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#111
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Why Colonize Space?
Wayne Throop wrote:
And space tourism will bootstrap triving "colonies" just like it has on Everest. I dunno about "colonies", but there's probably a bunch of sherpas (and others) staffing the various camps. Nope, they dont do that permanently. Of course, raising families and starting schools and universities and such, not so much. Not at all in fact. Problem is, you can commute down the mountain at vaguely reasonable intervals, so no reason to have your family colocate. Similar for LEO. Now, if costs fell enough to make a tourist destination on the moon work, Not a chance. one can imagine the permanent staff might include males, females, and eventually children. We dont even see that with the tourist traps on earth like antartica. But I'm not going to hold my breath. Just saying. See also, second episode of Futurama. "We're sailors on the moon, we carry a harpoon..." Pure silly fantasy. |
#112
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Why Colonize Space?
Damien Valentine wrote
David Johnston wrote But...it's there. If "it's there" is enough to reason to settle, then since Everest is obviously there, it should have been settled. - Actually, it has been. Actually, it hasnt. There are four or five base camps with permanent structures, staffed year-round. Nope. There's just a transitory collection of 'staff' instead. No wives and kids, let alone schools, hospitals, movie theatres etc etc etc. The highest one is less than a kilometer away from the summit. Its nothing even remotely resembling anything like a colony let alone a settlement. As far as I can tell, the only purpose behind these camps is to facilitate tourism. Corse it is, but they arent settlements. I don't know if that will change anyone's opinion, but I thought we should at least clear up this minor point. You didnt. |
#113
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Why Colonize Space?
David Johnston wrote:
On Wed, 22 Jul 2009 11:05:27 -0700, Dimensional Traveler wrote: It is not a choice _between_ feed the hungry and explore space. We can easily do both and each helps advance the other. Exploring and colonizing are two different things, you know. The colonization makes the exploration cheaper and easier, you know. -- Things I learned from MythBusters #57: Never leave a loaded gun in an exploding room. |
#114
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Why Colonize Space?
Dimensional Traveler wrote
David Johnston wrote Dimensional Traveler wrote It is not a choice _between_ feed the hungry and explore space. We can easily do both and each helps advance the other. Exploring and colonizing are two different things, you know. The colonization makes the exploration cheaper and easier, you know. Like hell it does. Its much more expensive to colonise than to do a visit. |
#115
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Why Colonize Space?
In sci.physics Dimensional Traveler wrote:
David Johnston wrote: On Wed, 22 Jul 2009 11:05:27 -0700, Dimensional Traveler wrote: It is not a choice _between_ feed the hungry and explore space. We can easily do both and each helps advance the other. Exploring and colonizing are two different things, you know. The colonization makes the exploration cheaper and easier, you know. Making it easier would require duplicating the agricultural, mining, and industrial infrastructure of Earth, and that would require terraforming another planet, which is certainly not cheaper. -- Jim Pennino Remove .spam.sux to reply. |
#116
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Why Colonize Space?
"Pat Flannery" wrote in message
... trag wrote: If you filled the space shuttle's cargo bay to capacity with something cheap--let's say lead. Launched it into orbit and magically transformed it into gold. Then brought it back. You would still lose money on the operation. Let's check this out mathematically; the total payload capacity of the Shuttle to LEO is right around 22,700 kilograms: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Shuttle A kilogram of gold costs $30,604 at the moment...so that means that 22,700 x 30,604 = $694,710,800 total gold. Lead costs $1.68 per kilo at the moment, so we have to subtract $38,023 from that, leaving us with $694,672,777 total profit on the operation. A Shuttle flight, according to NASA's reckoning (probably low) costs around $450,000,000: http://www.nasa.gov/centers/kennedy/...le_faq.html#10 So on that basis, you would indeed turn a healthy profit...but other estimates of the cost put it right up around $700,000,000, and in that case you break even at best. Pat Now do the math with something like Delta IV or Atlas V..... -- Greg Moore Ask me about lily, an RPI based CMC. |
#117
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Why Colonize Space?
