Diversification

Hi Ron,

This is probably still some way off, but one of the ideas the old L5
Society came up with back in the 70s, was that when the cost of getting
up to geosynchronous orbit and above comes down to reasonable levels,
using lunar materials - they didn't know there were quite as many NEOs
as we know about - you could build family house sized shops powered by
light sails manufactured up there, and family groups could take off
prospecting the asteroids in our Solar System.

There are lots of obvious snags in this, such as the amount of food
storage space you'd require for longish voyages, and the mass of
sheilding you'd require, the size of sails you'd need to carry it etc.
Nevertheless, if some way of opening our system to individual small
groups of prospectors could be found, and just one of those groups found
a bonanza asteroid somewhere, in no time Solar System space would begin
to be settled.

Best wishes, Andy.

rmenich@... wrote:

>
> I hold no allegiance to any particular technological ideas of O'Neill,
> per se. The concepts that I think are core are the following:
>
> 1.) Don't dive down into some deep gravity well (e.g., Mars) just
> after having expended so much energy to get off the Earth.
> 2.) Realize that there are plentiful resources in the Inner Solar
> System beyond the Earth that are not in deep gravity wells (e.g.,
> Luna, NEOs). Exploit these dead, airless bodies to drive the
> expansion of humanity into space.
>
> When I read the High Frontier and see O'Neill talking about colonies
> of ten thousand people or more, my eyes glaze over. I'd be happy if
> there were 100 non-NASA people living off-Earth, much less 10,000.
> Yes, I completely agree that we need to focus on space tourism. And
> on SPSs and orbital transfer vehicles and GEO antenna farms and on
> other means to generate a positive economic impact. Colonization
> will occur AFTER we've learned to make goodly amounts of money
> off-planet. We can't have an "Island One" filled with 10,000 people
> living in space until there is an economic reason for 10,000 people to
> live in space. And if it takes 10,000 people to construct SPSs, then
> we're sunk because the startup costs will be much, much too large to
> justify the endeavor.
>
> What I would fault O'Neill for is that his vision, expressed in The
> High Frontier, is too far away into the future. Zubrin and The Mars
> Society, by contrast, want to get a few handfuls of people onto Mars
> soon, a much more limited vision. True, Zubrin and Mars Society
> advocates are into the whole long-term terraforming thing, but they
> have a specific and limited near-term proposal: Mars Direct.
>
> Mars Direct is Zubrin's near-term, limited, government-funded
> proposal. We need to counter with something similar.
>
> What do you think about this counter-proposal to Mars Direct:
> return NEO 1991 VG --- all of it --- to ISS Alpha. The 1991 VG is
> probably less than 10 meters in diameter (absolute magnitude 28.5).
> We can do this thing with less technology than required by Mars
> Direct.
>
> Ron Menich
>
> Al Globus
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Please respond to spacesettlers Subject: Re:
[spacesettlers] Re: Diversification