Why space colonization never happened as envisioned

John Ordover wrote:

This is exactly correct. The limitation to going into space is
economic, not technological - and that may well be the solution to the
Fermi Paradox.

???

So, no civilization, no matter how much more advanced than ours, will
develop the needed technologies for *other* reasons, so as to make any
given degree of space flight virtually trivial? (Composite materials and
small, low power electronics, for example, were not created strictly for
aerospace applications, for example.)

Or at least trivial enough, that pure exploration/science will be an
adequate justification? (Even James VanAllen likely wouldn't turn down a
manned Mars mission if it could be done for just a few tens of
millions.)

I don't claim to have the answer to the Fermi Paradox either (though
I have an opinion or two), but that a civilization only a few percent
older than this one couldn't get into deep space for non-economic
reasons if the commitment was small enough by their very different
standards, is just too hard to believe...

Remember, the people who are bringing you White Knight, started with
homebuilt aircraft. It's not hard for me to imagine something similar in
spacecraft (at least to LEO) inside of this century. Something
completely undoable by anyone, before 1961...

Martha H Adams wrote:

I see all those mentions of "economics" up this thread; but maybe that
usage is too global. From here, I see a strong candidate for relevant
detail. If the money is there to do bases and settlements on Luna and
Mars, then where does it go?

For an answer, read the news and watch your TV. Guns; tanks;
aircraft; high-technology weapons; etc etc. All grown out of money
stripped out of any other use and spent for these dead-end
applications. Weapons and military technologies burn up money
indirectly but to same effect as shredding it into landfills.

Virtually all things are replaced, eventually. Had the towers not
been destroyed, in a hundred years, the WTC might well have been
intentionally demolished for something better.

If
you've missed my point, where do all those people in all those
restless parts of the world get all those guns and grenade launchers
they are carrying around?

Those aren't B-52's. That level of weaponry isn't that expensive,
even by Third World standards. (And they may even have been provided by
some outside power, with an interest in the outcome. Nothing
historically new there.)

And when did military combat ever build anything?

When was that ever the point?

It is so much
easier, and so much more spectacular, to destroy an architectural work
in moments, than to build in over years.

Right. So?

"As a matter of cosmic history, it has always been easier to destroy,
than to create." - Star Trek II

Entropy, and all that.

War involves destroying things, not as an end in itself (anybody,
from the Romans, to the US forces in Iraq, would be quite happy if the
opposition surrendered without firing a shot), but as part of the way to
some other goal. The morality of which, you must decide for yourself.

Seems to me, a better explanation for the lack of any forward-looking
space program is simply that in a military vs space economic
competition, space loses. An established armaments industry and
military-industrial complex, sucks up all accessible money, before the
space travel and settlement complex can reach it. The one thrives,
at a price of terrible waste and destruction; the other starves.

You're doing a different argument.

If people are willing to spend money on increasingly better
armaments, there's economic incentive to make and sell them. That's all.

*Why* people want increasingly better armaments is a psychological
and sociological question, not an economic one.

If we *wanted* space colonies just as badly, someone would step up
and provide them. But first, you have to believe it *can* be done, then
consider the reasons for doing it. We know weapons can be done, and the
reasons for doing it go back to the above point.

Meanwhile, here comes the future. With our human race concentrated in
one small single vulnerable place in all the universe, we are gambling
no astronomical Killer comes along. For whoever is interested, plenty
of warning is there to see. Doesn't anyone know any better? It's a
gamble we will eventually lose.

Cheers, well, maybe not -- Martha Adams

It's tough to get people fired up against an exceedingly rare
(however deadly it would be) natural astronomical phenomena. Now, if
there were ETs *inrentionally* bombarding us, yes, we'd pull out all the
stops...

On Thu, 04 Sep 2003 01:40:09 GMT, Joann Evans
wrote:

John Ordover wrote:

This is exactly correct. The limitation to going into space is
economic, not technological - and that may well be the solution to the
Fermi Paradox.

