From: Samantha Atkins (samantha@objectent.com)
Date: Tue Sep 12 2000 - 23:53:26 MDT
Technotranscendence wrote:
>
> On Tuesday, September 12, 2000 7:15 PM David Lubkin lubkin@unreasonable.com
> wrote:
>
> > But: Just as we should go to space in part to avoid putting all our eggs
> > in one basket, I think we should also have some solutions that fail-safe.
> > Some of us sentients should live in habitats that are not dependent on
> > advanced technology. That come with a biosphere that is capable of
> > sustaining organic, sentient life without use of technology.
>
How on earth (or off) would you do that? There is no place on earth
that is not vulnerable to natural or manmade catastrophe. We don't have
Vingean bobble fields after all. And there is no place off of earth
that supports a human compatible biosphere without the use of LOTS of
technology. So I am having trouble understanding what was meant.
> You got me there! This is true. I just wonder about the cost.
> Terraforming Mars without nanotech will take a long, long time and lots of
> resources. Terraforming it with nanotech seems pointless, because if you
> can do that, then you probably don't need to.
>
It will take a lot of tech to maintain an human supportive atmosphere
and temperature on Mars even with nanotech. And what is this hangup on
human (as we now know them) life support anyway? I would rather be able
to morph my body or better still design one I could "step into" that
best suits the environment and needs at hand.
> The price of one terraformed world is high compared with many space
> stations, space cities, hollowed out asteroids, and all manner of small
> scale space colonies. Space is a pretty big and cheap basket. Mars is a
> small and expensive one that requires one to cook many of the eggs
> beforehand.:)
>
Actually, we can seed Mars with various low-level organics over decades
that will produce most of the intended transformation. That is not
costly at all compared to building a space station, much less a space
city. A human mission to Mars will run at least 50 billion for the
first dropping down to perhaps 20 billion by the third or so according
to the most optimistic well-engineered plans I've seen.
It will be even more expensive to set up human infrastructure in Near
Earth space. But subsequent Mars flights and other works will be much
cheaper subsequently. The cost can be defrayed by using robotics as
much as possible to start processing the most accessible space resources
we have, the near earth asteroids. The NEAs contain several orders of
magnitude more wealth than is needed to exploit space and most of the
propulsion products, building materials and shielding and even rare
earths needed. But we need enough presence to start the process of
extracting this wealth economically. That is the big initial monetary
priming of the pump. But we shouldn't set up human habitats as the
first major goals. Humans are relatively difficult and expensive to
support in orbit and need to be returned to earth periodically (in the
beginning at least). Robots can stay in space and even assemble (a
stage or two out) more robots in space. Only when space operations are
already in the black can building large human habitats be justified.
Small habitats for highly skilled personnel needed to get the operation
started and rolling are justifiable earlier.
Personally I would consider turning gleisner at the first opportunity
with high capacity core uploads soon following (preceding if possible).
I like human bodies but they are a terrible thing to die in or to be
stuck exclusively in.
- samantha
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