SETI again

On Jul 28, 2006, at 8:39 AM, Combs, Mike wrote:

> Also, you seem to assume that the home civilization will need to fund
> the colonization effort, and then demand a return on their investment.
> I'd assume that the interstellar colonists themselves would be funding
> the effort, since they (and their children) would be the only
> conceivable beneficiaries. I think such colonization will be funded by
> people who for one reason or another want to leave their parent
> civilization and make a clean break from it.

Given the travel times, that's probably the only economic model that
can work, and that would require high-quality spaceships that can be
built at low prices (prices=material+energy+labor+time). Sailing a
few weeks across the ocean on a wooden ship would be comparatively
easy and forgiving compared to setting off on a "home-made" world for
several generations.

Not that it won't happen, but construction quality standards on an
interstellar spaceship would have to be extremely high compared to
anything we do on Earth. It's difficult to imagine a group of
political refugees building a ship fit enough to go to Tau Ceti or
someplace, when they could just build one strong enough to orbit
right here in our solar system. Few of these political "Utopias"
would be wealthy enough to spawn new colonies to diffuse outward.

Of course I'm thinking shorter term. It's not possible and perhaps
not very constructive to try to imagine what it will be like in
thousands of years. Fun, maybe, but not very constructive.

doug