[extropy-chat] Space colony behind the moon?

[Russell Wallace]

On 10/18/06, Robert Bradbury <robert.bradbury at gmail.com> wrote:

> You and/or the Lifeboat foundation should probably rethink this.  I've
> devoted a *lot* of thought over the years to external hazard function
> minimization -- I'm not sure putting anything in space is the way to go.
>

The point being missed is that what we need isolation from isn't matter,
it's ideas.

Giant rail guns, killer robots, swarms of flesh-eating nanites - they're
like Satan and Cthulhu, reifications of our fears, because it's in our
nature to put a visually imaginable face on things. They don't _literally_
exist; they need to be taken on the correct level, as metaphors.

The reason Earth isn't big enough is that it's not _psychologically
perceived_ as big enough, not now that we can span it in hours in person and
in milliseconds by proxy. Materially it could support everyone in comfort
and safety - considerably more than its current population if its resources
were used more efficiently - but that's not how our psychology works. We
need the _perception_ of an open frontier, so that our efforts will start
being turned outwards rather than inwards against each other:

http://spot.colorado.edu/~marscase/cfm/articles/frontier.html

I don't agree with the specifics of Zubrin's plans, but he's right about one
thing: opening the space frontier is the only way to go.
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