From: Adrian Tymes (wingcat@pacbell.net)
Date: Tue Feb 06 2001 - 00:54:03 MST
Spike Jones wrote:
> So, that goes right back to private funding, which can be raised
> only if there is some way to earn the money back, which leads
> to tiny single astronauts because we only have funds for one
> launch vehicle, outrageously high risk and attemtps to earn back
> the money by selling the astronaut's email. Most people find
> one or more of these results distasteful or unacceptable. What
> am I missing in this analysis? spike
Any company that can demonstrate the infrastructure to reach to Mars,
when even large governments can not, would likely be able to set its
own rates for access to this new land - for explorers and terraformers
alike. ("You wanna get away from it all, and literally build a new
home for humanity? Or maybe just flee from [random_large_government]
because of its [random_oppresive_acts]? We can do it - but you're ours
while you're up there. We own and operate the life support systems,
and the info pipelines to anyone you'd like to keep in touch with back
here. Which means you're working for us - either terraforming, or
doing science missions, or a few other things that can be done better
there than here, or simply creating intellectual property for us to
sell back on Earth. We'll try to be benevolent dictators since a slave
revolt is the only thing we really fear from you, but someone's gotta
earn the food shipments and pay off our stockholders until you guys get
self-sustaining. We've already made arrangements for security: since
the governments of Earth couldn't be bothered to go there, the weapons
we've built there are for our use only, to shoot down any
competitors...or to harrass anyone who makes a big enough stink about
it on Earth, possibly trying to interfere with our Earth-side
operations.")
...or maybe I'm being too pessimistic here.
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