Final destinations in space

I just finished Robert Sawyer's _Mindscan_: cool book, which reinforces my
notions about uploaded humans as the most logical interstellar explorers.
But another feature of the book is a very upscale lunar colony for the
mortal husks that the uploaded copies leave behind. Interesting, and creepy
too.

Which occasioned me to think again: For all the back&forth about manned
exploration, I'm not hearing much (here or anywhere else) about permanent
human habitation off this planet. That is to say, you leave the earth, and
you don't come back, ever. Hopefully, you live for a while in space before
you qualify as recyclable organic material.

The key, I suppose, is the linkage between motivation and finance. There
was a gap of more than seventy years between the European discovery of the
New World and the first permanent Settlement on the North American continent
proper. Greed and religion featured prominently in future developments.

Is any such motivation in sight for off-world habitation by humans and other
species? We've burned up nearly four decades since Apollo 11, and still
there is no St. Augustine or Massachusetts Bay Colony anywhere off-planet.
Granted, it costs a bundle to reach escape velocity by whatever means you
choose, and destination development is a long way from cheap. What sort of
motivation is finally going to make the capital start to flow?

I'll say this, and you can take it as gospel: If someone had offered me,
when I was a single man in my twenties or thirties, a chance to be on a team
that settled the moon or an asteroid, I would have signed on immediately.
Even now, as I stand between retirement and dotage, if I had a shot at
talking my wife into settling permanently on the moon, I'd make every
persuasive argument possible. Eventually 1/6th gee would be a blessing to
our aging bones -- but I don't have tens of millions of dollars lying about
to pay our one-way fare.


Jim McCauley

On Mon, 23 Jan 2006 16:35:22 -0700, "Jim McCauley" jematfriidotnet
wrote:

I just finished Robert Sawyer's _Mindscan_: cool book, which reinforces my
notions about uploaded humans as the most logical interstellar explorers.

Assuming it is ever possible to upload humans.

Which occasioned me to think again: For all the back&forth about manned
exploration, I'm not hearing much (here or anywhere else) about permanent
human habitation off this planet.

I agree. Maybe it's because the prospect of the Singularity makes
such speculations moot. OTOH, if it turns out that uploaded humans,
an artificial successor intelligence to humans, bionanotech or
whatever all turn out to be impractical, then permanent human
habitation is going to be the means of getting almost anything
meaningful done off-earth.

The key, I suppose, is the linkage between motivation and finance.

Motivation and finance are there already. The key is technology that
will make the finance adequate to satisfy the motivation.

There
was a gap of more than seventy years between the European discovery of the
New World and the first permanent Settlement on the North American continent
proper.

Over 500 years.

Is any such motivation in sight for off-world habitation by humans and other
species?

A number are possible, military advantage being perhaps the most
persuasive. It is simply a fact that a significant space-faring
civilization would be able to do whatever it wanted with the obsolete
nations of the earth.

We've burned up nearly four decades since Apollo 11, and still
there is no St. Augustine or Massachusetts Bay Colony anywhere off-planet.

The precedent set by China after the Cheng Ho expeditions in the 15th
C certainly gives one pause. IMO posterity will likely look at our
society's priorities today (whether it's taking the $T that could have
begun the human expansion into the galaxy and using it instead to make
enemies in Iraq, to stop people from using fairly harmless drugs, to
reward rent seeking behavior, or to prolong the terminal sufferings of
the elderly and the vegetative states of the brain-dead) and shake its
head in disbelief.

Granted, it costs a bundle to reach escape velocity by whatever means you
choose, and destination development is a long way from cheap. What sort of
motivation is finally going to make the capital start to flow?

My guess: Chinese nationalism. Another possibility: the need to
quarantine dangerous bionanotech experiments.

-- Roy L

wrote:

It is simply a fact that a significant space-faring
civilization would be able to do whatever it wanted with the obsolete
nations of the earth.

It is simply a fact that this "high ground" analogy -- bogus when
Heinlein & Laning peddled it in Collier's in 1947, bogus during
post-Sputnik alarums, bogus for SDI/High Frontier, bogus today -- has
an endless, zombie-like vitality. Space is strategically valuable only
for military surveillance and communications -- exactly the niche
where civilian satellites have been economically viable, and for the
same reasons.

