Re: Opening the High Frontier of Space

On 17 Feb, 08:37, "G. L. Bradford" <glbra...@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
"Mark R. Whittington" <mwhitti...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in messagenews:d4addd01-0993-4d2f-84f9-812160b7ec84@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Many years ago, the Astronomer Royal of Great Britain Richard vander
Riet Woolley famously declared, "Space travel is utter bilge." It was
a statement that haunted him for the rest of his life. The current
Astronomer Royal, Lord Martin Rees, seems to have repeated the folly
of his predecessor, albeit with a modern twist and caveat.

http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/601053/opening_the_high_fron...

  I've often tried to imagine the cost of opening (colonizing) the space
frontier versus the coast of never managing to get the job done. I find that
in this comparison there is no cost attached to opening. None! All the real
cost is attached to counting the wrong costs and never managing to get the
job done. All of it, and relentlessly becoming more catastrophic all the
time!

GLB

There is also the question of doing things in the cheapest way. To me
the great weakness of the Bush vision is that he is putting the
presence of Man on the Moon and Mars above everthing else. Go to the
Moon - take everything from the Earth. Go to Mars, well perhaps we
might just take hydrogen for the return journey and manufacture
methane and Oxygen from Martian CO2.

If we were to put the utilization of space resourcres first. Lets look
at the cheapest way of developing space resources we might well be
onto a better bet. If asteroids became an economic source of
platinoids to take an example, there would be no question about
political cuts. The whole thing would be self sustaining with pure
capitalism.

As I said, Lord Rees says " no humans at the costs suggested", NOT no
humans ever. I personally beieve that robotic development of resources
can be the only possible route to realistic costs.


- Ian Parker
.

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