On 2/22/11 2:58 AM, Victor Smith wrote:

> Sounds like we need every beanstalk and skyhook we can throw up, then.
> But, even with elevators (of whichever sort), try calculating how many
> trips up the beanstalk it takes to move a billion people to orbit.

It would take slightly more than the current number of air passenger
trips per year in the U.S. alone (which was 800 million in 2008).

http://www.numberof.net/number-of-airline-passengers-per-year/

Of course that doesn't mean it's practical for people to actually
emmigrate at that rate... but it does put the numbers in perspective.

Best,
- Joe

From: Joe Strout

> It would take slightly more than the current number of air passenger
> trips per year in the U.S. alone (which was 800 million in 2008).

I remember O'Neill making a similar point.

Just once on my Space Settlement FAQ (http://space.mike-combs.com/spacsetl.htm) I foolishly said that no conceivable space transportation system could keep up with the number of babies being born. I was quickly corrected. Yes, it's true that conceivable transportation systems could reduce Earthly populations.

Regards,

Mike Combs

Well, yeah, but now were getting into Ringworld and Dyson sphere stuff. Ringworld was probably the first proposal of kilometers high rim walls to hold in the atmosphere. Your SpaceRings resource seems to have done their homework on the concept, but makes some big assumptions, ie very advanced nanotech and antimatter tech. And I didnt quite get the central illuminaire, some kind of fusion flame or what? Its supposedly powered by solar power from the outer skin, but what is it?

From: Combs, Mike
Sent: Tuesday, February 22, 2011 8:10 AM
To: spacesettlers@yahoogroups.com
Subject: RE: [spacesettlers] Re: : 100-Year Starship some way off, a billion people in space

From: Victor Smith

> ...and can then be turned off.

An important point, that!

> These same types could, I would think, be programmed to lay down multiple layers of metal,
> etc. one atom or molecule at a time, onto a matrix or framework to produce habitats (or
> most anything else).

If such a manufacturing capability were to become possible, we could build habitats with extraordinary tensile strength, and hence size. The type where you don't have to glass over the roof, you just build 200 Km high walls to keep the air in. Here's a couple of references:

http://www.iase.cc/openair.htm

http://www.orionsarm.com/fm_store/SpaceRings.pdf

That latter reference discusses a rotating habitat 1/13th the diameter of the Earth!

Regards,

Mike Combs

Didn't think before posting on that one. I agree, it would take massive efforts to put a dent in transferring a significant number of people off planet.
Brooks

--- In spacesettlers@yahoogroups.com, "Victor Smith" wrote:

On Tue, Feb 22, 2011 at 9:29 PM, Victor Smith wrote:
>
> Well, yeah, but now were getting into Ringworld and Dyson sphere stuff. Ringworld was probably the first proposal of kilometers high rim walls to hold in the atmosphere. Your SpaceRings resource seems to have done their homework on the concept, but makes some big assumptions, ie very advanced nanotech and antimatter tech. And I didnt quite get the central illuminaire, some kind of fusion flame or what? Its supposedly powered by solar power from the outer skin, but what is it?
(...)

I don't know if that is the mechanism that they thought of, but in
theory solar energy gathered by the outer hull could be used to ower
up lasers that would ignite a ball of plasma in the center of the
ring, thus creating the "luminary". Sort of the principle of an
inertial confinement fusion reactor. Of course matter (gas, pellets,
whatever) would have to be constantly funneled into the reaction
center, but that does not look very problematic.

Although Niven's Ringworld went beyond currently conceivable strength-to-weight ratios. Diamondoid might be beyond present manufacturing abilities, but stays within the limitations of atomic bond strengths.

I was a tiny bit disappointed that this still didn't get us up to the scale of a Bishop Ring (24 hour rotation period). At least not with any significant amount of centrifugal force. I think the structure described would have a rotation of once each 15 minutes.

I didn't care much for their artificial illumination scheme. But it occurred to me that one could use a mirror arrangement much like that of a Stanford Torus. Only for the secondary mirrors, you'd use one conical ring of facetted mirrors rather than two because you'd want to simulate night cycles. Which would have the amusing result of largely reproducing the visual appearance of the Ringworld, albeit at a smaller scale.

