L5

--- In ssi_list@... Mitchell James

> L5:
> Food, housing, and energy are supplied by L5 resources under the
> assumption that the L5 is capable of being self sufficient otherwise
> it is a dead end anyway.

> In short the L5 is NOT integrated into the global market and
> therefore trying to measure L5 wage values against Earth values may
> be totally meaningless.

Mitchell,

Here are my unstated premises:

-The basics of food, housing and energy will be supplied from orbital
sources.
-A local economy will develop.
-An export/import economy will develop.
-Pricing levels and degrees of spread between products on Earth will
not necessarily translate directly to a Habitat's economy.
-A person's needs go beyond the basics. Many of the goods will not be
able to be manufactured economically in orbit until there is
sufficient population to warrant new undertakings.

So, if you need heart medication, it's likely that it might be able to
be manufactured on from a small batch process in orbit with IP
licensing fees paid back to Earth. However, if you need a CPU,
motherboard, hard drive, and LCD monitor then we're looking at massive
capital costs to establish factories in orbit and we may not have the
market size to warrant a return on investment.

If prices are transparent then you'll find some goods to be
extraordinarily expensive because they come from Earth, but other
goods will be really cheap, such as energy, perhaps food, perhaps
local clothes, etc.

How this price rationalization will play out is a great game of
speculation.

I do think that there will be a misappropriation of human resources by
doing in orbit that which can be done on Earth. We will certainly need
tailors, butchers, gardeners, bricklayers, agronomists, weavers, etc
in orbit, but the architecture of orbital homes may be done by people
on Earth who are versed in Habitat building codes.

I guess if I had to describe my assumptions it would be that those who
have to be in orbit will do well and those who have to compete against
terrestrial suppliers will have a harder time.

I have trouble rationalizing an Orbital economy that simply replicates
much of what we do on Earth, with the obvious exception of SPS
provision. As an economy grows organically, I think the export growth
will develop from industries that have to be in orbit. Right now there
is very, very little R&D devoted to vacuum environments, variable
gravity environments, and radiation environments because they are
either expensive to create on Earth or simply impossible. In orbit,
they'll be free for the taking, so to speak. No products have yet been
identified that can be developed in orbit and I think that this is the
case because compared to commerical R&D budgets, space R&D is
miniscule and misapplied. Put thousands of researchers into orbit,
because they have to be there, let them loose and direct them to
concentrate their research towards the unique conditions present in
orbit, and not trying to beat Intel with a better CPU chip that can be
manufactured on Earth, and we'll see marketable, and profitable
products being developed. If a product needs a high quality vacuum,
radiation bombardment and zero-gravity, there's no way they're going
to build that on Earth.

TangoMan