[ExI] Let's Just Do It (was The L5 Society)

[Lee Corbin]

Keith writes

> [John Clark writes]
> 
>>  It currently costs about $20,000 to put one kilogram into geosynchronous
>>  orbit, and no I can't give you a number, I don't know how much a power
>>  satellite would weigh except that it would be many many kilograms.
> 
> Easy to look up.  I am using 2kg/kW which works out to 10,000 metric
> tons for 5 GW.
> 
>>  It seems to me that for the idea to be practical a dramatically cheaper way
>>  needs to be found to put massive things in that orbit, and the only two
>>  ways I know of are space elevators or lunar industrialization. If neither
>>  of those can work then power satellites are Dead On Arrival.

Surely youse guys read the book "Project Orion" or its equivalents.
Larry Niven even, of course, in "Footfall" when the humans got
desperate, used the idea.  (A.E. Van Vogt was even earlier, it's
said, though I don't recall it from the book myself, with the idea
in his novel "Empire of the Atom".)

Keith believes that things will become *desperate*, and I doubt
if John would instinctively be against something as gung-ho as
Orion. 

So all in favor say "yay!".

Lee

P.S.  Yay!