high frontier labor market

Either way, the question is how to convince society to make the investment.

Yeah, Matt, you hit the nail with that one. Its my belief that if we can get at least one medium sized habitat (say 100 person capacity) at High Earth Orbit, and ensure that its either a cylinder or similar design that can be spun up for pseudo-gravity (which calls for a certain minimum size to minimize coriolis effect on the rim) so that Eventually everyone up there would NOT have to return to Earth, it would provide an essential platform for literally everything else. Want to go to the moon, or assemble an expedition to start robotic mining there, or maybe a mission to Mars, or Titan, or Ganymeade, or possibly asteroid capture and resource management, all of these missions would benefit greatly by having a manned platform at HEO with crews on station to build, service or fuel spacecraft, build new habitats for say L-2 prior to being tugged into place, or any number of other scenarios. Youre right, too, in that I believe that most of the difficulties attendant in living in space will be easily enough solved once we have a big enough laboratory in space and plenty of men living and working there and determined to find solutions. I mean seriously, the biggest problem is microgravity, easily solved with centripetal force to allow proper bone health and development. Probably next is radiation, which can be addressed crudely by accreting a rubble shield between the source of the radiation and the habitat. We know how to grow produce hydroponically which should provide ample supplement to supplies sent into orbit until ample space is made available to grow a self sustaining farming operation- additionally it goes a long way toward supplementing fresh oxygen supplies and scrubbing CO2 from the hab air supply.

Personally, this kind of next step makes a hell of a lot more sense to me (if we really want to do something meaningful toward permanently establishing mankind in space and getting some kind of industrial base or space infrastructure going) than regressing to a candle and capsule system like Constellation which seems an awful lot like the old Apollo capsules, complete with Luna Lander.

From: Matt Gallimore
Sent: Wednesday, April 13, 2011 10:16 PM
To: spacesettlers@yahoogroups.com
Subject: Re: [spacesettlers] high frontier labor market

From: Victor Smith mailto:victors%40gvtc.com

"If the US truly wanted to allow very many people in space, I have NO doubt that
we could have crews in orbit assembling habitats next year and have

them inhabited within 3-5. We COULDN'T do this with robots...not unless we spend
a couple more decades to develop them. We COULD accomplish it with prefab parts
shipped to orbit and assembled by crews of Humans on site."

And then what?

Isn't that the defining item? Not whether we could launch something into orbit,
but rather, how does that fit into a plan to take us to the next stage?
Otherwise, it is a prestige program like Apollo. Eventually everyone up there
would have to return to Earth because the supporting technologies are not in
place.

I think we are split into groups on this. Those who want to build a habitat
right now are in one (who believe enough of the undeveloped auxiliary science
can be done in transit). The other group wants more of the sustaining
technologies researched like resource extraction (lunar / asteroids),
transportation, life support, manufacturing, and robotics before constructing a
permanent settlement.

Either way, the question is how to convince society to make the investment.