Space Travel will save the world

Space travel technology has already given us an extension of our writ
on this world, and saved us from premature destruction. We will
survive only as long as we invest in space travel in the future.

The Past -ending warfare as we knew it.

Konstantin Tsiolkovsky a Russian math teacher worked out the
principles of rocket travel and in 1903 published his famous equation,
showing that it was possible to leave the Earth using rockets.
Goddard after reading a translation of Tsiolkovsky's paper in 1909
began working seriously on rockets.

Tsiolkovsky and Goddard stick out in my mind as part of that
generation that brought space travel to us by the middle of the 20th
century. Tsiolkovsky, a math teacher, who worked out the principles
of rocket travel. Goddard the experimentalist who worked out the
technical details of making working rockets and later advancing the
art of liquid fueled rockets. Goddard built a number of rockets for
the military during the first world war.

Goddard was famous in the 1920s - and was supported by National
Geographic Society and Lindbergh among others in his efforts to reach
beyond Earth. He inspired rocket societies around the world, not the
least being the German Rocket Society - with its members Werner
vonBraun and other notable rocket men in later years.

In 1905 as the details of rockets were being worked out, details of
the atom were being discovered - and Einstein showed us in his famous
paper of that year "Does the Inertia of a body depend on its energy
content?" that matter and energy were the same thing.

Since that time, people were thinking that perhaps someday the
tremendous energy held stationary within each and every particle of
nature might be released and used by human industry to transform life
on Earth from one of deprivation, to one of plenty.

On September 12, 1933, the famous physicist Lord Rutherford was quoted
in The Times of London as saying that anyone that looked to the atom
as a potential source of power was "talking moonshine."

The Hungarian theoretical physicist Leo Szilard who left Germany at
the start of World War 2 to live in London, later said,
"Pronouncements of experts to the effect that something cannot be done
have always irritated me." As a consequence, as Szilard stopped on a
street corner in London’s Southampton Row after reading the article
waiting for the light to change, he was thinking of how Rutherford
might be proved wrong.

As the light changed to green and he began to walk across the street,
he realized that the solution was to find an element that would be
split when struck by neutrons and would release two neutrons for every
neutron that it absorbed.

With a large enough quantity of this element a chain reaction could be
created, with two neutrons becoming four, four becoming eight, and so
on. This simple, yet profound insight, would lead to nuclear power
plants, and their more sinister cousins, atomic bombs.

On December 2, 1942 in Chicago's Stagg field, the first self-
sustaining nuclear reactor was built that realized Szilard's vision.
On July 16, 1945 - the first atomic bomb was detonated at the
Alamagordo Gunnery and Bombing Range.

The first use of the atomic bomb in warfare quickly followed - on
August 6, 1945 against the Japanese city of Hiroshima. On August 9,
1945 another bombing followed against the Japanese city of Nagasaki.
On August 15, 1945 Japan announced its surrender to the Allied Powers
and World War 2 was at an end.

Even though in the previous year 67 Japanese cities were firebombed by
the allies using conventional weapons, it was the attack and total
destruction of two cities, each by a single bomber, carrying a single
bomb, to each city that killed 140,000 people outright, and led to
cessation of hostilities.

Rocketry development paralelled the development of atomics during this
era. The German Rocket Society disbanded under the NAZIs, later had
its most prominent members working for the German Wehmacht, which
built the V1 and V2 rockets that bombed England and Belgium. The V1
was the first cruise missile. The V2 the first sub-orbital rocket.

Project Amerika was to build a two-stage rocket using the V2 as an
upper stage it would be capable of reaching across the Pacific from
Germany to bomb New York City with a German atomic bomb. The V2 was
also known as the A9 which would ride atop an A10 rocket. An A11
would carry the V2 into space as a 3 stage rocket. A12 would turn the
A11/A9 upper stages into a space transporter that would carry 10 tons
into LEO.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aggregate_series#A9

This all by 1940s.

In 1946 Convair built the MX-774 rocket for the USA derived from
captured V2s. In 1951 the USA began the Atlas program which resulted
in a space capable rocket in 1957. In 1953 the Russian space engineer
Korolov built the R1 - a copy of the V2 based on captured materials.
Later Korolov evolved his own rocket design the R7 - the first of
which was launched in August 1957, and the second flight in October
1957, orbited the first satellite Sputnik, which led to the space race
between the USA and USSR.

The ability to orbit the earth implies the ability to strike at any
part of the Earth from any other part of the Earth. The ability to
destroy a city with a single device carried aboard an orbital vehicle
means that anyone anywhere with the technical means to do so can
destroy any city anywhere on Earth.

The entire world is now the front line of a new battlefield.

Before the development of this capability, humanity fought two global
wars - calling into question our ability to usefully manage what
science and technology have given industrial humanity - not only do
humans grow and can beans with tremendous efficiency using modern
industrial techniques, but humans also are able to dispense death with
amazing efficiency as well, using the same industrial techniques;

World War 2 - 72,000,000 died - 1939-1945
World War 1 - 59,000,000 died - 1914-1918

For comparison

Vietnam War - 5,000,000 dies - 1945-1975

Atomics and rockets magnified our capacity for destruction many times
- leading to the real possibility that humans could nearly extinguish
themselves from the face of the Earth by fighting a global
thermonuclear war

World War 3 - 6,600,000,000 died - present day

The prospect of nuclear annihilation had led to a situation where all
out global war is unthinkable. This led to the Cold War and the
posturing of the world's super powers throughout the latter half of
the 20th century. Despite increasingly difficult regional and civil
wars - no all out war has been fought following the development of
rockets and atomics that gave us the capacity for nuclear
annihlation. In this sense, the development of these technologies,
the technologies that have the capacity to take us to the stars, gave
us first the impetus toward global peace.

Control of terror, and the propensity toward terror acts, along with
the exitence of loose nukes, in the modern era, will lead toward a
more inclusive, and practical system of instituting world peace. This
too will use the results of space faring technology, space
communications, space sensing, space navigation.

The Present - tying the world together

Sputnik 1 carries a radio relay that operated at 20 and 40 MHz. AT&T
and British General Post Office orbited Telstar 1 in 1962 to provide
radio relay across the Atlantic between Britain and the USA. Syncom
3 was the first satellite launched to GEO in 1964 - to televise the
Japanese 1964 summer Olympics.

Since that time hundreds of satellites have been orbited, to provide a
wide range of information services - tying our world tightly
together. We have moved from early satellites which communicated
from one point to another point - so called point to point
transmissions -to more direct broadcast satellites - that communicate
one to many receivers. Today the frontier of communications is many
to many - with systems like Teledesic and Iridium. Ultimately, the
entire Earth will be a wireless hot spot with a seamless digital
information resource available everywhere. This provides the basis
of a global economy and cooperation among all governments of the world
to achieve mutually beneficial goals.

This is the second great benefit of space travel

The Future - meaning in the modern world

Werner vonBraun began research on a 1 million lb thrust engine in 1953
- and established the feasability of such an engine by 1955. A
400,000 lb thrust engine was built and test fired by 1956 in Santa
Susana California. The largest in history up to that time. A
1,000,000 lb thrust test stand was activated in 1956. In 1957 a 1.5
million lb thrust engine - the F1 - was designed. In 1958 a contract
to build these engines was let. In January 1959 a 1 million lb
thrust engine was demonstrated. Later that year, in March, the first
F1 - a 1.5 million lb thrust engine was test fired. In June, the
first serious study of flight to the moon was begun using the results
of these tests.

In 1965 the first test firing of a fully configured S-1C first stage
was completed, also the S-II was test fired, the same month. A month
later the SIVB was test fired. A month later, all 3 stages fired -
simulating a lunar mission - was completed.

May 1966 - the first full scale Saturn V Apollo spacecraft combination
rolled out at the Cape - AS-500F pathfinder test.

Following a series of explosions with the SIVB, a fire during a ground
test in the Apollo capsule, and budgetary cutbacks due to the
escalating costs of Vietnam and entitlement programs - the moon
program was delayed and costs escalated.

Nov 1967 - SA-501 - test launch of an unpiloted Saturn V rocket
Apr 1968 - SA-502 - test launch of an unpiloted Saturn V rocket
Dec 1968 - Apollo 8 - first manned circumlunar flight

In December 1968 three astronauts orbited the Moon and broadcast
images of the Earth back to Earth in the vicinity of the moon. The
high quality photos they returned to Earth released a revolutionary
idea - of the Earth as a single place in the cosmos. With that idea,
related ideas began to surface. That the Earth - as a planet - had
common problems, that humanity - as a single people -have common
issues. With these ideas, radical concepts, that previously seemed
irrelevant to many became central - and meaningful and gave rise to a
plethora of movements and issues - not the least of which was a outre
concept called the Environmental Movement. The image of Earth from
the moon, the blue marble taken that December still emblazons the
Earth Flag - which embodies the hopes and dreams of many

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth_flag

Later, some of the astronauts that went to the moon, and returned to
Earth, were transformed by their experience. Some of these were
motivated to create institutes to further the insights they gathered
from their experience

http://www.noetic.org/


So, space travel as it has been practiced has changed the world for
the better. It has ended modern industrial warfare as practiced in
the first half of the 20th century. It has tied the world together
creating a common vehicle for commerce and politics. It has given us
insight to our place in the cosmos, and informed us and organized us
going forward.

Next, I will discuss what we can expect today of this capacity, and
where it might lead us in the future.

wrote in message
...
Space travel technology has already given us an extension of our writ
on this world, and saved us from premature destruction. We will
survive only as long as we invest in space travel in the future.

The Past -ending warfare as we knew it....

Large message/small dissertation, well worth reading
but clipped here in interest of moving on....

================================================== =

In short, Larry Niven's words (approximately): "The reason
there are no dinosaurs today is they didn't have a space
program."

I.e., we can be foolish and in a few million years, nature
can come up with something else. What Niven should have
said was not "space program" but "space settlements
program." Thus when Terra gets blasted, as is absolutely
certain to happen sooner or later, our species being solar
system oriented not Terra oriented any more, survives.

How can that happen? The outline is there in small scale
in our own history. Think of the settlement of the
American East Coast in the later 1500's and in the 1600's,
or of the railroad system development in the early to mid
1800's. And we can see lessons in that.

One of which is, the core people who participate and make
these things happen, create large fortunes which last
over generations. They risk all they have; they overwork;
some die and some succeed: I think this is in short, the
future of space settlement. *If* we can find people who
are strong enough today to do it; if we can build the
needed social and engineering organizations; if our local
governments don't strangle such society changing efforts
because they'd ...rock the boat.

I wonder if the people in this newsgroup have enough
capacity for clear original thinking; the maturity to
work things through and express them usefully, to
contribute to an objective of off-Terra settlements
with functional business ecologies, and make someone
very rich as well as improve the odds for us humans
to continue our line into the remote future? ??

Titeotwawki -- mha [sci.space.policy 2008 Jun 29]

Martha Adams wrote:

I wonder if the people in this newsgroup have enough
capacity for clear original thinking; the maturity to
work things through and express them usefully, to
contribute to an objective of off-Terra settlements
with functional business ecologies, and make someone
very rich as well as improve the odds for us humans
to continue our line into the remote future? ??

I think that the people here who are actually performing these kinds of
experiments, Martha, are rather more concerned with a functional 'LIFE
SUPPORT SYSTEM' ecologies, you know, one that cleans the air, recycles
the water, produces food and oxygen and thus keeps the astronauts alive.

You have capitalism on the brain, Martha, as do most right wing cranks.

The fundamental cost driver for space travel is the cost of momentum.
Investment in improved engines that reduce the cost of imparting
momentum, results in lower cost, more capable space travel. Since the
velocity change to travel from the surface of the Earth to anywhere in
the solar system is relatively fixed, the effect of lowering the cost
of momentum, has the impact of lowering the cost of maintaining a mass
flow rate between the surface of the Earth and points across the solar
system.

Previously I detailed some of the rich history of space travel
development by humanity. In the first decade of the 20th century, far
ranging thinkers showed how humanity could tap into the unlimited
energy of matter, and achieve travel beyond the Earth.
Experimentalists in the first half of the 20th century reduced these
ideas to practice. The result was a series of innovations that
impacted all the peoples of Earth equally - this isn't surprising
since any technology that transcends the Earth, affects everyone on
the Earth equally.

The development arc from 1950 through 1964 was;

1) small - suborbital payloads - which resulted in nuclear tipped
ICBMs
this brought about a change in warfare, and the end of modern
industrial warfare

2) moderate - orbiting ayloads - which resulted in communications
satellites
this brought about global communications, global sensing, global
navigation

3) large - cislunar payloads -which resulted in Apollo lunar travel
this brought images of Earth from space, and the concepts of
Earth as a single place
giving rise to the environmental movement, and other similar
ideas


Since 1964 development of fundamental imrprovements were halted. This
came in part due to the ambivalence the US government and other
governments have toward rocket and nuclear development. On the one
hand all pay large lip service to research and development and
exploration of frontiers, on the other hand all fear the development
of low cost ICBMs and widespread use of advanced nuclear weapons. As
a result, all schemes to halt the spread of nuclear and missile
proliferation are at odds with schemes to advance low cost high
performance rocketry and space travel. All efforts to bring peace by
the ability to threaten with invasion or destruction, are at odds with
all efforts to establish independent colonies using advanced nuclear
and rocket technology far removed from any control regime. The USA
after all started as a rogue British Colony. There is no guarantee
that our space colonies would owe any allegience toward Earth. In
fact, given the range of outre ideas that were inflamed by our brief
epoch of lunar travel - the environmental movement and the Noetic
Institute - it is quite likely that any independent space colony would
develop notions that are quite at odds with their stay at home
brethren.

The present day war on Terror is a result of our continuing struggle
with these issues. During the Cold War we attempted to maintain peace
by maintaining a large disparity of income, and a large disparity of
capability between us and our prospective enemies. The successful
attacks of 9/11 was a failure of this approach. The poorest nation on
Earth successfully attacked the richest nation on Earth - despite
these disparities. This is a wakeup call that we need to address
motivation rather than capability in ending human conflict.

One approach to ending human conflict is ending frustration of human
desire by using industrial and scientific capacity to raise human
living standards world wide. This has the following proven benefit;

1) lowering reproductive rates - high living standards lower human
reproductive rates below replacement levels
2) lowering propsensity toward violence - high living standards
lower propensity toward violence
3) tame humans arise within a generation - there are distinct
generational differences between
species that are continually frustrated and those that are
raised in a responsive
environment - those not frustrated for a generation -
undergo genetic changes
that make them tame.

So, this gives us a method to approach the human propensity toward
violence, merely raise living standards sufficiently, and maintain
them high for sufficiently long periods, and humanity will change -
much as demonstrated by the silver foxes of Russia -

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tame_Silver_Fox

This was shown to exist in humans in the 1920s and 1950s with the
creation of a generation gap. Those frustrated by war, 'spoiled'
their offspring following the war, creating a large difference in
world outlook. This spoiling of children, and creating an
epistimology for peace, is one approach to creating and maintaining
world peace in the modern age;

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generation_gap

The question, then, is how to achieve this?

The living standards enjoyed by the USA and our Cold War allies can
not be sustained by current levels of material production on Earth.
Increases in the use of energy, food, raw materials, of approximately
11x present outputs are needed. Furthermore, disposal of waste, and
its recycling, create further burderns, that make the living standards
required to achieve this goal of spoiling humanity for peace - seem
unattainable.

The only way out of this quandry is to look beyond the Earth for
energy and resources.

Solar energy arrives on Earth at a rate 171,000x greater than humanity
currently uses energy. The only difficulty is the cost of harvesting
it. The creation of an ultra-low-cost solar panel technology that is
highly efficient, is called for. A system that produces hydrogen and
oxygen from water and sunlight at a cost of $110 per ton of hydrogen
transforms our energy picture - and sets the stage for further
changes. The development arc is;

1) terrestrial solar hydrogen upgrading carbon
2) terrestrial solar hydrogen direct use
3) extra-terrestrial solar hydrogen - direct use
4) extra-terrestrial solar- direct beaming

At first we develop a very low cost, very efficient solar panel
technology. That technology produces hydrogen gas and oxygen gas from
water and sunlight. 30 billion tons of water produces 3.34 billion
tons of hydrogen using 190 billion MWh of DC solar energy. This much
hydrogen displaces all our fossil fuel use. With 550 MW per square
kilometer and an average of 1700 hours of insolation each year -we
require 110 trillion watts of peak solar panels covering 203,000 sq km
of desert lands. At $0.07 per peak watt including all balance of
systems cost, this infrastructure would $7.7 trillion to implement,
and generate $4.0 trillion per year in revenues - using 2007 energy
prices as a marker.

Displacing only coal, natural gas, and residual oil used in stationary
power plants with hydrogen at first, and using additional hydrogen and
oxygen to create gasoline, diesel fuel, and jet fuel, from these
sources, permits us to increase the amount of liquid fuels on Earth by
375% - even while oil production and natural gas production and coal
production decline by 4% per year - while using only 60 trilion watts
of solar panels covering only 100,000 sq km of land.

Focusing on the USA for a minute, replacing the USA's 1.1 billion tons
of coal each year with 177 million tons of hydrogen, and hten using an
additional 113 million tons of hydorgen to create 8 billion barrels of
liquid fuels from that coal - requires only 190 million tons of
hydrogen per year - and requires only 11,600 square kilometers of
solar panels in the Sonoma Desert regions of the USA.

