Seed Factories/Notes6

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F.2.1.1.3 Transport Data
This section includes data on requirements and alternatives which affect the main Provide Transport Capacity function as a whole.

Transport Requirements
As with Habitation, cost data are based on January 2013 as nearly as possible. Numerical values of all types are for the purpose of estimating the design, inputs, and outputs of all the location functions. Actual design will to some degree be a matter of choice for project participants and residents. This is less true for Transport elements than Habitation because transport has to function across the location and also outside it, so cannot be entirely different for each person. Despite that, we will try to preserve flexibility and choice where possible.

The Transport functions are divided by types into external Bulk Cargo, Delicate Cargo, and Human delivery, and Internal transport. We expect many of the hardware elements to carry out these functions will be shared across the functions, so most of the requirements are maintained at this main function level, and detailed values estimated for the component functions.


 * 1.2 Transport Scale - The goal is to provide internal and external transport capacity for the number of residents, which is 75/year up to 660, and participants, the latter on a proportional basis to their participation. The quantities will be estimated below, and derived from the needs of other functions.


 * 2.3 Self Production - The allocated requirement is to generate 10% of total location x 85% locally = 8.5% of the total economic value of $156,000/person/year from Transport, or $13,260/person/yr. The economic value includes the equivalent value of transport production and use.  Bulk freight is roughly estimated at $0.075/ton-km, from Exhibit F.1, and passenger transport at $0.30/person-km based on IRS mileage rates.  Federal Highway Administration data gives 21,700 km/driver average, and we allow some increase for passengers to 25,000 km/year, resulting in an estimated value of $7,500/person/year.  The remainder of the annual value would come from cargo transport, giving an estimate of 76,800 ton-km/person.  Note that economic value is not the same as cost.  We endeavor to provide Transport at a much lower cost than the value it represents.  We also do not require using this much transport, merely provide the capacity for it.


 * 2.3 Cyclic Flows - The goal is to limit un-recycled mass flow to 15% of the total used in transport, and the rest goes back to production. This excludes fuel, if used, which is difficult to capture the exhaust products from.  Instead we will try to produce fuel at the location in sufficient quantity to balance mass flows.  That technically does not count as recycling because it is different mass being used.  The goal also does not include cargo mass in the calculation of mass flow.  If the transport elements were entirely liquid fuel-driven, and passenger transport has an efficiency of 13 km/liter, we require 1,670 liters/person/year for that task. Conventional heavy truck efficiency is 6.5 gal/kiloton-mi, or 0.015 liters/ton-km.  Given our allowed cargo transport above, that requires 1,175 liters/person/year, giving a total fuel requirement of 2,845 liters/person/year (750 gallons).  We may choose an alternate energy source for parts of Transport, so this would be a maximum amount.


 * 2.3 Automation - The goal is to reduce human labor from transport by 85%. This will require extensive automation of internal and external transport elements.  For internal transport, bulk cargo vehicles performing mining, farming, and factory materials handling tasks are a good candidate for automation due to the mass involved.  For external transport, bulk cargo is also a candidate, but safety and legal issues may limit that use, or require outside designs because it would be too difficult to design within the project. Routine landscape maintenance, waste pickup, and food delivery are also candidates to be automated.


 * 2.3 Autonomy - The goal is to control at least 85% of transport functions locally. That includes automated systems, and residents and local participants.  This goal is easy to reach with conventional vehicles since they all have local human operators.  It should still be relatively easy to reach with automated transport if we define "locally" as including the vehicles themselves as part of the location when performing long distance trips.


 * 4.1 Development Cost - The requirement is to keep one-time development cost for Transport to 20% x $890,000 x 75 people = $13.35 million at that scale, and increased logarithmically by size to $29 million for 660 people. This is net of income for the location, which is allocated 20% back to Transport, and thus allows more development. Development costs are spent in Phase 0: Technology Development for design, prototypes, and testing, before recurring production and operation costs in building Phase I locations.  Development cost gets further allocated to individual Transport elements and system integration, which is making the elements work together and as part of the location.


 * 4.2 Location Cost - The requirement is to keep recurring acquisition cost below 20% x $76,000 = $15,200/person. This is the additional increment in cost for production of the transport elements after development.  The economic value of the produced elements should be much higher because of internal-self production.  This goal is not too difficult to meet with conventional private used vehicles and community owned work vehicles, but we would like to have higher quality and quantity by self-producing.


