Digest Number 669

Re: Frugality vs a "High Standard of Living"

Mike,

I have no quarrel with what you are saying, except to say that you are
missing the point.

I have no doubt that the entity, Gov't or Private, which sends the 1st
colonists will spare no
[reasonable] expense ;-] to make the workers, and eventually their
families, comfortable.

But how comfortable? Look around you, at home, or in the office. How many of
the objects with which
you are surrounded are worth their weight in lift costs... -Could they be
reproduced in Space?

Sure, but each item requires not just materials available in Space, they
also require dedicated engineering
personnel, manufacturing equipment, etc. How much of this can be justified
when the primary purpose is
providing a product. e.g., Solar Energy, -and making a profit?

An example comes to mind which is illustrative but otherwise not very good
i.e., "The Pencil".

On the one hand a serviceable pencil is easily made.

On the other, the typical earthside manufacture of a pencil illustrates the
complexity and
interconnectedness involved in the manufacture of most of the products we
use in our daily lives.

The wood,the metal, the paint, the graphite, the rubber, all have their
various sources and technologies.
Each pencil represents the input of dozens of specialists; miners,
foresters, timbermen, engineers,
draftsmen, and craftsmen of various sorts...

As I say, the pencil is a poor example, but look around you. -most things
are rather more complex.

Its true, "We" can do most anything 'we' set our minds to...

Sure, "We" can manufacture our own toilet paper, but will it be anything
like what we are accustomed to?
Can the cost of manufacturing a decent piece of toilet paper be justified?

Its not going to be sent up in rockets.

Raw materials and know-how aside, you will need equipment, plus original,
primary machineries and
personnel dedicated to producing that 2ndary, tertiary, or whatever-ary,
final equipment that
actually makes the toilet paper.

Plus knowledgeable people to run each set of equipment. I think decent
toilet paper alone is going
to cost a bundle, and that's just one inconsequential item in the scheme of
things.

[ More likely you're going to supply your recovering accident victims with a
screen, a bucket of
fiber slurry, and a pair of scissors... -ARF ! ;-]

Nobody ever said all this would be cheap, but I don't recall seeing an
estimate of how really, really
expensive it could be.

Bob H.
================================================
P.S.

If you're interested, here's a 'thingy' about pencils:

1st. A quote from "The Pencil: A History of Design & Circumstance" by Henry
Petroski

"So why did Thoreau -who had worked with his father to produce the very best
lead pencils...
-neglect to list even one among the essential things to take on an
excursion? Perhaps the very
object with which he may have been drafting his list was too close to him,
too familiar a part
of his own everyday outfit, too integral a part of his livlihood, too common
a thing for him to
think to mention."

[ Well, here I am all settled at Walden Pond, X number of miles from town,
and NO pencil ! !

-Ch Sciagura !! -Oh well, I can make my own; -shouldn't take more than
a day or two. ]-RH

Or see: http://www.pencils.com/

Check out other titles of interest by Henry Petroski See Amazon.com for:

Remaking the World: Adventures in Engineering
To Engineer Is Human: The Role of Failure in Successful Design
Engineers of Dreams: Great Bridge Builders and the Spanning of America

and others.

-Amazon will show you some 20 Pp. of text if you like.

> Message: 1
> Date: Mon, 7 Jul 2003 08:39:30 -0500
> From: "Combs, Mike"
> Subject: RE: New topic on SSI
> From: Bob Hardman [mailto:Bsanctuary@...]
>
> > "... -to improve the standard of living, ..."
> >
> > I wonder what this 'means' in light of currently estimated "high lift
> costs".
> > -seems to me that, at first anyway, much the opposite could be true.
> >
> > Essentially and ostensibly all very clean and high tech, but in all
> liklihood
> > extremely frugal as well.
>
> Of course one of the main points of High Frontier thinking is to do an
> end-run around high lift costs by emplacing industrial infrastructure in
> space and tapping resources already in space.
>
> I think in the short term we can expect space colonists to certainly be
> frugal with things like nitrogen and carbon. Maybe somewhat frugal with
> hydrogen (although our situation here seems much improved). They will
> certainly have to be frugal with certain substances like wood or rubber or
> plastic. But even from the beginning they can be quite free in their
> consumption of energy, and that's a major factor in standard of living.
And