(TGD) consensus: "Halfway to Anywhere" as a start?

John Frazer wrote:

>
> As for the orbital velocity differences, I was waiting for Al or
> somebody to quantify things.

Thanks for the vote of confidence, but unfortunately, although I consider
myself a pretty good programmer, I'm a lousy physicist. I never even took
college physics. Over the years I've picked up a few things, but that's no
replacement for serious study.

>
> With an ~800 meter stony-iron NEA, we _know_ for a fact that there's
> only a few percentage points difference between what we predict it'll
> have,

Actually, although we know a great deal about asteroids that have made it
through the atmosphere and landed on earth, we only know the surface spectra
of asteroids in orbit. Furthermore, agreement between laboratory examined
meteorites and surface spectra is not very good. Surfaces are subject to
space weathering and may have a different composition than the interior.
Therefore, the bulk composition of any small, natural orbit is not well
known. We are pretty confident, however, that NEOs are very heterogeneous;
so there should be lots of different stuff available.

Al Globus
aglobus@..., (650) 604-4404
http://www.nas.nasa.gov/~globus/home.html

The dinosaurs weren't spacefaring. We are. I don't think that's an accident.
Maybe we are life's taxi to the stars.

I think we should:

1. Devote half of NASA's budget ($7 billion) to reaching NASA's 2020 goal of
reducing launch costs to Low-Earth-Orbit to $220/kg with a 0.01% failure
rate.
This should enable space tourism. The resulting orbital hotels will need to
develop efficient orbital life support and other necessary technologies.

2. Build orbital space colonies. The materials in the largest asteroid are
sufficient for orbital colonies with a combined surface area about 500 times
greater than Earth's. Eros alone could make over ten thousand space colonies,

each with about about 10 square kilometers of 1g living area.

3. After a few generations of orbital living, people won't need their colony
to be near Sol. Then small groups of colonies with populations in the
tens-of-thousands can set out on multi-decade journeys to nearby stars.

Except the launch goals, none of this is even a little bit official.