The Colossus Expansion: The Second World, #4

By Doug Cook

In The Colossus Expansion, the fourth book of the Second World Series, deep space travel evolves as humans venture deeper into the solar system. Our existence in space is facilitated by the CASSI AI system. CASSI's consciousness and morality becomes legendary as human expansion into deep space is thwarted by ATek, a Russian asteroid mining conglomerate.

We need bigger, faster ships with artificial gravity for long voyages, something that the Colossus II settlement ships, launching November 20, 2054, can provide. The Colossus II is a huge interplanetary ship, ever so much more spacious and accommodating than the Colossus I, equipped with two hab rings rotating around the ship's central axis giving a Mars equivalent ship gravity. The Colossus II Interplanetary ship is propelled by Super Heavy booster rocket engines and ion thrusters.

Human settlement of the solar system reaches Jupiter's moon Callisto and Saturn's moon Titan while robotic probes penetrate the ice of Europa and Enceladus to explore oceans more vast than those of Earth. Discoveries there redefine the boundaries of what we imagine as life.

The Colossus Expansion saga culminates in 2079 on the Perseus Mission. Not only will this mission be the last hope of averting the Shiva disaster for Earth and Mars, the Colossus III ship Perseus secretly launches continuing outward on the most important exploration mission in human history.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Doug Cook
• Release date: Feb 9, 2021
• ISBN: 9781005108427

Doug Cook

Doug Cook is retired from a thirty-four year career as a petroleum geophysicist. He is now dedicated to writing, astronomy, and climate change awareness. Doug participated in ten years of deep-water submersible studies on chemosynthetic communities of life in the Gulf of Mexico . These extremophile organisms relate to Doug's passion for astrogeology and exobiology. He is a member American Association of Petroleum Geologists (AAPG), Chair AAPG Astrogeology Committee, Society of Exploration Geophysicists (SEG), Vice President Colorado Springs Astronomical Society, member of the Planetary Society, National Space Society, Explore Mars, and Adjunct Astronomy Professor PPCC. He has two daughters and lives in Colorado with his wife Elizabeth.

Book preview

SYNOPSIS

In The Colossus Expansion, the fourth book of the Second World Series, deep space travel evolves as humans venture deeper into the solar system. Our existence in space is facilitated by the CASSI AI system. CASSI’s consciousness and morality becomes legendary as human expansion into deep space is thwarted by ATek, a Russian asteroid mining conglomerate.

We need bigger, faster ships with artificial gravity for long voyages, something that the Colossus II settlement ships, launching November 20, 2054, can provide. The Colossus II is a huge interplanetary ship, ever so much more spacious and accommodating than the Colossus I, equipped with two hab rings rotating around the ship’s central axis giving a Mars equivalent ship gravity. The Colossus II Interplanetary ship is propelled by Super Heavy booster rocket engines and ion thrusters.

Human settlement of the solar system reaches Jupiter’s moon Callisto and Saturn’s moon Titan while robotic probes penetrate the ice of Europa and Enceladus to explore oceans more vast than those of Earth. Discoveries there redefine the boundaries of what we imagine as life.

The Colossus Expansion saga culminates in 2079 on the Perseus Mission. Not only will this mission be the last hope of averting the Shiva disaster for Earth and Mars, the Colossus III ship Perseus secretly launches continuing outward on the most important exploration mission in human history.

The Colossus Expansion

Doug Cook

This book is dedicated to my granddaughter, the warrior princess Zenobia.

Copyright ©2021 by Doug Cook

Smashwords Edition

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. Please do not participate in or encourage the piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

Cover image credits NASA/JPL- composite images of Saturn and its moon Titan.

