Humans could live on huge globes floating in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter for the next 15 years.
This is the statement of the bonkers made by the top scientist Pekka Janhunen, who says that millions of people could live in a megacity in space until 2026.
Dr. Janhunen, an astrophysicist at the Finnish Meteorological Institute in Helsinki, described his vision in a research paper published this month.
He presented the scheme for “mega-satellites” floating around the dwarf planet Ceres, which is about 325 million miles from Earth.
“The motivation is to have a settlement with artificial gravity that allows growth beyond the Earth’s habitat,” wrote Dr. Janhunen.
The vast majority of plots to establish distant worlds revolve around the Moon or Mars. This is largely due to their proximity to Earth.
Dr. Janhunen’s proposal, on the other hand, looks a little further.
Its disk-shaped habitat boasts thousands of cylindrical structures, each home with over 50,000 people.
Those pods would be attached to strong magnets and would generate artificial gravity by slow rotation.
Residents would extract the resources from Ceres 600 miles below the settlement and transport them back using “space elevators,” Dr. Janhunen said.
“Lifting Ceres materials is energy-efficient compared to processing them in habitats if a space elevator is used,” he wrote.
“Because Ceres is lightweight and rotates relatively quickly, the space elevator is feasible.”
Ceres – the largest object in the asteroid belt – is the best destination for settlements outside the world due to its nitrogen-rich atmosphere, added Dr. Janhunen.
This would allow settlers to more easily create Earth-like conditions than those that colonize the harsh, carbon-rich environment on Mars.
This does not solve the threats of dishonest asteroids or space radiation, although Dr. Janhunen, who worked with a number of Finnish researchers at the newspaper, also thought about it.
He proposed that the gigantic and cylindrical mirrors placed around the megasatellite could protect it from all kinds of bombings.
These mirrors would also focus sunlight on the habitat for growing crops and other plant life.
Everything seems pretty rosy, but Dr. Janhunen also pointed out a number of problems with the plans.
First, there is a not-so-small obstacle to actually flying people to Ceres.
NASA sent a probe there in 2015, a journey that lasted eight amazing years – far too long to support hundreds of people using current technology.
Dr. Janhunen also admitted that the energy required to lift construction materials from Ceres into orbit would be a major obstacle.
The research was published on January 6 in the pre-printed journal Arxiv. It has not yet been evaluated by scientists.