From: Robert J. Bradbury (bradbury@aeiveos.com)
Date: Thu May 22 2003 - 08:59:11 MDT
On Thu, 22 May 2003 spike66@attbi.com wrote:
> > They don't have enough water.
>
> Water will be practically useless for making the kinds
> of stuff I have in mind.
Actually spike, perhaps not so -- water contains a fair
amount of hydrogen which is useful from a radiation
shielding perspective (I think this due to the relative
volume occupied by the proton (and sometimes a neutron
or two) relative to the atomic radius -- one can simply
"pack" hydrogen at greater nucleon density).
Also, so long as you keep the temperature low enough I
suspect that ice, perhaps reinforced with nanotubes,
might be a reasonable structural material (what is
the difference between reinforced concrete and
reinforced ice???).
> > The don't have little atmospheres.
>
> Don't need atmospheres if you handle your matter
> correctly.
Not strictly true until one is uploaded. We still need O2
to oxidize reduced carbon energy sources. There might be
ways around this but I'm not sure that our current physiology
would adapt to them easily.
> > They aren't on the edge of the solar system, leading to the stars.
>
> That much I will give you, but my notion is that we have
> a lotta cool stuff we can do with the material that is
> in close, before we need to think about the next star
> system.
Go read my planetary dismantlement paper Spike -- the easy material
sources get used up *very* quickly. Indeed if the longevity
the "average" extropian should be anticipating is between 2000-7000
years and it only requires 600-800 years to disassemble Jupiter
(which is by far the hardest planet to disassemble) then the
"average" extropian *will* need to be thinking about the
"next star system".
Robert
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