Asteroid resources could create space habs for trillions; Land of thousand lands

This can be your first surprise. We tend to think that the place to look for resources for colonization must be the surface of the planets. But there are also abundant resources in the space. Water is the most important thing for making habitats. Liquid water is rare in our solar system. The ice is however abundant and many asteroids have significant quantities.

The most interesting asteroids are:

• Carbon type C – minerals with water and carbon content. Some may have a high percentage of water. The most common type of asteroid.
• S type (stony) – metallic iron mixed with iron and magnesium silicates (common in the internal solar system)
• Type M (metallic) – good source of iron, nickel and other metals, including platinum
• Asteroids of type D – rich in organic matter, possibly ice-water Inside Rare in the internal solar system.
• Comets and extinct comets – source for water and organic matter.

Nitrogen can be difficult to find in space and even on Mars or the Moon. But some carbon meteorites are rich in nitrogen. It is therefore possible to find enough space for the habitats to be used.

Once you have water, you can extract oxygen to create a breathable atmosphere (using plants or electrolysis, etc.). It is also easy to find carbon compounds in space, in asteroids. Metals are easy to find in space, indeed one of the earliest uses of metal on Earth is probably meteoric iron.

For orbits around the Earth, the Moon or other orbits near Earth, asteroids close to Earth can have almost any material you need to create a colony. For orbits around Mars or near Mars, the Martian moons Phobos and Deimos are a natural choice. The composition of the Martian moons is not too well understood. Deimos seems to be type C or D. Anyway, he could have water under the surface. It has a low density that could suggest ice water. In 1997, David Kuck suggested starting a Deimos Water company to supply Earth's orbit with water from Deimos. Kuck mosquitoes are small unmanned boats that drill the Deimos and extract water below the surface, using some of it as fuel to transport the rest to Earth.

However, if you are planning to build a large colony that may last for decades, you will not have to worry about where you can get these materials.

Freight transport on the super interplanetary highway

You can also use Mars cyclists to scroll through materials between Earth's orbit and Mars' orbit.

For asteroids, the artist Hop David suggested that asteroid cyclists operate in the same way as a Martian cycler, to scroll materials between settlements of Earth's orbit and "railway towns" In the asteroid belt.

They are big spaceships. Have enough of these and you can have a "carrier service" of spaceship between Earth and other destinations in the solar system. They require almost no fuel. Once you have loaded the materials on board, the spacecraft simply follows the free fall path and eventually reaches its destination. This avoids having to speed up the rocket itself, you just have to speed up the materials you want to put on board.

There is also more space to expand, as settlements can be built almost anywhere, in orbit around the Earth, Mars or Moon, or in independent orbits around the Sun. Your main limitation is the availability of resources to make the habitats. On the surface of a planet, you are limited to the surface of the planet (unless of course you want to start living like troglodytes under the surface).

Is not it easier to build on Mars or the Moon?

This may be another surprise, you may think that it must be easier to work on a planetary surface. But remember the surface of Mars and the Moon, it's not like Earth, you have to work in awkward space suits, as you do in space. Tearing the spacesuit or breaking the visor is as dangerous on these surfaces as in space. You work in a laboratory vacuum cleaner.

The gravity of the surface on the Moon or Mars will help in a certain way, but in other respects it is advantageous not to have gravity. In the space you can move huge weights with the smallest touch, little energy.

Once you have at least one habitat built and created to provide gravity, you can use it to build components for other habitats, with working conditions similar to those of the Earth. So, any disadvantage related to working in weightlessness really only applies to the first built habitats.

Then, for starters, many components of all habitats, whether in space, on the Moon or on Mars, will have to be transported from the Earth to your new habitat. Thus, the most economically viable habitats will certainly be, for a certain time, those that are most easily accessible from Earth.

In the distant future, the construction of space will probably become so automated that humans will have almost more to do than monitor the machines from time to time to make sure that no mistakes are made. major is not committed.

They will probably also use telerobots and semi-autonomous robots for all the difficult or dangerous construction and repair tasks to be carried out in a space suit.

We would surely start with small habitats, not much bigger than the ISS. Some interesting ideas that can be used in the near future include inflatable habitats (one of which has already flown), habitats with centrifuge cabins and habitats using an artificial gravity fixation system.