Pat Flannery wrote:
trag wrote: If you filled the space shuttle's cargo bay to capacity with something cheap--let's say lead. Launched it into orbit and magically transformed it into gold. Then brought it back. You would still lose money on the operation. Let's check this out mathematically; the total payload capacity of the Shuttle to LEO is right around 22,700 kilograms: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Shuttle A kilogram of gold costs $30,604 at the moment...so that means that 22,700 x 30,604 = $694,710,800 total gold. Lead costs $1.68 per kilo at the moment, so we have to subtract $38,023 from that, leaving us with $694,672,777 total profit on the operation. A Shuttle flight, according to NASA's reckoning (probably low) costs around $450,000,000: http://www.nasa.gov/centers/kennedy/...le_faq.html#10 So on that basis, you would indeed turn a healthy profit...but other estimates of the cost put it right up around $700,000,000, and in that case you break even at best. Pat (In an effort to miss the point completely...) If you had a process for reliably turning lead into gold, the price of gold would immediately converge on the price of lead plus value added (process) costs. The Spanish had a process for turning wood ( shaped into ships ) into gold and silver, and the resulting inflation was a partial reason why English is more common than Spanish in the Carribean. All the English did was turn wood into sugar... They were alchemists, not economists. -- Les Cargill |
#118
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Why Colonize Space?
On Tue, 21 Jul 2009 13:12:12 -0700 (PDT), tadchem wrote:
On Jul 20, 5:47 pm, Immortalista wrote: Today I was reading some opinions of people who believe that there is no reason for humans to leave earth. Are all arguments for moving into space and onto other bodies in space really that weak and irrelevant? ...only to weak and irrelevant people. Only??! George Mallory (1886-1924), in answer to the question 'Why do you want to climb Mt. Everest ?', answered "Because it is there." What a non-answer! And yet, famous. A deer-in-the-headlights moment immortalized. Go figure. The development of humanity as a species is based largely on the development of individuals. An individual is not going to fund his own trip to Mars. He is going to need massive amounts of cash from the public - and a better sales pitch than I have observed here to get it. This development occurs because of people who try to do things that haven't been done before. Development occurs because people do *useful* things that haven't been done before. Motion is not progress. What was useful about going to the moon? "Oh, but there were spin-offs ..." How much better would it be to focus a bazillion dollars of effort directly into a problem that is known to need fixing? Granted there are people who are too timid to try anything new. New is not necessarily better. Version tag may only yield more difficult ways to accomplish the same thing, with a dancing paperclip thrown in for annoyance. If it ain't broke, don't fix it. They are usually adept at making excuses for their lack of temerity. I am surrounded here in Richmond, VA by people who have never even traveled more than 100 miles from their birthplace - people who still live in the home their parents lived in when they were born. How far is far enough? For how long? Does showing up for a day of work elsewhere really count as having *been* elsewhere? Is a used airline ticket evidence of having experienced the culture in the area to which one has "traveled"? Wouldn't it be nice to enjoy where one finds themselves as much as some of your neighbors apparently do? Should people in Hawaii travel to Siberia just so they can say they have traveled far? Jesus never traveled more than 200 miles from his birthplace. He changed the world. Richmond, VA may not be paradise to everyone. Maybe some stay because they aren't adventurous. Is it better to become acquainted with an adventurous terrorist who has traveled far from his birthplace for the express purpose of engaging in a new, heart-pounding, and one-off activity? One man's adventure may be another's folly, or wickedness. Everyone may not have the same measure of achievement. Dialog from the TV series "Third Rock from the Sun": Gym Teacher: Soloman, climb that rope! Tommy: What's at the top of the rope? I do not consider them my intellectual or cultural peers. What does wanderlust have to do with intellect? Are nomads necessarily brilliant? Define "culture". Is it found only in rap music? Country? Classical? Should someone in one camp point to another and say: http://www.lyricsmode.com/lyrics/s/s...philippic.html The man ain't got no culture? Maybe rap music was a bad example. I'm told it's poetry. Maybe so. I like Larry King's question about music: "Can you hum it?" -- Adam |
#119
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Why Colonize Space?