Douglas J. Cook

Colorado Springs, CO

THE COLOSSUS EXPANSION

TABLE OF CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

PREFACE

PROLOGUE

CHAPTER 1 Earth 2054

CHAPTER 2 Arcadia 2054

CHAPTER 3 The Lutetia Incident

CHAPTER 4 Callisto Valhalla Base

CHAPTER 5 The Destroyer Missions

CHAPTER 6 Titan Shangri-La Base

CHAPTER 7 The Perseus Mission

CHAPTER 8 The Rain of Terror

EPILOGUE

APPENDIX 1 History of Mars Settlement and Shiva’s Threat

APPENDIX 2 Analysis of S1-5: A one-kilometer fragment impact on Mars South Pole

GLOSSARY of TERMS

DRAMATIS PERSONAE

Introduction

"As a species, we've taken a long time to get to this point after billions of years of evolution. The window to extend consciousness beyond Earth is open, but it might not be open for long. We have to do it now."

"It appears that consciousness is a very rare & precious thing, and we should take whatever steps we can to preserve the light of consciousness... We should become a multi-planet civilization while that window is open"

-- SpaceX CEO Elon Musk

This introduction serves to discuss the science and engineering woven into the Second World Series and The Colossus Expansion, the fourth book of the series. These are exciting times for the evolution of human space exploration. We have just celebrated the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 Moon landing. NASA has adopted the Artemis program with a goal of returning humans to the Moon by 2024 with a permanent settlement beginning in 2028. This is planned to jumpstart a NASA sponsored human mission to Mars by the mid-2030s. Below, we will discuss how SpaceX could accelerate that timeline.

The premise of Arcadia Mars and The Shiva Encounter, the second and third books of the Second World Series, is that the threat of ongoing global warming, Earth overpopulation, global thermonuclear war, along with the peaceful motivations to explore and settle Mars are not enough to compel that first human mission to the red planet in the foreseeable future. A one hundred kilometer diameter Kuiper Belt Object, KBO, from beyond Neptune and Pluto is discovered to be on a trajectory to the inner solar system. It was named Shiva, the Destroyer. It has a one-in-fifty chance of impacting the Earth in the year 2079. This disaster would be twenty-thousand times the impact energy of the Chicxulub Event, the asteroid impact that killed the dinosaurs and most of the life on Earth, 66 million years ago. This threat of possible extinction drives us to become a spacefaring multi-planet species.

The Aquila Mission returned humans to deep space by NASA’s current playbook using the SLS Space Launch System (fictional name therein-- Space Rocket System-SRS). In Arcadia Mars and The Shiva Encounter, the SpaceX Super Heavy booster with its Starship (fictional name herein-- SpaceTrans Colossus) becomes the workhorse for deep space travel to establish the first settlements on Mars starting in 2035 and Ceres in 2042.

In The Colossus Expansion, deep space travel evolves as humans venture deeper into the solar system. We need bigger, faster ships with artificial gravity for long voyages. Colossus II settlement ships launch November 20, 2054. The Colossus II is a huge interplanetary ship, incapable itself of a planet landing, but ever so much more spacious and accommodating with hab modules rotating around the ship’s central axis giving a Mars equivalent 0.38 g centripetal acceleration. The Colossus II will be able to carry 584 passengers and crew with 384 of them in hib-sleep. The Crew Cargo Vehicle, or CCV, is actually a Colossus I ship. The CCV detaches from the big Colossus II to make landings possible.

Even with these huge settlement ships, the long travel times to realms as far as Saturn, inspire us to find faster deep space travel. We look to fusion power and the potential development of the synchrotron ion drive (SID) with propellant exhaust driven to ten percent of light speed continuously accelerating the ship for months.

The Super Heavy/Starship Reality

In the Introduction of Arcadia Mars, we discussed the BFR Reality. In 2019, SpaceX changed the jargon. The BFR reusable design is comprised of a renamed Super Heavy booster first stage and Starship second stage. At the time of writing, SpaceX has successfully tested its Starhopper and SN5 single Raptor engine prototypes with short lift off and soft landings. A near-future Starship prototype, with three Raptor engines, will lead to a proposed 20-kilometer suborbital test flight. A crewed Starship orbital test flight will soon follow. Elon Musk predicts that will happen in 2021.