Sci-fi enthusiasts probably immediately think of large habitats with an atmosphere as thick as that of the Earth, like the extraterrestrial spacecraft of the Rama series of Arthur C. Clarke. Unfortunately, this is probably not practical for us in the near future, even if they dream. But smaller habitats are much more practical.

Here is a 3D video exploration of a RAMA type habitat

It's by Eric Bruneton, who did it as a doctoral project

For such habitats, the weight of the atmosphere can become the most important part of the habitat in weight. The atmospheric pressure on Earth is about ten tons per square meter.

The walls of the habitat should also be extremely strong to contain all that weight. Gerard O. Niel calculated that his twelve miles through the spherical habitat could be made of titanium. Maybe carbon nanotubes or other advanced materials could be used to build huge habs like this in the distant future.

You could deal with weight problems in another way, making many crossover trips to the center of the habitat like a suspension bridge, but it would ruin much of its appeal :).

Habs space we could build with current technology

Our space habitats for a while will be smaller. Their size may vary from those of small, not much larger than those of the ISS, with a juicer for sleeping and the rest of the habitat at zero, up to huge Stanford Torus type habitats with interiors big enough for cities and lakes. forests and hills.

Video through a Stanford Torus style space habitat by Uzi Bento

Sunlight is usually brought to the home by mirrors in these models, eg. here is how it goes for the Stanford Torus.

This is a modern update of the design, Habitat 2, with a large mirror of 2 km in diameter (aluminized Mylar) – the animation omits the shielding of cosmic radiation for artistic reasons:
Habitat 2 video and mirror

Sunlight is reflected around the cosmic radiation protecting the habitat. UV light can be absorbed while driving. Cosmic radiation, as highly energetic particles, passes through the mirror.

Protection against cosmic radiation is a technical design problem. In the design of the Stanford torus, the habitat rotates inside the static shield. The smaller Kalpana is a newer idea. This is for 3,000 people, and the radiation protection rotates with the habitat (unlike the Stanford Torus). There are several levels in the interior, with different sizes of cylinders in each other, the plants grow in a thin inner cylinder and have a zero gram habitat in the center.

I will speak in more detail about this protection problem.

Video by Kalpana One

Another recent idea is the Vademecum, which introduces the new idea of ​​a truncated ellipse cross-section for smaller habitats. This has a flat floor, which gives you a uniform gravity in a small habitat, and also needs less atmosphere. The impression of the artist with other designs of space settlement. In 2006, he won the NASA contest – NSS Space Settlement, which lasted until 18 years old. It was designed by a 16-year-old Belgian schoolboy.

Here is a 1989 model for a Bola Mars habitat.

Smaller designs may consist of a spacecraft connected to its spent rocket engine, in a rigid structure that rotates end to generate an artificial gravity. The little ones could just have a centrifugal bedroom like the Nautilus X.

For all these smaller habitats, atmospheric pressure is maintained by pressurizing the habitat, as well as for the ISS. So, normally, the atmosphere is not a significant design constraint for the home.

This is their 1970s design: Space Establishments: A Design Study – with details on Stanford Torus' design in Chapter 4.

You may also like: Theodore Hall's Ph.D. thesis on Architectural Design Considerations for Artificial Gravity, Designs to Help Humans Navigate to Emerging Gravitational Situations.

Shielding issues

You might be concerned about the impact of meteorites or comets. However, bodies like this one could be hijacked. Yes, it is difficult to divert a comet or a large meteorite to avoid the Earth if it is in a collision course, it would not be difficult to divert it enough to avoid a small habitat a few kilometers across, with enough of 39, warning. The smaller ones could simply be destroyed before arriving in the habitat, and the protection against micro-meteorites is not difficult to organize.

The main reason for shielding is to treat cosmic radiation. It's much more difficult to manage and requires a lot of material.

In Stanford Torus' design, this means that the interior habitat is moving at around 200 mph compared to the armor, but they thought it would not be a significant engineering problem. There should be a lot of attention to failure modes, but we have a lot of experience on Earth of high speed trains and, for example, we are moving at such speeds.

