ISLAND ONE, a prime time family sitcom set on the High Frontier

Actually, I envision that Island One and early Island Two will
pretty much be like what Survivalists envisioned back when I was a
school boy many years ago when everyone believed Reagan was going to
get us into a nuclear war or that our intelelctually bloated Society
would i mplode and collapse. Most clothing will locally made by hand
with cotton or linnen or hemp grown locally. Dyed locally. Woven
locally on looms assembled on sight that might be hand powered, then
cut and sewn together on local sewing machines.I suppose thesame will
be done with shoes and other things we take for granted. Forget
about gourmet food unless one or two of the colonists knows the
cooking styles. Food will be locally grown and locally processed.
Many things people take for granted won't be available but will have
to be replaced with the technologies that they replaced bbefore. The
actual family as a social economic unit may actually return to
importance.

I suspect early Island Society will look a little bit like early
american colonial society but high tech.

--- In spacesettlers@yahoogroups.com, "Dan Wylie-Sears"
>
> A lot of that depends on how the economies of scale play out, both
> in the engineering and in the demand for the exportable products of
> a space station/colony -- and how the cost of having more available
> on-site compares with the cost of transporting people up and down.
> With a mining camp in Alaska, it's fairly cheap to transport people
> to and from, but expensive to maintain them there. And if it costs
> X to maintain a mining camp of forty people, it won't cost that
much
> less than 2X to maintain one of eighty people. With a space
colony,
> it's very expensive to send people there and back, so anything you
> can do to make longer stays tolerable is likely to pay. And if it
> turns out that passive-mass radiation shielding is a major part of
> the cost, doubling the size will get you eight times the space for
> four times the shielding cost; doubling again will make it 64 for
> 16. Additional room keeps getting cheaper, up to the largest size
> that's structurally feasible with your materials. Weighed against
> that, we have the time-is-money effect: the bigger it is, the
longer
> it will take to build, to some extent, and a payoff sooner is more
> valuable than a payoff later.
>
> The other side is the earth-side demand for space-made products.
> Even a small colony can refine precious metals from a metallic
> asteroid and de-orbit them. Those payloads could probably be
pretty
> dumb: a silicate ablation shield around a lump of platinum with
> enough empty spaces in it (or spaces full of oxygen gas) that it
> will float after splash-down. There may be a range of scales where
> platinum group metals for fuel-cell catalysts is a more efficient
> way to effectively send energy to earth than actual solar power
> satellites. The potential demand for platinum is fairly large, but
> putting more of it on the market would lower the price
> dramatically. I if it's a company rather than a government that
> gets the first platinum mining operation going, I expect they'll
> sell at monopoly price or just low enough to keep competitors off
> the market.
>
> But I don't think we can tell at this point whether it will be a
> company or a government that sets up the first colony. More likely
> a combination, but what sort of combination is unclear.
>
> >Most inhabitants will be professionals.
>
> Depends. Does a technician overseeing the agricultural equipment
> count as a professional? I think there will be a whole lot of
> technicians. The first generation will be a highly select group
> capable of stepping into different jobs, because that's cheaper
than
> lifting new people from the ground when there's a change in what
> work is needed. But a lot of them will still function as
> technicians.
>
> > Currency: ? Credit.
>
> Money will almost certainly be electronic. But the distinction
> between credit and other means of payment is timing rather than
> mass. I expect debit and credit to both be used, same as here and
> now.
>
> >To make the fastest and latest electronic items ...
>
> Moore's law may have taken us all the way to the theoretical limits
> by the time we get off the ground in any serious way. So
> electronics may be a stable technology.
>
> I think economies of scale are a bigger deal here again. Once you
> set up chip production, you can cheaply produce a huge number of
the
> same chip. I would expect electronics in space to be much more
> modular than on the ground: if a computer has a thousand parallel
> processors of the same sort that you use five of in a telephone,
you
> can make them both off the same production line.
>
> --- In spacesettlers@yahoogroups.com, Matt Gallimore
> wrote:
> >
> > After reading this discussion with interest, here is my opinion:
> >
> > Government: Corporate rules for work conduct and most likely will
> go into personal life. Think of company mining towns in the late
> 1800s. Laws from nation sponsoring the project, or International
> laws.
> >
> > Crime: low. Most inhabitants will be professionals.
> >
> > Society: Contract labor. More akin to modern day mining