 * 5.1 Technical Risk - This sets an allocated goal for performance and design uncertainties of 7.5%. This is uncertainty in items like actual fuel efficiency or battery life vs. design estimates.  Phase 0: Develop Technology is partly intended to reduce these uncertainties to an acceptable level. The goal is for the location as a whole, so different levels of technical risk can be traded across the main functions. Technical risk is separate from production and operations cost estimates, which always have some uncertainty from cost of materials and other factors.  Production and operation stage uncertainty is accounted for with a cost reserve above the component estimates.


 * 6.1 Location Risk - This sets a goal to reduce life and casualty risk from Transport to 38% of the US average. A large part of this reduction can come from automating the transport and removing human presence and human error.  Additional reduction could come from reducing velocity and increasing design safety in the transport elements.  The location risk goal is for the location as a whole, and can be distributed across the main functions.


 * 6.2 Population Risk - The goal is to reduce population risk for the nearest 3.5 million people by 17%, with 25% of that allocated to the Transport function. This derives from a program level goal of reducing natural and human-made risks to the general population. One way to approach this is by providing better designs for others to reproduce over time.  Another is by selling risk-reducing elements such as automated transport.  Although we think reducing public risk is an important goal, reaching it will be difficult.

Transport Alternatives
These alternatives apply to the main Transport function as a whole.


 * Make or Buy - Transport equipment is a very large industry, so an early question is whether to make our own equipment vs. simply buying existing hardware. At the start of the project we will not have a factory in place to make things, so initially using existing equipment will be necessary.  As the factory grows and there are more residents to support, it becomes more feasible to self-build equipment if that results in lower initial and operating cost.  Thus determining a proper sequence for upgrading is important.  In comparing existing equipment, buying used is an option.  Another option is conversion of existing equipment, which amounts to a "partial make" choice.


 * Providing External Services - In addition to providing transport needs for the location and members, an option is to provide transport services for people outside the program as a way to generate income. This can range from small package delivery up to commuter networks, and repair services for conventional vehicles.


 * Providing External Systems - In addition to building transport elements for the location and project members, and option is to build infrastructure and elements for sale outside the program. Infrastructure might include conventional road-building using automated equipment, or installing rail or tube transport systems on existing rights of way.  This would need to be done in concert with surrounding communities.  Transport elements might include robotic vehicles for others to use, excess fuel for sale, or replacement parts for conventional vehicles.


 * Transport Configuration - This is choice between generic transport systems for multiple purposes (bulk and delicate cargo, and humans), specialized systems for each function, or modular systems which can be configured for different tasks as needed. The choice will depend on the volume of transport needed for each type, and how many transport operations will be required in parallel.


 * Power Source - The conventional choice is a liquid fuel used in an internal combustion engine. Alternatives are electric from batteries, outside conductors, or wireless power transmission, or some combination, or other fuels in solid or gas form, possibly using external combustion.  Unconventional options include flywheels or liquified air for energy storage.  A figure of merit for these systems is total energy stored/power train mass including storage.  This gives the effective range or operating time.


 * Location Infrastructure - Transport vehicles usually require suitable infrastructure in the form of roads, rails, fuel stations, or other fixed installations. Unconventional options include overhead or underground routes rather than ground level.  Since we cannot modify public infrastructure without permission, a location with distributed land parcels needs to assume use of existing infrastructure and adapt the vehicles to it.  The site plan for the location and fixed transport elements will need to be designed together.

F.2.1.1.3.1 Bulk Cargo Data
We estimate the following amounts for discrete bulk cargo, both to and from the location, and internally within the location. The delivery distances will depend on the land parcel distribution, but are estimated per the calculations under Internal Transport Data below. They will also shift slightly based on growth in the overall location size with population growth, and increasing fraction of production from local resources.


 * - Earthmoving for Habitation construction at 800 m3/person x short travel distance. Density averages 2 tons/cubic meter.
 * - Building materials for Habitation construction at 200 tons/person x 30-40 km one-way trip distance.
 * - Initial materials for Production and Transport at 150 tons/person x 30-40 km one-way trip average.
 * - Ongoing bulk materials transport at 15 tons/person/year x 3 trips per material x 20 km round trip average. 15 tons comes from 4% of initial materials for maintenance and modification.  The reason for three trips is from source to Production area, movement within Production, then delivery to final point of use.