???

So, no civilization, no matter how much more advanced than ours, will
develop the needed technologies for *other* reasons, so as to make any
given degree of space flight virtually trivial? (Composite materials and
small, low power electronics, for example, were not created strictly for
aerospace applications, for example.)


There is an unproven assumption in the Fermi paradox - that the
technological progress we experienced in the 20th century will
continue at that pace forever - when in fact it's already slowed way
down, with no significant physical breakthroughs since nucleonics.
There is no reason to assume that we aren't near the endpoint of
technilogical advancement when it comes to reducing prices on space
travel. Space travel may always be prohbitively expensive. The
Fermi paradox is only a paradox if you assume "magic" technology on
the part of aliens.

Or at least trivial enough, that pure exploration/science will be an
adequate justification? (Even James VanAllen likely wouldn't turn down a
manned Mars mission if it could be done for just a few tens of
millions.)

If a civilization expends so much of its inherently restricted
resources on unprofitable things, it either stops doing so or
collapses. It may be that the costs of space travel are irreducable,
and thus space travel is never practical.

I don't claim to have the answer to the Fermi Paradox either (though
I have an opinion or two), but that a civilization only a few percent
older than this one couldn't get into deep space for non-economic
reasons if the commitment was small enough by their very different
standards, is just too hard to believe...


Why? There is no proof that technological advancement that makes
space travel profitable is achievable under the laws of physics we
live under. In fact, looking at the stiuation objectively, there is
no reason to assume we will ever be able to make a profit on space
travel even just within our own solar system, let alone traveling long
distances at sub-light speed.

Remember, the people who are bringing you White Knight, started with
homebuilt aircraft. It's not hard for me to imagine something similar in
spacecraft (at least to LEO) inside of this century. Something
completely undoable by anyone, before 1961...


I'll believe it when I see it. Been hearing about this stuff for
-decades-.

Please pardon the third-person usage here. I have Ordover filtered out,
so I won't be talking directly to him.

John Ordover wrote:

This is exactly correct. The limitation to going into space is
economic, not technological - and that may well be the solution to the
Fermi Paradox.

Quietly, with no great fanfare, John Ordover has finally abandoned his
claim that space travel requires more advanced technology than we have.
That's something, at least.

I note with some dismay that he seems now to be claiming that "economic
limitations" are ultimately insurmountable, suggesting them as the reason
we don't see evidence of other civilizations in the universe.

Since he has never accepted that DirecTV and the like are actually
profitable companies, and that people do actually pay money for
high-speed, high-altitude "joyrides", I fear his personal "reality" is
still disconnected from the real world.

(Alan Anderson) :

Please pardon the third-person usage here. I have Ordover filtered out,
so I won't be talking directly to him.

John Ordover wrote:

This is exactly correct. The limitation to going into space is
economic, not technological - and that may well be the solution to the
Fermi Paradox.

Quietly, with no great fanfare, John Ordover has finally abandoned his
claim that space travel requires more advanced technology than we have.
That's something, at least.

I note with some dismay that he seems now to be claiming that "economic
limitations" are ultimately insurmountable, suggesting them as the reason
we don't see evidence of other civilizations in the universe.

Since he has never accepted that DirecTV and the like are actually
profitable companies, and that people do actually pay money for
high-speed, high-altitude "joyrides", I fear his personal "reality" is
still disconnected from the real world.

Noticed that too I see.

First his claims were that no space business could make money without a
'Major' breakthru in technology. And like you said he spent a lot of time
trying to dismiss companies that make money right now.

Now he claim there needs to be an economic breakthru - one that he saw no
need for before.

Simply put, John Ordover seems scared that private people will make it into
space. You will also notice that he advoids as much as possible the proof
that people do things for non-economic reasons. Using his logic not a single
cruise ship could sail, not a single theme park could be built and not a
single movie would play. And all people would demand a material return on
every penny they spent.

