Re: The Moon

From: william mook (william.mook_at_mokindustries.com)
Date: 10/07/04 

Date: 7 Oct 2004 08:32:09 -0700

"wally" <wallyg@citysyd.com.au> wrote in message news:<416504d8$1@dnews.tpgi.com.au>...
> "Alan Erskine" <alanerskine1@yahoo.com.au> wrote in > We can get people to
> the Moon in five years,
> > not the fifteen GWB proposes.
> > Give NASA a real challenge
>
>
> yeah, stop world poverity, wars///

1) Limited strategic resources can cause nations to engage in power
struggles over those resources which can lead to war.

http://www.ppu.org.uk/war/future_wars.html

2) The way children are raised in the modern world affords them scant
respect. This creates a fascination with wealth, power and death and
leads to a propensity to support actions that lead to war in a
significant minority of adults raised this way. Spending $8 trillion
on nuclear warheads for 'security' and next to nothing on peaceful
methods of resolving conflict makes sense to a population of adults
raised this way. Violent crime is also a byproduct of this process.

http://www.noogenesis.com/malama/abuse/miller.html

3) Voting and markets are incapable of doing what people routinely
expect of them. No method of counting can be used to accurately
measure the will of a population of individuals. Turning to market
forces mediated through open markets or the will of the people through
free and fair voting has been shown to be as effective as submitting
to the devine rights of kings. In short, ineffective despite common
belief that such practices are effective. Succintly, humanity has not
yet hit on a way to organize its affairs rationally. Knowledge of
this shortcoming has been uniformly ignored or misstated to minimize
the result and basically perpetuate the myth that markets and voting
work. Meanwhile, special interests poll populations to drive market
and voting decisions into the hands of those special interests by
controlling the order of decision making.

http://www2.sjsu.edu/faculty/watkins/arrow.htm

SOLUTIONS

Unconstrained by corruption, inefficiencies, environmental effects and
supply limits industrial economies can grow at double digit rates.
Since population growth grows in the low single digits clearly its
feasible for a growing industrial economy unconstrained by limits can
provide high living standards world wide. High living standards
translates to low levels of conflict and low population growth rates -
effectively solving the problem of warfare and poverty - except in
cases where poverty is the result of psychological disturbances an
inability to cope socially (which is another class of poverty
entirely)

The central problem facing human industry at the moment are supply
limits.

http://www.wws.princeton.edu/cgi-bin/byteserv.prl/~ota/disk2/1985/8525/852504.PDF

In addition to fuel resources the world's industrial economy relies on
a short list of strategic materials that are in short supply. Limited
fuel supply when combined with limited strategic materials supply
constrain the ultimate growth of our industrial economy leading to
pockets of high wealth surrounded by a sea of poverty. As stated at
the outset, this is the situation that is most likely to lead to
future warfare.

While the supplies of Earth are limited, the supplies available across
the solar system are not. The sun provides 171,500 trillion watts of
power to Earth. Humanity uses energy at a rate of 5.5 trillion watts
- primarily by burning 28 billion barrels of oil each year.
Unconstrained by limited oil supplies (there are 900 billion barrels
of easily recoverable oil available in the world) this could easily
grow to 60 trillion watts of energy usage. To collect this spaceborne
power terrestrially requires the construction of 20 trillion watts of
collectors growing to 210 trillion watts of collectors. These would
cover an area of 20,000 sq miles and grow to 210,000 sq miles. A
space based system would be about 1/3 this size since it would be
exposed to sunlight nearly continuously. If the cost of the energy
storage and processing system for this larger infrastructure is less
than the cost of rockets to place the smaller area of collectors into
space - and beaming of power could be worked out - we could provide
energy from space satellites creating a global powernet akin to
today's global internet.

This would be a first step in ending poverty and with it potential for
conflict and warfare.

The other strategic materials could be obtained from asteroids. Since
the 1950s we have known how to move asteroids through the solar system
using atomic explosives.

http://encyclopedia.thefreedictionary.com/asteroid%20deflection

While people have focused primarily on deflecting errant asteroids
away from collision with Earth, it is perfectly feasible to bring
asteroids into orbit around Earth. So, we can use nuclear pulse
rockets to go out and survey the 30,000 asteroids - and pick the
richest. We can then bring these asteroids back to Earth orbit.
There, we can use sunlight and remotely controlled robots

http://asimo.honda.com/index.asp?bhcp=1

to harvest critical materials in sufficient abundance to provide for
all our material needs - even if our population should exceed 10
billion people! Further, we can expand upon this concept to place all
major industry in Earth orbit, including farms and forests - to
provide all the world's food and fiber while simultaneously letting
the world go back to nature. People would then be capable of living
at very high standards in a vast global nature preserve - sustained by
resources and processes located in Earth orbit.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: The Moon
    ... Limited strategic resources can cause nations to engage in power ... In addition to fuel resources the world's industrial economy relies on ... While the supplies of Earth are limited, ... The other strategic materials could be obtained from asteroids. ...
    (sci.space.policy)
  • Re: The Moon
    ... Limited strategic resources can cause nations to engage in power ... In addition to fuel resources the world's industrial economy relies on ... While the supplies of Earth are limited, ... The other strategic materials could be obtained from asteroids. ...
    (sci.space.shuttle)
  • Re: Helium-3 Article in USA Today
    ... >>resources, then shouldn't other bodies such as many of the solar system's ... > For asteroids, it's unclear. ... of these energy resources. ... energetic structure possible upon the Earth if we are to keep the life zone ...
    (sci.space.policy)
  • Re: Solar powered lasers in space
    ... If we focus a 10m beam on asteroid this gives us a ... Earth and its people to use commercially. ... beaming energy to asteroids that will one day strike the Earth - from ... dispatched to the stars at 1/3 light speed. ...
    (sci.space.policy)
  • Re: Solar powered lasers in space
    ... A laser film with active optical film layered together - responding to ... Earth and its people to use commercially. ... all the objects in the solar system will ... beaming energy to asteroids that will one day strike the Earth - from ...
    (sci.space.policy)