"Rockets not carrying fuel" and the space tower.

On Fri, 1 Apr 2005 18:49:40 -0700, Bryan Derksen wrote
(in article ):

On Tue, 29 Mar 2005 21:21:18 -0700, "N:dlzc D:aol T:com \(dlzc\)" N:
dlzc1 D:cox wrote:
Dear Mike Rhino:
Would hiding inside an asteroid protect you
from those?

Who wants to live as a mole? How many generations will you hide?

If the alternative is dying I think I'd rather make do with a cave.
With the right lighting and decor it could probably be made quite
pleasant; many people spend large portions of their lives indoors
already without going nuts about it. And if it's a multi-generation
thing the kids will grow up thinking it's perfectly normal to live
underground.

A quick survey would have to be made of all the available mine sites in the
country. But I would guess... that ah, dwelling space for several hundred
thousands of our people could easily be provided.

A computer could be set and programmed to accept factors from youth, health,
sexual fertility, intelligence, and a cross section of necessary skills. Of
course it would be absolutely vital that our top government and military men
be included to foster and impart the required principles of leadership and
tradition.

Naturally, they would breed prodigiously, eh? There would be much time, and
little to do. But ah with the proper breeding techniques and a ratio of say,
ten females to each male, I would guess that they could then work their way
back to the present gross national product within say, twenty years.

You might ask: wouldn't that necessitate the abandonment of the so called
monogamous sexual relationship, I mean, as far as men were concerned?

Regrettably, yes. But it is, you know, a sacrifice required for the future of
the human race. I hasten to add that since each man will be required to do
prodigious... service along these lines, the women will have to be selected
for their sexual characteristics which will have to be of a highly
stimulating nature.

Dear David M. Palmer:

"David M. Palmer" wrote in message
y.net...
On Fri, 1 Apr 2005 18:49:40 -0700, Bryan Derksen wrote
(in article ):

On Tue, 29 Mar 2005 21:21:18 -0700, "N:dlzc D:aol T:com
\(dlzc\)" N:
dlzc1 D:cox wrote:
Dear Mike Rhino:
Would hiding inside an asteroid protect you
from those?

Who wants to live as a mole? How many generations will you
hide?

If the alternative is dying I think I'd rather make do with a
cave.
With the right lighting and decor it could probably be made
quite
pleasant; many people spend large portions of their lives
indoors
already without going nuts about it. And if it's a
multi-generation
thing the kids will grow up thinking it's perfectly normal to
live
underground.

A quick survey would have to be made of all the available mine
sites in the
country. But I would guess... that ah, dwelling space for
several hundred
thousands of our people could easily be provided.

A computer could be set and programmed to accept factors from
youth, health,
sexual fertility, intelligence, and a cross section of
necessary skills. Of
course it would be absolutely vital that our top government and
military men
be included to foster and impart the required principles of
leadership and
tradition.

Naturally, they would breed prodigiously, eh? There would be
much time, and
little to do. But ah with the proper breeding techniques and a
ratio of say,
ten females to each male, I would guess that they could then
work their way
back to the present gross national product within say, twenty
years.

You might ask: wouldn't that necessitate the abandonment of the
so called
monogamous sexual relationship, I mean, as far as men were
concerned?

Regrettably, yes. But it is, you know, a sacrifice required for
the future of
the human race. I hasten to add that since each man will be
required to do
prodigious... service along these lines, the women will have to
be selected
for their sexual characteristics which will have to be of a
highly
stimulating nature.

Been done. See "A Boy and His Dog." And put your pants back on!
;)

David A. Smith

On Sat, 2 Apr 2005 12:58:56 -0700, David M. Palmer
wrote:
A quick survey would have to be made of all the available mine sites in the
country. But I would guess... that ah, dwelling space for several hundred
thousands of our people could easily be provided.

It will also help if the "radiation pulse" phase is short but the
"toxic surface environment" phase lingers long afterward, the
underground habitats can be packed pretty tight to serve as temporary
habitats and then more spacious airtight surface dwellings moved into
afterward.

A computer could be set and programmed to accept factors from youth, health,
sexual fertility, intelligence, and a cross section of necessary skills. Of
course it would be absolutely vital that our top government and military men
be included to foster and impart the required principles of leadership and
tradition.

I wouldn't trust a computer with any decision-making other than random
"lotteries" among equally-qualified human-selected candidates,
personally. It almost goes without saying that a disproportionate
number of "important people" will arrange to be in the shelters when
disaster hits, but I suspect their importance among the survivors will
diminish soon afterward; they got to their current positions with a
skill-set that won't necessarily serve them as well under such
different circumstances, and they'll be missing most of the leverage
they had previously (unless large chunks of the rest of the population
is selected specifically to maintain that, I suppose. Details will
vary and I presume every major country or large organization will be
setting up survival habitats independantly).

