Juno yes, Moonrise no

"meiza" wrote in message ...

- Earth will still be the best place to be even during a huge calamity.

I'm a big booster of space settlement (I happen to prefer the Gerard O'Neill
variety), but I've always tended to shy away from the "insurance in case of
asteroid strike" argument for one simple reason: It's hard to galvanize
people into immediate action over odds that are pretty much the same for a
day 10,000 years from now as they are for next Tuesday.

But I think you've provided another good reason for resisting the temptation
to use this argument.

I think it's as simple as this: One either believes we have a destiny beyond
this one, tiny little planet or one doesn't. If one doesn't, no arguments
about limits to growth or surviving an asteroid are going to sway.

--


Regards,
Mike Combs
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Member of the National Non-sequitur Society. We may not make
much sense, but we do like pizza.

Mike Combs wrote:

I'm a big booster of space settlement (I happen to prefer the
Gerard O'Neill variety), but I've always tended to shy away
from the "insurance in case of asteroid strike" argument for
one simple reason: It's hard to galvanize people into
immediate action over odds that are pretty much the same for a
day 10,000 years from now as they are for next Tuesday.

But I think you've provided another good reason for resisting
the temptation to use this argument.

I think it's as simple as this: One either believes we have a
destiny beyond this one, tiny little planet or one doesn't.
If one doesn't, no arguments about limits to growth or
surviving an asteroid are going to sway.

The real problem with the "all eggs in one basket" argument is
that it is not a stand alone argument.

There are two possibilities:

Either

a) extraterrestrial settlements are wealth generators

If this is the case one already has the most powerful argument in
favor of space settlements. There is no need to invoke any
"survival" argument.

b.) extraterrestrial settlements are wealth consumers

If this is the case then extraterrestrial settlements provide no
"insurance" since they cannot survive any disaster that overtakes
the source of wealth that keeps them in existence.

Attempts to invoke the "survival" argument are either naive or
dishonest. Naive if the proponent is unaware that possibility a)
above is an unstated premise of the argument; dishonest if the
proponent is aware that possibility a) above is an unstated
premise of the argument but hopes to avoid the necessity of
demonstrating it.

In short, the "all eggs in one basket" argument is either false
or superfluous.

Jim Davis

In article , meiza wrote:

Joe Strout wrote:

But the planet-killing asteroid (all right, *civilization* killing
asteroid if you want to be picky) under discussion here is the far more
ordinary type, that number in the thousands and many of which have still
not yet been discovered.

What is the number of asteroids that make conditions on the whole earth
even half as bad as Mars (don't even mention the Moon) for even a blink
of an eye?

You still miss the point. Conditions don't need to be anywhere near
that bad to end human civilization (in its current state, anyway).

http://www.boulder.swri.edu/clark/vienngsa.html
has tables in the end part:
We're talking about a 10-15 km asteroid here that makes tsunami
waves 100 km inland, acidifies the oceans and causes a decade-long
winter. Guess what, that's still easy compared to living on Mars or
the Moon!

Yet still enough to most likely wipe out humanity, as long as Earth is
the only place we live.

Maybe. Maybe not. I'd rather a thriving multi-world civilization than
have all of human civilization depending on a few hastily stocked
bunkers.

You could build the bunkers beforehand - and there are caves.

Yes, and with enough effort, expense, and luck, it might even be enough.
Or it might not. A thriving offworld civilization, on the other hand,
is guaranteed against anything that doesn't wipe out the whole solar
system. And in the meantime, while waiting for the Big One to strike
(which may or may not happen in the next thousand years), you have a
thriving civilization instead of one turned inward, nervously stocking
food in caves.

Nobody's advocating the colonization of the underground because
of asteroid impacts / terrorists / plague though, although it would be
perfectly logical in the light of your comments.

That's mainly because colonization of the underground has nothing else
to speak for it. Colonization of space does. Ensuring the survival of
humanity is only one reason why it's important, though it is one of the
best reasons in the long term.

Colonization of any new niches on Earth is ultimately a dead end. Yes,
the oceans are vast, as is the potentially habitable volume of the
Earth's crust -- but it's still only one planet. The planet can and
will eventually be destroyed -- perhaps by the Sun billions of years
from now, and perhaps from some technological disaster mid-next century.
Keeping all your eggs in one basket is an unnecessary risk, no matter
how confident you are that the basket is strong.