Since the USA consumes 6.8 billion barrels of oil per year, and
imports 5.2 billion barrels of oil per year, the addition of 8 billion
barrels of native production - without any increase in coal use -
means the USA is self sufficient in oil, and exports an a dditoinal
2.8 billion barrels per year - allowing USA to control oil pricing.

A similar analysis of natural gas production, and conversion to liquid
fuels, and a comparable analysis of residual oil and its upgrading
using solar hydrogen to liquid fuels, adds another 2.0 billion barrels
per year to our productive capacity - by adding 4,000 sq km of solar
panels to the total above.

The creation of a heavy lift reusable launcher capable of placing 500
metric tons into GEO - allows the creation of a large inflatable
concentrating mirror that powers a free electron laser system of very
high efficiency - which illuminates existing terrestrial solar arrays
with band gap matched light in the IR portion of the spectrum - to
produce 800 MW of effective output per sq km of solar collector, 8766
hours per year - delivering 7.5x the effective output of the
terrestrial solar array - a total of 8.5x unassisted array. Thus
24,000 sq km of solar panels - assisted by solar power satellites -
provide sufficient output to provide for all the world's energy needs
in the form of hydrogen exports to augment synfuel exports - all
within the continental USA.

Continued expansion of powersat capability provides ultimately direct
beaming of energy to end users on Earth on demand - ending the
dominance of hydrogen.

A network of 660 satellites in 30 orbital planes - connected by open
optical lasers, with phased array anntennae to paint stationary cells
on the ground - provide broadband wireless worldwide. The development
of tele-robotic and tele-presence capabilities through this channel
allow the USA to build large manufacturing sites within the USA, and
use labor from throughout the world - augmenting our strength derived
from oil exporting.

Miniature nuclear pulse units - adapted to propel vehicles throughout
the solar system, have the capacity to send expeditions to the
Asteroid belt and beyond - to recover rich asteroids and return them
to Earth orbit. Once on Earth orbit, large solar powered tele-
robotic mines, smelting plants, fabrication plants - are orbited. The
same technology of remotely operated factories operates in space
giving work to all, and the products created on orbit rain down in GPS
guided capsules that soft land directly in response to end user
requests.

Using this massive productive capacity to produce objects in space,
allows the low cost construction of pressure vessels on orbit. These
are used to house farms, forests and eventually people. The
production of a ring of space farms that send food on demand in
minutes to anyone anywhere on Earth is a good thing. Ditto for the
production of fiber - paper products, wood products, and so forth.
All beyond Earth's biosphere, all without the pollution of terrestrial
production.

The Earth becomes at this point - a large residential area and nature
preserve.

MEMs based rockets - chemically powered, and electrically/photonically
powered from space lasers - create highly reliable, safe, easy to use,
quiet, propulsive skins. Millions of 'PROPELS' - similar to pixels
in a TV screen - provide thrust effects on demand - with very low
mass. Powered by rocket fuels, and laser energy beamed from orbiting
powersats - they transform the transportation industries of Earth.
Ranging in size from a #10 envelope to a super tanker - these
automated low cost ballistic missile systems makes of the Earth a
single village that anyone can span in less than an hour. As this
capacity develops, humanity also has the capacity to achieve orbit
routinely at low cost. Combined with the capacity to make large
numbers of large pressure vessels complete with their own internal
ecologies - gives rise to the space home movement - reducing
population levels on Earth - while improving living conditions for
everyone off-world.

A propulsive element propel - consists of three orthogonally situated
MEMs based nozzles with their vector sum forming a normal to a
propulsive skin. By varying the mass flow rate through each of the
three nozzles, a continuously varying thrust vector may be applied to
that point on the surface. Millions of elements operating
simultaneously produce a wide range of propulsive effects.

On Sun, 29 Jun 2008 15:16:45 GMT, in a place far, far away, "Martha
Adams" made the phosphor on my monitor glow in
such a way as to indicate that:


I wonder if the people in this newsgroup have enough
capacity for clear original thinking; the maturity to
work things through and express them usefully, to
contribute to an objective of off-Terra settlements
with functional business ecologies, and make someone
very rich as well as improve the odds for us humans
to continue our line into the remote future? ?

It seems quite unlikely. Most of the people in the group who are like
that have left. They're off doing useful things where they don't have
to deal with all the loons and trolls.