Naturally, they would breed prodigiously, eh? There would be much time, and
little to do. But ah with the proper breeding techniques and a ratio of say,
ten females to each male, I would guess that they could then work their way
back to the present gross national product within say, twenty years.

The limit on growth in a difficult environment like this isn't going
to be child _bearing_ resources, it's going to be child _rearing_
resources (and also habitat infrastructure expansion capabilities,
especially if the surface remains uninhabitable in the long term). I
realize you're going for a Dr. Strangelove riff here but it just
doesn't strike me as a realistic approach. In fact, IIRC in real-world
marginal environments where survival is very hard, low-tech human
cultures tend towards polyandrous systems where several men (often
closely related) band together to support one woman and their children
with her.

h (Rand Simberg) wrote in
:

On Thu, 14 Apr 2005 15:21:11 +0000 (UTC), in a place far, far away, bz
made the phosphor on my monitor glow in
such a way as to indicate that:

This is a bizarre (and fallacious) argument. The fact that we don't
literally ship money into space doesn't make spending money on space
worthwhile, just because it creates jobs.

It does MORE than just create jobs, it creates knowledge.

Sometimes. But there are other ways of creating knowledge than
building space stuff.

Other, but not better. That is the BEST way for us to be spending our
time now.

That's an opinion (yours), not a fact.

Opinions are like noses, everyone has one. 'My' opinion is not original. I
am echoing things said by Isaac Asimov, Jerry Pournelle and others that
have spend a good deal of time and energy thinking this through.

We still have enough of the stored solar energy left to be able to
overcome gravity.

When that is gone, the consequences for the human race will be grave
unless we have made it out of the cradle and have self sustaining
colonies in various orbits around the solar system.

We will have other energy sources. This is another fallacious
argument for space activities.

That is YOUR opinion.

I tend to agree with you that we will have other energy sources, but NONE
of them have what we were given by mother earth.

It's
easy to create jobs, but it's much harder to create wealth, and if
you don't, there will soon be no money left with which to continue
job creation.


If you want to really create wealth, you go out in space and snare
some of the rocks that come whizzing by. You build a big mirror and
refine the rocks. You create 'things' in space. You remove the
pollution that comes from creating things. You clean up the earth by
moving all industry into space.

Maybe, but we haven't done much of that yet. And it's a different
argument than the one you were making before.

Not in my mind.

Your argument before was that spending money on space is good because
it creates "jobs." That's a different argument than it's good because
it creates wealth, brings in new resources and cleans up the earth.
Whether the latter argument is valid or not, it's clearly different
than the first one.

I understand what you are saying, but just because I didn't say what I was
thinking 'clearly' does not mean that was not part of why I said what I
did.


If you're going to persuade skeptics of the value of space activities,
it's important to get your arguments coherent, and valid.

Agreed.

So, how would YOU say it?

Your column of a couple of years ago reads like you are against the whole
idea of space exploration.

It reads like something written by someone angry because they were laid off
during budget cutbacks. But the anger doesn't seem to focus on where it
should be focused, the lack of vision of the american politicans and
voters, it seems to blame the whole concept of space exploration.

Perhaps I missed the nugget of gold in there somewhere.

Sorry if you got burned. I, too, have suffered because of cutbacks. But I
don't syle myself as
[quote]
Rand Simberg is a recovering aerospace engineer and a consultant in space
------------------^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
commercialization, space tourism and Internet security. He offers
occasionally biting commentary about infinity and beyond at his Web log,
Transterrestrial Musings.
[unquote]



--
bz

please pardon my infinite ignorance, the set-of-things-I-do-not-know is an
infinite set.

remove ch100-5 to avoid spam trap

On Thu, 14 Apr 2005 15:21:11 +0000 (UTC), in a place far, far away, bz
made the phosphor on my monitor glow in
such a way as to indicate that:

This is a bizarre (and fallacious) argument. The fact that we don't
literally ship money into space doesn't make spending money on space
worthwhile, just because it creates jobs.

It does MORE than just create jobs, it creates knowledge.

Sometimes. But there are other ways of creating knowledge than
building space stuff.

Other, but not better. That is the BEST way for us to be spending our time
now.

That's an opinion (yours), not a fact.

We still have enough of the stored solar energy left to be able to
overcome gravity.

When that is gone, the consequences for the human race will be grave unless
we have made it out of the cradle and have self sustaining colonies in
various orbits around the solar system.

We will have other energy sources. This is another fallacious
argument for space activities.

It's
easy to create jobs, but it's much harder to create wealth, and if you
don't, there will soon be no money left with which to continue job
creation.