On May 29, 2020, hours before SpaceX would send its first human crew into space in a Dragon crew capsule on a Falcon 9, the SN4 Starship prototype went up in flames in an explosion that took place at the Boca Chica facility in Texas for developing Starship prototypes. The explosion was attributed to a fuel disconnect line. SpaceX learned and moved on to the next prototype- SN5.[¹] SN5 successfully completed a 150-meter hop test on August 4, 2020.

SpaceX Starhopper prototype as flown in 2019 with a single Raptor engine.

(Image credit: G. De Chiara via Wikipedia)

SpaceX Starship MK1 prototype as unveiled by Elon Musk Sept. 28, 2019 stands 50 meters tall at the company's Boca Chica site in South Texas (Falcon 1 used for scale). Planned inaugural 20 km launch, planned for 11/15/2019, according to FAA application. The fins on the Starship are used to control its belly first landing approach before a powered vertical landing. (Image credit: SpaceX)

On April 30, 2020, the SpaceX Starship was chosen as one of three potential human lunar landing systems for development for a NASA led 2024 return to the Moon. The next year will see many SpaceX developments toward a successful Starship design. Each step, with success or failure, constitutes a learning process.

In Arcadia Mars, we discussed the need for a low Earth orbiting (LEO) propellant depot. A crewed Starship could launch from Earth and refuel in a single rendezvous with the depot instead of waiting for five to eight propellant tanker launches to refuel the Starship. In the future, the Starship could be fully fueled for the journey to Mars at the depot with less expensive propellant made from water extracted from the Moon or near Earth asteroids.

Robert Zubrin, Mars Society and Pioneer Astronautics President, proposes that the Starship be used as a heavy lift vehicle to ferry Mars mission elements to LEO only.[²] From there, the Mars mission elements would launch to Mars with Habitat, Earth Return Vehicle, and Crew Transfer vehicle elements originally proposed in Zubrin’s 1996 book The Case for Mars. This would essentially be the NASA reference proposed Mars Mission that uses the SLS heavy lift vehicle instead of the SpaceX Super Heavy booster and Starship. This scenario may be viable only for a short stay Mars exploration and return crew mission.

I maintain that the prospect of delivering 100 to 120 metric tons to the surface of Mars with a single SpaceX Starship is the only realistic way to begin building a permanent, fully operational Mars settlement. It will require 1100 MT of propellant to fully refuel a Starship to return it to Earth. In Arcadia Mars, I described the scenario of using the SSTAR reactor to produce the 10 GWh of energy needed to produce the 1100 MT of propellant (liquid methane and liquid oxygen) from atmospheric carbon dioxide and ice found in the near subsurface of Mars.

The Mars Orbiting Space Camp proposed by Lockheed Martin looks cool and seemed integral to settling Mars. I adopted it in Arcadia Mars but now I feel it’s awkward and unnecessary. EDL, entry, descent, and landing, is hard enough as direct approach to landing on Mars. Why pay the price of deceleration to direct orbit without aero braking? The same could be said of plans to have bases on Phobos and Deimos before a human Mars landing.

What of producing propellant on the Moon? Water ice is known to exist in permanently shaded craters near the Moon’s poles, especially the South Pole. Water ice readily yields hydrogen and oxygen through electrolysis. Bring your own carbon dioxide and you can make methane propellant with the Sabatier Reaction. Water ice in permanently shaded craters ties this operation to the Moon’s poles.

ESA is partnering in a new process that can generate oxygen and metals from lunar soil. Both will be very valuable to a lunar economy.[³]

I discussed Mars surface operations energy budgets with SpaceX Principal Mars Development Engineer at the Humans to Mars Summit in May 2019. In our discussion, I pointed out the very high-energy bill to produce 1100 MT of propellant on Mars to return a Starship and described the idea of using the SSTAR reactor to foot the energy bill. I suggested salvaging some of the Starships on Mars. For settlements, I explained, it might be overwhelming to produce enough propellant to return all the Starships sent to build a settlement on the Moon or on Mars. What do you do with them? In Arcadia Mars, I proposed to salvage them for metal, materials, engines, and electronics! The engineer smiled and nodded politely.

