Envisioning the Cellarius V1 Facility, Part 1
REYKJAVIK, March 13, 2062 — After three decades of research, design, and planning, the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence has opened a facility to house the development of the Cellarius Artificial Intelligence (CAI).
The goal for this new facility is to research and prototype the necessary technologies for off-world sustainability. The primary focus of the CAI facility builds upon the work begun by the Coalition for the Colonization of Space prior to the Crash of 2036. To commemorate this great achievement, we are celebrating with a design retrospective of the facility. Before architectural and engineering plans were created, the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence engaged world-renowned concept artist Sean Andrew Murray to design a next-generation data center and research laboratory.
This first post in our Cellarius V1 Facility celebratory retrospective features a memo from one of the chief energy researchers of the CAI project.
For more details on the CAI, please visit Cellarius.network.
2047.06.29 Summary Document on Sustainable Extra-Terrestrial Energy Sources
By: Rip Stevens Ph.D., Director of the CAI Energy Subcommittee
Requirements
The Cellarius facility is a global project to design and build a self-sustaining, AI-managed facility for space colonization. The requirements state that the extraterrestrial installation needs to source all of its energy needs with no support from Earth for at least 1,000 years. This presents a historic challenge to scientists and has never been attempted before, at least not at this scale of both size and ambition. This brief is a summary overview of large-scale issues with known energy sources and general recommendations for which options are most promising.
The chosen energy source (or combination of sources) must provide sufficient power to sustain CAI (the autonomous artificial intelligence) as well as support a scaled manufacturing and refining facility that can grow at a rate of 2x per decade. The V1 Cellarius facility on Earth will serve as proof-of-concept for a V2 facility to be constructed on an extraterrestrial body. Several extraterrestrial bodies have been identified as host targets with widely varying characteristics, which may include atmosphere, volcanism, strong electromagnetic fields, and other potential combinations. The following will present all common energy sources and their viability for sustaining CAI in decades to come.
Note that this document will not discuss the potential fuels and strategies needed to transport the V2 infrastructure to its target, only the potential primary energy sources to be utilized at destination.
Solar:
Tremendous strides have been made regarding the use of photovoltaic cells for solar energy capture. A large percentage of the earth’s energy budget is sourced through solar power. However, the use of solar energy has significant challenges in remote space. For example:
1) As one travels farther away from the sun, the potential energy source decreases. This may be acceptable for a small trip to Mars, but when we start planning journeys to the edge of the solar system, the diminishing returns become significant.
2) The energy collection qualities of modern solar cells have a measured half-life and materials to construct new cells are difficult to find and resource in space.
Nuclear:
Despite wild swings in popular opinion, nuclear energy remains one of the most practical energy sources. While technologists are continue iterating to make fusion reactors efficient and cost-effective, fission reactors have made tremendous strides in both portability and safety. The initial Mars colonization project used portable mini-reactors designed in the early 2000s at Los Alamos Laboratory to generate power. A video on the early designs of those reactors can be seen here.
However, there are still significant downsides, which include dealing with highly radioactive waste byproducts and sourcing new fuel stores away from earth. These systems are also not well-designed to scale to the large projected power needs of the Cellarius facility. Despite these challenges, nuclear fission probably represents the best energy system to be used within a vessel for long journeys in space. For a finite (but extended) trip, the advantages of the mass-to-energy output ratio (efficiency of the fuel) outweigh the challenges of having a fission reactor on board. And this becomes even more efficient if Cellarius (CAI) can pilot and manage the spacecraft without any humans on board, who would be at risk from the radiation. Once the space vehicle has landed at its destination, there are other preferred energy solutions to consider, but nuclear still serves as an acceptable backup power source.
Wind:
Strong advocates for wind turbines focus on the success of these systems in coastal environments. Some have suggested that the strong atmospheric disturbances on gas giant planets, such as Jupiter and its multi-century storm (big red spot), could provide limitless amounts of energy. We continue to explore this possibility, but at present it is highly impractical. Wind requires mechanical gearing, which needs constant repair and updating; wear and tear using all currently known materials is significant and maintenance-intensive. There are also concerns about the additional engineering required to co-locate a facility in such inhospitable environments.
