[ExI] Gold

[Adrian Tymes]

On May 27, 2013 10:23 AM, "Rafal Smigrodzki" <rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com>
wrote:
> On Sun, May 26, 2013 at 4:43 PM, Adrian Tymes <atymes at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Physics informs feasibility.  Technology informs
> > economics.
> >
> > Space travel can get a lot cheaper than it is now.
> > Using current prices to argue economics is invalid.
>
> ### This is irrelevant. Whatever technology reduces the cost of human
> space travel, the same technology also reduces the cost of solid state
> creature travel by the same factor, or even higher. Solid state/non
> biological beings will always have an economic advantage over humans
> in space, an advantage so massive as to preclude meaningful
> competition against non-biologicals in terms of the ability to settle
> space.

Not necessarily.  They may have a large ratio, but
let us say it costs $10,000 to lift a human and tools
to do a job, but only $1 to lift a robot and tools.
That's a 10,000:1 difference - massive indeed - but
if designing and building that robot costs $20,000
- quite plausible in some cases - while the human
already has the necessary tools, the human is
cheaper.

There is also the problem that settling space, by
definition, requires biologicals (or sentient AIs,
which don't exist yet), to be in space.  A mine, a
factory...these things are not settlements.
Ultimately the resources are consumed for the
benefit of the biologicals (or AIs)...and if they're
all still down the gravity well, a lot of mass is
going to be dropped down it.  Getting them into
space might be worthwhile just to eliminate that.
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