Elon Musk gave an update on the next-generation Starship MK1 spacecraft at the SpaceX Texas launch facility on September 28, 2019 in Boca Chica, Texas. Elon Musk’s announcement described the Starship being constructed with 301 stainless steel instead of aluminum or carbon fiber. Stainless steel is less expensive ($1300/ton) and easy to weld. It has a high ( ~ 1400° C) melting temp versus Al-Li alloy that melts at 718° C. Carbon fiber is very expensive (~$130,000/ton) and not generally appropriate for temperatures over 150° C. 301 Stainless steel requires less heat shielding and is the lightest, cheapest architecture. Elon said, On Mars, [you can] weld it, modify it, cut up and use it for other things or whatever. Starship will allow us to inhabit other worlds, to make life as we know it interplanetary.

Reusability of both the Super Heavy booster and Starship lowers costs considerably. Musk recently said that each Starship mission could eventually cost as little as $2 million with the propellant being about half of that cost.[⁴]

The SpaceX Principal Mars Development Engineer was noncommittal about my suggestions at the 2019 Humans to Mars Summit. However, Elon Musk’s words describing cutting up and recycling Starships on Mars acknowledges the high-energy cost to return the vehicles. This sounds familiar! I can’t categorically say that my thoughts hit home with SpaceX but it’s rewarding to know that my thoughts are on a logical track even ahead of SpaceX announcements. Either my ideas were heard or great minds think alike!

Quoting Elon Musk, "Building 100 Starships/year gets to 1000 in 10 years or 100 megatons/year or maybe around 100,000 people per Earth-Mars orbital sync. A Twitter user ran the figures and checked if Musk planned to land a million humans on Mars by 2050. Yes," Musk replied.[⁵] "Loading the Mars fleet into Earth orbit, then 1000 ships depart over about 30 days every 26 months.[⁶], [⁷]

The scenario for carrying a hundred passengers on a Starship will work for suborbital or short Earth orbital tourist flights. The cabin space that could be allotted per passenger would not be much larger than what is available on a comfortable business class airline flight. A trip to Mars taking about six months will require larger living space and space for consumables. I believe that the twenty-one passengers and crew that I assumed for the journey to Mars in Arcadia Mars are ideal. When we develop human hibernation, which I call hib-sleep, then you may accommodate more passengers on a Starship. You will also need five or six cargo Starships with just consumables and supplies for each hundred passengers. Then, hope that you can start growing your own food soon!

Building an infrastructure on Mars will require a huge amount of freight. Also, we’ll need huge refueling depots in Earth orbit and a means of supplying them. The current scenario is that it will take eight Starship propellant tankers to fully refuel a Starship in Earth orbit for the launch to Mars. This operation will be mercifully more efficient at a propellant depot.

In the second book of this series, Arcadia Mars, we described the concept of using a propellant depot in LEO instead of having a Mars bound Starship waiting for multiple propellant tanker launches. The concept is shown below with the small cryo-tanks holding liquid methane and the larger cryo-tanks holding LOX.

Author’s concept of a Low Earth Orbit (LEO) BFR Propellant Depot capable of storing a full load of propellant for the BFR Second Stage Spaceship (240 MT of methane and 860 MT of LOX). One BFR ship can lift 100 MT to LEO. It will take eight BFR launches to fill the depot for one deep space BFR launch from LEO. The propellant docking port mates with the propellant transfer lines in the BFR aft engine bay by present design.

In The Shiva Encounter, the third book in this series, we took this concept a step further—a step which can open up the solar system to interplanetary commerce and launch crews to Jupiter and beyond. Let’s revisit that and describe how we can take Starship technology beyond Mars.

