From: The Low Willow (phoenix@ugcs.caltech.edu)
Date: Thu Jan 02 1997 - 18:18:04 MST
On Jan 2, 12:52pm, Michael Lorrey wrote:
} Missiles in earth orbit also violate a number of current treaties with a
} number of countries. You'd have a major problem uniting everyone enough
} to ignore the mistrust symbolized by those treaties.
Fair point. But again, conditions can change. They might be secretly
stored on stations, as well.
} A
} > small, "brain drain", colony may well be sentimental about Earth and
} > morally unable to wipe out 6 billion people and an ecosystem.
}
} You are still under the assumption that an ecosystem would be wiped out.
} As meteor strikes on industrial, military, and possibly population
} centers would not have ANY radiation (you are still making the same
I wasn't assuming any radiation. I was just thinking of big explosions
and dust thrown up. But you're right; unless they used lots of really
big rocks there wouldn't be total wipeout. They could still worry about
eco-disruption; if they aren't using really big arms, they're that much
less of a threat.
} in the solar system in the future. This used the same game theory used
} to prove the unwinnable nature of nuclear war on earth. The analysis
} said that in any Earth/Moon power contest, the moon will win in the end.
I'd want to see the actual analysis.
} > Belters I don't know about. And if anyone manages to live on Mercury
} > (Power Capital) or Venus ("we all live in a yellow refrigerator... and
} Mercury will be like the Middle East: In a strategically poor position,
} but if they become the dominant energy source for the solar system, via
Poor because of heat and radiation; rich in energy and possibly metals.
Although I saw a hypothesis in Science that the surface might be
conductive. Not sure what that would do.
} Mars would within 100-200 years become more powerfull than Earth and the
} Moon, as it is higher still, terraformable( i.e. high population
Lower in energy; useful or quick terraforming is hardly guaranteed, Kim
Robinson notwithstanding. Earth has a fair chance of remaining the
intellectual capital.
Robin claims we're debating a vague question, since there's no
specification of lunar colony size or exact political conditions. I
thought we were swimming through multiple possibilities at once, but
perhaps not very well.
} Jupiter and Saturn: if you stellate them via Von Neumann machine
I thought the last argument on this decided that the Jovians could not
be stars.
} Venus is impossible.
I'm arguing with someone who claims he can convert angular and linear
momentum and who has just proposed stellating the large Jovians, on a
list with regular discussions of Tipler cylinders, infinite Omega Points
and a Singularity in 38 years, or 28 years, or maybe before the
millenium. And I've just been told that colonizing Venus is impossible.
Catch this, Anders? Extro-conservative high point...
Why? High atmospheric pressure yes, but I hadn't heard it defied known
forces, or even materials -- Russian probes lasted there, just not for
very long. It's very hot, but that's what air conditioning was made
for. Admittedly the problem is more interesting, in that you might have
to cool the very surface of the material, or else (more likely?) have
some way to continually renew it, but at the moment these seem like
highly interesting engineering problems. (I'm also not sure about
dumping the heat from the fusion or black hole reactor; can air
conditioning go that far? If not, perhaps deep drill for geothermal.)
And I presume much would be underground as usual, or under whatever the
surface is like.
Difficult as hell, yes, quite literally. Impossible?
Merry part,
-xx- Damien R. Sullivan X-) <*> http://www.ugcs.caltech.edu/~phoenix
Life: an arms race to entropy.
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