[ExI] Fwd: Space governance

[Ben Zaiboc]

On 26/09/2020 19:20, spike wrote:
>
> > *On Behalf Of *John Grigg via extropy-chat
> *Subject:* Re: [ExI] Fwd: Space governance
>
> >…Spike, as our resident engineer, does Ben's math check out?  :  )
>
> Ja, sure does.
>
> John we knew back in the early 90s that any notion of people living 
> long term in space was really dependent on Single Stage To Orbit, or 
> failing that… all recoverable everything.  We knew you don’t build a 
> 737 in Seattle, fly it to Orlando, unload the passengers, then hurl it 
> into the sea.  No part of that aircraft is thrown out.
>
> Space hardware is inherently expensive, that isn’t going to change.  
> Until we get some way to get stuff to orbit cheaply, none of the 
> space-hab notions are practical.  All supplies need to be hauled up 
> there for a long time.  We can’t do that at $10K per kilo, which is 
> one man-day of food.  Can’t do that now, can’t do it later.
>
> To answer your question: space habs aren’t there yet.  There are 
> technologies missing, such as how to make food from sunlight a looooot 
> more efficiently than putting it thru vegetables.
>
> It pains me to be the wet blanket on the notion, but I used to it.  I 
> ended up in the same position with the early 90s engineering teams 
> working on SSTO: I calculated that anything you can do with one stage 
> can be done better with two.  Turns out that was true then and still 
> is now.
>
> We aren’t there on space habs.
>
> spike
>

I feel that this is missing my point. I'm not saying it's too expensive 
(although it is), I'm saying we just don't have enough energy available, 
and are unlikely to ever have it, this side of the singularity. That's a 
much more fundamental constraint than monetary cost. It's physics, not 
economics.

The OP was about governance systems for populations in space. We aren't 
ever going to have large enough populations (of biological humans) in 
space to make thinking about governance systems for them worthwhile.

-- 
Ben Zaiboc

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