On Jun 29, 8:22 am, kT wrote:
Martha Adams wrote:
I wonder if the people in this newsgroup have enough
capacity for clear original thinking; the maturity to
work things through and express them usefully, to
contribute to an objective of off-Terra settlements
with functional business ecologies, and make someone
very rich as well as improve the odds for us humans
to continue our line into the remote future? ??

I think that the people here who are actually performing these kinds of
experiments, Martha, are rather more concerned with a functional 'LIFE
SUPPORT SYSTEM' ecologies, you know, one that cleans the air, recycles
the water, produces food and oxygen and thus keeps the astronauts alive.

You have capitalism on the brain, Martha, as do most right wing cranks.

Her being another Zionist/Nazi supporter, the likes of DARPA and
William Mook, means that her motives and goals are always justified by
the actions and means taken. There's no need of remorse with the
likes of such loyal DARPA supporters.

So, it's actually much worse off than mere "capitalism on the brain".

- Brad Guth Brad_Guth Brad.Guth BradGuth

You know, I'm having troubles keeping by Google/newsgroup account
under the 5,000 readings per week (I'm not at all certain how that
accounting works). In fact, it seems the fewer times I post the
higher the count goes. How about yourself, especially if you subtract
for the times I've read your postings?

Perhaps CATS should be given full credits and support to China and
India, in that was we can stay focused upon global energy domination,
global polluting and otherwise causing as much global inflation as
possible (using phony wars as necessary).

- Brad Guth Brad_Guth Brad.Guth BradGuth


On Jun 29, 9:24 am, wrote:
The fundamental cost driver for space travel is the cost of momentum.
Investment in improved engines that reduce the cost of imparting
momentum, results in lower cost, more capable space travel. Since the
velocity change to travel from the surface of the Earth to anywhere in
the solar system is relatively fixed, the effect of lowering the cost
of momentum, has the impact of lowering the cost of maintaining a mass
flow rate between the surface of the Earth and points across the solar
system.

Previously I detailed some of the rich history of space travel
development by humanity. In the first decade of the 20th century, far
ranging thinkers showed how humanity could tap into the unlimited
energy of matter, and achieve travel beyond the Earth.
Experimentalists in the first half of the 20th century reduced these
ideas to practice. The result was a series of innovations that
impacted all the peoples of Earth equally - this isn't surprising
since any technology that transcends the Earth, affects everyone on
the Earth equally.

The development arc from 1950 through 1964 was;

1) small - suborbital payloads - which resulted in nuclear tipped
ICBMs
this brought about a change in warfare, and the end of modern
industrial warfare

2) moderate - orbiting ayloads - which resulted in communications
satellites
this brought about global communications, global sensing, global
navigation

3) large - cislunar payloads -which resulted in Apollo lunar travel
this brought images of Earth from space, and the concepts of
Earth as a single place
giving rise to the environmental movement, and other similar
ideas

Since 1964 development of fundamental imrprovements were halted. This
came in part due to the ambivalence the US government and other
governments have toward rocket and nuclear development. On the one
hand all pay large lip service to research and development and
exploration of frontiers, on the other hand all fear the development
of low cost ICBMs and widespread use of advanced nuclear weapons. As
a result, all schemes to halt the spread of nuclear and missile
proliferation are at odds with schemes to advance low cost high
performance rocketry and space travel. All efforts to bring peace by
the ability to threaten with invasion or destruction, are at odds with
all efforts to establish independent colonies using advanced nuclear
and rocket technology far removed from any control regime. The USA
after all started as a rogue British Colony. There is no guarantee
that our space colonies would owe any allegience toward Earth. In
fact, given the range of outre ideas that were inflamed by our brief
epoch of lunar travel - the environmental movement and the Noetic
Institute - it is quite likely that any independent space colony would
develop notions that are quite at odds with their stay at home
brethren.

The present day war on Terror is a result of our continuing struggle
with these issues. During the Cold War we attempted to maintain peace
by maintaining a large disparity of income, and a large disparity of
capability between us and our prospective enemies. The successful
attacks of 9/11 was a failure of this approach. The poorest nation on
Earth successfully attacked the richest nation on Earth - despite
these disparities. This is a wakeup call that we need to address
motivation rather than capability in ending human conflict.

One approach to ending human conflict is ending frustration of human
desire by using industrial and scientific capacity to raise human
living standards world wide. This has the following proven benefit;

1) lowering reproductive rates - high living standards lower human
reproductive rates below replacement levels
2) lowering propsensity toward violence - high living standards
lower propensity toward violence
3) tame humans arise within a generation - there are distinct
generational differences between
species that are continually frustrated and those that are
raised in a responsive
environment - those not frustrated for a generation -
undergo genetic changes
that make them tame.

