Subject: Re: Economic Effects of space Date: Tue, 22 Sep 1998 12:25:28 -0700 From: jim blair Reply-To: jeblairX@facstaff.wisc.edu Organization:University of Wisconsin Madison To: Gary Forbis Newsgroups: TO secundarev@aol.com sci.econ, alt.politics.economics, comp.robotics.misc, sci.space.policy,sci.bio.ecology, sci.environment, sci.energy, sci.space.policy A Short History of the Future Space Program Someone: >Humanity will exhaust the resources of the earth sometime. jim blair: True, but that is an arguement for the space program. No matter how much people cut back, if we try to depend on the resources of one little planet (earth), they will run out someday. But the resources of the universe are (for all practical purposes) unlimited. THE NEAR FURTUE Ross Nordeen wrote: RN RN I think communications will still be the only profitable use of space RN for a couple of decades. Remote sensing might take off soon, too. RN I'll be pleasantly surprised if there turn out to be other commercial RN uses, but I'm not holding my breath. jim blair: Hi, My guess for the next profitable business in space: vacations. There are enough really rich people who have been "everywhere"; they pay big bucks to climb mountains or fly a supersonic jet somewhere. What would they pay for a week in low earth orbit? Or for a trip to the moon? -- kunk@unm.edu (Robert James Kunkle): From the July/August issue of Mercury, the journal of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific, article titled "Your ticket to the moon; the Artemis project": Current plans call for the first flight in eight to ten years, followed a decade after that by the first tourist flight. What will a tourist flight cost? I depends on when you go. We've heard of a Japanese consortium planning to build a fleet of five 50-passenger single- stage to orbit rockets that will sell tourists two-day orbital flights. They expect to keep these vessels flying nearly continuously and to have the ships' construction costs paid off within a year or two. If these ships are flying, it will be a simple operation for us to refuel such a craft in LEO and fly it to the Moon. A two week lunar vacation would probably cost $80,000-100,000 on this first-generation craft. try http://www.asi.org or http://www.tlrc.com. THE LONGER TERM Gary Forbis : > As I tried to point out in another line our ability to reach the resources > of the universe is limited. When one looks at humans of citizens of > space their population grows with their volume and the space in > which they exists grows with the surface of the sphere in which they > exist. Expansion is limited by the speed at which we can travel in > space. The resources available to us is limited to that available in > the space we already occupy and the technology we use. Hi, Unless you mean this as a tautology, it is not true. We are not limited to the space we NOW occupy or by CURRENT technology. I will outline some possibilities for human expansion into space based on only slight extentions of current technology. No major "faster-than-light" breakthroughs are needed for humans to colonize the solar system, and even the galaxy. (And when have there NOT been new ideas and new technologies?) Even without a "warp drive" ala Star Trek, people could exploit the resources of the solar system using current knowledge. First, Space stations, and then an orbiting "skyhook", which could lift objects from high flying airplanes into orbit using counter weights (and thus relatively little energy). Then a moon base, and large orbiting self contained "cities" assembled in space from parts made on the moon and launched to L5 by a lunar catapult. That these are just the first steps. Next could be interstellar "ram jets": giant ships assembled in space that move at near light speed by scooping hydrogen from interstellar space for fusion fuel, and expelling the helium "ashs" out the back at near light speed. By moving at near c, the Lorentz time dialation would "slow down" their time enough to permit travelling across our galaxy in a human lifetime without even the need for cryogenitic hibernation. We may be "limited", but is mostly by our imagination. Think BIG. -- ,,,,,,, _______________ooo___(_O O_)___ooo_______________ (_) DO WE NEED PLANETS? jim blair: Hi, The obvious alternative to your (not very desirable) choices is: SPACE. The human race can expand "forever" and not run out of resources secundarev@aol.com (Secundarev) wrote: > Secundarev: First, we have yet to find another planet suitable for the > sustainment of life. Hi, This is a common misconception. It is based on what I call 'planetary chauvinism': the assumption that planets are necessary for life, intelligent life, or humans. They are not. People can live in large self contained "cities" assembled in space. If shaped like wheels, they can simulate gravity by rotating (and thus "down" would be away from the central hub). They can orbit the sun and grow their own food and make (well, recycle) their oxygen. >Even if we did find such a place, it might be so far > away that it would take us several hundred years to figure out how to get > there. Not to "figure out how", but maybe it would take such a time to "get there", if "there" is other star systems. Two questions: Hundreds of years according to WHAT clock? And, so what? >The fact that people are even talking about moving the human species > to > another planet betrays a serious problem right here on earth. Yes we have problems here. But when we start taking serious steps to expand into space, that will tell me that we are getting serious about SOLVING those problems. -- ,,,,,,, _______________ooo___(_O O_)___ooo_______________ (_) REPLIES: wmook (wmook@qn.net) wrote: : Read MIND CHILDREN by Hans Mouravec. Very interesting reading. : Also good is THE PHYSICS OF IMMORTALITY by Frank Tipler. and: You might want to review the essay of David Criswell in: Finney, Ben R., Jones, Eric M., eds Interstellar Migration and the Human experience ISBN 0-520-05349-4 University of California Press 1985 David Criswell computes that it is possible to make a lot of energy by husbanding the sun, extending its life, and later by constructiong 'tailored black holes' and carefully feeding mass into them. : I was simply projecting the present trend of population growth but : I also indicated that I thought it was a moot point because things would : change. Anyway trying to predict populations over the lifetime of a star is simply silly. Our species will not last that long. -- Filip De Vos FilipPC.DeVos@rug.ac.be Hi, Wow, extending the life of the sun and dumping junk into black holes to get more energy. This guy is way ahead of my rather modest proposals. I am just thinking of using our old "unimproved" sun, going to other stars, and around the galaxy. Nothing fancy. -- ,,,,,,, _______________ooo___(_O O_)___ooo_______________ (_) jim blair (jeblair@facstaff.wisc.edu) For a good time call http://www.geocities.com/capitolhill/4834