For fluids, US water use is 1500 cubic meters/person/year for all uses, so we adopt that as an estimate for both water supply and waste water transport. Transport distance will depend on whether it is from public or local supply. An undetermined amount of natural or other fuel gases would need to be delivered if they part of the location design, as well as an estimated 2 tons liquid fuel for the vehicles themselves if they are powered that way.

F.2.1.1.3.2 Delicate Cargo Data
Delicate cargo includes items like furniture, electronics, hazardous chemicals, and food, which need some level of protection during delivery. We estimate Transport at:
 * - Habitation movable contents at 40 tons/person initially, plus 2.5 tons/person/year for new items and moves for residents.
 * - Chemicals are estimated at 2 tons/person/year (mostly in Production)
 * - Food is estimated at 500 kg/person/year x 20 km average distance.

In addition to the cargo itself, items in this category need protection from the outside environment, shock and vibration, etc. We will make an estimate of 25% on average for padding, boxes and crates, and refrigeration.

F.2.1.1.3.3 Human Transport Data
We calculated 21,700 km/person/year previously for passenger transport. If we assume 4 person-hours/day usage x 40 km/hr average vehicle velocity, we need 0.375 passenger vehicles/person. This is lower than the US average, but we can design vehicles to self-drive when empty to the next user, optimize routing among residents and project members to increase passengers/trip, or simply reduce travel distance from less need to work outside jobs or make shopping trips as often. The conventional alternative is to use existing vehicles, and merely produce fuel for them. If building vehicles, then production requirements would theoretically be 0.375 x new resident population, and 0.02 units/per/year maintenance and replacement. Since most people already have vehicles, initial production will likely be much less than theoretical.

F.2.1.1.4.4 Internal Transport Data
Internal transport is where both ends of the trip are at the location. The amount required will greatly depend on whether the location land is one parcel or distributed into many parcels. For estimating purposes, we assume the in the distributed case the parcels follow a Zipf (harmonic) distribution with a minimum size of 1 hectare (2.5 acres). We estimate 0.45 hectare per person, so for 75 people we need 33.75 hectare/minimum parcels (83 acres). This yields approximately 11 parcels with the largest at 11 hectares (27 acres). For a population of 660 we need 297 hectares, with approximately 63 parcels, the largest being 63 hectare.

If the parcels are on average distributed with 1/2 within 30 minutes of the center of area of all the parcels, and successive halves for each additional 30 minute travel time, the average and maximum distances are (1.625, 4) and (1.875, 6) times 30 minutes for 75 and 660 population. The average distance between two random points in a circle is 2/3 the diameter, where that is 1 hour for a unit distance. This gives 65 and 75 minute average one-way travel times. Using 40 km/hr average travel speed we get 43 and 50 km average trip distance between parcels. The probability of a trip starting and ending on the same parcel is 33% and 21% respectively, for which the distance is less than 1 km, and we can use zero as an approximation. This lowers the average trip distance including same-parcel trips to 29 and 40 km.

For the non-distributed case, we can assume a land parcel with 2:1 aspect ratio, and therefore 400 x 800 meter and 1200 x 2400 meter dimensions for the 75 and 660 person sizes. If the average trip is 2/3 the long dimension, then we get 0.53 and 1.6 km average trip distances. For a single parcel, 100% of the internal transport is on the same parcel. Usefulness of alternate designs is much higher in this case because we can fully choose the design. In the distributed case we have to work within what is allowed on public routes.

If we have a goal of supplying 85% of resident needs from internal resources, then 85% of transport will be internal trips. The remaining 15% are external trips, where one end is not at location property. We will assume the same distribution of trip distances as among parcels in the distributed case, but this portion remains the same whether the parcels are distributed or not. At the start of construction there will be no residents, so all travel will be distributed. As the location is developed, the mix will shift according to the degree of land concentration.

F.2.1.1.1 Production Data
This section includes data on requirements and alternatives for the main Provide Production Capacity function as a whole.

