Questions about "The High Frontier"

Jim Davis wrote:

An inconvenience that is completely insignificant compared to the
inconvenience of supporting the workers permanently in space at a
standard of living approaching that of what they can enjoy on
earth.


If we enslave them, this problem is avoided.
Remember, one of the libertarian dreams about space colonies was that
they could have whole new forms of government unattached to Earth or its
laws.
So we Shanghai 'em in the night and drag 'em off to one of our lunar
slave mining colonies.
They complain that they want to go home, we say "sure!" and toss 'em out
the airlock.
It's worked for other cultures in the past (including America up till
the mid 1860's) it can work here also. ;-)
I'm being semi-serious here, but can anyone guarantee that something
like that _won't_ happen somewhere down the line?
You're in a area which isn't under national control from Earth.
Actually, the smart company avoids the whole problem with workers and
their living accommodation and life support needs by having all of its
space processing and manufacture done by robots, not people.
Given the expense of getting in and out of Earth's gravity well, that
makes a lot more sense from a bottom line as far as profits go. When one
breaks in a way that can't be repaired economically, it gets stripped
for useful parts and sent off to the recycling center to get broken down
into its component materials.
Unlike exploration, processing and manufacture don't really demand great
insight on the part of the machinery, just the ability to preform fairly
repetitive actions.
At least as far as work in HEO and on the Moon goes, anything unexpected
that needs addressing by a person can be dealt with via telepresence
from Earth with only a few seconds delay...actually faster than having a
person move from one area of the production facility to another.

Pat

In rec.arts.sf.science message
legroups.com, Fri, 26 Oct 2007 00:35:25, Michael Turner
posted:

If you didn't mind a really long cable, and the asteroid was rotating
fast enough, you could have your gravity just by attaching living
quarters to the asteroid at the end of the cable. A period of once
every 8 hours (I think that's the average for asteroids) might make
for a long commute, admittedly -- about 14km if you wanted something
like 1 gee at the tip (unless I dropped a decimal point somewhere).

I make it not 1 gee but 0.000666351 m/s/s.

We rotate at a third of the angular rate, but 500 times the distance.

To get nearly a gee, ISTM that you need about 200,000 km. For that,
climbing to work will be exhausting.

At most one of us is right.

--
(c) John Stockton, Surrey, UK. Turnpike v6.05 MIME.
Web URL:http://www.merlyn.demon.co.uk/ - FAQqish topics, acronyms & links;
Astro stuff via astron-1.htm, gravity0.htm ; quotings.htm, pascal.htm, etc.
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On Oct 28, 3:40 am, Dr J R Stockton wrote:
In rec.arts.sf.science message
legroups.com, Fri, 26 Oct 2007 00:35:25, Michael Turner
posted:



If you didn't mind a really long cable, and the asteroid was rotating
fast enough, you could have your gravity just by attaching living
quarters to the asteroid at the end of the cable. A period of once
every 8 hours (I think that's the average for asteroids) might make
for a long commute, admittedly -- about 14km if you wanted something
like 1 gee at the tip (unless I dropped a decimal point somewhere).

I make it not 1 gee but 0.000666351 m/s/s.

We rotate at a third of the angular rate, but 500 times the distance.

To get nearly a gee, ISTM that you need about 200,000 km. For that,
climbing to work will be exhausting.

At most one of us is right.

--
(c) John Stockton, Surrey, UK. Turnpike v6.05 MIME.
Web URL:http://www.merlyn.demon.co.uk/ - FAQqish topics, acronyms & links;
Astro stuff via astron-1.htm, gravity0.htm ; quotings.htm, pascal.htm, etc.
No Encoding. Quotes before replies. Snip well. Write clearly. Don't Mail News.

Oops. Obviously I did something much worse that dropping a decimal
point. But look in the bright side: think of how *fast* you'd be
going out there at the end of your 200,000km tether! ;-)

OTOH, using rotational kinetic energy of asteroids for propulsion
doesn't look quite so bad, on a second look. If all you needed was an
extra few hundred m/s or so to swing from one to another at the right
launch window, tethers hundreds of km long would seem to do the trick,
depending on asteroid rotation rate. Maybe piano wire would be
enough. But ... why believe me? I'm so often wrong by several orders
of magnitude ....

-michael turner

In rec.arts.sf.science message
glegroups.com, Sat, 27 Oct 2007 21:50:02, Michael Turner
posted:
On Oct 28, 3:40 am, Dr J R Stockton wrote:
In rec.arts.sf.science message
legroups.com, Fri, 26 Oct 2007 00:35:25, Michael Turner
posted:



If you didn't mind a really long cable, and the asteroid was rotating
fast enough, you could have your gravity just by attaching living
quarters to the asteroid at the end of the cable. A period of once
every 8 hours (I think that's the average for asteroids) might make
for a long commute, admittedly -- about 14km if you wanted something
like 1 gee at the tip (unless I dropped a decimal point somewhere).

