§ 10.1 Introduction to the PERMANENT Technical Database
 A main purpose of PERMANENT is to introduce useful and interested people to the concepts of space industrialization using asteroidal and lunar material - to bring people up to speed quickly.
Veterans in the field also meet new people and expand their horizons by finding new resources via PERMANENT.
We field inquiries from people along the continuum from specialist to generalist.
Frankly, our strengths are quality assurance and breadth. Anyone can overconfidently say "We've got a [database / bibliography / links] on space resources", but according to our experience, the vast majority of such people have just a cursory sampling which is quite incomplete.
We've been maintaining a database of leading technical research papers and reports since the early 1980s, in many key technical specializations. We regularly review the main databases for new work to review. However, we rely heavily on the published (and many unpublished) research papers and reports by leading researchers, and following their references and referrals. As people knowledgeable in our fields, we don't rely on any one expert (as too many generalists seem to do, based on the published work and self-confidence of one expert or group). The issues are sometimes vested interests, but are usually the simple fact that experts often disagree on the relative feasibility, technical and economic merits of alternative methods. We are committed to objectivity.
For someone new to this field who wants access to documents on these topics, it can be a laborious task (and often quite time-consuming and expensive) to find materials of your particular interest, especially quality materials. Publications on utilizing asteroidal and lunar materials are spread out among many online databases.
What we have done is organize the world's first database on utilizing asteroidal and lunar materials -- organize it to make your research easier. We also do quality reviews, and offer references to related work.
In addition to summaries of relevant material, we also offer quality judgements of material, as well as references to experts in the various fields who can help guide you (albeit sometimes with their own biases).
In 1997, our database went online on the internet, from a server in Canberra, Australia, thanks to Jonathan Ricketson. However, Jonathan subsequently left to pursue a Masters degree at the International Space University in France, and the database was left on autopilot. The online version is a bit out of date now. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. You can try to reach it at http://www.wct.com.au/staff/jonathan/Permanentlib.nsf, with special thanks to his employers Wizard Computer Technology and Wizard Training in Canberra, Australia, who own and operate the server. We are looking for another willing and able server. The database is in IBM Lotus Notes format.
Regarding many of the papers and reports cited in our webpages, you can acquire them by mailing within 24 hours, by photocopy or microfiche, through a service by the AIAA called AIAA Dispatch. In most of our references, however, we do not have the specific AIAA ordering information (document number and price), but you can get it online, or off-line via a library which subscribes to the monthly CD-ROM, via the International Aerospace Abstracts database provided by the American Institute for Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA).
In fact, the AIAA database is an alternative to our PERMANENT website for finding references. However, one problem with the AIAA database is that there is not yet a "Subject classification" for "space resources utilization", and papers relevant to lunar and asteroidal resources utilization are spread across classifications which are questionable. For example, many fall into the classification of "Astronautics - General", and many fall into categories which were not intended for these things, e.g., a report on making fiberglass on the Moon comes under the classification "Ground support and operations" normally used for such things as Earth aircraft and rocket launch pad operations and support.
As a result, a researcher is left to search by keyword, or "Descriptors". Yet there is no standardized set of descriptors. Picking up everything with asteroid, lunar and Moon in it won't get everything relevant to space resources utilization for space industrialization, and it will get you tons of weakly relevant material. Looking at what you get, it may seem there's no consistency in use of descriptors, which is mostly the problem.
That is why PERMANENT has taken published materials in the field of space resources and organized them with our own standardized, organized set of categories, and with keywords to help you find more specific information.
The PERMANENT database also strives to cut out as much of the weakly relevant material as possible, i.e., offering references only to material relevant to utilization of lunar and asteroidal materials for space industrialization and settlement so that search "hits" do not overwhelm you with irrelevant materials.
Notably, there is a lot of "publish or perish" work that adds little to the technical knowledgebase. Some of this comes from paper-pushing government contractors who basically plagarize, more or less, to produce paper to sufficiently impress higher level managers who don't know better. Some comes from academia. Much published work is "reinvention of the wheel" whereby the author didn't do a good search on what has already been done before creating their own work. Sometimes this is good, but usually this means they just waste time, effort and talent publishing analyses and conclusions that have already been reached by someone else, often not as well as the other researcher. In such cases, we usually try to contact the author to determine if they are serious about performing further work. Often, we don't include the weaker paper in our database in view of a more committed researcher.
Finally, even with a list of papers in a category of interest from a database search, it helps to have a third party review of the papers and how they fit into the big picture and relative to other papers. (Indeed, it helps to keep the big picture in mind, e.g., via a composed WWW presentation which puts each reference in its place.)
If you are an engineer or scientist looking for prior research, you may also want to contact an expert in the relevant field who is widely read in the technical literature for an in-depth review of your specialization, and hopefully an objective review of what are the best and most appropriate research papers to get. In addition to PERMANENT, you can contact the Space Studies Institute (SSI), the Arizona Center for Space Resources (esp. Dr. John S. Lewis), the NASA Johnson Space Center's Solar System Exploration Office (esp. Dr. David S. McKay or Dr. Mike Duke or Dr. Wendell Mendell, to name a few of the longtime leaders), or other links on our pages. In the PERMANENT references, we note the author's affiliation and the number of references in their paper, which can be another efficient trail to follow. If you have difficulty finding the e-mail address of anyone, then you can send a message to and we may be able to assist you. Many seasoned experts do not have well published e-mail addresses, but we're collecting them for servicing professional inquiries whereby we forward messages to the recipients but must leave it to them to make initial direct contact by a reply (for reasons of privacy).
