Re: Moon City?

"Greg D. Moore \(Strider\)" <mooregr_deleteth1s@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
[[about a lunar colony]]
I'm thinking more of folks who once setup, pretty much live off the land,
albeit it at varying levels of tech.

The problem is that the combination of "live off the land" and "moon"
requires a very high level of technology. That, in turn, creates a need
for many, many different kinds of specialized equipment, and the many,
many different sorts of specialized expertise needed to keep that
equipment running and to keep the humans and their domestic animals
in reasonable health. By the time you add that up, you need a pretty
substantial population.

Moreover, there are a great many things that could go wrong in such
a (necessarily high-tech) colony. Each of these may be individually
fairly unlikely, but (because there are so many of them, and because
you want the colong to survive for a long time with high probability)
the chances of at least one them happening are substantial. Alas,
each one has its own set of resources-required-for-an-effective-response,
and the sum of those over all the different scenarios adds up to (again)
a pretty substantial population: A few examples:
* A new parasite evolves (from some previously-benign species) and
devastates the food-production system. Response: you need biologists
and agronomists and chemists (and maybe biotechnology) to come up
with a suitable response.
* The life-support computers start crashing because a psychopath
sabatoged them (maybe in the hardware, maybe in the software).
Response: you need computer experts to figure out what's wrong,
and fix it (quickly, before the air gets unbreathable). And you
need something like police to find the psycopath before s/he does
something else equally nasty.
* Many computers start crashing because a manufacturing flaw left
the metal interconnect layers in their chips vulnerable to corrosion.
Response: you need a whole IC-chip-manufacturing infrastructure to
figure out what's wrong, and to make new chips which don't have
the problem.
* One day most of the critical-infrastructure-network crashes, due
to the same sort of network-software-bug which crippled AT&T's long
distance network on January 15, 1990. To get a working network again
(which the colony *needs* for efficient communication), the colony
has to have a bunch of talented networking/software engineers to
diagnose & fix the problem.

Another important driver for minimum-colony-size is the danger of
inbreeding (and the consequent buildup of genetic diseases) in either
humans or their domestic animals (livestock). To have a good safety
margin against this, you'd really like to have a a minimum population
size in the thousands.

Finally, you need to consider whether the colony is engineered to be
the smallest possible colony possessing the necessary spectrum of skills
and equipment, or whether it grows in a way dictated by other criteria
like cost and economic efficiency. In the latter case, it may have to
be a *lot* larger in order to possess the necessary spectrum of skilled
people and specialised equipment for long-term independent survival.

A somewhat-relevant data point: Consider the survivability of Australia
(population now a bit over 20 million) and/or New Zealand (just over 4
million) after a major nuclear war in which the Americans and Russians
collectively wipe out technological society in the northern hemisphere.
People who have studied this seriously have all concluded that these
societies would be in serious trouble due to lack of specialized and
hard-to-manufacture products, with the notable examples of computers,
pesticides, medical equipment, and hybrid seeds for agriculture.
[See, for example, the studies reported in
Barrie Pittock
"Beyond Darkness: Nuclear Winter in Australia and New Zealand"
Sun Books, South Melbourne, 1987
ISBN 0-7251-0536-4]

ciao,

--
-- "Jonathan Thornburg [remove -animal to reply]" <jthorn@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Dept of Astronomy, Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana, USA
"Space travel is utter bilge" -- common misquote of UK Astronomer Royal
Richard Woolley's remarks of 1956
"All this writing about space travel is utter bilge. To go to the
moon would cost as much as a major war." -- what he actually said

.

Relevant Pages

  • office network xp
    ... three computers, DSL hub downstairs, each computer has a ... Can I network all of them ... Without any other equipment? ...
    (microsoft.public.windowsxp.network_web)
  • RE: [Full-Disclosure] DCOM RPC exploit (dcom.c)
    ... > route leads to too many failures (you switch to the slightly more ... > better fit equipment. ... Then they had to retrofit the network. ...
    (Full-Disclosure)
  • Re: technological "bootstrap" ROM (Was Re: rebuilding technology, alone)
    ... So, in everyone's mind, what should be the "bootstrap" equipment for ... launching the needed technological level for a viable colony? ... galleons is muuuuch less than the gap between, say, an Alpha Centauri ... motherland all the required communications will be limited to basic ...
    (sci.military.naval)
  • Re: technological "bootstrap" ROM (Was Re: rebuilding technology, alone)
    ... So, in everyone's mind, what should be the "bootstrap" equipment for ... launching the needed technological level for a viable colony? ... galleons is muuuuch less than the gap between, say, an Alpha Centauri ... motherland all the required communications will be limited to basic ...
    (sci.military.naval)
  • RE: [Full-Disclosure] DCOM RPC exploit (dcom.c)
    ... I am a Techie Admin who is in management. ... the product, source it, install it, fix it, Admin it, everything except ... Then they had to retrofit the network. ... best work on our network and the purchased the right equipment, ...
    (Full-Disclosure)