Suggestion – 1/100 g to simplify engineering – for plants

Plants, in particular, can work well at zero g, as has been demonstrated in experiments on the ISS. Before these experiments, it was generally accepted that plants need gravity to have a sense of orientation so that their roots grow down and their leaves and stems upward. But apparently not, they can do very well without gravity (see also what happens to the growth of plants when you remove gravity?).

In an autonomous biosphere, a large part of the area may be used for plants. So, why not rotate all the habitat at a much milder pace? It could turn, for example, fairly quickly for a hundredth of a gram (just to give an idea of ​​the direction and help humans to work on the surface, and to help plants that need to know how) and insects .

When you build the habitat for the first time, you simply build it for the plants and associated microorganisms and pollinators.

Heavy shielding is no longer a problem if you rotate the habitat at such a gentle pace. Instead of 4.45 metric tons per square meter, you have, at the hundredth g, only 44.5 kilograms per square meter in weight to be processed. It is much easier to design to hold 44.5 kilograms per square meter of weight.

Thus, the armor spins with the habitat, at one hundredth of the speed, at only 2 mph instead of 200 mph for the design of the Stanford torus. Then, if it is updated to one-hundredth of its strength, it would also be easy to get out of the outer hull without the risk of falling and easily recovering someone who is moving at the speed of walking. easy for a spaceship to dock directly with the outer hull of the habitat, not just for the hub.

As colonization continues, settlers will build individual houses within the settlement. These could have sleep quarters to centrifuge. As larger houses and hamlets are built, they could turn slowly, perhaps into revolving "observation towers" with a tower in the center to descend to ground level.

Thus, for example, a hamlet in rotation of 200 meters in diameter could rotate at a relatively low speed of 2 revolutions per minute (2.11 revolutions per minute), the outer edge rotating at about 70 miles per hour to generate a force of 1 g. The inhabitants could sleep there, exercise, and then go out in a low environment for recreation, gardening and so on.

If it turns out that humans can tolerate long-term gs such as lunar g / g, if a tenth of 1 g is suitable for human health, your hamlet of 100 m in diameter could turn a times per minute (0.95 rpm). a sedate 22 miles per hour (perhaps with an internal juicer at a faster pace for quarters). When you want to travel somewhere else in your cycle, you probably start it directly from the outer edge of your hamlet :).

Or you could have whirling bedrooms, or spinning rooms to eat. Or, if humans need the very low spin speeds and high oxygen content of a Stanford Torus 24/7, you could have a smaller tube inside the big one, like a Maglev train, running at 200 mph to generate an artificial gravity.

You can do the calculations yourself with Theodore Hall's Spin Calc artificial gravity calculator

It all depends on human tolerances for spins in the space. What we do not know, because there are many differences between spins in space and on the ground, for example, all experiments on Earth involve hyper gravity, imply additional gravity along the axis of rotation, generally stimulate a different part of the vestibular system rather than vertical channels) and the coriolos effect is horizontal rather than vertical in most terrestrial experiments.

For more information, see my quora's answer to What is the longest duration that an astronaut can spend in space before it's too difficult to meet. acclimate to the Earth?

So we can not really make a final design for all of this. For example, all spinning habitats are based on the premise that humans need all the gravity for their health 24/7. If we do not, then, depending on the severity prescription , all this may need to be rethought.

This is an easy calculation, and I think you might find this rather surprising. No matter the size of your habitat, unless you want to build one of the very large RAMA type habitats, or very small ones. Most of the weight is needed for radiation protection. For the same total living area, it takes approximately the same amount of radiological protection (perhaps in a factor of two or more). So, I'm going to use the design for the Stanford Torus (donut-shaped habitat) as a basis because it was developed in some detail.

Before going into details, you might want to try a quick idea?

The diameter of the Earth is 12,742 km. The diameter of the largest asteroid, Ceres, is 950 km. The diameter of the moon is 3474.8 km.

How big should the asteroid be, approximately?to get enough material to cover the entire earth's surface?

• 10 km
• 50 km
• 100 km
• 500 km
• 1000 km (similar to Ceres)
• 3000 km (similar to Moon)

This is for the habitats themselves and also for radiation protection to protect the inhabitants against solar flares.