So, this gives us a method to approach the human propensity toward
violence, merely raise living standards sufficiently, and maintain
them high for sufficiently long periods, and humanity will change -
much as demonstrated by the silver foxes of Russia -

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tame_Silver_Fox

This was shown to exist in humans in the 1920s and 1950s with the
creation of a generation gap. Those frustrated by war, 'spoiled'
their offspring following the war, creating a large difference in
world outlook. This spoiling of children, and creating an
epistimology for peace, is one approach to creating and maintaining
world peace in the modern age;

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generation_gap

The question, then, is how to achieve this?

The living standards enjoyed by the USA and our Cold War allies can
not be sustained by current levels of material production on Earth.
Increases in the use of energy, food, raw materials, of approximately
11x present outputs are needed. Furthermore, disposal of waste, and
its recycling, create further burderns, that make the living standards
required to achieve this goal of spoiling humanity for peace - seem
unattainable.

The only way out of this quandry is to look beyond the Earth for
energy and resources.

Solar energy arrives on Earth at a rate 171,000x greater than humanity
currently uses energy. The only difficulty is the cost of harvesting
it. The creation of an ultra-low-cost solar panel technology that is
highly efficient, is called for. A system that produces hydrogen and
oxygen from water and sunlight at a cost of $110 per ton of hydrogen
transforms our energy picture - and sets the stage for further
changes. The development arc is;

1) terrestrial solar hydrogen upgrading carbon
2) terrestrial solar hydrogen direct use
3) extra-terrestrial solar hydrogen - direct use
4) extra-terrestrial solar- direct beaming

At first we develop a very low cost, very efficient solar panel
technology. That technology produces hydrogen gas and oxygen gas from
water and sunlight. 30 billion tons of water produces 3.34 billion
tons of hydrogen using 190 billion MWh of DC solar energy. This much
hydrogen displaces all our fossil fuel use. With 550 MW per square
kilometer and an average of 1700 hours of insolation each year -we
require 110 trillion watts of peak solar panels covering 203,000 sq km
of desert lands. At $0.07 per peak watt including all balance of
systems cost, this infrastructure would $7.7 trillion to implement,
and generate $4.0 trillion per year in revenues - using 2007 energy
prices as a marker.

Displacing only coal, natural gas, and residual oil used in stationary
power plants with hydrogen at first, and using additional hydrogen and
oxygen to create gasoline, diesel fuel, and jet fuel, from these
sources, permits us to increase the amount of liquid fuels on Earth by
375% - even while oil production and natural gas production and coal
production decline by 4% per year - while using only 60 trilion watts
of solar panels covering only 100,000 sq km of land.

Focusing on the USA for a minute, replacing the USA's 1.1 billion tons
of coal each year with 177 million tons of hydrogen, and hten using an
additional 113 million tons of hydorgen to create 8 billion barrels of
liquid fuels from that coal - requires only 190 million tons of
hydrogen per year - and requires only 11,600 square kilometers of
solar panels in the Sonoma Desert regions of the USA.

Since the USA consumes 6.8 billion barrels of oil per year, and
imports 5.2 billion barrels of oil per year, the addition of 8 billion
barrels of native production - without any increase in coal use -
means the USA is self sufficient in oil, and exports an a dditoinal
2.8 billion barrels per year - allowing USA to control oil pricing.

A similar analysis of natural gas production, and conversion to liquid
fuels, and a comparable analysis of residual oil and its upgrading
using solar hydrogen to liquid fuels, adds another 2.0 billion barrels
per year to our productive capacity - by adding 4,000 sq km of solar
panels to the total above.

The creation of a heavy lift reusable launcher capable of placing 500
metric tons into GEO - allows the creation of a large inflatable
concentrating mirror that powers a free electron laser system of very
high efficiency - which illuminates existing terrestrial solar arrays
with band gap matched light in the IR portion of the spectrum - to
produce 800 MW of effective output per sq km of solar collector, 8766
hours per year - delivering 7.5x the effective output of the
terrestrial solar array - a total of 8.5x unassisted array. Thus
24,000 sq km of solar panels - assisted by solar power satellites -
provide sufficient output to provide for all the world's energy needs
in the form of hydrogen exports to augment synfuel exports - all
within the continental USA.

