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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

"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.

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

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

"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.

wrote in message
...
In sci.physics "Giga" "Giga" just(removetheseandaddmatthe
wrote:

wrote in message
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In sci.physics "Giga" "Giga" just(removetheseandaddmatthe
wrote:

wrote in message
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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%.