Questions about "The High Frontier"

Jim Davis wrote:
Hop David wrote:


H being affected by T does not mean H T.


Yes, it pretty much does.

Sorry, your word doesn't cut it. To convince me you will have to provide
a more rigorous analysis than the avalanche of asterisks, exclamation
points, hyperbole and straw man arguments you've been pouring out in
this thread.



If constructing
housing requires 100 trips from earth and it saves a 1000 trips
for worker commutes, then it's possible T H.


But there's no question of that. A space community will be
relatively small. As such (just like any comparably sized community
here on earth) it will need *continuous* and *low cost* access to
goods and services that can only be had from earth.

This is very vague. Enumerate these goods and services. You must also
show that work crews working two weeks on and two weeks off (or
whatever) won't need the same goods and services while they're in space.

Hop

Jim Davis wrote:

John Schilling wrote:


What if the habitat is *not* adjacent to (or integrated with)
the actual work site? (Sort of like, you know, here on earth.)
Is this something we can be sure of?



Pretty much, yes.


Really? How would you know?


There's not much point in building a habitat
terribly far away from where its inhabitants will be working,
or vice versa.


Unless forced to by circumstances. As often occurs. Fishermen do
not buy or build homes anywhere near where they work. Neither do
oil rig workers. Neither do many in the construction trades.
Neither do many in the sales field. Neither do many engineering
consultants. Etc, etc, etc.

As usual you choose scenarios where T H.

If you want impressive looking, but irrelevant lists, you could
transcribe a phone book for us.


I mean, really, how often do you skip work just because you'd
rather be home?


You know, John, in the real world that sort of thing *does* happen.
But we're talking space here, I know.

So your solution to absenteeism is confining employees to the workplace?



And I'm rather dubious of the management philosophy
that says it's best not to let your workers go home at night
because they might not show up the next morning.


Sure. Any management philosophy that lets workers live on earth has
to be seriously flawed.

If orbital housing existed, it would be the worker's choice whether he
wanted to commute or not. Your managers that won't let workers commute
if they so chose is just another in a long line of strawmen you've
conjured up.


Strangely, one of the things that happens here on Earth is that
real people really do move to small, remote communities of ten
thousand or so.


Small, remote communities from which they can come and go as they
please.

Again, this penal colony where workers aren't free to come and go is
your invention.

Hop

Pat Flannery schrieb:
That book - 'The High Frontier' screwed up every bit as many minds as
did Rousseau's philosophical works, Ayn Rand's political works, Admiral
Mayhan's naval strategy works, Karl Marx's historical works, and Adam
Smith's economic works.
In each case you had a individual who had no real-world experience with
what they were writing about putting forth the one great
all-encompassing theory of what the truth was and what the future held,
completely untainted by practicality, but rather existing in a
dream-like conception pure as a virgin's idea of the prince she will
someday marry, when he finally, inevitably, shows up...as fate has decreed.

Apparently you never read Adam Smith.

mawa

Hop David wrote:
The human hand is an amazing tool. At first M.C. Escher thought his
hands wouldn't be able to meet the demands of his circle limit prints.
But then he discovered with eyesight enhanced by magnifying lens, his
hands were capable of extremely sure, minute movements. Besides doing
fine minute work hands can also help swing a sledge hammer. Closing my
eyes, I move my hands about and can still tell what position they're in.
They send back other information like pressure against the skin,
temperature, texture, etc.

Again, the comparison isn't quite fair. This isn't a contest between a
robot hand and a human hand, it's a contest between a robot hand and a
human hand _in a spacesuit glove_. Current spacesuit gloves are
extremely cumbersome. You can posit enhanced spacesuit design, of
course, but if you do that then you have to also allow for enhanced
robotic hand design at the same time. A lot of work is being done in
that field anyway, for a myriad of other reasons.

And again, a robot hand may be inferior to a human hand in terms of
dexterity, but in terms of cost it's a lot cheaper. That's my main point
here. The tool arm on a MER is vastly inferior to a human arm in terms
of physical capabilities, but the cost of putting a couple of human arms
on Mars to do geological work is many orders of magnitude greater.

Besides hands, the semi circular canals give information it'd be hard
for a teleoperated robot to relay. I can move my head side to side and
the world doesn't move from side to side - but television cameras
mounted on a teleoperated robot likely won't have some of the image
processing abilities of the visual cortex.

On the other hand, the television cameras mounted on a teleoperated
robot can be made _better_ than human vision in a lot of ways. You can
mount them anywhere, give them extreme zoom functions, etc.

And it's much cheaper than human eyes.

The sense of smell is very
useful (the sense of smell could be used by a mechanic working in a
pressurized workshop in space). There are many aspects of actual
physical presence that would be hard to replicate with telepresence.

I find it hard to believe that the sense of smell would be so useful in
space construction that it'd justify the cost of putting humans up
there. What _Earthside_ manufacturing processes depend on the sense of
smell so heavily? Can you give any specific examples that might be
applicable to space-based manufacturing? I honestly can't think of any.

