted in random restaurants because nobody knows your face.
Your purpose here is to sell books and have fun. All else follows from that.
1) Don’t short-sheet the seeker. Give him your name, his name if he wants it, the date if he wants it. “Best wishes.” Special inscription if it’s not too long. Don’t refuse to sign paperbacks or a story in a magazine. You didn’t have to come here to tell someone what he can’t have.
The exception is “generic” autographs for dealers. These have no emotional significance. Do it or don’t do it, depending on how you feel.
2) If the committee (store manager) wants to put a limit on the number of books a seeker may submit, that’s fine. Let him enforce it too. Or not. Riot control isn’t your problem.
3) Keep telling yourself: if the seeker’s carrying two grocery bags full of your books, he must have bought two grocery bags full of your books.
4) Get the convention committee to schedule you for a formal autographing, and advertise it. Otherwise, they’ll mob you elsewhere: in halls or at parties. You’ll find yourself looking for flat spaces or giving your drink and pipe to someone to hold; another flat space for the book, or someone’s back; fish out a pen or borrow one, and remember which, because you want to give back a borrowed pen and KEEP YOUR OWN…. All of this is worth avoiding.
5) At the formal autographing, borrow a pen from the committee/manager, or use your own. Know it’s yours. Don’t give it away. Use a cheap pen, because sure as hell you’ll hand it to someone anyway…
6) Your brain will turn to mush long before your hand gives out. Never make promises while autographing. (The good news is, it’s amazing how fast hand and brain recover afterward.)
7) Since some clown dropped his book into Robert Heinlein’s mashed potatoes when he was GOH at the Kansas Worldcon, I’ve never signed a book if the seeker got me while I was eating; and I’ve been willing to lecture him on the subject. Then again, I’m a compulsive teacher. Take your choice.
For Seekers
You’re here because you want to be. Enjoy it. If you admire the writer who’s doing all the signing, give him a break. He’s not necessarily having fun right now.
1) If the store put a limit on number of books signed, don’t violate it. Go through the line four times. It won’t kill you.
2) Sure you hate standing in line. You’d rather accost the poor suffering author in the halls or at a party; but it’s not as if you were among strangers. Start a conversation.
3) Talking with an author can be an act of mercy, if he’s not exactly being mobbed. However, don’t interfere with his signing books. His brain may have turned to mush by now, so don’t expect him to be sensible. He won’t remember dates or promises. If you leave him a note so he can get back to you, he may lose the note.
4) If he spells your name wrong in the autograph, it’s your fault. Best move is to show him your card or your convention badge.
5) Never accost anyone while he’s eating. Or ordering. Or sitting in a restaurant. The bar is marginal (and you’re buying). Don’t interrupt a conversation. At a convention, any writer may be trying to do business, and that takes precedence over an autograph hunter.
6) No author leaves an autographing if there’s still a line, unless it’s something serious. He may be keeping an appointment, a chance to make some money or get married or laid. Maybe his thumb and/or little finger feel like they’ve been smashed. Yours would. Maybe it’s his back that’s killing him. So let the poor bastard go.
7) Two minutes after the autographing is over, the author doesn’t remember your name. He won’t remember it two years later either, and making him feel guilty about it is rude.
Tabletop Fusion
When cold fusion broke into the news, Reason magazine asked me for an article on how it would affect the future.
The news had gone cold by the time I turned it in. They bought it anyway, but chose not to publish it.
The subject is warming up again.
The viewpoint of the physicists here is easy to understand. They spend money like a drunken government, trying to get enough heat and pressure to make solar-style fusion work. The money is committed years in advance. They did not warm to the notion of being beaten by chemists. Now they’ve admitted that something is going on: they get radiation, tritium, and other indications that it ain’t just chemistry. Nuclear fusion is happening at some level.
But even without that, it’s a fit subject for science fiction.
When the news hit, I bought stock in platinum mines. I had to explain to my broker that I had no interest in platinum, just the mines. They’re the only source of palladium. I held for a bit, then sold it. It isn’t that I lost faith. But it seems that the lattice structure of the palladium electrodes somehow absorbs the shock of two deterium nuclei becoming one helium nucleus, so that the nucleus doesn’t have to spit out most of the energy as a neutron. Palladium can’t be the only substance with the right lattice structure.
Now my stockbroker wants to hire me. The man she actually wants is Jerry Pournelle: these were his suggestions.
I’m a science fiction writer. It always feels as if I actually know all that stuff. In May 1989 I was prepared to tell you:
The wonderful thing is that you’ll know, and soon. The experimental setup at the University of Utah is cheap. Pons and Fleischmann used their own money. For a hundred thousand dollars you can try it yourself! A lot of universities and laboratories will. Before I have quite finished typing, you should know whether this is another Dean Drive or a discovery to rank with the electric motor.
Hah! A panel discussion at Baycon in May changed my perspective.
What’s the melt? Lithium deuteroxide, but was it doped with something else? Is it the deuterium that undergoes fusion, or the lithium? Or both?
Platinum and palladium electrodes seem to be the key. But “making the electrodes is a black art.” You do everything right, meticulously, and you still don’t know what you’ll get. Panelists spoke of electrodes used for isotope separation: melted in vacuum, and recast, fifteen times! After the tenth remelting, a spectrum change indicates that the melt is still losing trapped gas!
That black art is called alchemy, and it’s old. Or else it’s the infant science of chaos, like weather prediction, the stock market, disease control, and a score of other undisciplined disciplines. Results are very sensitive to initial conditions. Wobble the sixth or tenth decimal place, and everything changes. A bright calm day becomes a hurricane. A vaccine that had AIDS stopped cold hits a sudden spike in the death rate.
Pons and Fleischmann are saying very little. Their reputations are solid; their papers are not; their methods are secret pending patent applications. The brightest friends I’ve got are all using the word “intuition.”
So here’s the future. I’m making optimistic assumptions because that’s w
hat Reason asked for, and because it makes the most interesting story.
If tabletop fusion is real, then we know something about it.
1) A tabletop fusion plant—call it a fusor—would be a billion times cleaner (per output in kilowatts) than a hot plasma fusion plant. That makes it cleaner than every form of power now in use except hydroelectric (which is clean if you’re not downstream when the dam goes) and solar.
2) Interestingly, the tabletop fusor has no more weapons potential than a teddy bear. There’s not enough power output for a decent weapons laser, and if anything goes wrong, it just stops. You can’t build it bigger because there’s an upper temperature limit. The fusion takes place in the crystal lattice of the palladium, where an electric charge can concentrate deuterium nuclei to an effective 1024 atmospheres of pressure. That’s close enough to allow fusion. Swell; but if the electrodes melt (and the theory doesn’t), the crystal lattice in the palladium is lost and everything stops.
So don’t expect big power plants: there’s no economy of scale. There’s no way to make it explode either.
3) Are we talking about running a car around the world on a quart of lithium deuteride? Today’s gas-driven car always bursts into a fireball, whatever you do to it, at least in the movies. Deuterium burns like hydrogen, sure, but a quart of the stuff isn’t terribly dangerous.
I can’t see fusor automobiles. The fusor won’t get that small, not soon.
But we might see eighteen-wheel trucks running on fusors. Small businesses and apartment buildings and individual houses could have fusors in their basements, if the price dropped enough. The big power companies would lose customers.