Flashcards: Space colonization

A Dyson sphere is a hypothetical megastructure that completely encompasses a star and captures most or all of its power output.

Halo rings are eponymous fictional megastructures and superweapons in the Halo science fiction franchise.

Interstellar travel is the term used for hypothetical piloted or unpiloted travel between stars or planetary systems.

("Habitable planet" redirects here. For a list of potentially habitable planets found to date, see List of potentially habitable exoplanets.) Planetary habitability is the measure of a planet's or a natural satellite's potential to have habitable environments hospitable to life.

Space exploration is the ongoing discovery and exploration of celestial structures in outer space by means of continuously evolving and growing space technology.

In astronomy and astrobiology, the circumstellar habitable zone (CHZ), or simply the habitable zone, is the range of orbits around a star within which a planetary surface can support liquid water given sufficient atmospheric pressure.

A mass driver or electromagnetic catapult is a proposed method of non-rocket spacelaunch which would use a linear motor to accelerate and catapult payloads up to high speeds.

Asteroid mining is the exploitation of raw materials from asteroids and other minor planets, including near-Earth objects.

Terraforming (literally, "Earth-shaping") of a planet, moon, or other body is the hypothetical process of deliberately modifying its atmosphere, temperature, surface topography or ecology to be similar to the environment of Earth to make it habitable by Earth-like life.

The terraforming of Venus is the hypothetical process of engineering the global environment of the planet Venus in such a way as to make it suitable for human habitation.

In science fiction, floating cities are settlements that strictly use buoyancy to remain in the atmosphere of a planet.

The Exploration Systems Architecture Study (ESAS) is the official title of a large-scale, system level study released by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) in November 2005 in response to American president George W.

In space exploration, in situ resource utilization (ISRU) is defined as "the collection, processing, storing and use of materials encountered in the course of human or robotic space exploration that replace materials that would otherwise be brought from Earth.