Earl Colby Pottinger


--
I make public email sent to me! Hydrogen Peroxide Rockets, OpenBeos,
SerialTransfer 3.0, RAMDISK, BoatBuilding, DIY TabletPC. What happened to
the time? http://webhome.idirect.com/~earlcp

On Wed, 03 Sep 2003 22:38:25 -0500, (Alan
Anderson) wrote:

Please pardon the third-person usage here. I have Ordover filtered out,
so I won't be talking directly to him.

Why bother to filter me out if you keep responding anyway?


John Ordover wrote:

This is exactly correct. The limitation to going into space is
economic, not technological - and that may well be the solution to the
Fermi Paradox.

Quietly, with no great fanfare, John Ordover has finally abandoned his
claim that space travel requires more advanced technology than we have.
That's something, at least.

Not at all - what I'm saying is that more advanced technology is still
mandatory, and that we don't have it, and may -never- have it, because
it may not be physically possible. If the latter is true, then that's
the Fermi solution - that space travel on any significant level is
simply too impractical for any species, no matter "advanced" to spend
much time on.

I note with some dismay that he seems now to be claiming that "economic
limitations" are ultimately insurmountable, suggesting them as the reason
we don't see evidence of other civilizations in the universe.


They may well be.

Since he has never accepted that DirecTV and the like are actually
profitable companies, and that people do actually pay money for
high-speed, high-altitude "joyrides", I fear his personal "reality" is
still disconnected from the real world.

What comsats have to do with the Fermi paradox I'm not sure. Like I
keep saying, I'll believe it when I see it.

Simply put, John Ordover seems scared that private people will make it into
space. You will also notice that he advoids as much as possible the proof
that people do things for non-economic reasons. Using his logic not a single
cruise ship could sail, not a single theme park could be built and not a
single movie would play. And all people would demand a material return on
every penny they spent.

Earl Colby Pottinger

People as a whole do not do things for non-economic reasons. Things
done for non-economic reasons are called "hobbies" and people spend
precious little time and energy on them, compared to economic
activity.

All I'm asking you guys to do, frankly, is not to claim as reality
anything you can't show happening.

- that space travel on any significant level is
simply too impractical for any species, no matter "advanced" to spend
much time on.

Would that not depend on the conditions of their planet? Ie, a shallower
gravity-well, neighboring habitable planets, and a nearer stellar neighborhood
might make for a completely different space-travel equation than we have.

(FWIW, I believe that had Mars been human-livable as projected in midcentury
SF, a manned ship would have gone there by 1981. Mars is no use to present-day
humans or their societies, so there are no plans to go there or perfect the
technology.)

tho all the natureworshippers will need to be told to sit down and shut
up.

You can burn all the coal you want. Just make sure you don't create
CO2 and ruin my ski holidays (and much more besides).

If your ski holidays are weighed against the power needs of the masses, you may
have to spend some winters at home. Or travel farther to find the snow.


I agree though, SPS R&D needs to be done *now* so we will have it when we
do in
fact need it.

We could certainly start with some useful research instead of all the
stuff their currently not doing on ISS.

If in fact ISS can even provide such research. My guess is it will require an
entirely new station. But yes, we need to start, and about ten years ago.

Paul Blay wrote:

"alnilam" wrote ...
On Wed, 3 Sep 2003 13:08:53 +0000 (UTC), (Martha H
Adams) wrote:

Weapons and military technologies burn up money
indirectly but to same effect as shredding it into landfills. If

Not true. There is a direct benefit from military expenditure. It's
called freedom.

Yeah, but the _other_ direct 'benefit' from military expenditure is
oppression.

Which you don't get in the US, which has the biggest military budget in
the world. Ergo, military expendature /= oppression.

--
Scott Lowther, Engineer

"Any statement by Edward Wright that starts with 'You seem to think
that...' is wrong. Always. It's a law of Usenet, like Godwin's."
- Jorge R. Frank, 11 Nov 2002