"Rod Speed" wrote in message ... Giga wrote Rod Speed wrote John Stafford wrote Quadibloc wrote Giga just(removetheseandaddmatthe end) wrote I'm sure there are other sheilding methods than just great big lumps of lead. Surely one can generate something of a magnetic field around the spaceship (loads of free electricity after all). Not all forms of radiation consist of electrically charged particles. John, but aren't the uncharged particles harmless to us? Nope, most obviously with Xrays. I'm probably confused regarding ionized and not. Just very confused. OP: How about surrounding the craft with water tanks (of ice). Water will be necessary anyway. Doesnt stop plenty of things. Maybe this is why they are considderring the moon first as staging post. Nope, they are doing that because its clearly possible to put humans there and return them to earth. To lauch the 'necessary' shielding from there, perhaps collected on the moon itself, Soorree, no such animal there. would save a lot of lauch weight from earth. You could probably just use a load of basalt? Nope, that doesnt stop everything either. It doesn't have too. |
#120
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Why Colonize Space?
wrote in message ... In sci.physics "Giga" "Giga" just(removetheseandaddmatthe wrote: wrote in message ... In sci.physics "Giga" "Giga" just(removetheseandaddmatthe wrote: wrote in message ... In sci.physics "Giga" "Giga" just(removetheseandaddmatthe wrote: "Immortalista" wrote in message ... Today I was reading some opinions of people who believe that there is no reason for humans to leave earth. Are all arguments for moving into space and onto other bodies in space really that weak and irrelevant? To say on the one hand that there is no reason and on the other 'it is too expensive' is a kind of a contradiction. This means that if it was a lot cheaper then it would be justified, and that means there must be some reason for doing it, and the persons putting forward such an argument obviously recognise that. So if it just a question of allocation of resources, rather than fundamental value of the enterprise, then fine, it should recognised as a financial discussion, not really a philosophical one. Depends on who you are talking about doing it and what you are talking about doing. Governments do lots of things for no other reason than enough people think it is a "good idea" both directly and indirectly through grants. i.e, the voters and tax payers who are going to pay for it? Yeah, through the elected representatives funding things like NASA. Yep. I noticed Obama was talking pretty positively, during campaigning at least, about his support for the space programme. I'm sure this is because most of his employers feel the same way. Commercial enterprise doesn't do anything that doesn't have a ROI. Potential and hoped for ROI at least. What's your point? There is little in life that is a sure thing, but if your business plan doesn't show a good ROI, the bean counters won't fund you. I just meant that businiess is often involving quite high risk especially if the potential is large. As a general rule, big companies abhor risk of any kind. Small start-ups tend to take lots of risks, which is one of the reasons they have such a high failure rate historically. The only government colonies have all been penal colonies. America wasn't a penal colony. I didn't say it was. It was a British colony. So was India, Malaysia, Burma (now Myanmar), Australia (partly a penal colony for some time), Hong Kong, Singapore, America (as you say yourself not a penal colony), Canada, New Zealand, South Africa etc etc etc. Umm, no, it was a British, Spainish, Dutch, French, and a couple of others colonies. New Orleans, among some others, was a penal colony. The colonies in North America were not government colonies either. They were funded by private enterprise. They were funded by the crown initially, but I suppose you could say that was not a government in the modern sense (I suggest you jump on this face saving lifeline). Umm, no. If you are talking about the British, then the Crown awarded exclusive franchises to the companies doing the settling, but not funding. The original charters are available on line. The Spainish Crown sent the army as conquerors and that was funded. It is estimated that 50,000 convicts were sent to North America by Britain to serve as slaves or endentured labor. So what was America a penal colony or not, you seem to be contradicting yourself in this struggle to warp history. America didn't exist at the time. There were many colonies from many countries in North America. Most were not penal colonies, but some of them were. Is that hard to understand? Australia had many government colonies, all penal colonies. While there were some "free settlements" in Australia, the population was predomanitly convicts and their decendants until the gold rushes of the 1850's. So this one example means all government colnies....I can't even be bothered. No, it is but one example. Name all the government funded colonies during the colonial period and don't restrict yourself to North America. What percentage were penal colonies? I really honestly cannot be b othered, why don't you, my guess less than 10%. |
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