Regards,

Mike Combs

From: spacesettlers@yahoogroups.com [mailto:spacesettlers@yahoogroups.com] On Behalf Of Victor Smith
Sent: Tuesday, February 22, 2011 6:29 PM
To: spacesettlers@yahoogroups.com
Subject: Re: [spacesettlers] Re: : 100-Year Starship some way off, a billion people in space

Well, yeah, but now we're getting into Ringworld and Dyson sphere stuff. Ringworld was probably the first proposal of kilometers high rim walls to hold in the atmosphere. Your SpaceRings resource seems to have done their homework on the concept, but makes some big assumptions, ie very advanced nanotech and antimatter tech. And I didn't quite get the central 'illuminaire', some kind of fusion flame or what? It's supposedly powered by solar power from the outer skin, but what is it?

--- In spacesettlers, sraj wrote:

> ----------------
> Is there really a problem?
>
> 1. The robots need to be self replicating only to
> a limited extent. The complex electronics for a
> hundred slave robots will be carried from earth;
> only the heavy mechanical elements need to be
> fabricated on site. Five master robots will be on
> the spacecraft fully assembled.

So far so good, but keep reading.

> 2. There will be two way contact between Alpha
> Centaurus and Earth (with a time lag of 4.4
> years). It will be unlike a normal conversation;
> just a streaming conversation to keep the two
> sides updated.
>
> 3. The children will realise who they are by the
> age of two.

Will they? By ten, certainly. By five perhaps.
By two? I can't say that it's impossible, but I
have my doubts.

> There will be extensive video libraries in the
> nurseries, and streaming videos from earth.
> Each child will have a dedicated video stream
> from parents/relatives from Earth.

Not good enough for most parents I've met, not for
most children. But keep reading.

> 4. The technology for the artificial womb will be
> destroyed once its purpose has been served.

Why? I don't see any reason it couldn't go right
on being used by the women living in the new worlds.

> 5. Settlements in orbit around stars looks more logical.

Yep.

OK, now for the reason I asked you all to keep reading.
The idea of mind uploading has entered this thread. Well,
what if those five master robots are uploaded human beings?
There could be, say, twenty-five of them, with five active
for one-year shifts, all the way to Alpha Centaurus. Once
there, they are all active and start, with robot nannies
and nurses and teachers and such helping, to raise the
frozen embryos.

On 2/23/11 3:33 PM, sailor.barsoom wrote:

> OK, now for the reason I asked you all to keep reading.
> The idea of mind uploading has entered this thread. Well,
> what if those five master robots are uploaded human beings?
> There could be, say, twenty-five of them, with five active
> for one-year shifts, all the way to Alpha Centaurus. Once
> there, they are all active and start, with robot nannies
> and nurses and teachers and such helping, to raise the
> frozen embryos.

Because once you assume (or achieve!) mind uploading, sending biological
critters is a very poor way to colonize the galaxy. Uploads will travel
far faster (at the speed of light, in fact, once a suitable receiving
station is set up at the other end), and can adapt to a much greater
variety of environments.

I'm sure biological folks will eventually diffuse out into the galaxy as
well, but they won't be the pioneers -- they'll be the latecomers, by
far, and with a lot of assistance from the well-established civilization
of uploaded people already there.

Of course I realize this is the "space settlers" group and not the "mind
uploading" group, so this probably all sounds far-out, and I'll defer
further consideration of this possibility here if y'all prefer.

Cheers,
- Joe

Sailor Barsoom wrote:

OK, now for the reason I asked you all to keep reading.
The idea of mind uploading has entered this thread. Well,
what if those five master robots are uploaded human beings?
There could be, say, twenty-five of them, with five active
for one-year shifts, all the way to Alpha Centaurus. Once
there, they are all active and start, with robot nannies
and nurses and teachers and such helping, to raise the
frozen embryos.