Besides, my ambitions for humanity are much larger than one planet. As
far as we can tell, we're the only life in the galaxy (or at least, the
only life capable of space travel). The rest of the galaxy is just dead
rock, waiting for us to bring it life (if you'll pardon the
anthropomorphism).

Mars, pah. Human civilization will spread first to the Moon.

That's an even more inhospitable and harder-to-self-sustain place, although
it might be easier to colonize, so my point holds.

Rather, your point remains as irrelevant.

,------------------------------------------------------------------.
| Joseph J. Strout Check out the Mac Web Directory: |
| http://www.macwebdir.com |
`------------------------------------------------------------------'

In article ,
"Mike Combs" wrote:

"meiza" wrote in message ...

- Earth will still be the best place to be even during a huge calamity.

I'm a big booster of space settlement (I happen to prefer the Gerard O'Neill
variety), but I've always tended to shy away from the "insurance in case of
asteroid strike" argument for one simple reason: It's hard to galvanize
people into immediate action over odds that are pretty much the same for a
day 10,000 years from now as they are for next Tuesday.

But I think you've provided another good reason for resisting the temptation
to use this argument.

I think it's as simple as this: One either believes we have a destiny beyond
this one, tiny little planet or one doesn't. If one doesn't, no arguments
about limits to growth or surviving an asteroid are going to sway.

Well, I agree with that. I wasn't arguing that survival of the species
is a good reason for *convincing* people that space settlement is
important. I was only arguing that it is, in fact, a good reason for
doing it. People are amazingly short-sighted, and left to their own
choices, most of them wouldn't buy car or home insurance -- but that
doesn't mean that car or home insurance is a bad idea. It just means
that people are short-sighted.

Best,
- Joe

,------------------------------------------------------------------.
| Joseph J. Strout Check out the Mac Web Directory: |
| http://www.macwebdir.com |
`------------------------------------------------------------------'

What is the number of asteroids that make conditions on the whole earth
even half as bad as Mars (don't even mention the Moon) for even a blink
of an eye?

You still miss the point. Conditions don't need to be anywhere near
that bad to end human civilization (in its current state, anyway).

Well, that includes the implicit assumption of not preparing for
the crash at all, while it assumes that you really do colonize.

Could you admit that in the case of any calamity, (besides the Sun
expanding) Earth would still be the easiest place for humans to be in
this solar system, if you just do a bit of preparing for the thing.

http://www.boulder.swri.edu/clark/vienngsa.html

Yet still enough to most likely wipe out humanity, as long as Earth is
the only place we live.

No, in the contrary, it's much easier to take that kind of punishment
than to continually live in a much more hostile environment. Most of the
civilization will be destroyed, yes, but so would it if you had small
colonies elsewhere.

You could build the bunkers beforehand - and there are caves.

Yes, and with enough effort, expense, and luck, it might even be enough.

All these apply to your space colony too - except it has to stand tougher
elements much longer.

Or it might not. A thriving offworld civilization, on the other hand,
is guaranteed against anything that doesn't wipe out the whole solar
system. And in the meantime, while waiting for the Big One to strike
(which may or may not happen in the next thousand years), you have a
thriving civilization instead of one turned inward, nervously stocking
food in caves.


I see you have used lots of adjectives that are not linked
to the original, factual points. One could reverse them:
You would also have really miserable life (bad gravity, bad air, bad
food, small circle of life, health problems because of all the previous)
in the small colonies - not to mention how miserable it gets after
"Earth is wiped". Whereas you could make it a military service to live
a few months part-time underground.

I actually like colonization as an idea - but the argument about
it being for the safety of civilization if "something" happens to Earth
is wrong-headed and needs to be stopped being repeated.

I think it's about 1) spiritual reasons and 2) resources. I also believe
we need probably pretty advanced robotic manufacturing capabilities
(robots making robots on the moon for example) to make it possible to
send over a thousand people to live sustained elsewhere than on Earth.

That's mainly because colonization of the underground has nothing else
to speak for it. Colonization of space does.

Now you're talking - there's something else!

Ensuring the survival of
humanity is only one reason why it's important, though it is one of the
best reasons in the long term.

I agree it has a minor survivability enhancement but that is not the #1
issue, at least not in the 1000 year mid term. Lets see when we have
interstellar travel..

