Why space colonization never happened as envisioned

All successful corporations are realistic and pragmatic - they are
looking for profits now, or at most a few years from now, not possible
profits 20, 30, or 50 years in the future. No one has found a way to
make space colonization pay off in the short term -or- the long term,
although I hope someone will think of something at some point.

After all, a moonbase is clearly within our technological capacity and
has been since 1969. That we're not building one is entirely an
economic matter.




On Wed, 3 Sep 2003 09:31:15 +0100, "Paul Blay"
wrote:

"Hop David" wrote ...

Mike Combs wrote:
or alternately if we had turned away from fossil fuels
due to Greenhouse Effect concerns,

Don't see the U.S. doing that. Too many Americans _like_ cooking frogs.

And many American companies have more realistic views than
Mr "post ice-age" and Mr "green conspiracy" of this group.

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. 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?

And when did military combat ever build anything? It is so much
easier, and so much more spectacular, to destroy an architectural work
in moments, than to build in over years.

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.

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

In article ,
Ultimate Buu wrote:

"G EddieA95" wrote in message
...
optimisticly, most fossil fuel reserves will be gone in 30-50
years, and there is a real chance of the production peaking in not more
than
10.

No, there's lots of coal out there, and using it will still be cheaper
than
SPS, tho all the natureworshippers will need to be told to sit down and
shut
up.


You're forgetting nuclear as well. There's enough uranium to last at last
150 years if not more. Beyond that, fusion will most likely be a reality.

Actually, there's 6000 ppb of thorium in the Earth's crust and
1800 ppb of uranium, totalling very roughly 10^30 joules to play with.
If you assume a civilization that consumes one hundred times more energy
than we do now, that's enough for over thirty million years and by the end
of that period we should be no more than thirty years away from commercial
fusion.

I've been noodling around with ideas for deep crustal mining,
too. There's an entire subterranian ecology down there that has not been
made human oriented yet, although the paltry amount of energy it has to
use limits what one can do with it.
--
It's amazing how the waterdrops form: a ball of water with an air bubble
inside it and inside of that one more bubble of water. It looks so beautiful
[...]. I realized something: the world is interesting for the man who can
be surprised. -Valentin Lebedev-

In article ,
James Nicoll wrote:
In article ,
Ultimate Buu wrote:

"G EddieA95" wrote in message
...
optimisticly, most fossil fuel reserves will be gone in 30-50
years, and there is a real chance of the production peaking in not more
than
10.

No, there's lots of coal out there, and using it will still be cheaper
than
SPS, tho all the natureworshippers will need to be told to sit down and
shut
up.


You're forgetting nuclear as well. There's enough uranium to last at last
150 years if not more. Beyond that, fusion will most likely be a reality.

Actually, there's 6000 ppb of thorium in the Earth's crust and
1800 ppb of uranium, totalling very roughly 10^30 joules to play with.
If you assume a civilization that consumes one hundred times more energy


per unit time! per unit time!
--
It's amazing how the waterdrops form: a ball of water with an air bubble
inside it and inside of that one more bubble of water. It looks so beautiful
[...]. I realized something: the world is interesting for the man who can
be surprised. -Valentin Lebedev-

(garfangle) wrote in message . com...
Although in the 1950s/60s it seems that space colonization was only a
....snip....

You know if you survey prose science fiction from the 40's and 50's,
when interplanetary flight was strong plot narrative (actually
interstellar had become more popular by then, but anyway) you will
find , in most cases, not all, that the time scale for colonization of
the Solar System is predicted to start at a minimum of by 2100 , not
2000 or 2001!
I am not sure the reason for this, SF writers were just being
conservative , I guess.
I note that many SF writers left a future date of interplanetary and
interstellar flight ambiguous, even Heinlein, but check out his Future
History Time Line and you will see most settings at the end of this
century or the start of the next , and of course up the road from
there!

"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.

Military expenditure is a (modified) zero sum game. If every country and
organisation bearing arms around the world had its military equipment
halved overnight the net effect would be pretty small. In fact it's easy to
make the case that the change would be positive because oppressive
regimes tend to need forces to keep their populations in line more than
healthy democracies do.

Put it the other way if military equipment world-wide was doubled over-
night the net effect would be small and negative by exactly the same
reasoning.

In article ,
Earl Colby Pottinger wrote:
(James Nicoll) :

You're forgetting nuclear as well. There's enough uranium to last at last
150 years if not more. Beyond that, fusion will most likely be a reality.

Actually, there's 6000 ppb of thorium in the Earth's crust and
1800 ppb of uranium, totalling very roughly 10^30 joules to play with.
If you assume a civilization that consumes one hundred times more energy
than we do now, that's enough for over thirty million years and by the end
of that period we should be no more than thirty years away from commercial
fusion.

I've been noodling around with ideas for deep crustal mining,
too. There's an entire subterranian ecology down there that has not been
made human oriented yet, although the paltry amount of energy it has to
use limits what one can do with it.