operations
> in remote locations. For this think of mines near the Atacama
Desert
> or north of the arctic circle in Alaska. In each case, the labor is
> contract, perhaps for 1 to 4 years. For the station, it would be
for
> longer periods due to cost of employee transportation. In these
> situations, the companies sponsoring the employees would be
> responsible for their living expenses and support. The major
> problems at site are work related and difficulties of getting
> supplies. There will be families at these locations, but initially
> far fewer than in a normal Earth-bound town.
> >
> > Currency: ? Credit. Cash takes mass and that has to be lifted
from
> earth...and in a largely monitored society, credit would be easy to
> track. However, there may or may not be many opportunities to buy
> many things with your pay. Consumer items imported from earth would
> be expensive. No doubt, some amount of transport weight would have
> to be part of an employees contract.
> >
> > Technology: Actually, personal tech would probably be less high
> tech than living on Earth. After all, there is easy access to the
> latest gadgets and fashion items from stores on earth. In space,
the
> heart of electronics devices (high powered semiconductors) may be
> precious. Most large items can be manufactured, as can slower
> computer chips. Until there are many orbiting colonies,
> manufacturing ability for consumer goods would be very limited. To
> make the fastest and latest electronic items requires dedicated
> factories and these may only be built on earth for the foreseeable
> future due to cost and size. In this vein, a shipment of goods from
> earth has all the special appeal as a shipment of New York clothes
> to a small western town in the 1800s.
> >
> > Food: The ideal may be plentiful plant growth, but there will be
> some difficulties in this. Just like some stories of isolated
> communities, sharing will be a requirement if there is ever a time
> with limited food supplies.
> >
> > Actually I do not see these colonies operating smoothly initially
> as they will start as artificial communities. A significant number
> of "colonists" will not intend to retire there. Most will no doubt
> intend to work through their contract and then return to earth. One
> of the impediments to its success might be interference from
> competing interests (companies, governments, NGOs) trying to gain
> influence or control of the colony.
> >
> > Then there is also the matter of investors and their interests
and
> how that would affect the society....
> >
> > terrierkeeper wrote:Actually it could be much
like
> the wild west.
> >
> > Little house on the prairie had much in common with the towns of
> the
> > time. But remember what happened to the Cole Younger and James
> Gangs?
> > Or the Daltons? Those farming towns had little in common with
> > Tombstone.
> >
> > In addition to which there is one question that will have to be
> asked
> > of the Space Islands. Who will run the governments? I suspect the
> UN
> > Might try for a power grab and want to run them as International
> > Settlements according to their own rules and with no regard to
> wishes
> > of the inhabitants. They'll want to appoint governments rather
> than
> > hold elections. And if any elections are held they'll insist on
> > writing the Constituitions and veto for any candidate they may
> > dislike.
> >
> > The issue of popular soverenty comes up almost immediately.
> >
> > Thent there is crime and punishment.
> >
> > --- In spacesettlers@yahoogroups.com, "Xenophile"
> > wrote:
> > >
> > > --- In spacesettlers, "terrierkeeper" wrote:
> > >
> > > > Anyway, I still think the Island Two Phase would be a better
> > > > grounds for a television series. Space Island Society would
> have
> > to
> > > > start forming governments. Diffferent island types would be
> under
> > > > developement.
> > >
> > > For most of the public, though, starting with the very first
> Island
> > > One is a big enough stretch. A whole space-bourn civilization
> > might
> > > be a bit much for them.
> > >
> > > > And then there is Crime which society would have to confront
> and
> > how
> > > > to handle it. I doubt they would have all the soft approach
> that
> > is
> > > > the fad in western civilisation yet there is some possibility
> they
> > > > might be like the wild west.
> > >
> > > I doubt that we will see much of the wild west in Earth orbit,
> or
> > in
> > > the earliest settlements. We might well get it in the Main
> > Asteroid
> > > Belt, though. Of course, this is why the Island Two phase
would
> > make
> > > an interesting setting.
> > >
> > > This would be more _Little House on the High Frontier_ than
> > > _Tombstone in Orbit_. Have to agree that that would make for
an
> > > interesting series, though. After there are a few dozen Island
> > Ones,
> > > an orbital cop (or rescue team) show would be a possibility.
> > >
> > > My other pet project (High Frontier-wise) is a superhero
cartoon
> > for
> > > kids, with space pirates and mysterious aliens and a clear line
> > > between HumanTech (which would be ultra-hard SF) and AlienTech
> > (which
> > > would have supertech weird science stuff, like giving four
young