Or, if you prefer, what size does it take for habitats large enough to match the surface of Mars? Coincidentally, Mars is almost exactly the same size as Earth, so it's the same question.

I'm about to do the math, so if you want to guess, it's now your last chance before I reveal the answer.

…

…

Radiation protection is the greatest contribution to the mass. The design of the Stanford torus (donut shaped) uses 4.5 metric tons per square meter. A more recent calculation of NASA shows 4.41 tons per square meter of lunar dust. Other materials can protect with less material, but common materials like water are similar. You can reduce the mass with the Graded Z shield, used for satellites or with active shielding (for example, using magnetic shields), but let's keep it in simple ground shielding. use.

Radiation protection contributes 99% of the mass. In Stanford Torus design, they use lightweight structures for everything else. They found that the torus was the best model they had tried, with 10 million tonnes of material for a habitat of 0.68 km2.

So it's a little under 15 metric tons per square meter of living space. It's more than 4.5 tons because you have to protect the torus all around (sides, roof and ground). Ceres has a density of 2,077 metric tons per cubic meter. So you end up with about 7.5 cubic meters in total for one square meter of living space.

So what volume do we need? The area of ​​the Earth in square kilometers: 148 300 000 km2 (March: 144 798 500 km²): 7.5 meters correspond to 0.0075 km; so we need 1,112,250 km³ of material.

Now, we just need to solve for the radius. (Google Calc: 1,112,250 / (4i / 3) * p) ^ (1/3))

It turns out that you need an asteroid of 64 km radius, or 128 km in diameter. If you guessed 100 km, give yourself a big gold star :).

The density of Ceres is twice that of water. Asteroids vary greatly in density. An iron / nickel asteroid of the same weight could be smaller and a C-type asteroid would be larger.

Asteroids such as Ceres could provide materials for hundreds of times the Earth's surface

The largest, Ceres, 952 km in diameter, has a mass of 9.43 * 10¹⁷ Metric tons.

TThe land has 148,300,000 square kilometers at 15 tons per square meter, which requires 2,2245 * 10¹⁵ Metric tons.

Ceres has enough material for Stanford Tori on more than 400 times the surface of the Earth.

Ceres lower left, with the Earth and the Moon on the scale. (Cut of this image on wikipedia)

So, if you can extract Ceres, there is enough material for space habitats large enough to replicate the tropical rainforests, deserts, Antarctica, Siberia, Himalayas, and so on. four hundred times more

Le plus grand astéroïde suivant est Vesta, un astéroïde rocheux d'environ 525 km de diamètre, presque une planète naine, différenciée, probablement avec un noyau de fer-nickel de plus de 200 km de diamètre. Il a une masse de 2.59076 × 10¹⁷ Tonnes métriques. À huit tonnes métriques par mètre carré, cela suffit pour une surface habitable de plus de 100 fois la surface de la Terre.

La totalité de la ceinture d'astéroïdes a une masse environ trois fois supérieure à celle de Cérès, soit suffisamment pour environ 1200 fois la surface de la Terre.

La majeure partie de cette masse est le blindage. Vous pouvez construire des maisons à plusieurs étages, dans les plus grands habitats spatiaux de type Stanford Torus, tout comme pour la Terre. De toute évidence, les premiers habitats seront petits, mais par la suite, ils seront certainement importants.

Une chose que nous ne pouvons pas reproduire de cette manière, ce sont les océans de la Terre, car ils sont si profonds que la quantité d’eau est immense. Le volume total des océans sur Terre est étonnamment supérieur à 1,3 milliard de kilomètres cubes, il faudrait donc étendre votre filet plus loin que Ceres pour fournir autant de glace d’eau, peut-être à la ceinture de Kuiper. Donc, probablement, nos colonies proches de l’avenir n’auront pas autant d’habitats profonds pour les baleines, les calmars géants, etc.

