Men and Women in Space

I certainly hope that building space colonies will someday be
inexpensive, otherwise I can't go. But I don't see that day coming
for several hundred years, though I could certainly be wrong.
Governments can only operate in the red as long as they keep making
the minimum payments. Once they miss a payment, they are cut off with
disastrous consequences. Would a bank be able to repossess a space
station that misses its payment? Who would enforce it? The Space
Marines?

Space settlements will be more expensive by many times than Earth
cities, requiring some kind of lucrative export in order for the
settlers to raise the funds just to maintain their settlement, much
less expand it or build new ones. None of the vital equipment and
material that is essential for life will last forever. It will have
to be maintained, upgraded, and even replaced. Go downtown and look
at a fifty year old office building and compare it to a brand shiny
new one. Stuff just degrades over time, and in a society with 100,000
people or less, there is not much economy of scale, so a large
portion of the tribe will have to devote time and energy to keeping
their rusty bucket afloat.

I am absolutely certain that colonies will divide, expand, and
diverge. Eventually we will make it to the Oort cloud and maybe, in
some 100,000 years or so to another star system. However I am
convinced that using space as elbow room, that is using it as a place
for excess population growth, will be perilous. The survival rate
among colonies will be less than 100%, and the more reckless and
impatient we are are putting new colonies out there, the greater risk
each faces of impending disaster. Hasty workmanship should not be
tolerated in Space settlement construction.

Don't forget Fermi's paradox: If rapid expansion in space and high
birth rates are an advantage, then where are the aliens? Either we're
the only ones, or the first ones, or the existing alien civilizations
are not expanding this fast. Millions of potentially life sustaining
stars exist in the Milky Way that are billions of years older then
Earth. Even if just 1 of those stars developed a civilization that
continued to expand at the rate we do, the Galaxy would have been
full millions of years ago. They could have just missed our star. Or
we could be the only ones. Or they could have chosen a much slower
expansion rate. Or perhaps they continued with high expansion rates
and "overgrazed" themselves to death. I suppose it's even possible
that they're hiding in Roswell, New Mexico.

Another possible approach that is kind of eerie and filled with
problems of its own is to live "forever". Put an end to reproduction,
and use future medical technology to live forever. Augment the brains
so that the people's memory can accommodate centuries of experience.
Theoretically, you would have wiser people and would not have to
train new people. Deaths by accident and such could be replaced by
cloning. Perhaps you could even link everyone's memory wirelessly so
that everyone would know everything equally well. Creepy. Ugh!

Doug

On Jun 23, 2006, at 5:28 PM, Omar E. Vega wrote: