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Questions about "The High Frontier"
"Pat Flannery" wrote in message
... It was only after the book that every Tom, Dick, and Harry with a political or economic axe to grind began looking at space colonies as some sort of do-it-yourself Utopias where the innate superiority of their political or economic system would no doubt be shown to all. It might have been T. A. Heppenheimer who said, "Space colonies are a kind of political Rorschach test". But I am sanguine about space habitats as political experimentation laboratories. If one's society ultimately fails (or just consistently performs poorly), it would have to be a result of its underlying philosophy. In a space habitat, one could hardly blame resource depletion, an energy crisis, population pressures, a crop failure, or inconvenient location. -- Regards, Mike Combs ---------------------------------------------------------------------- By all that you hold dear on this good Earth I bid you stand, Men of the West! Aragorn |
#12
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Questions about "The High Frontier"
On Oct 2, 10:13 am, Hop David wrote:
Damien Valentine wrote: So I just got through O'Neill's "The High Frontier". There seem to be some philosophical inconsistencies -- O'Neill claims to be promoting individual freedoms and small-scale economies by building monolithic power satellites and kilometer-scale orbiting cities, for instance -- but that's neither here nor there. What really bothers me is that the entire scheme seems too much like something out of a Rube Goldberg cartoon. "We'll build a base on the Moon to deliver material to Earth orbit -- and we'll need at least some mining ships scouting the asteroids for water and organics too -- which will be used to build a 3-million ton, 10,000-man space station the size of Manhattan; then that will build 80,000-ton satellites, and those will transmit solar power back to Earth." (He offers other justifications for his "Islands" -- building space telescopes, for example -- but it seems that we've achieved most of those goals already without them.) I suppose I want to start off by asking, "Would a Solar Power Satellite work in the first place?" I know that the idea has gotten a lot of flak recently; is it still viable or just hopeless? Not sure what you mean by "flak". I've read valid criticism of the idea and have also seen misinformed criticism. There was this recent article:http://www.space.com/businesstechnol..._airforce.html I believe they'd be a good long term investment. In the short term other energy sources are more economical. Hop- Hide quoted text - - Show quoted text - Yes, "criticism" is what I ought to have said, but it was late and I was tired. Your article reads, "Rouge said that moving out on the proposed SBSP effort would be the largest space venture yet, making the Apollo Moon landing project 'look like just a small little program.' As a caveat, however, he noted that the U.S. Department of Defense is cash-strapped and is not the financial backer for such an endeavor." The US DoD recieves some $300-$400 billion-with-a-B every year. I wonder if anybody else can afford an SPS project, if they cannot. |
#13
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Questions about "The High Frontier"
On Oct 2, 7:29 am, John Schilling wrote:
That's almost entirely a question of scale. Solar Power Satellites can be built and will work as advertised, it's just that if you read the fine print in the advertisements, the things only work well at power levels of several gigawatts or so. Anything less, and you run into problems with the relative size of the antennas for power beaming from desirable orbits. Or, alternately, the seriously inconvenient duty cycle and load sharing problems associated with the crappy orbits you're limited to with small antennas. Well, that answers my next question: why, if an SPS works, does it have to be so big? Many thanks. |
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Questions about "The High Frontier"
"Troy" wrote in message
ps.com... Building O'Neill colonies from refined lunar dirt... unlikely. Real colonies would be built more simply (eg hollow asteroid), The primary requirement for a space habitat is to provide a pressurized environment. That takes lots of tensile strength. Regolith has little or no tensile strength and even solid rock doesn't have enough. Even glass is much better, and steel and aluminum more so. So if we wind up building a steel or aluminum shell inside the asteroid to provide the pressurized environment, we have to ask what is the asteroid providing. Radiation protection? Fine, but we can get that with a shell no more than 6 feet thick. If we remove a certain amount of raw materials from the asteroid and refine it to glass, steel, and aluminum, the left-over slag is sufficient material for that 6 foot thick radiation shield. be smaller, and less ambitious. From there it would be a gradual scaling upwards. I see the first colonies as being in low earth orbit as some kind of space hotel / servicing centre hybrid. Yes, I'm entirely open to the idea that space habitats, instead of springing full-blown from a single project as O'Neill envisioned, might evolve as a series of incremental improvements to space hotels. We get to the 10th generation space Hilton, with its rotation for artificial G, its full radiation shielding, its closed ecology, and perhaps even use of natural sunlight, and people will suddenly go, "Hey, this is like that old Island One notion O'Neill was talking about back in the 20th Century". -- Regards, Mike Combs ---------------------------------------------------------------------- By all that you hold dear on this good Earth I bid you stand, Men of the West! Aragorn |
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Questions about "The High Frontier"
On Tue, 02 Oct 2007 17:48:06 -0000, in a place far, far away, Damien
