> > A few tons and a few people would be more than enough, with hard nanotech...
> >> ...Bottom line: Give me the right tools and I could be out of here
> tomorrow...
Greg, your question has given me many hours of pleasant ponderations. Doug is more advanced than I am in the field of heavy lift, so I will defer to him, however I must admit to being somewhat less optimistic. With hard nanotech, we get stronger, lighter materials, which would be a godsend to the space colonist, but at the end of the day, I must say getting a space colony going with rocketry will still be difficult and expensive... UNLESS: we can reduce the size of... us.
If we must carry full size humans [especially gorillas the size of *you* Greg {8^D ] to orbit, it will take rockets pretty much the size we are accustomed to today {8-[. But if we could tinkerbellize to the scale of 10 cm, which should eventually be possible with strong nanotech, holy schlaMOLY we could make some wicked cool space colonies, and of course the rocket problem would already be solved: preadaptation from the time we were still huge apes, as we are today. Even if we could get down to the size of Darwin your pet lemur, it would make the whole process vaaaaastly more practical.
I would then agree with Doug: give us *that* tool and we could be outta here tomorrow. spike