Hey! I been gone for a long time, but I had good reasons (like an
"educational" program called college). Anyway, I have throught over
space colonization in my head, and here are my conclutions:
estalish any settlements in space. Popluation pressure and search of
new energy sources have been citied as reasons for space settlement,
and for the world at wit it is not a bad idea (esp. new energy
sources). However, there is no actor for the entire world with the
power or the monitary resources to undertake the constuction of space
settlement, or even a mission to the moon. The US would definatly
withhold money from the UN, and there almost no one with the UN even
considing space settlement.
So that leaves states. On popluation matters, however, the states that
have exessive popluation growth are so poor that space settlements is
out of the question, ditto for energy. The states that have the
economic power to begin a program of space settlement do not have
these popluation growth pressures; instead, there is consern over a
popluation delince (Of course, there is a real need of energy and
material; I will deal with it later).
Corperations have been also been cited as a potiental patrons for
space humanization. Now, no one expects a corperation to tomorrow to
hold a press conference to annonce an plan for an O'Neillian space
settlement with 25 years or so. The benfits are too long term to
outweight the short term costs. So any private space settlement
"program" would have to be through many corperations completing with
each other building on the small victories. However, why they should
is not clear. There are doing fine, raking in billions of dollars per
year, and there is a lot of growth in those sectors without resorting
to any space devlopment. Any activities in space done for profit would
use less human labour, as the cost of keeping them alive would
outweight the devlopment costs of robotic crews.
That leaves wealthly inividuals. In some sf, a wealthly patron gives
billions of dollars to space exlopation and colonization. It may
happen, but don't count on it. Most of it will go to charities.
2. So the only current reason for organizations for space exporation
is wealthly states in search of new energy sources and materials. This
is not a mute point; sometime in the next thousand years, with fossil
fuels of the Earth will have been consumed. But, even with this fact,
space settlement is not a logical endpoint. The seach for a good
energy policy may lie in a mix of wind, solar, nuclear and
hydroelectic engery, combinied with a conservation program may do the
trick.
But, even with energy is "imported" from space viva the SPS concept;
it does not mean space colonies will result. Why should any
state/company invest in space colonies? Remember, a movement into
space would be like not of in human history, with humanity needing to
providing itself with a biosphere, which does not come cheaply.
O'Neill believed that his colonies would be like northern mining
towns, designed to house massive amounts of workers for the massive
SPS's. This ignores the two great drives of the industral and
eletronic revolution: mechization and miniturization. The SPS of
O'Neil is comparable to the GEO orbit communication stations of
Clarke, with larged manned stuctures 'replaced' with small unmanned
stucture.
The more likely prototype for SPS workforces would the offshore
dilling stations, with it rotationg crews are spartan quarters. The
SPS companies would young men (and few women as well), ship them on
the station, where they do there shift for 6 months, return to collect
their pay. The SPS corperation would not have to pay much attention to
living conditions if they paycheck is high enugh. Techinical expert
need only vist once or twice to check equipment, otherwise, they stay
home on Earth. Food, water and other supplies would be shipped from
Earth, as its "close" (the moon can be reached in 2-3 days) distance
sllows for such dependance; only we one is on Mars, or in Mars orbit
or the asteroid belt would the shipping time would force people to
depend on local grown foodstuffes of a long duration.
3. The space tourism concept seems overhyped in "alt.space" circles.
There is no industry yet, and whole thing may collape. The efforts of
Scaled, the Da Vinci, Armadillo, et al. get press coverage becouse of
its unordinariness, its novelity. Novelity will also help the industry
sell tickets. But the novelity will wear off, and people may not be
willing to shell out money, esp. if there is a new resseasion and/or a
horrible space tourism acciendent.
Space colonization advocates need to figure out the solutions for
their cause to advance. Personally, advocates still have beilf in the
"master plan," where this and that will happen, and humanity will
become spacefaring. History does not work that way; plans never goes
exactly to the plan. The settlement of space will be like every other
human endeivior, full of logic and illogic, reason and irrationality,
false assumptions and overlooked detials. It will be produce it share
of leaders and followers, wisemen and madmen, heros and villians. One
can't plan for those.
Hope you're taking advantage of that "educational"
oppotunity. Your "babbler" acronym is highly
appropriate. I found it very difficult to follow your
letter as your misspellings are distracting.