Les habitats d'eaux profondes sont également un problème structurel, car une mer de 100 mètres de profondeur pèsera 100 tonnes par mètre carré, un véritable défi technique. Vous auriez probablement besoin de nombreux séjours comme un pont suspendu. Mais peut-être que les poissons et les baleines n'ont pas besoin de vivre pleinement? S'ils peuvent gérer avec des forces g beaucoup plus faibles, peut-être que quelques kilomètres dédiés à des habitats de type eau-monde pourraient être réalisables dans un avenir pas si lointain, des habitats filants qu'une baleine pourrait nager sans jamais trouver un avantage?

Tout le reste est là en abondance, à notre connaissance. C'est assez de matériel pour plusieurs milliers de milliards de colons avec des conditions de vie aussi spacieuses que celles dont nous jouissons sur Terre.

Qu'en est-il des ressources immédiatement accessibles depuis la Terre ou l'orbite de Mars?

Si vous regardez les ressources disponibles pour l'orbite de Mars – alors les lunes de Mars et les astéroïdes en orbite proche de la Terre (facilement accessibles aux sociétés minières sur Terre) sont les ressources évidentes pour commencer.

Deimos la minuscule lune de Mars a une masse de 1,48 * 10^{^ 12} tonnes métriques, qui à 15 tonnes métriques par mètre carré suffisent à faire de Stanford Tori environ 100 000 kilomètres carrés de surface habitable.

En termes d'États américains, c'est à peu près la taille de l'Oregon ou du Colorado

Donc, il est clair que nous n'allons pas manquer de ressources pour faire de l'espace habillé autour de Mars de sitôt 🙂

En ce qui concerne les astéroïdes proches de la Terre, le plus grand est le 1036 Ganymede, à environ 34 km de diamètre. C'est un astéroïde de type S. Donc probablement bon pour la construction, mais pas beaucoup par l'eau. Si cela a été utilisé pour créer des habitats spatiaux, il passe sur une grande orbite en boucle et, bien qu'il soit considéré comme un astéroïde proche de la Terre, il passe la plupart de son temps presque aussi loin que Mars.

Les objets facilement accessibles depuis la Terre dans un avenir très proche sont plutôt plus petits. Il y a une liste ici au programme d'objet proche de la terre de la NASA. Quelques-uns peuvent atteindre 100 mètres de diamètre ou plus. Nereus, sur la droite, a 300 mètres de diamètre et est plus facile à atteindre que la Lune.

Nereus a une forme irrégulière, mais son volume est d'environ 0,019 kilomètre cube. En supposant une densité similaire à Cérès, avec notre épaisseur de 7,5 mètres, ou 0,0075 km, cela suffit pour 2,53 kilomètres carrés de surface habitable.

En utilisant simplement ces AEN qui sont les plus faciles à atteindre, nous avons encore suffisamment de matériaux disponibles pour certains habitats de départ assez énormes. Nous n'allons pas manquer de matériaux pour ces projets de sitôt.

Planetary Resources est une entreprise qui prévoit d’exploiter les NEA pour leurs ressources dans un avenir proche. Ils ont une bonne idée d'utiliser l'impression 3D dans l'espace pour créer des composants pour leur vaisseau spatial à l'avenir. Avec les progrès rapides de la technologie d'impression 3D, de telles idées pourraient peut-être transformer la colonisation de l'espace.

L'espace habs peut fournir beaucoup plus de terres pour la colonisation que les surfaces planétaires de notre système solaire

Il est clair qu'à l'avenir, avec le temps, l'espace libre ou les orbites planétaires hébergeront une population beaucoup plus grande que la surface de n'importe quelle planète, à condition que les humains continuent à coloniser le système solaire.

Nous n'avons même pas besoin de vivre dans la ceinture de Kuiper, etc. (mais je suis sûr que certains le feront une fois que la puissance de fusion sera pratique avec des mini-soleils alimentant les habitats)

Via le «réseau de transport interplanétaire», vous pouvez simplement déplacer tout le matériel dont vous avez besoin dans le système solaire que vous souhaitez installer, avec le temps, en particulier avec un réseau automatisé de transport contrôlé par engin spatial robotisé.

C'est-à-dire si nous avons choisi de le faire. Il se pourrait que nous décidions de ne pas trop nous développer et de maintenir notre population totale plus faible. Il n’ya pas d’impératif moral d’agrandir et de remplir la galaxie, et comme le ciel n’est pas déjà plein d’état colonisés, peut-être que la plupart des ET décident de ne plus s’étendre à un certain stade. Si oui, nous pourrions faire la même chose. Mais en ce qui concerne les matériaux, les matériaux sont là pour coloniser notre système solaire avec des billions, et même notre galaxie à terme.