- - - - - -

I think it is useful to seek some clarity in our thinking regarding life as
we know it and robots that humans are making; and higher order robots that
humans will eventually make. What are the possibilities? Where are the
limits?

The first step probably is to set up a table to make an estimate of the
order of complexity we are dealing with:

My table would look like this:

System
.................................................................................
Complexity

A wheeled device that travels on earth from point A to point B ............
10

A human looking robot that walks on earth from A to B .....................
1000

A standard precision machine tool
................................................... 10,000

Any organic life that is capable of walking from point A to B
............... 1000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000

Intelligent humans
..........................................................................
Same as above ( add or subtract a zero)

.... We don't really know whether humans are more or less complex than other
forms of life. The genome of an amoeba is larger than the genome of a
human: http://www.genomenewsnetwork.org/articles/02_01/Sizing_genomes.shtml

The idea of uploading a human is thus highly questionable. Much of the
complexity of a human being resides in his physical nature and not in his
intelligence.

We need not upload a human being, all we need to do is to upload the
knowledge base of a doctor, for instance, into a robot. The complexity of
such a system in the above scale should not exceed say 10,000,000.

Regards,
Selvaraj

On 24 February 2011 04:03, sailor.barsoom wrote:

sraj wrote:

We need not upload a human being, all we need to do is to upload the
knowledge base of a doctor, for instance, into a robot. The complexity of
such a system in the above scale should not exceed say 10,000,000.

I would agree with your first statement. Instead, just send some Humans along, as well. Otherwise, your programed docbot will not be able to raise a bunch of kids from embryos (not and have them come out as recognizable, functional Humans) . As for uploading an actual Human into some form of circuitry, it may some day be done, but I doubt if it will be soon. Even if it does happen, I doubt that it will be uploads that settle space-why would they need to? I can see that sort of thing as an advanced scout, where the upload can put itself into sleep mode for decades at a time for extraterrestrial exploration before we send bodies on a very long, possibly fruitless trip. Why, Id probably volunteer for something like that myself- itd sure take care of the bad back problems.

From: sraj
Sent: Sunday, February 27, 2011 9:42 AM
To: spacesettlers@yahoogroups.com
Subject: Re: [spacesettlers] Re: : 100-Year Starship some way off

Sailor Barsoom wrote:

OK, now for the reason I asked you all to keep reading.
The idea of mind uploading has entered this thread. Well,
what if those five master robots are uploaded human beings?
There could be, say, twenty-five of them, with five active
for one-year shifts, all the way to Alpha Centaurus. Once
there, they are all active and start, with robot nannies
and nurses and teachers and such helping, to raise the
frozen embryos.

- - - - - -

I think it is useful to seek some clarity in our thinking regarding life as
we know it and robots that humans are making; and higher order robots that
humans will eventually make. What are the possibilities? Where are the
limits?

The first step probably is to set up a table to make an estimate of the
order of complexity we are dealing with:

My table would look like this:

System
.................................................................................
Complexity

A wheeled device that travels on earth from point A to point B ............
10

A human looking robot that walks on earth from A to B .....................
1000

A standard precision machine tool
................................................... 10,000

Any organic life that is capable of walking from point A to B
............... 1000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000

Intelligent humans
..........................................................................
Same as above ( add or subtract a zero)

.... We don't really know whether humans are more or less complex than other
forms of life. The genome of an amoeba is larger than the genome of a
human: http://www.genomenewsnetwork.org/articles/02_01/Sizing_genomes.shtml

The idea of uploading a human is thus highly questionable. Much of the
complexity of a human being resides in his physical nature and not in his
intelligence.

We need not upload a human being, all we need to do is to upload the
knowledge base of a doctor, for instance, into a robot. The complexity of
such a system in the above scale should not exceed say 10,000,000.

Regards,
Selvaraj

On 24 February 2011 04:03, sailor.barsoom wrote:

Here's another alternative:

It is 1500 years from now, the solar system has been settled
throughout by humans. The problems of keeping humans alive in
settlements, of setting up self-supporting settlements on different
planetary surfaces or in space, have been solved (they had to be in
order to expand out into the Solar System in the first place).

