Space and planetary settlement.

From: "Edith & Steve"
To:
Sent: Thursday, July 19, 2001 8:41 PM
Subject: [spacesettlers] Space and planetary settlement.

My wife told me before humanity can really colonise space, or planets, it is
fundamental that it put its act together in cleaning up our environment, the
whole Earth. I agree totally. We need to recycle 100 percent before we can
consider colonisation. Look what happened in the late 1800 and 1900s when we
created heavy industry. We need to recycle 100 percent and clean up our
Mother Earth now, not tomorrow or the next, but now. If we don't, we will
never learn to colonise space especially other planets. The starships and
space stations must not become polluted because we wouldn't be able to throw
out garbage like we do now and not realise that Mother Earth cannot recycle
by Herself at the rate we throw out garbage. Only when we will put our act
together then we will be able to travel through space and colonise other
planets.

My reasoning is completely opposite. I agree that we *need* to take care of
Earth's environment because there is *no way* to throw away pollutants out
of our planet - any dangerous substance that we produce will stay here and
we will have to live with it, and in the long and even medium range it will
affect ourselves.

However, when it comes to space, a space habitat could produce basically any
toxic waste in any quantity and just throw it away in space, where the solar
wind would quickly disperse the thing for tens of gigameters. As for 100%
recycling, that is another misconception about space: since any resource
(water, ores, etc) in space is thousands of times more abundant than on
Earth, I can't see a compelling reason for enforcing a 100% recycling
(which, by the way, is an impossible goal) if you can at any given time take
more resources from the nearby space. Consider for instance the case of a
space habitat with 10,000 people orbiting a NEO one kilometer in diameter.
Even assuming a low water content of 5% (a reasonable estimative for a
carbonaceous asteroid), the colony could be supplied with water for more
than a thousand years, assuming a consumption of 100 liters/day person. With
partial recycling, the lifetime of the colony would be practically
limitless.

We need Mother Earth as a home base because it is where we were born, she is
our cradle so to speak. Governments and corporations must be made
accountable in order to save our Mother Earth from ourselves who take things
for granted like our legs and hands to be able to function. Persons with
disabilities must be fully integrated because we will not be able to ignore
them from furture societies. If we don't grow up socially and spiritually,
we will miss the boat as we say. Unfortunately, when I see articles or
websites promoting the benifits of colonisation, and there are, I don't see
any social planning nor spirituality which are a must. For me spirituality
has always been and will be a strong social base. I cannot seperate
spirituality from social base nor health nor education. They are, for me,
fundamental basis for a healthy society.

Again, a vision opposite to mine. I'm an atheist and a materialist, so
religious and spiritual concerns are meaningless to me. I try to make
decisions on a rational basis only... That's why I ended up thinking that
space settlements are the way to colonize space! ;-)

[snikt]
Steve Dolesch
esdesd@...

Lucio Coelho