Re: How should people colonize space?


"Quadibloc" <jsavard@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:4926fc21-1620-4a06-9aeb-18020aea7864@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
On Aug 16, 10:18 am, "Ken from Chicago" <kwicker1b_nos...@xxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
But it
seems inevitable that people en masse will be going into space, if not
this
century, then the next.

~Is it?

~Let's suppose that civilization doesn't collapse, and technology
~continues to advance.

~For all the advances in the power of microcomputers, do cars get 1,000
~miles per gallon, and travel at 20,000 miles per hour? Of course not.
~So if they never discover antigravity, and the speed of light remains
~forever the limit, what will happen to radically improve spaceflight?

Fusion power.

With it, the cost of manufacturing in general radically plummets.

~Nanotechnology, creating new materials that make a space elevator
~possible?

Yep, nanofacture on a massive scale is another major boon, combined with a
space elevator is even that much more a boost to space exploration.

~Or maybe uploading - so that 100 people can travel to Mars in a small
~rocket that today could only send a small instrumented probe like the
~Viking lander there - just in a post-biological form.

Agreed. Lifting to Earth orbit on a space elevator saves tremendously on the
size of a ship to the Moon or Mars or other planets in the Solar System.

~It does make sense, then, since we can't predict what will happen,
~over the long term, as the first thing to make travel to Mars or the
~asteroid belt "affordable", or what the threshhold will be, to ask how
~we could colonize space sooner rather than later - and why.

~John Savard

Why is the easier part: because we can. There's always some percentage of
the population that has simple wanderlust, others have specific curiousity
to the Moon, Mars, or other locales in outer space, and some would like it
merely for the thrill of adventure. The question becomes how many of the
above have the resources or clout to advance the cause of human space
colonization.

-- Ken from Chicago


.

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