The Super Heavy booster is not designed for low Earth orbit (LEO) and atmospheric reentry. It is designed to lift the Starship part way to LEO and then return to its launch center just as the reusable Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy boosters have done successfully. Let’s now consider launching the Super Heavy booster as a single stage to orbit (SSTO) without the Starship load and sporting an aerodynamic nose faring.

Super Heavy booster launched as single stage to orbit (SSTO) without the Starship load and with an aerodynamic nose faring. (Concept modified from SpaceX images)

Assuming the dry mass of Super Heavy is 150 MT, larger than a Saturn V First Stage, with the propellant mass of 3300 MT, it could conceivably be launched to LEO as a single stage vehicle (SSTO). It could then be repurposed to be a fuel depot or Super Heavy space-tug. Reaction control motors and gyros would need to be added to maintain orientation for refueling operations. The Super Heavy space-tug version would need to be converted to vacuum Raptor engines.

Super Heavy booster SSTO being used as a propellant depot refueled by the tanker shown above the SSTO. The SSTO Super Heavy can hold 3300 MT of propellant. (Concept modified from SpaceX images)

Super Heavy booster SSTO being used as a propellant depot to refuel a Starship. (Modified from SpaceX images)

With a Super Heavy propellant depot, a Starship could refuel in one operation. The Super Heavy depot holds enough propellant for two Starships.

Colossus II Interplanetary Vehicle

A further extrapolation inspires the idea of using a refueled Super Heavy booster to launch the Starship to Mars with a full load of propellant for Mars landing and return without refueling. The current SpaceX concept requires the Starship to refuel on the surface of Mars with propellant manufactured from in situ resources (ISRU) in order to return to Earth.

In this scenario, the now empty Super Heavy booster could then be maneuvered to a Lagrange parking orbit for reuse as a propellant depot or space tug. Now, imagine moving huge loads of propellant manufactured from water on the Moon, Mars, or deep space asteroids. This is the commodity of interplanetary commerce!

The concept could also be used to launch truly huge spaceships from LEO for human deep space missions to Jupiter and beyond. These huge spaceships will need to provide consumables and artificial gravity using centrifugal force for the crew for voyages lasting years.

Colossus II Interplanetary Vehicle concept (modified from SpaceX images)

In The Colossus Expansion, the Colossus II Interplanetary Vehicle, pictured above and described below, is first launched in 2054. The Colossus II Interplanetary Vehicle concept shows a Super Heavy booster SSTO core with a Starship as a Crew/Cargo Vehicle (CCV) that can separate for landing. The concept adds double habitat torus rings (Hab Rings) that rotate on a hub for artificial gravity. Access to the CCV from the habitat hub is through a retractable access tunnel. The hub segment holds an SSTAR reactor for power and water for propellant for four ion thruster pods attached to the Super Heavy core. The core and Hab Rings stay in orbit while the CCV lands on its objective. The CCV is capable of aerobraking and atmospheric entry in Titan’s thick atmosphere.

The Hab Rings on Colossus II are 10 meters wide and have a ring diameter of 70 meters. The Hab Rings are insulated against cosmic radiation with aluminum and tantalum foils sandwiched with polyurethane foam. Ring wedges can be manufactured on Earth from stainless steel or aluminum and launched to orbit for ring construction. Eight 11.25° ring wedges can be launched on a Super Heavy booster to comprise a 90° ring arc. Thirty-two ring wedges from four launches completes a Hab Ring. Manufacturing bases on the Moon can use aluminum rich lunar anorthosite to construct aluminum Colossus and Hab Ring segments. Propellants to send the parts to orbit can be manufactured from lunar water ice proven to exist in permanently shaded polar craters.

Each Hab Ring has an internal volume of almost 15,000 cubic meters. That’s fifteen times the habitable volume of the Starship CCV further multiplied by the volume of two rings. Let’s reserve half of that volume for food stores, life support, maintenance shops, science labs, and dining and entertainment space. That still leaves us room for fifty average sized homes on Earth. With this space, we could comfortably transport about 200 waking passengers plus 384 hib-sleep settlers plus crew. A stroll around the ring circumference takes the length of two football fields.

