AscensionTek Business Plan

Phase 3: Space Property Development

 

Property Development on the Moon

This phase of the business will focus on the Moon, with the major project being the establishment of Billabong, an Australia-led lunar settlement located at Mount Malapert, lunar south pole.  The settlement will ultimately include:

  • a hotel/resort
  • permanent and holiday accommodation
  • mines that produce water, oxygen, steel and titanium
  • systems for producing its own electricity and food
  • a scientific research facility and observatory
  • a spaceport

The base will essentially be a combination of holiday resort, ecovillage, mining town, and scientific research station on the Moon.  Further development of lunar property will grow from this initial base.

 

Property Development on Mars

Our Mars development plans are more ambitious than our lunar development plans, because the potential for Mars is much greater.  Hopefully we will be able to begin development work around 2055-2060, with a colony at Olympus Mons called Valhalla.

There are two main reasons for selecting Olympus Mons for our base.  One is the view.  The view from the summit of Olympus Mons will be so mind-bogglingly spectacular that it will become the most highly-valued property on Mars almost as soon as colonisation begins.  We will get in early and thereby obtain some of the best real estate in the Solar System at the cheapest possible price.

The second reason is for terraforming research.  Mars is fairly big.  Its diameter may only be half that of Earth's, but when it comes to gardening projects, terraforming Mars is right up there.  In fact, it will be the most ambitious project ever conceived since Qin Shi Huang, the Emperor of China, said "Maybe we should build a wall..."

So it will be well worthwhile to develop our terraforming technologies on a small scale, such as inside craters - or inside the caldera of an old volcano.

Terraforming Mars is the ultimate goal of AscensionTek, and I can only hope that the company will survive that long (because I'm pretty sure I won't!).  See the Downloads page for my paper "Terraforming Mars".

 

Primary Departments

These are the following main departments that will exist within our space property development division:

  • Construction: Above-ground and underground base design and construction.
  • Resources: In-situ resource utilisation, which includes mining (and atmospheric mining) and production of air, water, metals and other materials.
  • Energy: In-situ production of clean energy, especially solar, wind and zero-point energy systems.
  • Biological systems: Human communities, space agriculture, biotechnology and terraforming.

More about these later.