[extropy-chat] Moon news

[Robert J. Bradbury]

On Fri, 9 Jan 2004, David Lubkin wrote:

> Thinking of nanotech, though, is far beyond any competency I'd expect from
> journalism.

Journalists are catching up faster than you might think from where I sit.
Perhaps due to the fact that they can't escape from more informed writers
who simply throw stuff onto the net without having to make a living as
a journalist.  Its tough to push ca-ca when a Google search will cleearly
show it as such.

> Anyway. The Case for Mars plan is cheap, pay-for-results, and builds a
> permanent complex on Mars. It is not "going briefly and coming back."

But, but but... Zubrin gets so close to the dismantlement of the planet
with the construction of solar cells for power sources then doesn't
follow through.  I believe anyone who is an extropian who believes
nanotechnology will develop reasonably rapidly (say within a century)
would be foolish to support any Mars colonization or even Mars
human visitation efforts.  There is no point to expending resources
to put humans at the bottom of another gravity well.  Hell, on Mars
the atmosphere is so thin one doesn't even have the protection from
asteroids, comets, UV and gamma rays that one has on earth.  It is
*stupid* to expend large amounts of resources to go there.  O'Neill
space based colonies or even asteroid based colonies make much more
sense.  If a Mars program would cost $100B consider what that could
do if invested in nanotech development...

> But, if I were in the position of allocating investment dollars, I'd put my
> space effort into bringing back a nickel-iron asteroid. Set up shop for
> mining, manufacturing, and space construction somewhere convenient, like
> geosynch, L-4, or L-5. Bova et al outlined a reasonable scenario for doing
> this nearly off-the-shelf twenty years ago. I keep expecting to hear that
> Paul Allen has funded it.

Let Paul finish the X-prize first, then deal with the asteroid as a
follow-up effort.  (Though I strongly agree with the strategy.)

> Hundreds of millions of tons of metal and organics in a useful Up location
> is a major bootstrap for anything else you want to do in space, and I think
> would have a lot of synergy with nanotech.

It does.

Robert