If you want to really create wealth, you go out in space and snare some
of the rocks that come whizzing by. You build a big mirror and refine
the rocks. You create 'things' in space. You remove the pollution that
comes from creating things. You clean up the earth by moving all
industry into space.

Maybe, but we haven't done much of that yet. And it's a different
argument than the one you were making before.

Not in my mind.

Your argument before was that spending money on space is good because
it creates "jobs." That's a different argument than it's good because
it creates wealth, brings in new resources and cleans up the earth.
Whether the latter argument is valid or not, it's clearly different
than the first one.

If you're going to persuade skeptics of the value of space activities,
it's important to get your arguments coherent, and valid.

In article 39, bz writes:
(Rand Simberg) wrote in
t:

On Thu, 14 Apr 2005 13:23:08 +0000 (UTC), in a place far, far away, bz
made the phosphor on my monitor glow in
such a way as to indicate that:

By the way, when we 'waste money by sending it into space', we don't
waste money and it doesn't go into space.

Pieces of metal and some small amounts of other elements go into
space. The money stays here. It goes into the pockets of techicians.
It keeps millions of people employed and doing worthwhile things for
the human race HERE, on EARTH. No money goes into space.

This is a bizarre (and fallacious) argument. The fact that we don't
literally ship money into space doesn't make spending money on space
worthwhile, just because it creates jobs.

It does MORE than just create jobs, it creates knowledge.

Sometimes. But there are other ways of creating knowledge than
building space stuff.

Other, but not better. That is the BEST way for us to be spending our time
now.

Proof by emphatetic assertion?:-) I would say that, in terms of
knowledge generated per effort spent, space stuff is nowhere near the
top of the list.

Mati Meron | "When you argue with a fool,
| chances are he is doing just the same"

wrote in
:

In article 39, bz
writes:
(Rand Simberg) wrote in
:

On Thu, 14 Apr 2005 13:23:08 +0000 (UTC), in a place far, far away, bz
made the phosphor on my monitor glow in
such a way as to indicate that:

By the way, when we 'waste money by sending it into space', we don't
waste money and it doesn't go into space.

Pieces of metal and some small amounts of other elements go into
space. The money stays here. It goes into the pockets of techicians.
It keeps millions of people employed and doing worthwhile things for
the human race HERE, on EARTH. No money goes into space.

This is a bizarre (and fallacious) argument. The fact that we don't
literally ship money into space doesn't make spending money on space
worthwhile, just because it creates jobs.

It does MORE than just create jobs, it creates knowledge.


Sometimes. But there are other ways of creating knowledge than
building space stuff.

Other, but not better. That is the BEST way for us to be spending our
time now.

Proof by emphatetic assertion?:-) I would say that, in terms of
knowledge generated per effort spent, space stuff is nowhere near the
top of the list.

I don't say it is the most efficient way to generate knowledge.
I say that getting mankind 'out of the cradle and into space' is the MOST
important thing to do NOW for the long time future survival of the human
species.

The fact that we will learn a lot while doing it is a "not exactly
unintended consequence".




--
bz

please pardon my infinite ignorance, the set-of-things-I-do-not-know is an
infinite set.

remove ch100-5 to avoid spam trap

In article 39, bz writes:
wrote in
:

In article 39, bz
writes:
(Rand Simberg) wrote in
t:

On Thu, 14 Apr 2005 13:23:08 +0000 (UTC), in a place far, far away, bz
made the phosphor on my monitor glow in
such a way as to indicate that:

By the way, when we 'waste money by sending it into space', we don't
waste money and it doesn't go into space.

Pieces of metal and some small amounts of other elements go into
space. The money stays here. It goes into the pockets of techicians.
It keeps millions of people employed and doing worthwhile things for
the human race HERE, on EARTH. No money goes into space.

This is a bizarre (and fallacious) argument. The fact that we don't
literally ship money into space doesn't make spending money on space
worthwhile, just because it creates jobs.

It does MORE than just create jobs, it creates knowledge.


Sometimes. But there are other ways of creating knowledge than
building space stuff.

Other, but not better. That is the BEST way for us to be spending our
time now.

Proof by emphatetic assertion?:-) I would say that, in terms of
knowledge generated per effort spent, space stuff is nowhere near the
top of the list.

I don't say it is the most efficient way to generate knowledge.

Aha.

I say that getting mankind 'out of the cradle and into space' is the MOST
important thing to do NOW for the long time future survival of the human
species.

There is a big difference between writing "I say that this is the most
important..", and "It is the most important" (or "That is the best",
as you wrote before. In the form in which you put it now, it is
simply an opinion. Feel free to have one.

Mati Meron | "When you argue with a fool,
| chances are he is doing just the same"