Check out:

http://inisjp.tokai.jaeri.go.jp/ACT98E/04/0401.htm

http://ito01.gs.niigata-u.ac.jp/jcej/e24_0500.html

http://wwwsoc.nii.ac.jp/jsac/analsci/pdfs/a16_0429.pdf

Noted and saved.

Using seawater avoids the potential problem I saw with crustal
manipulation, that tiny volume changes in tall columns can produce
annoying swelling or subsistance at the surface. It's hard to make a
long term hole in water.
--
It's amazing how the waterdrops form: a ball of water with an air bubble
inside it and inside of that one more bubble of water. It looks so beautiful
[...]. I realized something: the world is interesting for the man who can
be surprised. -Valentin Lebedev-

(G EddieA95) wrote in message ...
optimisticly, most fossil fuel reserves will be gone in 30-50
years, and there is a real chance of the production peaking in not more than
10.

No, there's lots of coal out there, and using it will still be cheaper than
SPS, 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).

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.

Apologies to those who have been there before, but...

I did a hypothetical business case at
http://www.geocities.com/alexterrell.../Routemap4.doc

This basically shows that if certain conditions can be met, then a
hugely profitable space based operation could be established.

If that happens, then access to and living in space would become cheap
enough that large scale colonisation would be inevitable.

I would hope that the conditions could be met in 20 years. It would be
sooner if NASA orientated its research to its achievement, for
example, developing high power electric propulsion, asteroid
processing techniques, solar panel manufacture etc.



(garfangle) wrote in message . com...
Although in the 1950s/60s it seems that space colonization was only a
few decades away (see: sci-fi at the time), even if we had continued
to fund space development through private commercialization, I doubt
we'd be much farther than we are at today. Aside from the dismantling
of the rocket program and the setbacks of the shuttle program and cost
of the space station , I say we still would not be any closer to
having habitable colonies in either earth orbit, on the Moon or Mars.

Why? Simple because there would be no economic basis for doing so by
the private sector. Given the costs of putting material into space
(on the order of thousands of dollars a pound) and assembling it, no
development could be structured such that it would generate a feasable
return. Even if one could replicate a Dennis Tito scenario, that
would just mean the platform would be vanity, not a real, long-term
livable habitat.

The reason why the New World was settled in the 16th/17th century,
aside from explorations for gold, was for governments to establish
outposts for their empires and for desperate and poor settlers to
enjoy a new life away from the European millieu. By international
law, governments cannot make soverign land claims. Space presents
both high costs and a hostile environment that would be impossible for
typical immigrants to afford and have the skill to work in.

The scenario that science fiction often lays out is one from where a
group of astronauts, scientists and engineers are sent into space to
establish a base colony on the Moon/Mars. After a few years of
development the colony expands to accomodate other professions
including miners, traders, et al. Life beings to simulate Earth
communities as the early settlers being to have families on the new
planet/colony. And so the story ends happily.

However, I do not see where such an enterprise could get started in
terms of massive financial support which would run into the hundreds
of billions for at least the first decade if the settlement was going
to be an actual colony and not just an outpost. Moreover, even if it
was backed by a Bill Gates or a trans-government entity I do not see
how the colony makes a return for the investment. It is just a
sinkhole. Using the base as an exotic research center or establishing
mining operations are nice to have but they won't recoup hardly any of
the costs and any eventual breakthroughs would take many years if at
all. Unless colony can discover the fountain of youth drug or Earth
resources are so depleted that it make transplanetary shipping cost
effective, I do not see why any rational business or government would
make such a speculative investment.

For the most part, the business model that drove New World colonies
was that sailing companies would be paid by would be (voluntary)
settlers, either upfront or as a portion of their eventual labor, to
make the journey across the Atlantic ocean. The boats were often
barely seaworthy and passenger safety concerns were not a high
priority, esp. for those who paid in advance. Also the crew were
often composed of former naval men, convicts and other low paid
laborers. This model is replicated today is the cases of Chinese
immigrant smuggling.

However, each of these circumstances which made settling so profitable
for the sailing companies would not exist in colonizing space. Either
they would be impractical or intolerable. The space vehicle would
have to be custom built to exacting specifications of tolerance and
performance. The crew would be drawn from the NASA's best. If the
settlers were to be scientists and engineers, they obviously could not
afford to pay the cost there, nor bring their families. And they
would not have any means of earning any money once they landed.

So, I do not see how even the most promising developments that could
have occured since the first Moon landed would have overcome these
impediments.

Ciao.

James Nicoll wrote:


Using seawater avoids the potential problem I saw with crustal
manipulation, that tiny volume changes in tall columns can produce
annoying swelling or subsistance at the surface. It's hard to make a
long term hole in water.

A much greater problem for deep hard rock mining, IMO, is stress at
great depths. Of course vertical stress grows as you go deeper. And in
many cases side stress is even greater. This used to mystify before the
theory of plate tectonics came along.


Hop
http://clowder.net/hop/index.html