RE: The good ship Extro 1

From: Robert J. Bradbury (bradbury@aeiveos.com)
Date: Mon Jun 02 2003 - 08:35:56 MDT

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    On Mon, 2 Jun 2003, Greg Burch wrote:

    > There's a REASON that these vessels are for sale cheap! The capital
    > cost of the actual steel and static physical systems is small compared
    > to the cost of operating and maintaining them.

    Ok, point taken. But it doesn't answer the question of whether
    robotic "insects" can solve the problem of maintaining the structure
    or whether we should be looking at vessels made of fiberglass
    or eventually nanotube composites where the "maintaining"
    problem will be much less.

    The Europeans are sending a probe to Mars on the cheap today --
    $190 million buys a *lot* of "maintaining" (point being that
    the cost of getting into space buys a *lot* on the Earth's
    surface right now and probably for several decades). While
    navigation in space is probably easier, I question whether it is
    cheaper after one takes into account the radiation shielding
    required to provide that equivalent to that the atmosphere provides.

    I would say that I want to grow into space nearly as much as
    Greg does -- but I want to live in a colony that has a *lot*
    of water (or better frozen hydrogen, but that is a bit tougher
    to engineer) surrounding it. And I honestly don't know
    if that makes space a better place to live than international
    waters (in terms of freedom from those who would restrict ones
    freedoms).

    Robert



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