> On 18 Mar 2001, Anders Sandberg wrote:
>
> > Upon arrival, the craft divides into two. The nuclear reactor part,
> > cargo and habitat modules land on Orpheus, becoming a mining base,
> > while the (nearly empty) fuel tanks and an auxillary propulsion system
> > remain in orbit as a heavy cargo transport.
>
> Oh my god, Anders is actually inventing another boondogle
> that requires *people* to do the work! I explained how this
> should be done in my previous (somewhat lengthy) post from
> a week ago or so. You do it with microsats.
Microsats are nice, yes. But we players won't have the opportunity of going
crazy in space in quite as expensive a manner if we're not allowed to go to
Orpheus :-)
(says the schizoid mathematician cum AI-ecologists with 'The Yudkowsky
institute of AI research' on his CV and a clinical problem with social
distance :-)
> > The crew will have to spend a long time in microgravity; I have been
> > toying with the idea of rotating the ship but I'm not sure it would be
> > worth it
>
> Why don't you just have the biotech engineers come up with a drug that
> simulates the stress-signals produced by gravity (or amplifies those
> produced naturally, so you can cut the treadmill time down to something
> reasonable).
Cute! I like it!
> > The business plan is rather long-range and mainly interested in
> > building the industrial infrastructure needed for large scale habitat
> > production (of which there is a predicted tremendous jump in demand
> > within 20 years of the start of the operation, due to external
> > factors).
>
> Long range business plans can only be financed by very rich people.
> VC & Investment bankers wouldn't touch them with a ten foot pole.
> You can of course wait until 20 years when a new generation of
> hot-shots thinks they know everything and buy into the stupidest stuff
> (The marketing plan for Iridium must now be a B-school classic.)
This is set in 2040 -- so Iridium is long since forgotten, and Iridium the
sequel is 20 years since :-)
// Mikael Johansson
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Mon May 28 2001 - 09:59:41 MDT