Wave:
We applaud the recent successes in wave-based power plants off the coast of Alaska (300 Tw/yr production). The Bureau of Energy Management (BOEM) should be recognized for their forward-thinking initiative on wave energy capture, which began as early as 2007. Unfortunately, there are no suitable planetary bodies with surficial liquid water in our solar system (the cold temperatures or lack of atmosphere immediately freeze open water). We will discuss a gravitational induced (similar to tides) energy source, which may contain liquid water underneath an ice cap, in the geothermal section. The interiors of the gas giants may contain a type of liquid metallic hydrogen/helium, or even liquid diamond, but the extreme pressures (~200 GPa, 2 million times the pressure at the surface of Earth) and temperatures (+17,000 degrees Fahrenheit) found at these locations quickly disqualify this option.
Fuel Cells:
Fuel cell technology is optimized for energy storage and conversion. No natural source of energy in its condensed fuel cell state is readily available, therefore all fuel cells require a large amount of energy to be expended to create them. For a primary energy source, this is unacceptable, because all fuel cells created on Earth would eventually run out and there would be no way to replenish the energy supply. However, as a secondary energy supply, fuel cells may provide a highly portable, battery-like option for things like autonomous vehicles, mining stations, and drones. A separate study will examine potential energy storage solutions and will include an in-depth analysis of fuel cell viability.
Lightning:
As unusual as it may sound, lightning power generated through static friction within a planetary atmosphere has future potential. The Earth’s atmosphere acts as one huge battery, constantly collecting more positive charge as it moves over the planet’s surface until, just like a capacitor, it discharges the energy back to the Earth. The release of this energy comes in the spectacular light show of lightning and noisy compression waves called thunder. Frequency irregularities can pose reliability issues, but with proper battery design and low-power slumbering modes, it might be accommodated. Lightning has been observed on the outer planets of Jupiter, Saturn, and Uranus, and is expected on Neptune. The other solar system bodies with known atmospheres are Titan, Triton, and Pluto. However, none of them exhibit evidence of lightning. There is evidence for the potential for exoplanets (bodies outside our solar system) to have active lightning storms.
From the perspective of this study, the engineering required to capture and store lightning energy is not mature enough to consider for the Cellarius project. We recommend additional funding for more research and development of prototypes to be built for lightning energy capture and storage.
Geothermal:
Geothermal energy is not new; in fact, it has been used by specializing species ever since the first evidence of life began on Earth. When the Earth formed as a swirling body of mostly heavy elements (nickel and iron), it also contained smaller amounts of radioactive elements. Within the Earth’s mantle, the process of radioactive decay of these elements continues to this day, producing the heat which keeps the Earth’s mantle molten and drives convection. This crucial feature creates everything from plate tectonics to the earth’s protective electromagnetic field.
Targets to tap into this abundant energy source are in areas where the earth’s crust releases heat. This requires drilling wells into super-heated aquifers and opening a conduit for the steam/hot water to flow to the lower pressures at the surface. Piping must be installed to direct the flow of heat and pressure through turbines. Once the energy dissipates, the water condenses and flows out to surficial ponds or is re-injected back into the aquifer to heat up again for reuse. Large-scale geothermal plants exist along volcanic centers, primarily along plate boundaries, but some are located on areas of mantle upwelling called hot spots.
Many of the solar system’s moons demonstrate adequate volcanism for geothermal power plants. It should be noted that the mechanisms generating the volcanism are significantly different from those on earth. Moons around gas giants such as Jupiter and Saturn experience tremendous tidal forces caused by the gravitational pull of the massive planet on the moon as it orbits. These forces push and pull on the internal substance of the moon, which builds high amounts of friction that produces heat. The heat is released by the same mechanisms as here on Earth. An example of this phenomenon is Enceladus, a moon of Saturn, which has a concentrated area of what were originally described as its “Tiger Stripes,” a series of linear sets of ice volcanoes. Based on data from the Cassini mission (2010–2017), Enceladus has sufficient energy to support a power plant sufficient for the Cellarius installment requirements.
Summary
Based on the Cellarius Project’s power requirements as set forth and agreed upon by the governing committee, the energy research group recommends geothermal energy as the primary source for the V1 Installation. We feel this best approximates a self-sustaining energy source which can be repurposed for extraterrestrial installment. Solar and nuclear systems are recommended as additional secondary energy sources.
The choice of geothermal energy reduces the number of potential host locations for the Cellarius V1 Facility. This committee recommends the following locations:
- The triple-junction spreading center located under Iceland, Northeast of Reykjavik
- The large hot spot under Yosemite National Park in the Northwestern United States, and
- Taal Volcano Island in the Philippines.
Each of these locations presents a diverse set of challenges and will need to be thoroughly studied before a final decision can be made.
Do you envision a viable energy source that we haven’t discussed here? Tell us about it at r/cellarius2084
