> > > Earth has a more densely layered and interwoven network of
> > > productivity enhancing tools than does orbit because these
> > > tools are easier to provide on Earth than in orbit.
> > Do Robert Platt Bell's professional-needs seem like they
> > would be difficult to cater-to if he were in orbit?
> OK, let's play your scenario. Let's stick your patent
> attorney into orbit.

OK.
http://www.donaldedavis.com/BIGPUB/STANTRUS.jpg

> the moment we push him out of the spacecraft's air-lock,
> his productivity falls to zero in that he's dead.

We were discussing orbital-habitats -- as in:

It's unlikely that we're going to be sending
French-Fry cooks into orbit to make McDonalds'
crispy fries. -TangoMan

You can take "Robert Platt Bell in orbit" to mean "Robert Platt Bell
in an orbital habitat, along with thousands or millions of other
people".

> what is his IP address

If his high-speed internet service...

Any given population of 10 million people in a
spacehab is probably going to want to communicate
with Earth -- and do so with bandwidth.
http://images.google.com/images?q=hp+halo+bandwidth

...is like Comcast's on Earth, I assume his IP address would be
dynamically-assigned and therefore periodically semi-randomly (re)
assigned from among one of perhaps many blocks of IP addresses
assigned to the habitat by the IANA.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Assigned_Numbers_Authority

> where is the domain server for his internet connectivity?

I imagine Comcast -- or Spacecast -- would put it in or near the
habitat.

> OK.
> http://www.donalded avis.com/ BIGPUB/STANTRUS. jpg
The point of course being that some investor somewhere had to firstfinance the construction of that enormous torus with some expectation of a return on his investment. You can't assume the large space habitat exists first, and then establish reasons someone might have for moving an operation from Earth to space second. You have to establish that a profitableoperation which has to be in space can exist first, and for so doing perhaps justify a certain amount of habitat construction in support of it second.

Regards,
Mike Combs

>
> Behalf Of hitssquad
>
> > OK.
> > http://www.donaldedavis.com/BIGPUB/STANTRUS.jpg
> http://www.donaldedavis.com/BIGPUB/STANTRUS.jpg>
>
> The point of course being that some investor somewhere had to first
> finance the construction of that enormous torus with some expectation of
> a return on his investment. You can't assume the large space habitat
> exists first, and then establish reasons someone might have for moving
> an operation from Earth to space second. You have to establish that a
> profitable operation which has to be in space can exist first, and for
> so doing perhaps justify a certain amount of habitat construction in
> support of it second.
>
> Regards,
>
> Mike Combs

Exactly. We seem to be on the same point here, in that I logged on to
make the following point:

Instead of focusing on the High Frontier why don't Billionaires and
patent attorneys focus on building a City Under the Sea or a domed
city in Antarctica? Each would be cheaper than building an orbital
settlement. The glaring point that I hope jumps out from the question
is "why would patent attorneys and Billionaires go to the trouble of
building such cities."

The city has to arise for a purpose. Both scenarios are set in hostile
environments, but not as hostile as space. Both scenarios require HUGE
upfront investment, rather than simply building a house on the
outskirts of town and hooking up to a power, water and sewer grid.
Both scenarios involve long supply lines, but nowhere near as long
(energy-wise) as an orbital Habitat.

What is the purpose of spending $200 billion to establish a City under
the Sea or a domed city in Antarctica? So that a tax haven can be set
up so that a Billionaire can avoid paying $50 million in taxes per year?

Mike, you hit the nail on the head, IMO, with the Savage comparison. I
was never taken with his fanciful scenarios in that they were too
divorced from reality to be taken seriously. He also relied on
presumptions of these environments existing but never addressed the
question of how and why they would come into existence. He just took
them for granted.

> Instead of focusing on the High Frontier why don't Billionaires and
> patent attorneys focus on building a City Under the Sea or a domed
> city in Antarctica? Each would be cheaper than building an orbital
> settlement.
>

This is true, and it's a problem for any scheme that proposes building
orbital cities just for the sake of building cities. The sensible
answers fall into only two classes:

1. Build them in space in order to make or do things that can be made
or done only in space;
2. Build them in space because that's the direction humanity needs to
expand long-term (for any of the various reasons you may believe that
to be the goal).

O'Neill proposed SSP as the primary driver, which is an answer in
class 1. Lately some very intelligent people (e.g. Stephen Hawking)
have been pointing out the need to colonize space in order to ensure
mankind's survival, which is more in class 2.

> What is the purpose of spending $200 billion to establish a City under
> the Sea or a domed city in Antarctica?
>

Not much that I can think of. There isn't much of anything (except
perhaps a few kinds of research) that can be done there that can't be
done elsewhere, and it's not a direction that leads to open-ended
economic expansion.

Of course there ARE groups working on undersea settlements anyway, but
I'm not a fan; unlike space, which has no ecosystem, oceans are rich,
diverse ecosystems which don't certainly don't need us mucking things
up (any more than we already have).

> Mike, you hit the nail on the head, IMO, with the Savage comparison. I
> was never taken with his fanciful scenarios in that they were too
> divorced from reality to be taken seriously.
>

True.

Best,
- Joe