Mining the Sky & Space Tethers to achieve LEO

From: "bill t"
To:
Sent: Sbado, 23 de Dezembro de 2000 19:46
Subject: [spacesettlers] Re: Mining the Sky & Space Tethers to achieve LEO

>
> Where does all the material we escavate go to now? Its in the
> buildings we build, in the products we own, and in the landfills.
>

That is, you admit that the material excavated from your network would have
to go somewhere and this "somewhere" would be on Earth itself. Therefore, my
argument holds.

[snikt]
> Finally, what does it matter if we change anything. Are you so foolish
> as to believe that the we are able to kill life on earth. Blue green
> algae has been here a lot longer than us, has lived through far worst
> disasters than us, and its still around. Yes species will go extinct.

I never insinuated in my message that Humanity could extinct life on Earth,
and I wonder how you could interpret such a thing. What I meant, and
continue to maintain, is that your network would completely disrupt our
present biosphere.

As for your question "what does it matter if we change anything", well,
maybe you dont have enough sensibility to appreciate the fact that we are
the only natural complex biosphere that we know - and probably the only one
that Humanity will ever know. But I do have. Also, while there have been
worst disasters in natural history, we are a potential "disaster" that,
unlike the other ones (asteroid crashes, ice ages, continental drift, etc)
have consciousness and moral, and I dont like to bear part of the
responsibility of the current degradation of Earth, and I would like much
less to support a *really* degrading project like your network.

> That is how life works, if you can't adopt to the new conditions you
> go extinct. And just in case anyone is wondering, yes one of those
> species may be man. That is everyones unspoken fear, that we may end
> up dying in our own shit.
>

Paraphrasing you: are you so foolish that you think that Humanity wouldnt
end up dying in its own shit long before your network was finished?

> You have obviously missed the point though. The point is, if we have a
> cheap enough energy source on earth we don't need to go out into
> space. The resource argument doesn't work. The argument that does is
> the cheap energy source.
>

I think that youre the one who missed entirely the point in this whole
discussion. It all begun with a message from Tom Tucker where he simply said
that "The resources in the asteroid belts are vast", with no further
statement. Youre the one who is assuming that he implied that the vastness
of the resources in space would be a motivation to go there.

But if you assume that Humanity will become a race of planet eaters (as you
seems to suggest with your scenarios of complete and careless exploration of
Earths natural resources), than Earth certainly will not be enough. Nothing
is enough when you consider unbound geometric expansion...

[snikt]
Lucio Coelho