Rik van Riel wrote:
>
> On Wed, 10 Nov 1999, Doug Jones wrote:
>
> > As for setting up a spacefaring civilization- the minimum is
> > enough mass to start bootstrapping more from extraterrestrial
> > sources, a Library of Everything (at most a ton or so), a few
> > people, and a good head start.
>
> I'm afraid that you'd need more than just a few people if
> you want to setup a civilization. While the tech side of
> the story might be done by just a few, I guess you'd need
> at least a few hundred people to start a self sustainable
> space village.
Perhaps I should have said "economy" instead of "civilization". And most of those people shouldn't be engineers, since even in the best of times we aren't very cultural anyway :)
The problem, as usual, is more on the social side than the technical.
-- Doug Jones Rocket Plumber, XCOR Aerospace http://www.xcor-aerospace.com