High efficiency drives

It wasn't so much a near verses far future problem. The assumption was
that the planet was to be evacuated within a "reasonable" time period.

The time period I chose was 200 years. I assumed the first fifty the
population exodus would be negliable since the infrastructure would be
built.

After that to get 5 billion people off a planet in 150 years you need
to move about 600 000 people every day.

Let me run you through a typical scenerio.
Land transportation to the launcher.
Launcher is a 5 minute ride at 5 g then twenty minutes to one of the
capture tethers.
2 day elevator ride to the top of the tether.
from the top of the tether:
1 month or so ride to a colony at l4 or l5 or high orbit.
1 month ride to the moon transfer point to the moon.
1 month ride to a habitat in a parallel orbit with the earth for
transfer into a "transfer city", an asteroid in a two-1 orbit with
the earth and mars, or the asteroid belt.

Before you get on the launcher you have a whole procedure to organize
health checks, final destination, your personal finances, etc...

I took the model of a person emigrating to another country for that.

Please remember that much of what I wanted to do is not complete.

Almost all the infrastructure would be built in space. The parts that
would be planetbound would be built and maintained on the planet. The
only "expendable" part of the planetary infrastructure, is the
capsules being shot by the launchers.

I may in the future write a short story or a novel based on the idea.

Bill

--- In spacesettlers@egroups.com, "Tom Tucker (Olympia)"
wrote:
> Bill,
>
> I see. Your scenario is way out there in the future, and I am
looking a the near future to see how we can build the 1st colony.
>
> Since the earth's population only increases at 80 million/year, why
move 1/2 million per day? Why not 1/4 million or 1 million while we
are on the topic?
>
> How much of the infra-structure would be build in space and how much
supplied from earth? What is your presumed launch cost per KG?
Presumably this would be low enough for the average person to afford,
say around $1/KG?
>
> Tom
> From: bill t
> To: spacesettlers@egroups.com
> Sent: Sunday, December 31, 2000 9:19 AM
> Subject: [spacesettlers] Re: High efficiency drives
>
> What is funny is I have no way of complying with your request at
the
> moment. I have no windows machines at my house, and the zip
program on
> unix doesn't produce a file that pkzip can uncompress.
>
> I'll get it into a zipfile and post it.
>
> To give you an idea of what I was trying to accomplish, imagine
what
> infrastructure you will need to move half a million people into
space
> a day.
>
> This included things like ground transportation/storage large
scale
> launch facilities, construction requirements for housing,
factories,
> ships, power equipment.
>
> With half a million people to huase in space every day, you have
to