I make it not 1 gee but 0.000666351 m/s/s.

We rotate at a third of the angular rate, but 500 times the distance.

To get nearly a gee, ISTM that you need about 200,000 km. For that,
climbing to work will be exhausting.

At most one of us is right.

--
(c) John Stockton, Surrey, UK. Turnpike
v6.05 MIME.
Web URL:http://www.merlyn.demon.co.uk/ - FAQqish topics, acronyms
& links;
Astro stuff via astron-1.htm, gravity0.htm ; quotings.htm, pascal.htm, etc.
No Encoding. Quotes before replies. Snip well. Write clearly. Don't
Mail News.

Please trim your quotes; see sigs.

Oops. Obviously I did something much worse that dropping a decimal
point. But look in the bright side: think of how *fast* you'd be
going out there at the end of your 200,000km tether! ;-)

I did. I used URL:http://www.merlyn.demon.co.uk/gravity2.htm ,
available to you by the Wayback Machine.

OTOH, using rotational kinetic energy of asteroids for propulsion
doesn't look quite so bad, on a second look. If all you needed was an
extra few hundred m/s or so to swing from one to another at the right
launch window, tethers hundreds of km long would seem to do the trick,
depending on asteroid rotation rate. Maybe piano wire would be
enough. But ... why believe me? I'm so often wrong by several orders
of magnitude ....

A *COPY* of URL:http://www.merlyn.demon.co.uk/js-quick.htm would be
handy for calculations which you would do on a calculator if you could
be sure of getting the algorithm right in the first place.

X1 : 2e8 X2 : 28800
In the big box :
var R = +F.X0.value, T = +F.X1.value
F.X2.value = 2*Math.PI*R/T
var W = Math.PI*2/T ; F.X3.value = W*W*R
Press Eval.

IMHO, good plain string should do. 1000 km gives 220 m/s at 5% of g.

--
(c) John Stockton, Surrey, UK. replyYYWW merlyn demon co uk Turnpike 6.05.
Web URL:http://www.uwasa.fi/~ts/http/tsfaq.html - Timo Salmi: Usenet Q&A.
Web URL:http://www.merlyn.demon.co.uk/news-use.htm : about usage of News.
No Encoding. Quotes precede replies. Snip well. Write clearly. Mail no News.

"Jim Davis" wrote in message
6.26...

That makes no more more sense than to assert that oil companies may
come to have a preference for employees willing to live at sea
versus ones who only commute there to work.

For the 10th time, present-day oil companies /might/ have such a preference
if the costs for sending workers back and forth was 1/20 space
transportation costs.

Indeed, I think the
time lost to commuting would be *greater* for workers living
permanently in space. Absenteeism would certainly be far greater.

Don't see how you figure. I guess your concern about absenteeisms might
relate to Daddy staying home with the kid with the sniffles or something.
I'm thinking about traveling through 1 or 2 miles of space vs. lifting off
from the surface of the Earth to travel something approaching 100,000 miles
of space. (And the previously-mentioned 1 or 2 miles might be via a cable
pulley system.)

An inconvenience that is completely insignificant compared to the
inconvenience of supporting the workers permanently in space at a
standard of living approaching that of what they can enjoy on
earth.

It might be a rather large initial expense, but will it be a tremendous
ongoing expense? With solar-powered utilities, recycling of raw materials,
and closed ecologies, I don't see why.

Sure. But the new world could be settled by preindustrial (and
indeed precivilized and preintelligent) means. At insignificant
cost compared to that of settling space.

This is your best point so far. It can't be denied that to believe in space
settlement is to belive in something with only imperfect precedents.

Further, I don't think that promising workers a
standard of living comparable to the first European settlers in
America is quite the "can't miss" recruiting tactic that you seem
to think it is.

I wasn't trying to imply living conditions would be the same. I only said
European settlers were willing to make breaks with family and friends in
Europe to start a new life.

What I can't seem to get across to you is that people won't be
popping back and forth between Earth and HEO the way off-shore
oil-rig workers can pop back and forth between there and the
shore.

Of course not. Who said otherwise?

You don't say it in so many words, but you certainly seem to believe it when
you keep insisting that anything Mobil-Exxon is not currently doing for
offshore oil-rig workers will never be done for space workers.

I think you have very naive ideas about the costs of of supporting
the workers permanently in space at a standard of living
approaching that of what they can enjoy on earth.

Perhaps I do. It's merely been pointed out that once you have what you need
to build SPS from ET materials, you already have much of what you need to
build space settlements from same. You seem to feel there will be some
tremendous ongoing expense associated with maintaining the Earthlike
life-style, but I don't see it.

Why? Distance isn't the issue; time is. They both have the same
amount of time to devote to their familial (and/or other) pursuits.

The expense of making the trip is more the issue than the trip times. The
result of the expense is that trips will be made much less frequently.

In fact, a case could be made that a space based workforce would
have *less* time with his family because of the necessity to work
shifts to keep the SSP production facility operating 24/7. One
could overcome this somewhat by having *three* Stanford toruses
(tori?) or one divided into three separate communities to synch up
a worker with his family but that adds to the inconvenience and
costs.

Your latter solution wouldn't add a lot of cost. Might be some small loss
of convenience.

And we have yet to have an example on Earth where a place was
permanently settled that required technology above a stone age
level *regardless* of transportation costs. Draw your own
conclusions.

Again, this is your best point. Either the future will be more of the same,
or new things will happen. We'll see.

--


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 ..

So they use the ships to look for other places that have trees....so they
can cut those down and make more ships.
And at some point, someone asks "What the hell is the point of this all?

First: I'm one hundred percent in agreement with you that there's probably
nothing in space worth sending back to Earth. But I think SBSP is one
industry which can benefit from space mining. I'd agree that if the only
purpose for space materials was to build spacecraft, then it wouldn't be a
profitable business (unless somebody was already going to pay for the
spacecraft for other reasons). But I think space materials can be put to
purposes beyond just building spacecraft.

That said, if a space industry existed for SBSP, and somebody wanted to
mount an expedition to another part of the Solar System, said industry could
construct, fuel, and deliver the spacecraft much more cheaply than could
anybody operating from the surface of the Earth.

--


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

On Sat, 27 Oct 2007 08:20:25 +0200 (CEST), Jim Davis
wrote:

Mike Combs wrote:

Certainly. My argument is that the consortium doing the space
construction work may come to have a preference for employees
willing to live in space versus ones who only commute there to
work.

That makes no more more sense than to assert that oil companies may
come to have a preference for employees willing to live at sea
versus ones who only commute there to work. Indeed, I think the
time lost to commuting would be *greater* for workers living
permanently in space. Absenteeism would certainly be far greater.

How do you figure that? If the workers are living in a permanent
habitat adjacent to (or integrated with) the actual work site,
then the commute time is negligible and absenteeism certainly
ought to be negligible - where are the workers going to go?

It's the workers you are rotating to and from Earth every month
or two where the week spent in transit is going to be a significant
loss, and where each worker has half a dozen opportunities every
year to say, "Screw it; I'm sick of living in a tin can and I've
made enough of a fortune already and I just found a girl I don't
want to leave quite yet, so I won't be back for the next tour."


--
*John Schilling * "Anything worth doing, *
*Member:AIAA,NRA,ACLU,SAS,LP * is worth doing for money" *
*Chief Scientist & General Partner * -13th Rule of Acquisition *
*White Elephant Research, LLC * "There is no substitute *
* for success" *
*661-951-9107 or 661-275-6795 * -58th Rule of Acquisition *

On Wed, 24 Oct 2007 10:58:48 -0700, Johnny1a
wrote:

On Oct 23, 5:58 pm, Jim Davis wrote:
Mike Combs wrote:
On the other hand, one might note that with the SMF with the
spartan living conditions one sees quick turnover in skilled
workers. People sign-on for 2 year tours (or whatever), fill up
their bank accounts, and then come back to Earth to spend their
money, because what are they going to spend it on living in an
aluminum can in HEO? Then you might note that since you've got
mining facilities on the moon and/or a NEA, a means of
transporting ore to HEO, ore refineries and parts fabrication
facilities in that same orbit, most of what you need to build a
Bernal Sphere or Stanford Torus is already in place (and perhaps
already paid for by SPS profits). So it might be worth a bit of
investment for your workers to be able to live under natural
sunlight surrounded by greenery, and able to do ordinary things
like fish in a pond or walk in a park. Perhaps highly-trained
and skilled workers might be more apt to spend their entire
careers with you if they can look at their apartment or house in
Bernal Alpha as "home" rather than some place on Earth.
Families might be more apt to form in such a place than in a
place which more resembled an off-shore oil rig.

Mike, you're a good guy and everything, but the above is a textbook
example of thinking with your heart instead of your head. In any
other context except space (you yourself bring up oil rigs) you
would quickly recognize the absurdities. But since this is space
we're talking about...well, things are different in space, right?

Jim Davis- Hide quoted text -

The only way any of that would make sense is if the cost of returning
workers to Earth, and the related turnover, was less than the cost of
constructing a habitat. Slot in selected assumptions about relative
cost and you can reach an answer. The answer is almost surely going
to be 'no'.

