From: John Marlow (johnmarlow@gmx.net)
Date: Tue Jan 30 2001 - 22:39:21 MST
You know, I'll probably get all kinds of flak for this, but...
I'm new here, but I like the place. It's full of intelligent and far-
sighted people. HOWEVER--there's a lot of this sort of thing here.
Now I don't mean to say we shouldn't look to the extended future; we
should, and in order to do that we have to assume there is one. But
man--"when we colonize the asteroid belt?"
The chances that we're ever gonna make it off this rock in any
meaningful way are a billion to one, to be kind. The chances that we
make it to the end of this century are what? 10:1? 100:1 against?
Worse?
Star drives and colonization are cool and desirable--but, dude, we've
got a lot of prep to do right here, right now, if we're ever gonna
get there.
jm
On 30 Jan 2001, at 23:37, Harvey Newstrom wrote:
> At 4:36 AM +0100 1/31/01, denis bider wrote:
> >I think we all dream of - or maybe at least feel highly of - a world like
> >Asimov described in Aurora: a whole planet divided into a relatively small
> >number of large properties, each of them governed by virtually
> >self-sustained hominids and their robots.
>
> I don't think I've ever dreamed of this or desired this as a goal.
>
> However, I do predict that this will happen when we colonize the
> asteroid belt. The very large number of very small worlds make this
> type of distribution likely to occur. I see the asteroid belt, and
> the rings of the gas giants, as becoming a close community of small
> states in close proximity. The only odd thing would be that these
> states would drift in their physical location to each other.
> --
> Harvey Newstrom <http://HarveyNewstrom.com>
>
John Marlow
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