business plans

> What we need are
> some actual scientists to say, "given these conditions, this is what
> I'd investigate." And some industrial engineers saying "Given those
> conditions I would design this process to achieve this product."

Actually, I think what we really need are many more people (including
some scientists and engineers)living in space so they fully
understand and appreciate the unique aspects of that environment
in the most direct possible manner. I don't think there's any real
hope that scientists or engineers sitting here on Earth will ever
be capable of any reasonable theoretical prediction of what will
transpire up there. We may make some suggestions and theoretical
projections, but until we have real human experience in space, it's
just not going to be anywhere near the things that will come along
to meet the potential of that new environment.

Just as a simple example - the stuff Don Pettit did up on the
ISS recently playing around with water bubbles:
http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2003/25feb_nosoap.htm?list71523
now that doesn't amount to a whole lot, but if we had
thousands of people up there playing around with things like
that, who knows what weird and wonderful things they'll dream up.
It's a new environment for the human species: zero or low gravity,
nearby extremes of temperature and pressure, radiation different
from anything on Earth - we're bound to find things we never,
ever could have expected living down here and theorizing about it.
And those will be the really important discoveries and products.

Arthur