The population of this Solar-System-wide human civilization is
literally millions of times what is it now. Because of this, its
economy is also millions of times what the world economy it now.

Because of this, that civilization can afford, with *no* problem,
ways of getting *large* numbers of humans to Alpha Centauri *fast*,
with accompanying infrastructure, however extravagant these ways
might be *to us*. Things that would be hopelessly costly to us, won't
be to them; THINK BIG. Whether it's laser-arrays the size of the moon,
tankers full of antimatter, starships hundreds of miles long, or
whatever else, they can.

--- In spacesettlers@yahoogroups.com, Al Globus wrote:

We haven't even settled our own Solar System yet...pardon me, but
such talk as this to me sounds ridiculously premature. In fact, we
don't even know everything that's in our own Solar System: see the
news about a possible gas giant in the far outer Solar System.

Unmanned probes to the nearest star systems in 100 years...yeah, that
sounds like a good idea to me. Just as exciting will be to construct
huge telescopes out in space, with apertures measured in kilometers
and so powerful they will be able image and map planets in these
other systems.

--- In spacesettlers@yahoogroups.com, sraj wrote:
>
> Come to think of it, the best way to send humans to Alpha Centaurus will be
> to send them in spacecrafts controlled by robots.
Human genes kept in cold

--- In spacesettlers, "William" wrote:

> Here's another alternative:
>
> It is 1500 years from now, the solar system has
> been settled throughout by humans. The problems
> of keeping humans alive in settlements, of
> setting up self-supporting settlements on
> different planetary surfaces or in space, have
> been solved (they had to be in order to expand
> out into the Solar System in the first place).

So far, so good. I'm with you.

> The population of this Solar-System-wide human
> civilization is literally millions of times what
> is it now. Because of this, its economy is also
> millions of times what the world economy it now.

Makes sense.

> Because of this, that civilization can afford,
> with *no* problem, ways of getting *large*
> numbers of humans to Alpha Centauri *fast*,
> with accompanying infrastructure, however
> extravagant these ways might be *to us*. Things
> that would be hopelessly costly to us, won't
> be to them; THINK BIG. Whether it's laser-arrays
> the size of the moon, tankers full of antimatter,
> starships hundreds of miles long, or whatever
> else, they can.

You know, a Saturn V launch probably used more
energy than the entire human population used in the
year 1492. Suppose you had explained to Christopher
Columbus just how much energy such a launch requires,
and then tried to tell him that a single nation would
do this a dozen times or so in the course of ten years.

From: sailor.barsoom
"You know, a Saturn V launch probably used more energy than the entire human
population used in the year 1492. Suppose you had explained to Christopher
Columbus just how much energy such a launch requires, and then tried to tell him
that a single nation would do this a dozen times or so in the course of ten
years."

An interesting example. It can be difficult viewing the future when using a
comtemporary perspective.

Unmanned probes to the nearest star systems in 100 years...yeah, that
sounds like a good idea to me.

William, Id like to remind you that weve ALREADY launched several unmanned probes to locations extrasolar.

From: William
Sent: Wednesday, March 02, 2011 11:25 AM
To: spacesettlers@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [spacesettlers] Re: : 100-Year Starship some way off

We haven't even settled our own Solar System yet...pardon me, but
such talk as this to me sounds ridiculously premature. In fact, we
don't even know everything that's in our own Solar System: see the
news about a possible gas giant in the far outer Solar System.

Unmanned probes to the nearest star systems in 100 years...yeah, that
sounds like a good idea to me. Just as exciting will be to construct
huge telescopes out in space, with apertures measured in kilometers
and so powerful they will be able image and map planets in these
other systems.

--- In mailto:spacesettlers%40yahoogroups.com, sraj wrote:
>
> Come to think of it, the best way to send humans to Alpha Centaurus will be
> to send them in spacecrafts controlled by robots.
Human genes kept in cold

Al Globus wrote:

Try this thought experiment: would you like your children to be
raised by a robot with extensive video libraries?

