[extropy-chat] Space elevator numbers III

[Eugen Leitl]

On Fri, Feb 16, 2007 at 10:16:34AM -0500, Keith Henson wrote:

> That's the key problem.  Nobody has any engineering experience with 
> automatic manufacturing from dirt up.  I am (or was) a working engineer 

Exactly. Expecially in microgravity.

Which is why scaled-down teleoperated (wheeled centaur-type) robots
on the Moon are so interesting. You don't even need an InterPlanet,
common TCP/IP and UCP is good enough for a pingpong of 2.5 s.
Teams distributed across time zones with laser line of sight and
linked up via the terrestrial Internet could operate 24/7/365
machinery at the north pole crater rim. You could just add an
artificial FIFO lag to a terrestrial lunar simulator (an UHV
chamber with simulated regolith and lots of xenon lights), and
start tinkering but for gravity -- which is not that different
for very small robots.

> with wide experience and I wouldn't know where to start. If the Mars 
> Society were to dump a package where they have their habitats and build 
> even a small house without human labor input that would be an interesting 
> demonstration.

Sending people to space looks such a waste of resources. Life support
overhead, radiation shielding, bone mineral loss in microgravity,
blacking out at just a few g's, the list can go on.
 
> I am a bit amused at the opposition to the space elevator from this 
> group.  Perhaps it is to serious a proposal.  I don't want to live an 

This group will shoot down ideas which don't make sense. Right now
the project is much too expensive, and there's frankly no money for
anything, unless it's a war. There is no longer to lift human cargo
with tethers or beanstalks with nanotechnology, because monkey bauplan
people as well as the biosphere and nanotechnology are incompatible
long-term.

> energy poor lifestyle and if you think about it, I doubt you do either.

Look at http://www.solarbuzz.com/StatsCosts.htm
Suburbia density is low enough to be self-reliant. At one third of
the current price, fossil is obsolete. EU energy/household IIRC
is half that of US, and I don't have to tell you about which life
quality wins.

-- 
Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org
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