The Little Guy or How You Can Help Colonize Space

On Sat, Apr 19, 2008 at 4:32 PM, king_rodent wrote:
> I'm always weary of placing my eggs in a futuretech basket. It does
> smack of "If we just leave mushrooms out on the porch, the magic
> nano-gnomes will come in the night and fix all the shoes". I am much
> more inclined to place my efforts in the practical application of
> nowtech or yestertech instead of waiting around for some unproven and
> truly uninvented technique.
>
> If we can live in space on Apollo era tech, then lets start doing so.
> To stuff one more cliche in, "you don't want to re-invent the wheel"
> except that's exactly what Space X did, and Falcon 1 is flying.

Who says it needs to be either-or?

As it happens, personally I don't believe we can live in space (as in,
a self-sustaining population rather than small, short forays) with
today's technology; as far as that goes, I might have called future
tech "essential".

But I used the word "important" instead, deliberately, because I don't
think it's a useful argument. Irrespective of our disagreement on the
minimum _required_ tech level, we can hopefully agree that more
advanced technology will make it easier, and that it is _also_ useful
to try to get things done with what's available at any given time.

Is the Foresight Institute's work in promoting the development of
nanotechnology valuable? Yes. Is SpaceX's work in building cheaper
rockets with today's technology valuable? Yes. Which deserves support?
Both!