Many tasks are difficult with actual physical presence. Doing the tasks
even with extremely good waldos would be harder. Waldos with a 2 second
light delay would be even more difficult.

I expect teleoperated robots to be very useful in space. But they won't
be a human substitute in all situations for a long time to come.

It's possible to come up with situations where humans are still needed
in space, sure. But I remain unconvinced that one of those situations
will be a large-scale lunar mining and manufacturing operation.

"Jim Davis" wrote

It will be
millenia before the space community can provide that set itself.

Oh, please. It might be in excess of a century before space settlements
stop needing something from Earth besides works of art, but saying millennia
is grotesque over-statement.

--


Regards,
Mike Combs
----------------------------------------------------------------------
By all that you hold dear on this good Earth
I bid you stand, Men of the West!
Aragorn

"Jim Davis" wrote

All communities here on earth have their undesirables. But in space
no doubt that will all change.

There was a sf story in the old Omni magazine called, "Down and Out on
El-Five Prime".

Sure. Any management philosophy that lets workers live on earth has
to be seriously flawed. Exiling them permanently in space is
obviously much more humane and enlightened. I hear the Soviets
thought of Siberia in much the same terms.

Who said anything about permanent exile? All that anybody has ever talked
about was sufficiently-pleasant living conditions and the possibility of a
family life such that a person might consider something in space a home.
Having a home in space wouldn't preclude visiting Earth.

And curiously, they always find these communities on earth. And
these communities are always in environments exactly like
environments which mankind has lived in since the stone age. Funny
that.

If your logic is that you can prove a thing will never happen because nobody
can point to it already occurring, then there's no room in your world view
for anything new ever happening. Granted, space settlement would be a new
thing. Nobody's ever before decided to make a home for themselves beyond
the Earth. Does that mean they never will?

Precedents are helpful for establishing that a certain thing is likely or
probable, but sometimes things happen which are unprecedented. Everything
had to happen for the first time.

--


Regards,
Mike Combs
----------------------------------------------------------------------
By all that you hold dear on this good Earth
I bid you stand, Men of the West!
Aragorn

"Pat Flannery" wrote in message
...

'God hath delivered him into my hands.'

Oh, please, this dinky little debate isn't that big a deal.

Coal mining isn't exactly done by people with picks anymore,

To successfully argue that it's not being done by men with picks is a far
cry from establishing that it can be done with no men on site.

You elsewhere argued that we send people down into coal mines here on Earth
because down here life-supports requirements are less. I would argue that
in addition to that, we don't send down robots because none can be produced
which are as capable as the human miners.

--


Regards,
Mike Combs
----------------------------------------------------------------------
By all that you hold dear on this good Earth
I bid you stand, Men of the West!
Aragorn

:: The 21st Century reality? Honda is justifiably proud of a robot that
:: can actually walk. It can even go up stairs! Can you ask it to go
:: upstairs and fetch your glasses? Well, no.

: Erik Max Francis
: Well ... you can _ask_ ... :-)

Heh! And talk to walls, even!

--


Regards,
Mike Combs
----------------------------------------------------------------------
By all that you hold dear on this good Earth
I bid you stand, Men of the West!
Aragorn

"Pat Flannery" wrote in message
...

I assume that when I'm talking about mining robots, everyone thinks they
are supposed to be like something out of 'Magnus, Robot
Fighter'...anthropomorphic robots riding around in the control seats of a
mining machine.
That's not the case at all...the mining machine itself is a robot, that
moves on treads or wheels, and can range in size from a few inches overall
to a monster the size of one of the giant tunnel boring machines that cut
out the Chunnel - hundreds of feet in length.

Your point is perfectly valid. But it does nothing to establish that any
time in the next quarter century we'll be able to run a mine on the moon or
on an asteroid with no human workers on-site.

--


Regards,
Mike Combs
----------------------------------------------------------------------
By all that you hold dear on this good Earth
I bid you stand, Men of the West!
Aragorn

"Matthias Warkus" wrote in message
...
Pat Flannery schrieb:
That book - 'The High Frontier' screwed up every bit as many minds as did
Rousseau's philosophical works, Ayn Rand's political works, Admiral
Mayhan's naval strategy works, Karl Marx's historical works, and Adam
Smith's economic works.
In each case you had a individual who had no real-world experience with
what they were writing about putting forth the one great all-encompassing
theory of what the truth was and what the future held, completely
untainted by practicality, but rather existing in a dream-like conception
pure as a virgin's idea of the prince she will someday marry, when he
finally, inevitably, shows up...as fate has decreed.

Apparently you never read Adam Smith.

Nor "The Case for Mars", as I fail to see how THF could be included on such
a list, and TCfM left off. At least O'Neill attempted to propose a
plausible export to balance trade and assure ROI.

--


Regards,
Mike Combs
----------------------------------------------------------------------
By all that you hold dear on this good Earth
I bid you stand, Men of the West!
Aragorn