restoring the dream

Interesting, another idea would be to make it the mission of the space colony to save Earth. If you lose you became the last humans if you win, you save Earth from destroying itself.

So Earth is facing global warming and overpopulation, so you address those issues from orbit. You build SSP or even nuclear, fission or fusion, to harness power to replace coal. You mine asteroids, moon, etc. to reduce the pollution from mining on Earth. You build larger and larger habitats to house the exodus from Earth. You build a space elevator from asteroid material to continuously increase the population in orbit, reduce the population on the planet. You build up your capacity to grow food, as well as build up industry in orbit so as not to rely on Earth for goods. You can even start partially blocking the sun out, reducing incoming solar radiation to reduce the temperature.

Most of these are very feasible, some are very difficult if not impossible but the dream and game of space colonizing, saving Earth is the goal, not perfection. Of course you only have so much resources to work with and so much time, that being the challenge.

Brooks

--- In spacesettlers@yahoogroups.com, Joe Strout wrote: