Why Colonize Space?

Walter Bushell wrote
Rod Speed wrote
Walter Bushell wrote
Rod Speed wrote

The traditional western european dark ages werent really
all that dark, just didnt produce much in the way of dramatic
changes that later times like the renaissance etc did.

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

From what I've read the later "Dark Ages" produced a lot of technological innovation,

Quite a bit, particular military stuff like the longbow etc and fortifications etc.

Technology was always driven by military stuff,

Like hell it was. Hordes of it like the wheel, plant and animal
breeding, the printing press, even the industrial revolution wasnt.

until recently when games and p0rn came to be drivers.

They arent the drivers of anything much.

Even today, IIUC, the biggest users of $500 and up graphics cards are gamers.

Yes, but thats a tiny part of even the PC market.

On Aug 30, 8:59*am, Walter Bushell wrote:
In article ,
*"Rod Speed" wrote:

Quite a bit, particular military stuff like the longbow etc and
fortifications etc.

Technology was always driven by military stuff, until recently when
games and p0rn came to be drivers. Even today, IIUC, the biggest users
of $500 and up graphics cards are gamers.

In the modern PC/MAC gamer realms, it's not the least bit unusual to
see $5000+ investments, and of course public subsidized fiber optic
networks plus vast numbers of spendy servers to be involved.

Outside of mainstream gaming, I think the global energy consumption by
GOOGLE alone has exceeded 10 GW, and for the most part that's a lot of
coal consumption, not to mention CO2 production (especially when
taking into account all the commute miles their staff accumulates per
day).

~ BG

Walter, Google Groups thinks you started a lot of new threads with
title "Why Colonize Space?" Is that due to posting in multiple
groups, or something?

In article ,
"Rod Speed" wrote:

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

wrote in message
news In sci.physics Sean O'Hara wrote:
In the Year of the Earth Ox, the Great and Powerful
declared:
In sci.physics "Giga" "Giga" just(removetheseandaddmatthe
wrote:
"Greg Goss" wrote in message
...

They laughed at Columbus because they knew that the water tanks
and food supplies on his ship could never let him reach Japan.
And you know what? The intellectuals were right about that.

But ships very often stopped somewhere, like a small island, to
resupply
such things.

And what islands might that be?


If we assume as a point of departure that the Americas are
submerged, say one kilometer, there'd be a huge archipelago
consisting of the Andes, Rockies, Sierra Nevadas, etc, and a
smaller one for the Appalachians. Columbus still could've landed on
Hispanola, though it would've been a small island chain.

In that scenario, you are less than half way to Japan.

Absent a good map, the odds of stumbling upon one of the few islands
on the way to Japan is near zero.

No

Seems the map makers disagree and have the vast majority of islands in
the Pacific south of Japan.

The vast majority is completely irrelevant, even those without any nav
aids or maps managed to find those as isolated as Easter Island etc.

And non volcanic. If a major eruption is going on an island can be
detected from far away. It is common of people to go off on cruises to
nowhere after they have lost a war and lack resources. Sometimes they
find new land. How else was Hawaii settled?

Walter Bushell wrote
Rod Speed wrote
wrote
Giga "Giga" wrote
wrote
Sean O'Hara wrote
wrote
Giga "Giga" wrote
Greg Goss wrote

They laughed at Columbus because they knew that the water
tanks and food supplies on his ship could never let him reach Japan.
And you know what? The intellectuals were right about that.

But ships very often stopped somewhere, like a small island, to resupply such things.

And what islands might that be?

If we assume as a point of departure that the Americas are
submerged, say one kilometer, there'd be a huge archipelago
consisting of the Andes, Rockies, Sierra Nevadas, etc, and a
smaller one for the Appalachians. Columbus still could've landed
on Hispanola, though it would've been a small island chain.

In that scenario, you are less than half way to Japan.

Absent a good map, the odds of stumbling upon one
of the few islands on the way to Japan is near zero.

No

Seems the map makers disagree and have the vast majority of islands in the Pacific south of Japan.

The vast majority is completely irrelevant, even those without any nav
aids or maps managed to find those as isolated as Easter Island etc.

And non volcanic. If a major eruption is going on an island can be detected from far away.

They didnt need anything like that to find Easter Island.

It is common of people to go off on cruises to nowhere
after they have lost a war and lack resources.

FAR more often they go to places like Easter Island for other reasons.

Sometimes they find new land. How else was Hawaii settled?

It certainly wasnt by randomly cruising around until they found something.

Easter Island in spades.

In article ,
"Rod Speed" wrote:

Walter Bushell wrote
Rod Speed wrote
wrote
Giga "Giga" wrote
wrote
Sean O'Hara wrote
wrote
Giga "Giga" wrote
Greg Goss wrote

They laughed at Columbus because they knew that the water
tanks and food supplies on his ship could never let him reach
Japan.
And you know what? The intellectuals were right about that.

But ships very often stopped somewhere, like a small island, to
resupply such things.

And what islands might that be?

If we assume as a point of departure that the Americas are
submerged, say one kilometer, there'd be a huge archipelago
consisting of the Andes, Rockies, Sierra Nevadas, etc, and a
smaller one for the Appalachians. Columbus still could've landed
on Hispanola, though it would've been a small island chain.

In that scenario, you are less than half way to Japan.

Absent a good map, the odds of stumbling upon one
of the few islands on the way to Japan is near zero.

No

Seems the map makers disagree and have the vast majority of islands in
the Pacific south of Japan.

The vast majority is completely irrelevant, even those without any nav
aids or maps managed to find those as isolated as Easter Island etc.

And non volcanic. If a major eruption is going on an island can be detected
from far away.

They didnt need anything like that to find Easter Island.

It is common of people to go off on cruises to nowhere
after they have lost a war and lack resources.

FAR more often they go to places like Easter Island for other reasons.

Sometimes they find new land. How else was Hawaii settled?

It certainly wasnt by randomly cruising around until they found something.

Easter Island in spades.

True, and those people were adept at finding clues. But they did not
find Pitcairn island, AFAIK.

In article ,
"Rod Speed" wrote:

FAR more often they go to places like Easter Island for other reasons.

After they know it's there. But how do you find it, if you don't even
know it's there?

Walter Bushell wrote
Rod Speed wrote
Walter Bushell wrote
Rod Speed wrote
wrote
Giga "Giga" wrote
wrote
Sean O'Hara wrote
wrote
Giga "Giga"
wrote
Greg Goss wrote

They laughed at Columbus because they knew that the water tanks
and food supplies on his ship could never let him reach Japan.

And you know what? The intellectuals were right about that.

But ships very often stopped somewhere,
like a small island, to resupply such things.

And what islands might that be?

If we assume as a point of departure that the Americas are
submerged, say one kilometer, there'd be a huge archipelago
consisting of the Andes, Rockies, Sierra Nevadas, etc, and a
smaller one for the Appalachians. Columbus still could've landed
on Hispanola, though it would've been a small island chain.

In that scenario, you are less than half way to Japan.

Absent a good map, the odds of stumbling upon one
of the few islands on the way to Japan is near zero.

No

Seems the map makers disagree and have the vast
majority of islands in the Pacific south of Japan.

The vast majority is completely irrelevant, even those without any nav
aids or maps managed to find those as isolated as Easter Island etc.

And non volcanic. If a major eruption is going on an island can be detected from far away.

They didnt need anything like that to find Easter Island.

It is common of people to go off on cruises to nowhere
after they have lost a war and lack resources.

FAR more often they go to places like Easter Island for other reasons.

Sometimes they find new land. How else was Hawaii settled?

It certainly wasnt by randomly cruising around until they found something.

Easter Island in spades.

True, and those people were adept at finding clues.
But they did not find Pitcairn island, AFAIK.

We'll never know. Its never going to be possible to know if they did find it and
decided they didnt like it and moved on to somewhere else they liked better.

Walter Bushell wrote
Rod Speed wrote

FAR more often they go to places like Easter Island for other reasons.

After they know it's there.

Someone must have found it without knowing it was there.

But how do you find it, if you don't even know it's there?

It isnt that hard to work out that there is an island close.

Walter Bushell wrote:

After they know it's there. But how do you find it, if you don't even
know it's there?

You start out on a three-hour tour...then the weather starts getting
rough, and your tiny dugout catamaran sailboat is tossed...
Trivia point BTW; during the run of the series, if you listen to the
latitude and longitude figures they give and locate them on a map,
Gilligan's Island moves from the Caribbean Sea to south of Hawaii.
That consistency slip made the series hard to take seriously.

Pat