For some time many materials may be easiest supplied from Earth for the first colonies, before asteroid and NEO mining is well established. For lightweight electronic components this isn't a major issue. But heavy materials might be more of an issue.

There are however several innovative solutions suggested that could make supply of the colonies from Earth cost much less than you would expect. The other way around, return of materials from the colonies to Earth is relatively easy because of aero-braking in the thick Earth atmosphere. Energy can be exported directly to Earth using micro-wave transmission to receivers in remote locations on Earth.

• Slingatron – a spinning wheel with a spiral pattern engraved into it which by rotating at high speeds could send small rockets into orbit with supplies. They would be small and strong, like "smart projectiles". There are several other mechanical or chemical ways to "fire materials into orbit" from Earth.
• Air breathing space planes like Skylon – these could fly from reinforced runways on the surface of Earth straight to orbit, like a conventional plane
• JP Aerospace's Orbital Airship. An airship can't fly straight to orbit because if strong enough to survive the winds at low altitudes, it would be too heavy to fly to orbit. But if you put a floating staging post at about 30 to 43 kilometers above the ground, you can then have airships designed to fly in the upper atmosphere that could float at higher levels and simply accelerate slowly,  until they reach orbital velocity. Passengers fly up to the orbital platform in conventional airships, then transfer to the orbital ships. These are in between a spaceship and an airship in design, and would be the largest vessels ever constructed, 2 km long (compared with 380 meters for the largest current supertankers). However, they can be amazingly light and don't need much strength, because they don't need to withstand strong winds or indeed much air at all. They would remain permanently at high altitudes.
• Space fountain and space loops. This uses a similar idea to the way you can balance a golf ball on a jet of water, to keep structures at high altitudes, to make literally a bridge into space. It uses less energy than you would think because most of the energy gets recovered when the matter returns back to Earth, it then bounces back and keeps it going as an active structure. Vehicles then can travel along that road, accelerating all the time, you literally drive faster and faster until you reach orbital speeds. It seems a zany crazy idea but when you look at it more carefully, perhaps it might work, it's no more crazy than some other ideas that we now take for granted. It is much easier to construct than the Space Elevator which requires materials we don't yet have.
• Many other ideas see the wikipedia article: Non rocket spacelaunch.

It is hard to tell which of these will actually be adopted. Most are ideas, gleams in the inventor's eye, yet some like Skylon are at reasonably advanced stage of development, with many of the practical issues addressed. With so many ideas to explore, seems not too unlikely that one or the other will be feasible in the not too distant future.

So trade between the colonies and Earth seems like it might well be feasible in the reasonably near future. We could start almost right away, with small habitats and high value materials (such as platinum, and beaming energy back to Earth) plus earnings from space tourism. Eventually it seems possible you could have extensive trade of just about anything.

No practical need for surface of Mars for colonization

Mars is no des. res, not at present anyway. It's got an atmosphere, yes, but the atmosphere is so thin it would count as a laboratory vacuum on Earth. Its nights are bitterly cold; even at the equator they go well below the lowest temperatures ever recorded in Antarctica. From time to time it gets covered in global dust storms so you can't see the sun.

The photos from Mars make it look like much more habitable than it is. That's because they are coloured adjusted to simulate Earth lighting conditions to help geologists to identify rocks on Mars. The surface to human eyes would seem a dull muddy red brown with hardly any variation in the colour, unless you use enhanced vision of course.

There is enough light to keep the temperatures constant at about -50 C, and to give almost constant power from solar energy greatly simplifying construction of a lunar habitat. Small though they are, you could have small colonies that live on the peaks of (almost) eternal light and use water ice from the surrounding ocean of eternal darkness.

These probably need to be kept pristine in the very near future for scientific study, but after that, once we know what is there and understand it, maybe they can be colonized and the water used for habitats.

These may be the most easily habitable spots for humans outside of Earth in the solar system.