The more likely prototype for SPS workforces would the offshore
dilling stations, with it rotationg crews are spartan quarters. The
SPS companies would young men (and few women as well), ship them on
the station, where they do there shift for 6 months, return to collect
their pay. The SPS corperation would not have to pay much attention to
living conditions if they paycheck is high enugh. That is without a doubt how the process will start. But the assumption that a large-scale SPS from space resources program will lead to space settlement is predicated on the notion that past a point, engineering spacious and pleasant living quarters for the workers will be more economical than continuing to pay transportation costs for frequently rotated workers. Consider that once you've built up the industrial infrastructure for producing SPS from space materials, you've pretty much got everything you need in place to build space habitats from same. So an Island 3 built well into a major SPS program will cost only a small fraction of what it would have cost as a stand-alone project built for its own sake. The reason being that the former sees much of itsamortization paid for by another project. Whether the assumption will prove right or wrong depends, I suppose, on a complicated interplay of technology, economics, and politics. (re space tourism)Novelity will also help the industry
sell tickets. But the novelity will wear off, and people may not be
willing to shell out money, The assumption has been that as the novelty wears off, the ticket price will decline due to the economies of scale, and thus the industry may be sustainable long-term. esp. if there is a new resseasion and/or a
horrible space tourism acciendent. We might find that an accident may enhance the "machismo" factor, and might make some personality types even more interested in space tourism.
Regards,
Mike Combs
> Hey! I been gone for a long time, but I had good reasons (like an
> "educational" program called college). Anyway, I have throught over
> space colonization in my head, and here are my conclutions:
I do think space power will never be a big thing on Earth for reasons I
discussed on this list before -- that locally produced power (especially
from solar PV panels) without a grid will in the end power most homes
more cheaply than grid power from SPS (since the grid is expensive to
maintain -- on the order of $0.06 / kWh on my own electric bill, and
when PV produced local power drops below that it would be foolish to
hook up to the grid). There are difficulties in producing home based
power that people like TangoMan have rightly pointed out; I feel those
issues will be resolved in a much shorter time frame than the thirty
years SPS is expected to take to get going from a funding commitment.
I personally don't see overpopulation as being a problem; the issue is
more a wasteful culture -- a million people who liked to regularly play
at mock-battles with real nuclear bombs would do more damage to the
planet than a trillion people who all were happy living in skyscraper
Urbmons
http://www.scifi.com/sfw/issue332/classic.html
or mostly just sat in pods surfing an internet and living in simulated
reality (like the Matrix). Our society right now is obviously somewhere
in the middle there -- but I think some combination of recycling, solar
power, home insulation, food replicators, better simulated experiences,
and so on may bring our culture to a point where fifty billion people
could easily be supported indefinitely (and population pressures will
likely drop as the whole world advances, like they are dropping now in
the industrialized west).
So, in short, I think Space Settlement is something that should be done
for itself -- not directly to solve some earthly problem where solutions
already exist for it. And I think it worth doing for that reason alone
-- just as part of the human living adventure (inlcuding Gaia
replicating herself? the greening of the universe? for new experiences?
for new opportunities? etc.).
Still, I think there are ways to combine support for space settlement
with also using some of the ideas (recycling, high technology
replicators, solar power, and so on) to also help solve problems on
Earth. Here is one potential collaborator on that:
http://www.bfi.org/
Anyway, here is a larger site I started related to the topic:
http://www.kurtz-fernhout.com/oscomak/index.htm
On the topic of wealthy individuals, there are some involved in space
thing (typically CATS type rocket planes). I think they could be counted
on to fund a single billion dollar launch of a self-replicating seed
which would create a space infrastructure -- if we otherwise had the
design. I feel it possible open source or free software sorts of
development methods are quite possible to accomplish this design -- and
gave a paper about this at the last SSI conference. Her is a link to
that paper:
http://www.kurtz-fernhout.com/oscomak/SSI_Fernhout2001_web.html
And for reference, here is an essay on all the monetary limitations
people throw up about creating a positive future for human kind are
really just a smoke screen for essentially unjust and wasteful economic
spending:
http://www.kurtz-fernhout.com/oscomak/AchievingAStarTrekSociety.html
Been too preoccupied with other things (including a new kid) to push
these ideas along that much recently though.
--Paul Fernhout