Production Requirements
Cost data are based on January 2013 as nearly as possible, and dollar amounts in requirements are allocated for the purpose of estimating the design, inputs, and outputs of the various functions. Actual design and dollar amounts for Production will be derived from the complete needs of the location and the optimized set of alternatives chosen. The Production elements are expected to evolve over time. Meeting the following requirements is expected at the end of location growth (660 people), but approaching or reaching them earlier is desired. Maximizing the fraction of requirements met over time is used to select between different growth paths.


 * 1.2 Production Scale - The requirement is to produce finished elements for Production (itself), Habitation, and Transport for 75 more people/year to a total of 660 for the location. Another requirement, for 85% local production, is distributed to the individual lower level functions.  Therefore 15% of the finished elements are allowed to be obtained from outside.  We will measure those by completed mass and final value of the built environment.  The natural environment (land, unprocessed water, plants, and air) is excluded from that calculation.


 * The first increment of major Production elements (also known as the Seed Factory) must be inherited from the Technology Development phase or supplied from outside, because they cannot produce themselves from nothing. The first increment also includes necessary attachments, bits, tooling, and conventional small workshop tools. After the first increment, an increasing percentage of Production and expansion is done locally, and a decreasing percentage is supplied from outside to reach the 85% goal.  For purposes of design and tracking, additional increments of outside supplied items may be organized into Expansion Sets.  The delivery schedule of items will be set by actual Production needs, however they are organized and tracked.


 * 2.2 Growth - The requirement is to increase Production capacity by 11% per year compounded, above the initial requirement for 75 people/year. The excess capacity is first used for maintenance and modification of the existing location elements.  This is estimated for now to be 4%/year of the completed elements, but that estimate will need to be revised once more design details are known.  At completion of the location, 4% x 660 people = 26.4 people/year worth of production would be needed for maintenance and modification, which is about 1/3 of the original Production capacity.  Combined with the growth requirement, there should be surplus capacity available to sell products, expand the location beyond the 660 person goal, or start building a new location elsewhere.  The long term goal of the overall program is to expand to multiple locations, so the last option is especially desired.


 * If not enough funding or participants are available to reach a 75 people/year production rate at first, a reduced starting rate of 45/year is an option, adding 5/year to reach the 11% growth rate, and ramping up above 75/year later on to reach the 660 person goal in 9 years. The Production elements will still be designed for a rate of 75 per year at full scale, because we need a definite scale to develop the various pieces around.


 * 2.3 Self Production - The requirement is to generate 75% by production x 85% locally = 63.75% of total economic value of $156,000/year/person from Production, or $99,450/person/yr economic value.  The remainder of the economic value is 15% for Habitation and 10% for Transport x 85% locally, and 15% by residents doing work outside the location.  The completed value of Habitation for 75 people is $33.75 million, of which 85%, or 28.7 million is supposed to be added value (the remaining 15% being purchased items).  At the stated economic value rate, then it would require 288 people building just Habitation elements to build 75 person's worth/year.  Since this exceeds the resident population at first, it implies substantial program participants who are not yet residents, working part or full time.  Note that 75 residents does not equal 75 workers.  We assume long-term labor force participation is 50% of resident population.  The program participants who are contributing work count at 100% participation.  Contributions of cash, tools, materials, or elements completed off-location will substitute for on-location work, but the quantity is undetermined.


 * 2.3 Complexity - The goal is at most 7 major Production elements in the Seed Factory, since more different elements is more to design and higher initial cost. This does not include attachments, bits, tooling, or small workshop tools.  We would count the factory building itself as one of the major elements, especially if it includes overhead cranes or rail systems for materials handling, or is partitioned into multiple work areas with different conditions.  A passive shelter that just keeps equipment out of the weather would not be counted as a major element, nor would temporary leased space during early construction.  Once the Seed Factory is operational, as many additional major elements can be added as needed, using a combination of self-production and outside supplies for expansion.


