Volunteerism vs. Rewards for Space Settlement (Was R

tangoman
no criticism at all to the high frontier
I believe that the biggest contribution to our culture
was the concept that space colonization must be
performed independently from existing celestial
bodies, Moon mars etc and achieved by ad hoc created
ones with human requirements including gravity.
Can you visualize a third generation human born in
Mars trying to walk on Earth? we would raise a mutant
species which is one of the biggest risks of space
settlement on the Moon and mars.
Only Venus seem good for us gravity wise.
What a paradox.
Same concept is valid for the far future concerning
interstellar expansion
we will probably never find a duplicate earth around
and we have to learn to build artificail space
habitats if we want to truly expand in space.
At the same time we must think positive about the
space habitats and try to move forward, at least
teoretically from the original concept and go over
their limitations.
For me they are the fixed location, due to the need of
an exterior body such as the moon to supply by mass
driver the needed materilas, their lack of
flexibility, and expansion capability, their initial
oversize and many others.
we should address such features with critical but
positive and improving proposals to advance at least
teoretically the state of the art and consider that
there are many alternatives thanks to new or
foreseeable tecnologies to be included.
The entire issue of SPS as a means of economically
support for the space colonies is obsolete from my
point of view.
We must achieve space colonies with a step by step
approach, with new but feasible technologies like an
antirely reusable commercial type space transportation
system from earth,
deflect small asteroids and insert them in cycler
orbits to major destinations , use them as
transportation to moon and first colonies, using their materials and expand from
there.
They will be economically independent by supplying
trasnporation, food, lodging and services to manned
expeditions to >Moon and there.
From small, first generations habitats for 4\6 people
they will grow to bigger second generations habitats
for up to 100 people supplying transportation services
for bigger numbers of passengers and so on
Only with a profit making immediate activity we can
justify space colonization, at least at the beginning,
and in free space and not in a particular body.
Space colonies to be realistic , like our cities, must
grow like that, starting from a small nucleus and, if
vital and economically feasible , keep growing.
Space settlements must follow our history of growing
communities to be successful by having built in
flexibility, expansion capability and economic
feasibility.
Any other alternative is antihistorical and will have
few possibilities to suceed

--- In ssi_list@... giorgio gaviraghi

giorgio,

Welcome to the choir. If you're expecting someone in
this group to put
up a *vigorous* defense of ISS you may have to wait a
long while.

ISS did add some knowledge to our space encyclopedia,
but it was
nowhere near efficient in terms of cost/benefit. It
had no space
mandate, though it did serve some purpose, I suppose,
in the
international political arena.

ISS = all around bad news white elephant.

If you want to use ISS as a basis for criticizing The
High Frontier,
then I think you really need to establish a basis for
why such a
comparison should be considered valid.

TangoMan