Ceres, Part II; Colonization

Space.com had an interesting article recently on Ceres, asking if we would be able to colonize the planet as is done in the SyFy television series The Expanse.  Its an interesting question, just as The Expanse has been a fascinating take on humans expanding into the solar system, including occupying Mars and the asteroid belt.

Here is how the dwarf planet is described in the future on the Syfy website:

The largest object in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, the dwarf planet Ceres has become the port city of the Belt. A subterranean city has been bored into the rocky interior of the planetoid, which is home to some 6 million people. Thanks to the spin created by Tycho engineers, the residents of Ceres experience artificial gravity in the form of centrifugal force, which presses away from the core of the planetoid, and out towards the exterior of the station. An endless stream of trade flows through its docks, but the majority of the wealth flows back to Earth and Mars. The closer you travel to Ceres' Core, the more impoverished the living conditions.

It would be nice to have one person on Ceres, never mind 6 million.  The Space.com article discussed the difficulties of living on the surface with only 1/40th the Earth's gravity, noting:

The moon has lava tubes, and some people have talked about repurposing these structures into habitats. An alternate idea for Ceres — a place bereft of the silicate lavas needed to create such tubes — would be to use inflatable habitats (similar to those in development by Bigelow Aerospace) and then bulldoze rocky material over the habitat to serve as a radiation shield.

Living off the land on Ceres may be more difficult than doing so at the moon, but it's hard to say yet as the dwarf planet is just this year getting its first close-up. Still, any water ice on Ceres seems (so far) to be buried in the dwarf planet's interior, despite the discovery of a definitive signature of water ice in Ceres' atmosphere. The water ice on Earth's moon may be a little closer to the surface, at least at the poles.

It is interesting that we are now discussing "any water" on Ceres when back in 2005 Space.com was noting that scientists believed Ceres had more fresh water than the Earth.  The Dawn spacecraft page at NASA still notes the large quantities of water on Ceres, even though the Dawn mission results have been somewhat tentative.  The European Space Agency's Herschel space observatory detected water vapor on and around the dwarf planet, so the water is there, but the quantity still seems to be a guess. 

It is very intriguing to speculate on future mission to Ceres and the asteroid belt.  The existence of water, as well as other resources, is the key reason the colonists in The Expanse are in the belt - to supply the needs of humans living on Mars and elsewhere. Let's just hope the future colonists are a little happier than those in the SyFy series.

The Expanse: An Imagined Future

If you think the future entails bigger brains, SyFy has other ideas. In tonight's new series The Expanse you learn the future depends on precious commodities other than gold, platinum, and helium 3. And inequality has been relocated rather than removed - this time placed on the dwarf planet Ceres.  Yes, in the future the strange lights on Ceres will be mining colonies. As a concept I like the science of the show even if the sociology is depressing. 

Here is the basic story surrounding The Expanse:

Hundreds of years in the future, humans have colonized the solar system. The U.N. controls Earth. Mars is an independent military power. The planets rely on the resources of the Asteroid Belt, where air and water are more precious than gold. For decades, tensions have been rising between these three places. Earth, Mars and the Belt are now on the brink of war. And all it will take is a single spark. 

It is within this future that The Expanse begins. The series follows the case of a missing young woman that brings a hardened detective and a rogue ship’s captain together in a race across the solar system that will expose the greatest conspiracy in human history.

The first episode has been available on the website for some time. I enjoyed the pilot and look forward to more about the situation on Earth since our planet is being run by the United Nations and Mars by the corporations.  You can already see the upcoming democrat/republican dichotomy.  The Red States have moved to the Red Planet with potentially deadly consequences for all. Although it is set hundreds of years into the future, I would not be surprised if the descendents of Trump and Cruz are running around. Talk about terror-forming ideas...

By the way, the three-night miniseries Childhood's End starts tonight on SyFy as well. This series indicates things could get even worse than humanity soiling its own sandbox. If you have not read the book, this trailer gives you a glimpse of what is ahead.