Re: food from space

<Willie.Mookie@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:969eb942-0fe2-4456-abfe-198065eb4240@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

So, respectfully I ask Why? Have you really looke at the numbers?

I mostly just have a tendency to go along with O'Neill in these matters,
since he was the acknowledged expert and pioneer in this field. While I
know he made the point that space habitat construction costs would decline
dramatically with experience and infrastructure build-up, I just can't
imagine O'Neill making this audacious an assertion.

I agree with most of the points you make about the advantages of use of
solar energy in space, that orbiting man-made land will be prime, and
certain other things. Just please know that I've had lengthy arguments with
people who think I've extremely naive for supposing that space construction
costs might drop to the point that some large multinational corporation
doing hundreds of billions of dollars worth of SPS construcuction work might
could afford to build a single Island One so their space workers could have
a modest little apartment to live in.

I believe that, and I believe that as costs decline, additional habitats
might be built for billionaires who want to live among the stars. I expect
further decline, to the point where more-average-type people could afford to
emigrate short of pawning their souls. I expect further decline, to where
the population density in the average space habitat is less than that for
the average area on Earth.

What you're advocating seems another step beyond that. But I argue with
people who won't for a minute accept square one in this process I've just
described.


--


Regards,
Mike Combs
----------------------------------------------------------------------
We must be staunch in our conviction that freedom is not the sole
prerogative of a lucky few, but the inalienable and universal right of all
human beings... It would be cultural condescension, or worse, to say that
any people prefer dictatorship to democracy.

Ronald Reagan at Westminster Abbey, 1982


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