Lunascaping and Zubrin

> No really, they were superior :-)
> Actually I think it's got a lot to do with the fact that we recall what
> we like and forget the vast sea of cr*p in which it was embedded.

Yeah. Brust's _Agyar_ has a long-lived character who refused to read or
listen to anything less than 50 years old, letting the rest of humanity weed
out the crap for him. This wouldn't work for my science fiction tastes, but I
appreciate the sentiment. Of course it's kind of selfish -- someone's got to
do the weeding.

The effect has been said to apply to antiques and old buildings. They may
have been better built than our planned obsolescence stuff, but there's also
the fact that the crappy stuff fell apart. And the ugly old buildings got
demolished given a choice. So we're left with the well-built nice-looking
stuff.

> I'm inclined to agree. I think the only thing Zubrin brings to the
> table is some interesting new technologies, and perhaps a bit of

Mars Direct *is* an interesting idea for "Mars Now". I haven't read his
books, but I went to talk he gave for the Skeptics Society at Caltech. It was
a "whee!" moment. He had his 'put-down' moments too, but they were funny
then. Talking about NASA's plan for a Mars mission, with a huge craft, and no
socioeconomic background like SPS. "I call this the Death Star, built by an
orbital manufacturing capability I call The Alternate Universe." Hee.

> innovation in the areas of mission architecture for early stage
> exploration. As you point out, O'Neill did the math. A LOT of math.

I don't know if this is accurate (it's been a long time since I read _The High
Frontier (1st ed)_) but my memory whispers the impression that O'Neill's ideas
felt like they had a good chance of being built at the time, if we'd wanted
to. Some engineering research needed, but it feels like low-surprise stuff.
Marshall Savage, writing later, counted on more advanced research -- I think
it's in accordance with his timeline that even the oceanic Aquarius hasn't
started yet, as the plan waits for OTEC research, material science, and even
faster computers. On the flip side it seems that Asgard could be built if we
wanted it, whether or not we could get people to do their exercise.

And then there's Zubrin, writing even later, with some math and engineering
worked out, but also "fusion, sweet fusion!" apparently being counted on.
More modern? Well in advance of modernity, I'd say...

> Terraforming, incidentally, is one of those huge projects with vast
> capital investment and massive risks that is so huge that it will never
> happen. By the time that technology and capital is available to
> seriously consider it, there will already be plenty of settlers and
> industries well adapted to the non-terraformed state of the planet.

I think that statement is too sweeping. Lots of terraforming ideas count on
incremental, decentralized, or self-replicating stuff, after all, not central
direction. Humans are changing the Earth; Mars could get terraformed by
accident or pollution. And if local adaptations consist of Earth-normal
humans hiding in stuff close to space colonies, they may have no reason to
object to terraforming which just makes the place nicer.

And there's human chauvinism. If lifespans become much longer, whether
through medicine or uploading, longer plans could be worked on. And even
humans have worked on projects lasting longer than a century -- cathedrals of
Europe, the Great Wall of China. Or the pyramids (shorter timescale, but
really lousy economic rate of return.)

As for non-monolithic space colonization -- sounds nice, but there are real
problems, or differences with the New World. Families can't buy tickets and
go to space and do anything useful, let alone live. OTOH, once you have an
advanced center in space, subsequent growth could be non-monolithic, since
it'd provide the source of relatively cheap trade in advanced goods, like the
Eastern seaboard supplying tools to western pioneers. One monolithic shove
could catalyze the rest. But I'm hard pressed to see the first step happening
without a big push, or big changes.

-xx- Damien X-)