The Little Guy or How You Can Help Colonize Space

Since I was a child, I've been a fan of science fiction. Buck Rodgers,
Star Wars, Battlestar Galactica, I was entranced by the science
fantasy depicted in film and television. As i got older, I began
reading Sci-fi. Heinlein, Asimov, but began gravitating away from the
science FANTASY and began reading more hard SCIENCE fiction.
Pournelle, Niven, Clark, Bear. Along the way I was slowly and subtly
beginning to understand the possibilities of humanity becoming a space
faring species. Jerry Pournelle's "A Step Farther Out" turned me on to
G. Harry Stine's "The Third Industrial Revolution" and I began to
truly understand how achievable and beneficial space was going to be.
I began to look for more scholarly tomes on space exploration,
industrialization and colonization. Books like "Fundamentals in
Astrodynamics" (which the equations went right over my head having
barely gotten through high school geometry), Gerard O'Neil's "Colonies
in Space", Alfred Bester's "Life and Death of a Satellite", G. Harry
Stine's "living in Space" allowed me to understand many of the
underlying problems of expanding into the solar system.

As I began to realize that my skills in mathematics were severely
limited compared to the standards of NASA, that I was unlikely to
become a full fledged academic scientist or engineer, the likelihood
of me getting a shuttle ride was all but zero, I began to ponder ways
that I could contribute to humanity reaching for the stars. I began to
look at the broader picture, what areas could I investigate that I
haven't seen in the literature.

Realizing that many aspects of a space colony will mirror those of a
gold rush frontier town, I began to think about what a small town
needs to exist and thrive. I'm talking beyond just the general raw
materials but what keeps a society going. Literally the Butcher, baker
and candlestick maker. Understanding that a frontier town is a good
analogy (with shipping costs making many manufactured products
prohibitively expensive to import) I started thinking about what a
colony could make for itself. I mean more than just chairs and tables,
I mean toothbrushes. How do you make toothbrushes, what do you need to
make toothbrushes, what can you make a toothbrush out of, how can you
make a toothbrush with the least amount of machinery and/or tools?
Heck, how do you make toothpaste?

These are the inevitable questions that a space colony will face and
not many people are tackling it. So I started. (btw, I think you can
make a toothbrush out of a small piece of bamboo and some stiff goat
hair, hardly any tools involved).

My first forays into this research was soap, the benchmark of
civilization. How do you make soap? I looked it up and found it
surprisingly simple. So much so that I decided to try to make some...
not so simple. Took me over a year of on and off research, book
reading, internet searches, buying materials and testing to get it
passably right.

When I finally did get it right, I realized "wow, this is actually
pretty good soap" and my friends encouraged me to sell it... which is
what I am doing now. You can find my online store at
http://www.santacruzsoapco.com

Before you dismiss this as a long winded advertisement (which it kind
of is) I wanted this to also be inspiration for other space advocates.
There are small things you can do to prepare for our inevitable
migration to the stars. Begin thinking about the things that allow a
small community to survive, look into homesteading literature, try
your hand at composting, gardening. Do some small scale experiments.
Look up sewage treatment, tool making, rock hounding, backyard metal
forging. There are so many small things that will be important, vital
even, if you think about it.

Me, my next project is researching paper making. Mainly, how to turn
vegetable garden waste (stems, roots, ect.) into toilet paper (I bet
you forgot how important THAT will be...).

(please be aware that this is only a first draft. I appreciate any
input you have)

rodent (putting the eek in geek)a