Due to copyright restrictions, we cannot put up onto the webpage entire documents unless they are public domain or unless we have special permission, and hence we can't offer a complete "one stop shop" (not that any one entity could offer a complete one stop shop, ever…). In the PERMANENT webpages, we have tried to cover each subtopic to a limited depth and then add the most pertinent references to each subtopic, so that specialists can go directly to the sources for more information. We hope that more WWW sites will pop up to interface with people in sub-fields. However, few individuals and organizations have performed such professional quality work without funding, and getting funding over competing needs is always an issue, so it's not always wise to wait for others. Given history, we will continue to develop our database and webpages. We welcome help from other professionals, which helps both parties to become better established in the field.
We are doing everything without funding. We are leading, not following. (Notably, funding doesn't always mean a total quality product, but can often mean a minimal product according to funding specifications, without much creativity and proactivity beyond the general guidelines.) Nonetheless, this work is certain to pay back heavily, in concrete ways, in the near future.
It's worth mentioning that over the years, quite a number of others have spoken of projects "underway" to produce a bibliography of asteroidal and lunar materials utilization papers and reports, some of these organizations being leading organizations in the field. Experience has dictated that we should not wait for these projects to progress. Without exception, these other projects have either stalled or produced a bibliography that cites a fraction of the papers and reports, and the leading figures have almost all acknowledged that their project hardly progressed in view of other demands for their time and energy (shelved, in effect).
One interesting conference paper in 1991 by Robert J. Summersgill and Carole Kingsbury (now Carole Hornik) of Washington, D.C., entitled "The Space Information Matrix: Defining The Critical Path" defines a system under development at the time to show where past, current, proposed and needed research would fit within the big picture of space development utilizing lunar and asteroidal materials. Its structure is akin to a Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) or PERT chart system used by some project management software. This system was implemented in Hypercard software on an Apple Macintosh computer provided by the Space Studies Institute (SSI) and the Space Frontier Foundation (SFF). The paper shows screen shots, so the project was well underway, at least in conceptual design. Its first focus was on papers from the SSI Princeton conferences, and papers in a quarterly periodical on solar power satellites, though it makes clear that the reader should not presume that all the available information had been assimilated. It's an ambitious project, trying to put everything into an orderly format with the aim of identifying gaps and areas of needed work. Despite the name of the paper, "defining the critical path", I believe the authors have found out that consensus on a single "critical path" will always be very elusive (as one of the authors expressed in later published remarks), and they state an appreciation for the need for adaptability. Unfortunately, from what I've heard, this project has not progressed much beyond the software stage, according to communications with Mr. Summersgill in mid-1997, and is not adapted to access via internet. (Mr. Summersgill has also stopped contributing his work on the project.) Nonetheless, it could be a very useful in-house tool for SSI and its associates, and they probably could use some help adapting this work to various applications. It would be a shame to see all that work wasted.
PERMANENT has its database references cited in two ways:
First, references are cited in the appropriate webpages. The webpages follow an outline organized by subtopics, and references are embedded into the resultant flowing text. Early on, a decision was made (for better or worse) to not try to force fit all the data into an overly computerized format (i.e., pursuit of too orderly and simple a format may not be best), but to work it into a freeform, flowing text presentation for a wider audience.
Secondly, along a traditional and most orderly path, PERMANENT also has a simple computer database of paper references with categories and searchable keywords, which is online on the WWW.
In these two ways, the same reference can be cited in both formats, with the user choosing the one they prefer. In fact, the webpages are linked to the database and vice versa, e.g., the database record of a particular paper lists all the webpages where it is cited, and clicking on the citation in the webpage can bring up the record in the database.
At present, we do not give much coverage to certain important but fairly generic topics such as robotics, astronautics, mathematical modeling of large space structures, etc. There are a lot of papers and big NASA contractor reports on these topics, which could be called "support" topics. Our initial focus has been on certain "mission definition" topics which are outside of NASA's current implementations and which need work despite lack of much government funding. (Again, we're leading, not following.) Topics covered in our database are such things as mining and processing asteroidal and lunar material into feedstocks for industry, the value and design of end products in space made from asteroidal and lunar materials, the economics of missions to specific asteroids, and other mission defining topics. The latter "mission definition" topics are the first priority. When that is defined, we can always plug in the "support" stuff such as robotics, astronautics, beam builders, etc. It is hoped that other websites will emerge which cover such "support" topics as robotics, astronautics, beam makers, etc. If anyone is willing to write up coverage of these or other such "support" topics for putting up on the PERMANENT website, that would be greatly appreciated! Special publications
Most records in our database are just one paper, often less than 10 pages. However, some publications are special because they are large publications which offer diverse and rich sources of general information in multiple disciplines between the two covers of each book. Some are collections of papers from conferences specifically on lunar and asteroidal materials utilization, with a fairly broad scope of subtopics. Besides the conference proceedings, there are some special collections of technical papers by highly qualified editors. Both are multidisciplinary.
For the less technical, we offer a list of layman books written by visionary researchers in this field for the nontechnical general public.
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