As Henry Spencer used to say, belief is no substitute for arithmetic.
If you *can* "slot in assumptions and reach an answer", you probably
ought to do so rather than just assuming in advance you know what it
is. At very least, your choice of assumptions might make an interesting
topic for discussion.


--
*John Schilling * "Anything worth doing, *
*Member:AIAA,NRA,ACLU,SAS,LP * is worth doing for money" *
*Chief Scientist & General Partner * -13th Rule of Acquisition *
*White Elephant Research, LLC * "There is no substitute *
* for success" *
*661-951-9107 or 661-275-6795 * -58th Rule of Acquisition *

Mike Combs wrote:

For the 10th time, present-day oil companies /might/ have such a
preference if the costs for sending workers back and forth was
1/20 space transportation costs.

Mike, this is absurd. Transportation costs cut *both* ways. If
rotating workers is impractical, then colonies are completely out
of the question.

Don't see how you figure. I guess your concern about
absenteeisms might relate to Daddy staying home with the kid
with the sniffles or something.

Most of reasons we have absenteeism on earth apply in space also.
Everything from "I missed the bus" to "I overslept".

I'm thinking about traveling
through 1 or 2 miles of space vs. lifting off from the surface
of the Earth to travel something approaching 100,000 miles of
space. (And the previously-mentioned 1 or 2 miles might be via
a cable pulley system.)

Mike, we have no idea how far a space colony would have to be from
a space factory or indeed if its practical to maintain a constant
distance with all the perturbations present. In any event, space
colonists have to commute 250 times a year. If it's an hour each
direction that adds up to 20 days commuting time per year. The
bottom line is we simply don't know.

It might be a rather large initial expense, but will it be a
tremendous ongoing expense?

Uh, yeah. On earth we have something called depreciation.

With solar-powered utilities,
recycling of raw materials, and closed ecologies, I don't see
why.

On earth we have very little experience with any of those things
and what experience we do have is not uniformly encouraging. On
earth it takes a *very* large set of skills to maintain a
technologically advanced society and a *very* large number of
people who have them. Your not going to get them all into a
Stanford torus; certainly not the very first one. Any Stanford
torus is going to have to import a lot of goods and services to
maintain its standard of living or even its very existence just
like a community of similar size on earth.

If you doubt this, well, try it on earth. Let me know how it works
out.

I wasn't trying to imply living conditions would be the same. I
only said European settlers were willing to make breaks with
family and friends in Europe to start a new life.

But that's entirely different from your point thus far. You're
trying to make the case that a company that offers workers a lower
standard of living with complete breaks with family and friends is
somehow going to be more profitable. That's absurd.

You don't say it in so many words, but you certainly seem to
believe it when you keep insisting that anything Mobil-Exxon is
not currently doing for offshore oil-rig workers will never be
done for space workers.

I think your failure to percieve that high transportation costs are
much more debilitating to permanent settlements clouds your
judgement.

Perhaps I do. It's merely been pointed out that once you have
what you need to build SPS from ET materials, you already have
much of what you need to build space settlements from same.

Sure, once you assume that manufacturing in space costs as much as
it does here on earth even though terrestrial labor, capital, and
infrastructure are far cheaper things do become easier. And of
course factories optimized for SPS can easily be switched to other
products. Of course, that would require one to forego the income
from building SPS but in space no one will care about the bottom
line. The rules are different there. It's space, after all.

You
seem to feel there will be some tremendous ongoing expense
associated with maintaining the Earthlike life-style, but I
don't see it.

I know you don't, Mike. Maintaining an Earthlike life-style here on
*earth* is a tremendous ongoing expense but space is different,
right? The terrestrial rules just don't apply there.

The expense of making the trip is more the issue than the trip
times. The result of the expense is that trips will be made
much less frequently.

That's right. But you seem to have a problem with that even though
there's no shortage of terrestrial examples. But this is space
we're talking about...

I will leave you the final word.

Jim Davis

John Schilling wrote:

How do you figure that? If the workers are living in a
permanent habitat adjacent to (or integrated with) the actual
work site,

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?

then the commute time is negligible and absenteeism certainly
ought to be negligible - where are the workers going to go?

Home. This habitat *is* going to be a *home*, isn't it? Not just
some glorified minimum security prison with conjugal priveleges,
right?

It's the workers you are rotating to and from Earth every month
or two where the week spent in transit is going to be a
significant loss, and where each worker has half a dozen
opportunities every year to say, "Screw it; I'm sick of living
in a tin can and I've made enough of a fortune already and I
just found a girl I don't want to leave quite yet, so I won't be
back for the next tour."

Yeah, that makes perfect sense. Just tell your workers they can't
choose whom they want to associate with from the billions on
earth; they're going to have to make do with whomever isn't
already spoken for among a few thousand on a Stanford torus.
They'll be lining up around the block to jump at that chance.

Jim Davis