If you're talking about neo-Mahan "control of the space lanes," Mahan
was writing in a context of 400 years when access to overseas
resources, markets and colonies had been economically important to
great powers. All space activity for the foreseeable future doesn't
add up to a fraction of that for any contemporary power.

If you're talking about space hardware for use against ground targets,
you need much, *much* cheaper access to space before you can put up
either significant munitions or power supplies adequate for
directed-energy weapons. And the same features of orbit that make it
"high ground" make it a highly visible and vulnerable place to be,
with no reverse slope and a fresh shot at your hardware every 90
minutes.

If you're talking about destructive (rather than jamming) conflict
between space hardware... think "debris." As I've said before, I'm
sure our descendants -- locked away from space by a million new chunks
in orbit -- will admire the bloodless resolution of the
Tehran-Pyongyang-Caracas Space Crisis of 2017.

But, of course, if you're talking about Space Power as a way of
fulfilling zoomy dogfight fantasies... of getting a piece of a DoD
budget 25x larger than NASA's... or as a scary pretext for *selling*
space, along with the killer asteroid, the lunar PGM/He3 boom, and
escape from the imminent gray goo catastrophe... you go, boy.

On Tue, 24 Jan 2006 19:04:13 GMT, Monte Davis
wrote:

wrote:

It is simply a fact that a significant space-faring
civilization would be able to do whatever it wanted with the obsolete
nations of the earth.

It is simply a fact that this "high ground" analogy -- bogus when
Heinlein & Laning peddled it in Collier's in 1947, bogus during
post-Sputnik alarums, bogus for SDI/High Frontier, bogus today -- has
an endless, zombie-like vitality.

It is not bogus in the least. If anything, the strategic advantage of
a space-faring civilization over terrestrial ones would be even
greater than a terrestrial high ground advantage.

Space is strategically valuable only
for military surveillance and communications -- exactly the niche
where civilian satellites have been economically viable, and for the
same reasons.

But that's only now. I was talking about a space-faring civilization.

If you're talking about neo-Mahan "control of the space lanes," Mahan
was writing in a context of 400 years when access to overseas
resources, markets and colonies had been economically important to
great powers. All space activity for the foreseeable future doesn't
add up to a fraction of that for any contemporary power.

I don't think very much of the future is foreseeable.

If you're talking about space hardware for use against ground targets,
you need much, *much* cheaper access to space before you can put up
either significant munitions or power supplies adequate for
directed-energy weapons.

I'm talking about a space-faring civilization, with thousands of
people living there permanently.

And the same features of orbit that make it
"high ground" make it a highly visible and vulnerable place to be,
with no reverse slope and a fresh shot at your hardware every 90
minutes.

Consider a different orbit: behind the moon.

If you're talking about destructive (rather than jamming) conflict
between space hardware... think "debris." As I've said before, I'm
sure our descendants -- locked away from space by a million new chunks
in orbit -- will admire the bloodless resolution of the
Tehran-Pyongyang-Caracas Space Crisis of 2017.

Such a quarantine of earth might be quite welcome to a space-faring
civilization that was no longer affiliated with any terrestrial one.

But, of course, if you're talking about Space Power as a way of
fulfilling zoomy dogfight fantasies... of getting a piece of a DoD
budget 25x larger than NASA's... or as a scary pretext for *selling*
space, along with the killer asteroid, the lunar PGM/He3 boom, and
escape from the imminent gray goo catastrophe... you go, boy.

But of course ;^)

-- Roy L

wrote:

I'm talking about a space-faring civilization, with thousands of
people living there permanently.

OK, we're talking different time scales. The initial poster asked "Is
any such motivation in sight for off-world habitation by humans and
other species?" You're talking on a time scale of many decades at
least (absent unforeseeable basic-science breakthroughs); I was taking
"motivation" to mean "something that would shape a nation's spending
choices in 2006."

I must say, I find it hard to imagine a scenario in which one
"civilization" gets that kind of incommensurable technological lead
over "the obsolete nations of the earth." Let's see... Secretary of
the Admiralty (and Royal Society fellow) Samuel Pepys says, "Let's
fund that promising Isaac Newton, because his work will lead to
nuclear warheads and submarines that will put Admiral De Ruyter and
Louis XIV in their place."

On Thu, 26 Jan 2006 15:12:47 GMT, Monte Davis
wrote:

wrote:

I'm talking about a space-faring civilization, with thousands of
people living there permanently.

