Uranus and Neptune

Well two things to consider. The first is that until you build out the 'cheapest' sites first not much point in going after the expensive ones. So NEO's, the moon, Mars, Mercury's poles, etc. would seem like very cheap real estate with copious amounts of solar energy for much less cost. Even Venus's clouds might serve as an economically feasible location. Then moving outward one by one makes sense. Unless you had a motivated specific program whose goal is going outbound. Then you might as well leap frog to iceteroids and small icy moons, hanging at each for years at a time, until you move out into the kuiper belt and finally Alpha Centauri. Not really waiting to 'establish' each beach head as a colony but only breaking into two colonies when you grow too big, where ever that happens to be. Of course this would take a fantastically long time, but if you are in no hurry.

Another thought on the mirrors though is that we need larger mirrors further from the sun because the sunlight is more diffuse with distance. Essentially that the sunlight's density decreases due to the slight spreading of individual rays away from each other over distance. Well my thought was why not put mirrors very close to the sun, say within the orbit of Mercury and reflect the sunlight with a slight concave mirror pointed to where you want extra light. So instead of monster sized mirrors around pluto or Neptune, you have much much smaller mirrors around the sun. Which reflect and slightly change the direction of the reflection so the sunlight's rays are all parallel to each other.
Brooks

--- In spacesettlers@yahoogroups.com, "Combs, Mike" wrote: