Sedna, space probes?, colonies? what's next?

Dez Akin wrote:
"Mike Combs" wrote in message ...
"Marvin" wrote in message
...

You are advocating *SOLAR* power, out that far?

snip

You dont need large mirrors, you need un-be-fooking-lievably giganic
hugenourmous mudderfookahs of mirrors.

All very true. But in 0-G, the mirrors needn't be anything more substantial
than aluminized mylar stretched over bailing wire.

Gerard O'Neill got curious how far a space habitat could range from the sun
simply by increasing mirror size. He decided a good stopping point was when
the mirror came to mass as much as the rest of the habitat. The calculation
came out as 10x the distance of Pluto.

I just read that Sedna is currently about 3x the distance of Pluto (yes, I
know, it gets out a lot farther).

Theres nothing wrong with nuclear. By the time we start considering
space habitats this far out, nuclear fusion might even be viable, but
we can build molten salt fission plants now for fueling a huge colony
for at least a couple of centuries.

Yes, but you can't build a huge colony even in Earth or Moon orbit -
never mind somewhere far away - nor move it as things stand. And the
cause for that is launch costs, something that is not noticably helped
by nuclear reactors.

--
Sander

+++ Out of cheese error +++