Colonization of any new niches on Earth is ultimately a dead end. Yes,
the oceans are vast, as is the potentially habitable volume of the
Earth's crust -- but it's still only one planet.

Yes. Even now, some metals are running a bit scarce and new mines
with lower yield are being opened.

The planet can and
will eventually be destroyed -- perhaps by the Sun billions of years
from now, and perhaps from some technological disaster mid-next century.
Keeping all your eggs in one basket is an unnecessary risk, no matter
how confident you are that the basket is strong.

Yes, but now you're talking really far off. Current technology
can't destroy Earth to Mars-level, and there's billions of years
to the problem with the Sun.

Besides, my ambitions for humanity are much larger than one planet. As
far as we can tell, we're the only life in the galaxy (or at least, the
only life capable of space travel). The rest of the galaxy is just dead
rock, waiting for us to bring it life (if you'll pardon the
anthropomorphism).

I actually guesstimate there is life on multiple planets in our galaxy.
A hundred million stars and lots of them are metallic and have planets
- there's gotta be better places than Mars out there! A magnetic
field, better temperature, an atmosphere.

--
meiza

On 14 Jun 2005 19:05:53 GMT, in a place far, far away, Jim Davis
made the phosphor on my monitor glow in such
a way as to indicate that:

The real problem with the "all eggs in one basket" argument is
that it is not a stand alone argument.

There are two possibilities:

Either

a) extraterrestrial settlements are wealth generators

If this is the case one already has the most powerful argument in
favor of space settlements. There is no need to invoke any
"survival" argument.

Not if the generation of wealth doesn't accrue to the investor
himself...

"Alex Terrell" wrote in message
oups.com...
You raise good points, though you would still need
distribution, or long term storage, if you want to rely
on solar in northern cities. For these reasons it remains
to be seen which technology will prove the most
competitive.

True, but, say twenty years, might be a long enough time for such
solutions to become a necessity, and then become entrenched. There are
many potential low cost energy storage and distribution possibilities
out there, and I very much doubt we will be depending on solar alone.
Demand is also more variable than supply, currently we use, (and pay
for), an over sized grid to average this at the local level, and that is
where distribution really costs. So I doubt SPS is much better off in
this regard, the local supply/demand variation is large either way. The
infrastructure may already exist, but must further be maintained and the
opportunity costs must still be paid for.

I suspect SPS will not become economic for Earth until after hands on
R&D has first been covered by a space based market. This would I think
be the more likely evolutionary path, which is all the more reason to
get into space sooner so that such development work can be started.

Over the long run, if (once) it proves possible to make
low cost, thin film solar sheets, the trade-off will be
against "mounting" these in an Earth gravity, and
providing storage, or providing the large scale
infrastrucutre to support rectennas (most of the
infrastrucure exists now).

There is an argument that the looming energy crisis is in part caused by
a centralised/monopolistic approach to energy which is very slow to
innovate and adapt - long lead times. If one could invoke a distributed
highly competitive and innovative consumer whiteware type solution to
energy production then the economics might come out very differently.

There is perhaps around a threefold distribution cost for electricity,
(less for larger users and denser populations, etcetera). Compared to
perhaps around a base twofold distribution factor for hydrocarbons.
Bypassing electricity distribution costs, which are relatively fixed,
may be as significant at the retail end as reducing base energy costs.

I expect to see far greater innovation at the small scale end of the
market than at the large scale end. In fast changing times this may
cause something of a snow ball effect. I expect large scale low cost
energy production like SPS will catch up in the long term as the market
settles down again. It is going to be very interesting to see how this
all works out.

Pete.

Mike Combs wrote:

I'm a big booster of space settlement (I happen to prefer the Gerard O'Neill
variety), but I've always tended to shy away from the "insurance in case of
asteroid strike" argument for one simple reason: It's hard to galvanize
people into immediate action over odds that are pretty much the same for a
day 10,000 years from now as they are for next Tuesday.

Two comments:

(1) You don't need to build space settlements to protect the earth
from asteroid strikes.

(2) Even after an asteroid strike, Earth is still more hospitable
than anywhere else in the solar system.

Paul

"Jim Davis" wrote in message
. 247.90...

In short, the "all eggs in one basket" argument is either false
or superfluous.

Great analysis.

--


Regards,
Mike Combs
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Member of the National Non-sequitur Society. We may not make
much sense, but we do like pizza.