Domitor Astrorum

For better or worse, Blue Origin’s latest publicity stunt has garnered more attention towards spaceflight than anything else in recent memory. The private sector’s forays into space paired with NASA’s planned Artemis missions show the beginnings of a renewed interest in manned spaceflight. What is notable about Blue Origin’s missions, however, is that their rocket is remotely piloted. This got me thinking about another video I had watched recently pertaining to the Air Force’s sixth generation fighter.

The F-47, as it is currently being called, is intended to be an even more advanced stealth fighter to replace the F-22; though its most interesting feature has nothing to do with stealth. The plane is being designed with the intent of having two autonomous aircraft (called CCAs) accompany it. Without getting too into the weeds about what these CCAs would be able to do, they will mark a drastic shift in air combat should the project succeed. I also wish I knew about them sooner so I could have written about them in my last essay. In regards to spaceflight, unmanned spacecraft, while not new to NASA or other space agencies, have always had varying degrees of human involvement in their piloting. Signal interference and the lag caused by these signals travelling enormous distances can make remote piloting quite difficult. Typically these issues are solved by programming the craft’s maneuvers ahead of time. But what if these systems were automated?

Breaking from the norm a little bit, I would like to talk about my own writing project as opposed to popular science-fiction like I normally do. Humanity’s conquest of the solar system plays a sizeable role in the story and this is greatly facilitated by artificial intelligence. In particular, I would like to talk about its implementation in terraforming and the automated transportation of unfathomably large amounts of materials.

In this hypothetical future, humanity has taken up the herculean task of terraforming both Venus and Mars. By the 23rd century these two planets, while vastly more hospitable than they were previously, are still far from being verdant paradises. Fleets of autonomous Astra-Liners ferry water and other important compounds en masse to their destination for processing. By utilizing artificial intelligence the liners are able to save money, weight, and reduce risk by not involving humans in the process. The only limiting factors in this equation are building materials (which are readily abundant in our solar system) and cheap, efficient propulsion (which is done via nuclear propulsion and solar/photon sails). Nuclear propulsion (I never specify which type, but probably nuclear-thermal for the older craft and nuclear-electric for the newer ones) Allow the liners to achieve tremendous speeds without requiring impossible amounts of fuel like you would from a chemical rocket. Supplemented by photon sails receiving focused beams of light from the Sun, these vessels are able to achieve speeds an upwards of 5% the speed of light. This allows them to reach the innermost part of the Oort cloud in just shy of a year where they collect ice for their journey back. Another limitation of remote piloting shows arises when you realize any signals given from any of the inner planets would take over ten days to reach the fleet, further necessitating autonomous spacecraft.

Artificial intelligence and automation are also heavily used in the manufacturing of terraforming equipment, processing of incoming materials, predicting biomes, and countless other things. But in order to maintain my sanity and avoid turning this into a one-hundred page blog-post, I am only going over its application in spacecraft. Hopefully you found this subject as interesting as I do.

Below I’ve posted the video that inspired this topic as well as some other supplementary info.

Links:

https://www.nasa.gov/humans-in-space/artemis