Asteroid Capture

> Again though the question is how do we (you, me and others here) advance the ball on space settlement? If we pick cheaper access to space how do we do it? Buy shares of SpaceX or Bigelow? Talk to congressman? Work on subsystems that will be needed in the short term? Give money to space organisations, National Space Society, etc.?
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> Brooks

It's to open a whole can of worms, but both the private business and the government-run solutions have weaknesses. The huge cost makes it really difficult for 'small business' to risk, and who wants to make Halliburton or say BP bigger? And yet the whole government-run solution has proven unworkable, too (as I see it, for reasons outside of the questions and problems surrounding space exploration--for reasons of the 'trustability' of specific governments based on other issues).

But what if the government helped form (and initially finance) a 'space cooperative' that citizens could buy shares in? Or rather, that citizens automatically had real shares in? So that the wealth, through ownership, not salary, a very big difference, would go neither to a government nor to a big company, and governance would be by the owners, an elected board, not government.

I know there are many details lacking in my one paragraph, but I'm only pointing in a direction; lots of cooperative plans exist; they appear to have worked well, they have often accompanied big water and agriculture projects in the US. It seems to me that if citizens could see some benefit to themselves, support and demand would grow. It's just not too motivating to put any hope in schemes that would strengthen existing players--they've already shown their knickers.

But that alone isn't enough. We are in a state of economic stagnation with demand down. If we got an asteroid, what would we do with the materials we mined? We can't even sell our recycles right now, if NPR's coverage is right. Demand is down.

So it seems to me that we'd enumerate the enemies of demand with as much attention to detail as given to the dynamics of aerobraking. We actually are divided on those details. Most people reading this post are for every measure that insures 'population planning.' Whatever measure or behavior reduces births is deemed 'good' by default. "Freedom."

But no. We need population pressure. We need demand that won't be satisfied just by earth, not the tourist demand for a nice view (pictures can satisfy the plebs well enough). We need to grow demand. Instead, all our public policies are in the opposite direction. And just about everyone I know supports them by default, without lining up the effect on space exploration.

Consider something happening today in the Philippenes, you may hear about it on the news. The president of the Philippenes (just returned from a pow-wow in Washington in which Philippene aid was at stake) is vowed to push birth control aggressively in the Philippenes. The Catholic church there was fighting it tooth and nail (reports today say they caved, and promised to shut up, though). The people are prepared to go either way, they have a long Catholic history, and they would not rebel or demonstrate for easy availability of birth control (you can get anything on the black market, just like always). President Aquino is yielding to Planned Parenthood pressure, backed up by Obama. Our boy's not doing much at home, but is kicking tail in the UN, with increased pressure, even threats of withholding aid, to reduce population everywhere, always.

Presently there's no big population problem in the Philippenes. Their biggest export, in fact, is workers to the contracepting countries, and they--a government agency-- manage it effectively, and their nurses especially are very sought after. But the pressure is on them now to reduce, reduce, reduce.

Against the interests of space exploration. We can't have it both ways. "Planning" always results in decrease of births. That's first. Then there's the plunge. And after--it will be called paranoid to say so--when they see that planning is a misnomer,is in fact impossible, as they recently admitted in South Korea, with its disappearing population, reproduction will be taken out of our wombs altogether.

Long ago this list discussed labor needs on colonies. It would be high, that was the consensus. But how would we get workers? Someone joked, just forget to order the birth control. Yeah. Duh. (That wouldn't work, by the way. Women have always known how to get rid of unwanted infants, by waiting until after they were born and killing them. It was the struggle of centuries to break that habit.) But what we don't realize is that it has to start now. We have to be dedicated to reproducing and growing that work force now. Or there's no real point in making that first colony. We are busy adjusting (way way early) to a controlled and contrived life on earth.

This how I see it. Since you asked, and a good question, too. Not unlike nudging an asteroid. But presently, we're divided on these things, pushing the darn thing from all sides, in fact, and getting nowhere. Laying off NASA.