Al Globus Mar 19

--- In spacesettlers@y..., rehaulku@h... wrote:
> Dear Al,
> I sometimes wonder that you are serious or joking.

For me, I'm dead serious.

> Space settlement problems were not solved. Everytime I read this e-
> group I checked out them again and again.

Please elaborate on this. If they are not yet solved, then it is our
job to solve them. That's why we have scientists and engineers, you
know.

> We don't still know how to live 2 or more years in the space. Who
> must go? Or who can go? Or who wants to go? Psychologically or
> physiologically...

We can make habitats that give artificial gravity. For instance, the
Space Island Group (http://www.spaceislandgroup.com) might build the
first economically practical space station, and it will spin to give
1/3 of Earth's gravity. Larger models can be built to give exactly
1 G of gravity. We might not know everything we need to know about
space, but remember that the Puritans that came from the Mayflower
knew NOTHING about America, but came here anyway. Needless to say,
over half of the pilgrims died in a winter that was much more harsh
than that of England. And even later, more and more people started
to come. We know much more about space than the Puritans knew about
America, and there are no indigenous people to push aside either. If
we don't know how to live for more than 2 years in space, then we
need to LEARN how to. It's probably not that difficult, we are not
trying hard enough. We don't know how many people will want to go,
but when the price of getting into space is low enough, you can be
sure that people will move into space. Most of Eart's population
likely does not want to live in space, but there are enough people
that do. But most people think of space as something that is far
into the future, and will not happen in their life times, and the
reason is how space is portrayed. So we don't know how many people
would want to colonize space. We would have to calculate the "whys"
of space colonization, and there are MANY reasons why people are
willing to colonize space. First, people will emigrate to space to
seek riches, and riches can be gotten by mining the Moon and
asteroids near Earth. In fact, a 1 km metal asteroid that crosses
Earth's orbit contains much more iron than we have ever mined on the
Earth's surface, and according to John S. Lewis in "High Frontier"
(3rd Edition), the NEAs contain enough water to house 30 billion
people. The Jamestown settlers were looking for wealth when they
came to America. Nearly 250 years later, people moved west to search
for gold. So greed and wealth are one reason people will go. People
will go for political reasons. There are many people (like me, for
instance) that believe that there can be a better social order. So
people will emigrate to space to establish new political entities.
Some colonies will be tied to their Earth nation, and a group of
colonies might one day even become a state of the Union, just like
Canada became part of the British commonwealth. But others will
attempt to break from Earth. Many will be self-governing. This will
be perfect for diehard libertarians. But in space, there will be
countless political experiments, many will fail, many will survive.
People will move to space to escape persecution. People will go to
space to defect from dictatorships...people might even defect from
the US. The US is perhaps the most free nation in the world, but
there is still MUCH that can be improved upon. And people will move
simply to start a new life.

The question of who CAN go is a good one. Many people will want to
go to space, and if we can apply the past and present, people WILL
find some way to get there. One way to do so is to have an entire
family, or even community pool a significent portion or all of their
financial resources towards the most competent person to go there.
Then the person will work to raise enough money to bring in the next
most competent person, and both of them will work to raise enough
money to bring in more people. This is just one way of colonizing
space. Many people will return to Earth eventually, but the space
population will grow. It's possible that 1% of humanity would want
to go to space at this moment, and that represents 60 million people,
which is about 4 times the population of the Los Angeles Metro Area.
That is certainly enough people who would want to go. 600 people are
enough to begin space colonization, and I highly doubt that there is
a shortage. In fact, there is probably a surplus of people who would
want to go.

> Please do not say me I am this or that.
> Spacism means and needs 1.000 or more people. We don't have 100
> people.
> Please awake from your daydreams.

Space will be hard at first, as all untamed places are initially.
But in time, we will build crystal jewels of civilization in space.
We've turned rainforest into great civilizations and cities. There
are many ancient civilizations such as one in Southeast Asia, few in
central Africa, and in South America, in the heart of the tropics.
We built civilization in deserts. We've built Egypt, Western China,
and remember that we built Las Vegas in the middle of a desert. We
built civilization in frozen wastelands, such as Russia, which
extended into Siberia. We will do the same to space. We will turn
dead and airless rock into rich oasis of civilization. We can
transform sections of asteroids, the Moon, Mars, and etc. into lush
civilization. Sure, it seems far-fetched, but all ideas seem far-
fetched at first, as they lie outside the boundaries of common sense
and normal thinking. But people always underestimate humanity.
People underestimate the power of our intelligence and our
creativity.