OK, we're talking different time scales. The initial poster asked "Is
any such motivation in sight for off-world habitation by humans and
other species?" You're talking on a time scale of many decades at
least (absent unforeseeable basic-science breakthroughs); I was taking
"motivation" to mean "something that would shape a nation's spending
choices in 2006."

Some nations have longer planning horizons than others.

I must say, I find it hard to imagine a scenario in which one
"civilization" gets that kind of incommensurable technological lead
over "the obsolete nations of the earth."

Uh, it happened, just over 60 years ago.

Anyway, it's not so much a question of technology as investment in
infrastructure. Consider the Vikings reaching North America. Their
technology was not really superior, in fact it was in many ways
inferior to contemporaneous Chinese naval technology. But if they had
had the vision to make the necessary investment in infrastructure,
they could have established permanent settlements in North America,
with incalculable consequences for the world. Likewise with the
Chinese after the Cheng Ho expeditions.

-- Roy L

On Tue, 24 Jan 2006 15:48:36 GMT, wrote:

It is simply a fact that a significant space-faring
civilization would be able to do whatever it wanted with the obsolete
nations of the earth.

Only if they had completely ceded control of orbital space; not very
likely in the face of any significant developments in the field of
offensive space capability.
--
Stephen Horgan

"intelligent people will tend to overvalue intelligence"

http://www.horgan.co.uk/

On Tue, 24 Jan 2006 19:51:47 GMT, Stephen Horgan
wrote:

On Tue, 24 Jan 2006 15:48:36 GMT, wrote:

It is simply a fact that a significant space-faring
civilization would be able to do whatever it wanted with the obsolete
nations of the earth.

Only if they had completely ceded control of orbital space; not very
likely in the face of any significant developments in the field of
offensive space capability.

A space-faring civilization would have no trouble eliminating any
plausible earth-orbital defenses. Just put a small comet into a
retrograde low earth orbit, and watch the fireworks.

-- Roy L

On Wed, 25 Jan 2006 07:36:16 GMT, wrote:

On Tue, 24 Jan 2006 19:51:47 GMT, Stephen Horgan
wrote:

On Tue, 24 Jan 2006 15:48:36 GMT, wrote:

It is simply a fact that a significant space-faring
civilization would be able to do whatever it wanted with the obsolete
nations of the earth.

Only if they had completely ceded control of orbital space; not very
likely in the face of any significant developments in the field of
offensive space capability.

A space-faring civilization would have no trouble eliminating any
plausible earth-orbital defenses. Just put a small comet into a
retrograde low earth orbit, and watch the fireworks.

As if all of the nations of the earth would sit and watch while anyone
engaged in an assault that would indiscriminately eliminate orbital
infrastructure. Especially if such a plan would take months or years
to execute. A spacegoing military buildup backed by an entire planet's
industrial base would be the most likely consequence.

Anyway, a comet versus a swarm of high-yield nukes or massed and
sustained megawatt laser fire? Likewise for any assaulting space
forces. It would be a war, not an annexation.

--
Stephen Horgan

"intelligent people will tend to overvalue intelligence"

http://www.horgan.co.uk/

On Sat, 28 Jan 2006 14:32:43 GMT, Stephen Horgan
wrote:

On Wed, 25 Jan 2006 07:36:16 GMT, wrote:

On Tue, 24 Jan 2006 19:51:47 GMT, Stephen Horgan
wrote:

On Tue, 24 Jan 2006 15:48:36 GMT, wrote:

It is simply a fact that a significant space-faring
civilization would be able to do whatever it wanted with the obsolete
nations of the earth.

Only if they had completely ceded control of orbital space; not very
likely in the face of any significant developments in the field of
offensive space capability.

A space-faring civilization would have no trouble eliminating any
plausible earth-orbital defenses. Just put a small comet into a
retrograde low earth orbit, and watch the fireworks.

As if all of the nations of the earth would sit and watch while anyone
engaged in an assault that would indiscriminately eliminate orbital
infrastructure. Especially if such a plan would take months or years
to execute. A spacegoing military buildup backed by an entire planet's
industrial base would be the most likely consequence.

What could they do?

Anyway, a comet versus a swarm of high-yield nukes or massed and
sustained megawatt laser fire?

Comet wins.

Likewise for any assaulting space
forces. It would be a war, not an annexation.

Spears vs Gatling guns.

-- Roy L