On the colonization of space Forum: Spacesettlers
Thread: On the colonization of space
# 5888 bycapcartoonist@... on Nov. 14, 2004, 2:09 p.m.
Member since 2021-10-03
"babbler36" wrote:
hold a press conference to annonce an plan for an O'Neillian space
settlement with 25 years or so. The benfits are too long term to
outweight the short term costs.>
The President of Bose Corporation was interviewed recently and cited a
couple of reasons why Bose never went public. First of all, a public
corporation spends 2/3 of its time and energy promoting its image to keep
those stock prices up. Secondly, the CEO of a public corporation thinks
long-term planning means having good profits at the end of the Quarter to
show the stock holders (even if he has to cook the books to do so). No CEO
of a major corporation is going to look past 90 days to a year, let alone 25
years down the road.
No, it is going to be the intrepreneurs who lead the way. And it is going
to be the adventurous and financially desparate who become the colonists.
is not a mute point; sometime in the next thousand years, with fossil
fuels of the Earth will have been consumed. But, even with this fact,
space settlement is not a logical endpoint. The seach for a good
energy policy may lie in a mix of wind, solar, nuclear and
hydroelectic engery, combinied with a conservation program may do the
trick.
But, even with energy is "imported" from space viva the SPS concept;
it does not mean space colonies will result.>
I read somewhere a while back that the SPS concept is no longer considered a
major incentive; too costly for what we could gain from it, or some such.
But there is speculation that mining near Earth asteroids could be the first
step. An iron-nickel asteroid of diameter 1 km or so could be worth 30
trillion dollars. Mine the near Earth asteroids, build factories in orbit
around the Earth, ship the goods planetside. ("What, and take work away
from Chinese political prisoners?!")
"master plan," where this and that will happen, and humanity will
become spacefaring. History does not work that way; plans never goes
exactly to the plan. The settlement of space will be like every other
human endeivior[sic], full of logic and illogic, reason and irrationality,
false assumptions and overlooked detials[sic].>
Some very valid points here. Most of the New England colonies were
established by religious fanatics looking to get away from everyone else.
They established (eventually) self-sufficient farming communities.
Jamestown's early settlers were a mixture of farmers and gold prospecters.
Eventually, it was discovered that tobacco plants could be 'mined' and the
product sent home, and Virginia became a colony of plantation owners. New
Amsterdam and Fort Orange were set up by the Dutch to make a profit off the
lucretive fur trade.
People came to the New World for different reasons, but it all boiled down
to one hard truth -- opportunity to make living without interference. Point
of fact, the whole Age of Discovery was fuelled by disenfranchised people
looking for fame and fortune (or at least a decent living).
The three incentives for the colonization of space are going to be
Opportunity, Opportunity, and Opportunity. The same reasons why people come
to America. Instead of "Go West, Young Man," we'll end up with a slogan
along the lines of, "Go Up And Out, Young Person."