Wayne wrote: >Has the list discussed what it will take to colonise the solar system in >the past or is that too almost on topic?
I'm pretty new here too ... I haven't seen anything of this kind of conversation. But maybe sci-fi has moved on a bit beyond merely banal spaceflight -- perhaps the topic had become a bit too commonplace, and the genre as a whole has moved onto other more sophisticated foci? >It seems to me any colonisation of space will be doomed while it is >dependent on any more than token amounts of equipment manufactured on >earth, and that with current technology it would take hundreds or perhaps >thousands of missions to Mars say, before there would be much chance of >building the infrastructure to bootstrap an independent technological >civilization. It's pretty well accepted that using resources found in-situ is the only far-sighted way to progress space travel. As you've pointed out, heaving everything with you from the bottom of this gravity well is a fairly tough prospect, so any bootstrap program would be far more likely to succeed if the location chosen is not a planet & doesn't have the associated arduous gravity field. >Therefore, it seems to me that the colonisation of space something that is >going to have to wait until the singularity starts to kick in. Whether the singularity would want to have anything to do with colonizing space, as we see it today, is debatable. Transcendent technology would be capable of so much more, it's hard to see a reason for space colonization in a traditional 'sci-fi' sense. Thus, in my view, space colonization by Homo Sapiens Sapiens is only likely to happen before the singularity occurs. You hit the nail on the head in your posting, in that space exploration (on a human scale) is only feasible if we make the right choice on how to bootstrap. This is why we must make asteroids our first priority! They are the most accessible resource we have in near-earth space, and only by exploiting them can we have a sufficiently large space-borne economy to enable colonization of the solar system. (& beyond?) In order to achieve this dream, we need to develop technologies to allow us to make use of these resources. In the case of most metals, this is a process of crushing the ore rock, and smelting the ore. Starting with small quantities of material processed using earth-origin machinery (small factory / smelter ship), refine enough raw materials to manufacture more capable facilities, which in turn allows an increase in material output, which enables bigger smelters, and so on and so on. Smelters would be solar powered, using very large paraboloid mirrors of lightweight construction. It is likely that the operation would be crewed, with the heavy work done by tele-operated robots and machines. Most ore-processing and steel-working machinery is heavy and cumbersome, and currently works only under earth-gravity conditions. New techniques will have to be devised to deal with the challenge of microgravity materials processing. If a particular process cannot be adapted to micro-g conditions, we could always fall back on using centripetal force to simulate gravity, which would allow us to use the same old kinds of machines that work here on earth. I find it pretty sad that nobody is working toward this goal. The current US space program is doing some good work, but sadly the mission profiles target the moon and mars -- not asteroids. Many forward-thinking engineers in the space industry have noticed this, and are trying to do something about it. There is now a fairly strong movement to have the whole US space program repurposed toward asteroid habitation / exploitation. I wish them every success. C Rock 'n' Roll Maru _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
