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