Re: Why Planetary Bias in SF? Was: Terraforming Mars by crashing comets into it

On Mar 11, 1:55 pm, Damien Valentine <valen...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Mar 11, 6:55 am, CharlesRCap...@xxxxxxxxx wrote:

Can I turn that one around on you? How can an orbital colony *not* be
more economically viable than shipping something out of a gravity well
and atmosphere without SSTO?

Because from what I understand, you don't need an entire colony in
orbit; a lightly crewed (or completely unmanned) factory will do the
same job (whatever it is) at much lower cost.

Well that is a very good point. I think that the lag time from Earth
(bouncing off a satellite or two) to one of the stable L-points or the
moon would make the process tedious, but then again tedium never
stopped people from making money if it's there to be made. Also you
would need at least a few humans to fix the unusual things or to fix
the repair system, humans are the ultimate self programming remotes.
Then there is ultimately the old SF standby, people want to read about
people and teleoperated remotes have an ultimately limited emotional
range. Of course if you put people there for that reason you still
need to come up with a reason for them to be there if you don't want
to stretch believability.
.

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