Away from these lunar poles, the Moon is more of a challenge because of its two week long night. This is a long period to last without solar energy.

Here are some ideas to play around with, the first two are my own:

• Could giant mirrors, perhaps in the L1 position, supply this light to a colony during the lunar light?
• What about slowly rotating giant habitats, like a huge roundabout, to create artificial gravity on the Moon, so that at least within the habitats you can enjoy Earth  normal gravity? (It's the same idea as the rotating hamlets inside a slowly rotating Stanford Torus above). This might also help with health problems from low G, if there are any (nobody seems to know yet).
• What about generating a thin atmosphere? This is an idea suggested by Mithridates. The idea isn't to terraform the Moon, but rather to create a thin atmosphere similar to that of Triton. The thin atmosphere would be enough to reduce the danger from the smallest micro-meteorites. It would also create a basic weather system that would help to equalize the atmosphere, and might be a natural product of colonization.

Colonies in orbit around Earth or the Moon would be the easiest to construct, but the most exciting location  in the near future could be Mars orbit. It's population can explore the surface of Mars, driving vehicles and operating robots on the surface via telepresence.

All our rovers on Mars to date have been slow moving, taking months to travel kilometers. That's mainly because of the light speed delays. There is just no point in making a faster rover because we couldn't control it from Earth, not over the rough terrain on Mars. Rovers operated from orbit around Mars wouldn't have those issues.

Some of the advantages of an orbital colony over surface colonization of Mars are:

• Telerobots can be sterilized, humans can't be. Human explorers on the surface might not be able to keep Mars free of Earth life.
• Any spot over half of the surface is accessible directly via telepresence, so rovers and telerobots at multiple locations can be accessed by the same operator
• No need to get into a spacesuit to explore Mars
• Enhanced vision, and shared streaming of all video streams easy to do.
• Super-human powers possible – the telerobots on the surface can be made stronger, smaller, larger, more agile, than a human.
• No dust storms to block out sunlight.
• Steady temperature, avoiding the extreme cold of the Martian night.

For more about this see Can Human Explorers Keep Mars Clean of Microbes, For Science?

Eventually colonists in similar habitats could use telerobots to explore Jupiter's atmosphere, Titan, Triton, the surface of Venus, Europa's oceans, and other locations that are impractical for humans to explore directly because of:

• Gravity is too high (Jupiter)
• Too hot (Venus)
• High levels of radiation (surface of Io for instance)
• Too cold, humans would melt the surface just by walking around (Triton, Titan, Pluto)
• Danger of contamination with Earth life (Mars, Europa, Encladus, possibly Triton and Titan if they have cryovolcanoes too)

In this way we can explore anywhere in our solar system almost without limits at all.

Far future possibilities

The Moon is a possible location for paraterraforming – where you cover an entire planetary or moon surface with greenhouses and habitats and live in those, if you can overcome the issues of the long dark nights. The entire surface of the Moon might one day be covered in habitats. Lunar soil has been shown to be good for plants, if you can supply water, though nitrogen would need to be imported to get it started.

Further in the future, who knows, maybe it will be possible to terraform Mars, once we understand the planet well from a scientific point of view, and know what we are doing. It would take centuries, but perhaps could get to the point where plants can grow there and the atmosphere is thick enough so that you only need a breathing apparatus and no spacesuit.  It could be paraterraformed too, covered in habitats.

On Mercury, small colonies perhaps could use the polar ice deposits if those exist. But both of those are likely to be significant challenges.

Terraforming Venus may be possible in the future, over centuries but is a major issue because of the huge atmosphere. It is hard to get rid of it permanently. Even if you can somehow blast it into space, Venus may gather it all up again in its gravitational field later. Perhaps it could be done, but you are talking about mega scale planetary engineering. This problem has exercised the minds of many thinkers, with some imaginative solutions suggested  Wikipedia has a good article on this subject if you want to stretch your mind and try to think of a way to do it.

Interesting though these ideas are, it's hard to see how they could house the trillions that could potentially colonize space settlements.

This calculation showing the vast potential of the asteroids for creating new habitats, a thousand times the area of the Earth, goes back to the 1970s, it's in the book "Colonies in Space" by T. A. Heppenheimer