- - - -

My answer to this question would lean on my interest in 'Human Posture' ....
websites www.humanposture.com .... www.humanposture.blogspot.com

When discussing this subject, most disciplines (and there are many of them)
focus on correcting the posture of adults; they conveniently ignore how the
problem is created in the first place. From observing how children are being
brought up by modern parents it is quite clear to me that children's health
is being seriously compromised even within their first year of life. The
problem arises at multiple levels:

1. The problem of toilet training:

In the olden days in India, children would most probably roam free, at most
they would have a cloth lightly tied around their waist. Probably grand
parents and large number of people in a joint family would be around to
clean up as and when the occasion rose. Nowadays this is not possible in
modern homes because the place is too clean to be soiled and it is difficult
for busy parents to attend to their children... So naturally, nappies must
be used and manufacturers compete with one another to manufacture the ideal
nappy, which of course they are not able to do since the knowledge level of
modern science on this issue tends to ... well, zero. I have come to know of
late that some children are being forcibly toilet trained by dumping them in
suitable receptacles attached to western type toilets.

An interesting phenomenon is also emerging, even as older people are
throwing their clothes and footwear to the wind and stepping out 'in the all
together' it is considered indelicate for children to remain unclothed, so
they are clothed to the hilt. Since the advent of elastic a couple of
decades back manufacturers of children's clothing make liberal use of the
stuff ... they could not care less whether this could potentially
destabilise a child's musculoskeletal system.

2. The nuisance of caring for children:

I was surprised to learn that many modern parents dose their children with
sleeping pills so as to make life convenient for parents. Children are also
artificially confined to keep them from hurting themselves.

It is quite obvious that modern parents are finding their children a
handful. Either we must go back to more tribal ways of living, or ...

ENTER THE ROBOTS:

I would expect a robot to do a good job, in some ways a better job than
adults in looking after children, so it is worth developing robots for this
purpose even for terrestrial use. Children unlike adults know precisely what
they want, so it is unlikely that robots will be challenged in terms of
finding out what is required of them.

I am not too worried about robots looking after children in the initial
phase on Alpha Centaurus. Perhaps there could be some concern regarding the
provision of medical care ..

Regards,
Selvaraj

P.S. Regarding extensive video libraries ... the video libraries will deal
with the real world, not the hyped up world that the world's children are
currently being inundated with. And we would expect the robots to create a
natural world with birds, flowers etc. suited for children to grow up in.

On 19 February 2011 07:02, Al Globus wrote:

On Mar 6, 2011, at 3:22 AM, sraj wrote:

> Al Globus wrote:
>
> Try this thought experiment: would you like your children to be
> raised by a robot with extensive video libraries?
>
> ...
>
> 1. The problem of toilet training:
>
> In the olden days in India, children would most probably roam free,
> at most
> they would have a cloth lightly tied around their waist.
>
In the old days, most children died before age 5, often of infectious
disease spread by human excrement.

>
> 2. The nuisance of caring for children:
>
> I was surprised to learn that many modern parents dose their
> children with
> sleeping pills so as to make life convenient for parents.
>
I do not know a single parent who has done this. It is certainly not
widespread. For perspective, go back and look at advertisements
around the 1900, many of which were for 'sleeping tonics' for
children. These 'tonics' contained significant quantities of alcohol
and heroin.

>
> ENTER THE ROBOTS:
>
> I would expect a robot to do a good job, in some ways a better job
> than
> adults in looking after children, so it is worth developing robots
> for this
> purpose even for terrestrial use. Children unlike adults know
> precisely what
> they want
>
Are you a parent? Children do know what they want, it changes on a
minute to minute base, it often involves infinite quantities of sugar,
and surprisingly often carries a high probability of death or
dismemberment.