To generate Mars equivalent artificial gravity, 0.38 g, the centripetal acceleration needs to be 3.72 m/s. The rotation rate to yield Mars equivalent gravity with our 70-meter diameter Hab Ring is one revolution in 13.6 seconds, a bit over 4 rpm. While this will be quite comfortable inside the Hab Ring, the inhabitants may do without windows since the view rotating that fast would be unsettling to say the least. Our deep space travelers can foray into the CCV for panoramic views sans gravity.

In 1960, Ernst Stuhlinger, the inventor of ion propulsion,[⁸] stated that someday electrodynamic systems will have exhaust velocities up to 1000 km/s. Let’s assume that the propellant water is ionized to doubly ionized oxygen (O2+) and protons (H+) driven by electromagnetic thrusters to 200 km/s ion exhaust velocity. That’s about four times what is achievable today.

The Super Heavy SSTO uses chemical propellant to reach Mars escape velocity and saves about 1000 MT of propellant for other maneuvers. The Starship is fully loaded with cargo and propellant totaling 1300 MT gross mass. The Hab Ring section weights 600 MT with 1000 MT of propellant water in the hub with an SSTAR reactor producing a prodigious amount of energy. Our Colossus II gross mass at Mars escape velocity is then 4150 MT. If we use 500 MT of propellant water with 200 km/s exhaust velocity, we have gained 27 km/s additional velocity.[⁹] We can get from Mars to Saturn in eighteen months with the Colossus II for the scenario used in the Perseus Mission in Chapter 7 of this book, The Colossus Expansion.

Fusion Power and Synchrotron Ion Drive

Looking farther into the future of what might be possible developing the Colossus, the Colossus III might evolve with a fusion power plant replacing the SSTAR reactor and add a synchrotron ion drive (SID) which accelerates its ion exhaust velocity to relativistic speeds at 90% of light speed (0.9 c). Assuming the Colossus III has the same 4150 MT mass as in the Colossus II scenario above, using only 16 MT of propellant, the SID will accelerate us by 1000 km/s potentially getting us from Mars to Saturn in two weeks. Of course, we will have saved propellant to flip and burn to decelerate at the halfway point for landing on Titan.

Can this Colossus III SID ship take us to the stars? No, not unless we make it a generation ship like the Nauvoo on The Expanse. When we look out at the cosmos, we must feel the infinite. Pioneering probes, Voyager 1 and 2 and most recently New Horizons, flying by Pluto and KBO Arrokoth, have traveled distances almost unimaginable into interstellar space. At the time of writing, Voyager 2 is 17 hours 11 minutes 49 seconds of light-travel time from Earth! The stars are infinitely farther. Our exploration range for the foreseeable future is within our solar system unless we invoke science fiction technology and bend the laws of physics as we know them today.

Let’s do the math for a trip to Proxima Centauri, the closest star beyond our solar system and home the Thelud extraterrestrial intelligence that we were introduced to in The Shiva Encounter. Proxima Centauri is 4.2 light years away from us. At 300,000 km/s, light travels 9.5 trillion kilometers in a year. So the distance to Proxima Centauri is 40 trillion kilometers. If our Colossus II is traveling at the amazing velocity of 1000 km/s, it will still take 1273 years to get to Proxima Centauri! That’s more than a few generations.

What technology might we learn from the Thelud who left us The Box artifact in The Shiva Encounter? We know that they have faster-than-light (FTL) technology. Their sphere of influence encompasses some twenty light years from Proxima Centauri. Is there a twist of physics that can give us a glimmer of hope for FTL interstellar travel? Keep reading The Colossus Expansion.

Stars within Twenty Light Years of the Sun[¹⁰]

Construction in Deep Space

Today, all facilities in commercial space and space exploration are made from components manufactured on Earth. They are all lifted to space with