Continued expansion of powersat capability provides ultimately direct
beaming of energy to end users on Earth on demand - ending the
dominance of hydrogen.

A network of 660 satellites in 30 orbital planes - connected by open
optical lasers, with phased array anntennae to paint stationary cells
on the ground - provide broadband wireless worldwide. The development
of tele-robotic and tele-presence capabilities through this channel
allow the USA to build large manufacturing sites within the USA, and
use labor from throughout the world - augmenting our strength derived
from oil exporting.

Miniature nuclear pulse units - adapted to propel vehicles throughout
the solar system, have the capacity to send expeditions to the
Asteroid belt and beyond - to recover rich asteroids and return them
to Earth orbit. Once on Earth orbit, large solar powered tele-
robotic mines, smelting plants, fabrication plants - are orbited. The
same technology of remotely ...

read more »

On Jun 29, 11:22*am, kT wrote:
Martha Adams wrote:
I wonder if the people in this newsgroup have enough
capacity for clear original thinking; the maturity to
work things through and express them usefully, to
contribute to an objective of off-Terra settlements
with functional business ecologies, and make someone
very rich as well as improve the odds for us humans
to continue our line into the remote future? *??

I think that the people here who are actually performing these kinds of
experiments, Martha, are rather more concerned with a functional 'LIFE
SUPPORT SYSTEM' ecologies, you know, one that cleans the air, recycles
the water, produces food and oxygen and thus keeps the astronauts alive.

You have capitalism on the brain, Martha, as do most right wing cranks.

You are being discourteous - and disingenous. Systems that work
efficiently are emergent systems. The marketplace when it works well,
is one such system. It does have a common mode failure, its reliance
on scalar values. This was proven by Arrow a half century ago.

Centralized control is a virtual guaranteed recipe for death by common
mode failure. All collapsed cultures were centrally controlled - and
single minded in their pursuit of the centrally mandated goal.
Whether it be greater profits, more perfect socialist ideals, more
Easter Island heads, or smarter weapons.

Our dominance was surrendered for a faulty idea that we thought
brought us national security. We thought it important to abandon our
core values to protect ourselves in the nuclear age, to avoid a
nuclear Pearl Harbor. So, as a result, we created secrets and
societies to watch over those secrets isolated from every mechanism of
control and oversight and accountability.

We created a disparity of income based on a faulty and changing
premise of wealth and created an environment that guaranteed that we
become subject to negative attention going forward that brought about
the very thing we feared. In the process we also took a world that
honored and respected us as a nation and caused it to revile us - by
following ill-concieved faulty policies that guarantee our eventual
destruction if continued for much longer.

We need to go beyond politics of right wing or left wing -as they're
both flawed - go beyond the politics as usual and seek to construct
real solutions to real problems facing us. I have limited myself to
the technology of survival by moving beyond the center into the
frontier to develop new resources. However, I have also given some
thoughts to the problems posed by Arrow and Schumpeter - and come up
with a possible solution to those as well.

wrote:

We need to go beyond politics of right wing or left wing -as they're
both flawed - go beyond the politics as usual and seek to construct
real solutions to real problems facing us.

Like for instance, sustainable life support systems using the resources
we already have at our disposal? But you know humans, they go ape ****.

I have limited myself to
the technology of survival by moving beyond the center into the
frontier to develop new resources.

It won't make any difference at all, the apes will still go ape ****.

****, ****, ****, eat - more ape babies.

Space won't help them at all.

You might try ... education.

On Jun 29, 11:40 am, (Rand Simberg)
wrote:
On Sun, 29 Jun 2008 15:16:45 GMT, in a place far, far away, "Martha
Adams" made the phosphor on my monitor glow in
such a way as to indicate that:

I wonder if the people in this newsgroup have enough
capacity for clear original thinking; the maturity to
work things through and express them usefully, to
contribute to an objective of off-Terra settlements
with functional business ecologies, and make someone
very rich as well as improve the odds for us humans
to continue our line into the remote future? ?

It seems quite unlikely. Most of the people in the group who are like
that have left. They're off doing useful things where they don't have
to deal with all the loons and trolls.

Well, people with multi-million dollar fortunes that let them own
companies that build three-stage rockets don't have much time to post
on newsgroups anyways. This is partly why I support such socialist
institutions as NASA. That and I just find it hard to imagine what
people call a "business model" for private enterprise space
development... just yet. People pioneering now in *that* fashion are
not going to get much more than the proverbial "arrows in their backs"
for their pains, I fear.

John Savard