Valentine made the phosphor on my monitor glow in such a way as to indicate that: On Oct 1, 2:10 pm, Pat Flannery wrote: Damien Valentine wrote: So I just got through O'Neill's "The High Frontier". There seem to be some philosophical inconsistencies -- O'Neill claims to be promoting individual freedoms and small-scale economies by building monolithic power satellites and kilometer-scale orbiting cities, for instance -- but that's neither here nor there. I've the original book; as I remember it, it wasn't so much a political, economic, or social system he was promoting as much as the technology of using space colonies for large scale manufacturing... No, sir; the copy I just read, at any rate, specifically promotes colonies as bastions of individualism and freedom (although he specifically avoids describing details of colonial government), and also as a reservoir for Earth's population growth (which would at this point have to be 200,000 people shipped out to L5 _every day_). That's not so many. More people probably transit daily through the three largest US airports than that. Of course, the growth is set to decline and go negative later this century, by the time such colonies would be built. |
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Questions about "The High Frontier"
"Damien Valentine" wrote in message oups.com... Well, that answers my next question: why, if an SPS works, does it have to be so big? Many thanks. SPS that operated at optical frequencies could be much, much smaller. So SPS proponents should support continued work on efficient solar-pumped lasers and laser-to-electricity conversion devices. Paul |
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Questions about "The High Frontier"
"Damien Valentine" wrote in message oups.com... On Oct 1, 2:10 pm, Pat Flannery wrote: Damien Valentine wrote: So I just got through O'Neill's "The High Frontier". There seem to be some philosophical inconsistencies -- O'Neill claims to be promoting individual freedoms and small-scale economies by building monolithic power satellites and kilometer-scale orbiting cities, for instance -- but that's neither here nor there. I've the original book; as I remember it, it wasn't so much a political, economic, or social system he was promoting as much as the technology of using space colonies for large scale manufacturing... No, sir; the copy I just read, at any rate, specifically promotes colonies as bastions of individualism and freedom (although he specifically avoids describing details of colonial government), and also as a reservoir for Earth's population growth (which would at this point have to be 200,000 people shipped out to L5 _every day_). There's a huge and glaring logical flaw with the idea of large scale colonies in space. If we can't learn how to sustain ourselves here on earth, with all the natural advantages and cheap resources. How in the hell are we going to produce a sustainable colony in space? The wisdom and technology needed to produce large scale colonies renders them irrelevant. The true test of an enlightened civilization is to be able to sustain itself indefinitely. Not to simply find more room for unsustainable societies. Why do sci-fi writers assume we must move into space to survive??? The facts on the ground strongly suggest that as societies become more advanced and affluent, the population growth slows to sustainable levels. |
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Questions about "The High Frontier"
"John Schilling" wrote in message ... On Mon, 01 Oct 2007 17:45:19 -0000, Damien Valentine wrote Mind you, some of the same problems apply to nuclear power, and we do have that. But much of the necessary infrastructure there is common to existing coal-fired powerplants, and much of the rest is shared with the nuclear-weapons people. And governments have a well-established track record of pumping huge ammounts of money into unprofitable weapons programs. I think the upcoming Olympics in Beijing will provide a glimpse into the priorities of the future. China burns so much coal that it's air is almost deadly. Dear Mother Nature will give us a few very calm days in Beijing so the world can watch the athletes flee the city for their very lives. As oil and natural gas continues to rise every day, as the third world continues explosive industrial growth, the third world will turn to coal, and pollute us into desperation. Solar power will then no longer be a matter of cost/benefit. But a matter of survival. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environment_of_China -- *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" * *661-718-0955 or 661-275-6795 * -58th Rule of Acquisition * |
#19
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Questions about "The High Frontier"
On Tue, 2 Oct 2007 21:38:00 -0400, in a place far, far away,
"Jonathan" made the phosphor on my monitor glow in such a way as to indicate that: There's a huge and glaring logical flaw with the idea of large scale colonies in space. If we can't learn how to sustain ourselves here on earth, with all the natural advantages and cheap resources. How in the hell are we going to produce a sustainable colony in space? All of the available evidence indicates that we are quite successful at sustaining ourselves on earth. |
#20
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Questions about "The High Frontier"
"Rand Simberg" wrote in message ... On Tue, 2 Oct 2007 21:38:00 -0400, in a place far, far away, "Jonathan" made the phosphor on my monitor glow in such a way as to indicate that: There's a huge and glaring logical flaw with the idea of large scale colonies in space. If we can't learn how to sustain ourselves here on earth, with all the natural advantages and cheap resources. How in the hell are we going to produce a sustainable colony in space? All of the available evidence indicates that we are quite successful at sustaining ourselves on earth. This coming from someone that doesn't see any problem with co2 increasing at 2% a year...and accelerating. But maybe you're right, everything on the planet is just fine. But keep your head in the sand, with a little water maybe something interesting will sprout. |
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