 * Since we are trying to keep the Seed Factory relatively simple and inexpensive, the first elements should be as flexible as possible. Later additions can be dedicated to particular purposes and specialized/optimized for them.  An initial candidate list, which is very likely to change, includes:
 * - (1) Modular robotic tractor with multiple attachments for different land and construction tasks.
 * - (2) Concentrating solar furnace facility with different focal targets for different heating jobs.
 * - (3) Bridge mill frame with 4 replaceable head mounts (LF, RF, LR, RR) and pallet changing sliding table for different machining/printing/cutting/painting/other tasks. Sawmill operation uses both LF and RF mounts to hold the bandsaw frame. Heads and table can have additional axes for multi-axis (>3) operation.
 * - (4) Horizontal lathe with 4 rails: two for main spindle/chuck, tailstock/secondary spindle/supports, and two for cross-slide/turret/mill head, with tool and attachment exchange.
 * - (5) Modular chemical process plant to produce different bulk materials by connecting various modules in different ways.
 * - (6) Hydraulic press/rolling mill/ironworker to shape thinner cold metal, thicker hot metal, or press non-metallic materials by various inserted dies, molds, and blades.
 * - (7) Electrical/Electronic fabrication shop for making motors, generators, circuit boards, and similar items. This element is not one big machine, but a collection of a number of smaller items.


 * 2.4 Quality of Life - We measure quality of life in economic terms until a better measure can be devised. The requirement for the location as a whole is to provide the equivalent of $156,000/person GDP.  We count internally produced and used items at market value, plus actual sales of products and services, including outside labor for pay.  This requirement is related to 2.3 Self Production above.  The difference is the earlier requirement is about what percentage to provide locally, where this one sets the total value of the output.  Residents may choose internal jobs or outside work as their skills and preferences determine.  If not all internal jobs are filled this way, outside participants are used as needed.  The legal structure of the location is still to be determined, but possibly a homeowner's association.  In general, the intent is that internal work accumulates capital in the location, while external work is used to buy capital in the location.  Members then get a share of the output proportional to their capital.


 * The Production share of the total output is 75% of local output x 85% local share of total output = 63.75% x $156,000/year = $99,450/year/resident. This assumes 50% of full time work by the residents in total, and thus 32% in production tasks.  This goal may not be reached the first year because of lower levels of automation or lack of some production machines, but intended to be reached by the end of location construction.  Participants who are not residents have the same production output goal, but do not get the benefit of integrated Habitation and Transport use because they are not physically at the location.  Instead they get increased capital in the location, or withdraw a larger share of products.


 * 2.6 Resources - The requirement is to produce 10.5 times internal needs for materials and energy over the long term, or a surplus of 9.5 times. This is a fairly high requirement, and will not be met at first. Since ongoing maintenance and modification is 4% x 660 people = 26.4/year, to reach a level of 10.5 times this requires 277.2/year, or about 3.7 times the original production rate.  At 11% compound growth rate of production this can be reached 12.5 years after the rate of 75/year is attained.  For energy output, it simply means building 10.5 times the amount needed by the location itself, which will take another 10 years.


 * 4.1 Development Cost - Production is expected to be the most complicated part of the location design. Therefore we allocated 60% of the one-time total $890,000/person temperate location development cost x 75 people = $40 million.  For the full 660 person location, this is increased by ln(660/75) to $87 million. This is net of income from the location, which is allocated 60% to production.  One time development cost is for design, prototypes, and testing, separate from recurring production output for the location.  This development cost needs to be further allocated to lower level Production functions, plus production integration into the full location.  Scaling down to 1/10 scale (1/1000 output) leads to an estimate of $5.8 million for small-scale proof of concept design.


 * 4.2 Location Cost - Once the Production elements have expanded from the Seed Factory to full capacity, we have a goal of 40% x $76,000 = $30,400/person for added production elements. This does not count whatever part of the production elements are self-built, which is 85%, or $170,000.  Since the seed elements cannot build themselves and during initial expansion the factory at any point can only do a lesser portion of it's own production, we assume on average half of the 85% goal for self-production is available during expansion.  Thus the final value of production elements of $200,000 per person requires 57.5% of this for the first increment of 75 people, or $8.625 million.


 * 5.1 Technical Risk - This sets a goal for Production of performance and design uncertainties of 7.5%. This requirement is partly assigned back to Phase 0: Develop Technology, to reduce the risk to an acceptable level by design, prototyping, and test. The remaining risks are distributed to functions within Production, and integration between them and the remainder of the program.  They are tracked and measured as the location grows, in order to reach the goal.