> , so it is unlikely that robots will be challenged in terms of
> finding out what is required of them.
>
> I am not too worried about robots looking after children in the
> initial
> phase on Alpha Centaurus. Perhaps there could be some concern
> regarding the
> provision of medical care ..
>
> Regards,
> Selvaraj
>
> P.S. Regarding extensive video libraries ... the video libraries
> will deal
> with the real world, not the hyped up world that the world's
> children are
> currently being inundated with. And we would expect the robots to
> create a
> natural world with birds, flowers etc. suited for children to grow
> up in.
>
> On 19 February 2011 07:02, Al Globus wrote:
>
> > On Feb 16, 2011, at 7:51 PM, sraj wrote:
> >
> > > Victor Smith wrote: Ah, but would they know what Human is?
> > >
> > > Al Gobus wrote: Frankly, doesn't sound like much fun.
> > >
> > > ----------------
> > > Is there really a problem?
> >
> > Try this thought experiment: would you like your children to be
> > raised by a robot with extensive video libraries?
> >

Space Solar Power (SSP) can solve our energy and global warming
problems. For details see: http://www.nss.org/settlement/ssp/

Al Globus
http://alglobus.net

Views expressed in this email are only my opinions and are not the
position of any organization I'm familiar with.

The furthest of the launched unmanned probes have reached out to
about 117 A.U. from the Sun so far; the nearest star is about 268,000
A.U. away. Put another way, if the sun were the size of a marble and
we're in San Francisco, the Earth would be 2.3 meters away, that probe
would be 250 meters away, but Proxima Centauri would be in Los Angeles.

--- In spacesettlers@yahoogroups.com, "Victor Smith"

To reach Alpha Centaurus (or Proxima Centauri) in fifty years will require a
velocity 10% that of light!

Maybe a travel time of 500 years at a velocity 1% that of light may be more
practical. Even then the average velocity will be 3000 Km/s . (The orbital
velocity of the Earth around the Sun is around 30 Km/s)

The difficulties of interstellar travel:
.. Accelerating one ton to one-tenth of the speed of light requires at least
450 PJ or 4.5 1017 J or 125 billion kWh, not accounting for losses.
... A major issue with traveling at extremely high speeds is that interstellar
dust and gas may cause
considerable damage to the craft, due to the high relative speeds and large
kinetic energies involved. Various shielding methods to mitigate this
problem have been proposed.[*citation
needed
*] Larger objects (such as macroscopic dust grains) are far less common, but
would be much more destructive. The risks of impacting such objects, and
methods of mitigating these risks, have not been adequately assessed.[*citation
needed *]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interstellar_travel

Regards
Selvaraj

On 7 March 2011 23:59, William wrote:

Think on this, Voyager 2 with the rare alignment advantage of gravity assists from all the gas giants, took 12 years to get to Neptune. I think getting a modest sustainable human presence in LEO would be a nice start.
Brooks

--- In spacesettlers@yahoogroups.com, sraj wrote:

obviously!

Regards,
Selvaraj

On 8 March 2011 22:11, brooksn wrote:

If someone is going to spend 500 years getting to P. Centaurus, they
might as well not try. Later on someone else will make a much faster
ship, and even though the other ship left after you them, the other
ship will arrive there far sooner. And so by the time the first ship
finally makes it to Proxima Centauri, they will be greeted, not by the
people who made it before them, but by their great-grandchildren...

That amount of energy mentioned, though huge by our current standards,
is nothing compared to the amount of energy poured out by the sun
every second (10^26 J/s). So a truly gigantic solar panel -- something
the size of a planet -- could readily supply that energy.

--- In spacesettlers@yahoogroups.com, sraj wrote:

I've heard of this, the link below indicates someone calculated when we 'should' leave by and came up with 1,100 years from now to travel to Bernard's star. (6 light years away)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wait_Calculation

Of course I wonder if they are considering a few things. First if you are leaving with a full industrial base, any further advances in propulsion could be transmitted to the 'lead' ship. Second unmanned probes would need far far less mass and I wonder how this would affect the calculation. And lastly unlike say a 15th century ship at sea on the atlantic vs. a 747, if you are leaving with a home/community it's more like taking Hawaii and pushing off to be on your own. So how much do you care when, as has been said, you have everyone and pretty much everything you need.
Brooks

--- In spacesettlers@yahoogroups.com, "William" wrote: