Futuof Space Colonization (And why do we always keep going into politics and economics?)

Yeah, its fine to say its a chicken and egg problem
(now that you can have chicken with your eggs). :-)
What a problem it is!

Thetis

--- Ryan Healey wrote:

The problem I see with needing a non-zero sum system
to go into space is that
one of the reasons we want to go into space is to get
a non-zero sum system
(which was one of Dr. O'Neil's objectives with the
space settlement concept).

Sounds like chicken and egg.

A mixture of government and corpoate funding might be
able to do it although
only after something that requires a significant human
presence in space is
making a good profit. I wouldn't cound on only
one of them doing it alone.
Corporations can barely see past the next FY let alone
the 22 years the NASA
Ames Stanford study said would be required to build
the first one. At least
not in the amounts that'd be needed. Governments
have trouble looking past the
next election so we'd have some problems.

Ultimately it comes down to our civilisation having a
bias towards the short
term instead of the long term.

--- Thetis Reticulum
wrote:
> One rather large and unattractive problem: the
current
> economy hasn't the guts or motivation to pull
off
> projects of this magnitude: you need one that
works
> based upon the fulfillment of the civilization's
need,
> not on the accumulation of profit. The
current
> economic system remains unwilling, and more
> importantly, incapable of financing such
projects.
> Look at the HST for an example. An
estimated 10
> trillion in development costs for the most
fabulous
> flying machine ever dreamed of, but engineers say
it
> could be done in as little as 10 years, provided
it
> was wanted bad enough. No corporation is
willing to
> invest the necessary funding. No
corporation
> possesses the necessary funding, or could even
put
> together the necessary funding (despite a
launch
> manifesto exceeding 1800 satellites at
present). And
> the banks have governments by the balls the
world
> over, so they're fundamantally eliminated.
Need a new
> economic engine, and probably non-zero sum.
>
> Jason Mabbott

of Service.