making money on asteroids

Subject:
[spacesettlers] Re: making money on asteroids
Date:
Mon, 22 Mar 2004 12:43:36 -0000
From:
"Xenophile"
Reply-To:
spacesettlers@yahoogroups.com
To:
spacesettlers@yahoogroups.com

--- In spacesettlers, "Valens Agnitio" wrote:

> Why do people reference sci-fi books or movies as proof of
> concepts, ideas, or pre-conceptions?
>
> Val

'Cause its all we've got. Until this stuff is actually done, what
else is there to reference?

Xenophile (on the subject of eugenics, please see early chapters of
_Princess of Mars_ and middle/late chapters of _Lost on Venus_, both
by Edgar Rice Burroughs)

Because science fiction is where most of our ideas were originated and refined.

When did you first read of space settlements?

With me, it was in 1953. And I was reading Jack Williamson's "The Prince
of Space" which was published in the January 1931 issue of Amazing
Stories. Which means, given publishing delays, that Jack Williamson was
grappling with how space settlements would work about 75 years ago.

I know of no scientist that was doing the same that long ago.

Hugo Gernsback started Amazing Stories back in 1926 and he intended it to
be scientifically accurate. Unfortunately, he could not publish a monthly
magazine and do so. But he tried.

Astounding Stories in the late thirties had a letter column, Brass Tacks,
which shared space with Scientific Discussions, another letter
column. Readers liked to try to catch authors in a mistake.

In 1953, Mission of Gravity by Hal Clement, a master of "hard" science
fiction was serialized in Astounding. A few issues latter, in Brass
Tacks, one reader calmly noted that the hero in the story had opened a
vehicle door. The door had one atmosphere of pressure inside and three
atmospheres of pressure outside.

Which means a pressure of nearly thirty pounds per square inch was holding
that door shut.

"Hard" in this case meaning that science was stressed.)

Editor John Campbell had attended MIT. Clement got his Master's in 1947 in
astronomy and had grad courses in chemistry.