 * 6.1 Location Risk - This sets a goal of life and property risk of 38% of US average from the Production function. The primary way to reduce life risks is by use of automation and remote control.  This removes humans from contact with production tasks, and therefore from the associated risks.  There will still be some human-performed tasks, so we consider other existing average risks, and try to design features of Production to reduce them as much as possible.  Examples would be better fire safety and structural strength. FM Global has guidelines for Industrial Safety.  Other property risks are TBD.


 * 6.2 Population Risk - The completed location represents 0.44% of the full Phase 1 program. The goal is then a 17% reduction (set by program goals) to general population risk for 0.44% of the human population, which is 7,056.7 million x 0.44% = 31 million.  A different distribution of risk reduction x number of people would meet the goal. One way to reach it is by widely licensing or distributing improved technology which reduces risk outside the location.  The behavior and built environment of the general population is difficult to change in a short time, so this goal may need a longer time to reach than building the location will.


 * 7.2 Survivability - The goal is 17% compensation (set by program goals) for civilization level critical risks x (location scale/program scale), or 17% x (660/150,000) = 0.075%. Some alternate approaches to meeting this goal include:
 * - Increasing general food and housing security by designing climate-proof systems (greenhouses and energy sufficient habitation) and systems to produce them,
 * - Contributing to an asteroid hazard detection telescope,
 * - Developing modified trees or advance planting ahead of climate zone shifts, since trees are not mobile and take time to grow. Forests are net Carbon accumulators.
 * - Developing systems to increase albedo, reduce soot emissions, absorb or reduce carbon emissions to reduce climate effects,
 * - Developing extraction methods for low-grade ores, thus alleviating resource depletion.


 * Many of these approaches require development, and are partly assigned back to Phase 0: Technology Development, but a continuing task to implement them is included in this phase.

Production Alternatives

 * Initial Resource Supply - When construction of the location is starting, equipment will not yet be in place to supply resources like power or clean water. The question is then how to supply these resources, if needed, and to what extent outside supplies should stay in place later on, when the location has the ability to provide it's own.  We will make the default assumption that location planning will include analyzing the need for utility type resources. Early options include temporary supplies, like portable generators and water trucks, and provision of more permanent resources like conventional power line and transformer connected to temporary power pole.  We expect an eventual surplus of connected resources, like electricity, so discussion with local power companies makes sense to plan for this.


 * Scaling - This the question of the size of the initial production elements, and growth steps in terms of expansion of existing units, replication of the original units, or building larger elements. In Phase 0: Develop Technology we identified scaling for prototypes ranging from 1/10 to full linear size, relative to the sizes needed for a 75 person/year location growth rate.  For that growth rate multiple units may be needed of a given element to handle parallel operations.


 * Growth Planning - This is which starter set of elements to include, and what sequence to add new types of machines and processes. This includes inheritance from the Technology Development phase, which may overlap in time with the construction of the location.  Several ways to plan the initial and growth sets of technologies were noted in the section on Production Technologies under Self Expansion.  These included reverse engineering from the completed location, and forward engineering from various starting points towards the desired end point.  We are starting with the reverse approach to populate our resource model with initial data, and intend to apply other approaches as alternates and then compare them.  These use the more conventional choices for each function if the data is readily available, or our own estimates for any alternative otherwise.  Once one or more complete resource models are generated, then other alternatives for the various functions can be examined individually for their effects on the complete location.


 * Production Allocation - This includes the issue of allocating funding sources to new production hardware and bought parts and materials. It also includes allocating production output among items for sale, for Habitation and Transport elements, and for expansion of Production itself.  We will make the default assumption that we cannot plan this entirely in advance, and can only do so in detail up to the point the location can start to sell items or accept future resident choices.  Beyond that, the Planning and Scheduling task of the Control Location function will continue to make allocation decisions.  These will be based on satisfying resident needs, outside orders, and meeting program requirements as well as possible.


 * Location Maintenance and Modification - After initial construction or assembly of location elements, they will need maintenance to continue operating, or modification to support changed needs. We will assume that the same systems that are used to build the elements are used for these tasks.  Part of element design is maintenance planning, which includes scheduled maintenance, such as landscape mowing on a regular schedule, and unscheduled repair.  Some amount of spares inventory or production capacity will be needed for replacing or rebuilding parts which wear out or break.