Gaia Selene

Yes, I'm advocating putting habitats in NEO orbit, right next to the
source of material that created them. Why not?

It would be quite a journey for people to travel to a NEO, but when
they got there they would have the resources and energy of a
nation in easy reach. Once a NEO colony became established, it
would be easier to support, because everything needed would be right
there in abundance. The standard of living would be superior to
anywhere else.

The trick is how to seed this process with the smallest amount of
mass. (people and machines) As I understand it, it wasn't simple to
pack covered wagons for the trip west 150 yrs ago either.

Yes, there would be some trade needed with Earth initially. but not
on the order to support a cislunar infrastructure. Just enough
goods to trade for the cpus needed for the next batch of mining
bots. Or something like that. And a couple SPS to repay the
initial equipment. But like colonies in the Americas, most goods
would be consumed locally.

In summary, it would definitely be far from Earth and yield hard
living at first, but the tight integration of resources, energy and
population would result in a superior economy that wouldn't take
long to outstrip that of the Earth.

--- In spacesettlers@yahoogroups.com, "victoriatangoman"
wrote:
>
> --- In spacesettlers@yahoogroups.com, "flymuffins"
> wrote:
>
> > > On a NEO, which is on a independent orbit from that on Earth,
the
> > > material can be anywhere from a few days away from the
refinery to a
> > > few years<
>
> > Why would NEO mined materials be refined back at Earth? Since
the
> > advantages of space are energy and resources, and since these
are at
> > said NEO, wouldn't the refining, construction, and living be
done at
> > the NEO?
>
> Note, I wrote "material." I'm mostly agnostic on whether the
material
> that comes back to cislunar space is refined, ore quality, ice or
> dirt. What I thought was crucial was the transit time for the
material.
>
> If you want to analyze it a bit further, I'd factor in the
> cost/benefit of maintaining some refining capacity at the NEO so
far
> from Earth and if it would be worth the cost savings of shipping
only
> refined goods rather than the higher bulk raw goods to be refined
in
> cislunar space.
>
> As for living at the NEO, I'm not sure if you're advocating
locating
> the Habitats in the NEO orbit or just the refining/mining camp. If
the
> former, I think you'd be running into all sorts of logistic and
> economic problems compared to cislunar space. If the latter then I
> think you're looking at the issue of dispersing your life support
> facilities throughout a LARGE area of space and the centralization
> benefits of being in cislunar space are lost, i.e. multiple
facilities