109 replies to this topic

[macdog]

I'm starting this thread hoping to get some thoughts on the idea of terraforming various spots in the solar system. Everything from technical questions to ethical considerations.

If some of the people in this group are going to become immortal, or at least radically extended in lifespan, we're going to have to consider that not only is this plante groaning under the weight of the extant population but almost certainly there will be a cultural backlash with violent overtones. That means immortals are going to need somewhere to go.

Everyone wants to talk about terraforming Mars, but I'm opposed to it for now. There is simply too much to learn up there to start pumping a bunch of corrosive O2 into the atmosphere. There's also the peroxide problem, that I have yet to hear any of the Green Mars factions address. Further, I'll bet $20 that there's already a complex ecosystem on Mars, and if that proves to be true, then you've got a better chance of building condos in Yellowstone than Terraforming Mars.

The logical place to start is the Moon. In 1969 we got there in 3 days. The farside of Luna, for reasons that are not understood, is much more hilly and wrinkled than the earthside. I think that it's likely that there is a significant reserve of volatiles frozen in shaded canyon. We also know that there are moonquakes. Since plate tectonics can not account for this, a possible explanation is that Luna's interior has large voids filled with ice, gas or liquids, and that every once in awhile the chunks of rock shift a bit over these voids. Luna is also not as dense as it should be, which has all kinds of conspiracy theorists saying it's hollow and full of aliens. I think water is more likely. If we were able to release these gases to a survivable pressure, the atmosphere would take several thousand years before it escaped the gravity well, really enough time to solve that particular problem. There's the small matter of solar radiation (not that small actually) but given enough power from nuclear reactors or solar panels, I think a sufficient electromagnetic feild could be generated to take care of a goodly portion of that. Hopefully the atmosphere I propose would burn up much of the micrometeorite bombardment, but Lunar fashions will probably include a helmet. A green Moon would also have a huge cultural effect on the entire Earth, and stand as a constant reminder to everyone on Earth of the power of human ingenuity, and serve as a social pressure to increase scientific advancement. Brain products will probably be the basis of a Lunar economy, and Earth will likely suffer a significant brain drain as a result. The best talent will want to live and work on Luna.

Given the success of The Mars Society(at least in terms of gaining membership), and that civilians have now started to outdo NASA with the awarding of the X-prize, a project to terraform Luna could gain a powerful momentum. There's already this wackjob selling real estate certificates for Lunar property (and he will try to sue us, he's nuts). As far as I know there are no legal hurdles to designing a remote mission, or a manned mission, to go look for water and volatiles. If we could cheaply send a host of robots with a simple mission: find ice and evaporate it, report back, this project could easily be underway in a decade. Send up another to plant some kind of alpine moss or lichen, and the first spots of green could be visible through a telescope in 20 years.

Who wants a cabin on Lake Armstrong? I do.

[Kalepha]

Hi Macdog,

I think the attitudes toward size are arbitrary. “Outward” doesn’t necessarily mean better than “inward.” Rather than thinking about taking up increasingly more space, I would rather work first toward compressing my cognition and figuring out what it can do in increasingly smaller spaces until I reach some infinitesimal limit, at which point then I’d concentrate on outwardness. We have no reason to hypothesize that the world is going to become overwhelmingly violent in the interim. Furthermore, we simply need to have a different type of embodiment altogether before we waste a whole bunch of resources on accommodating for what our human bodies aren't innately built.

[Lazarus Long]

While I am in favor of off world development Mac I am also in favor of modifying ourselves to adapt to marine environments so that we could offer a competitive opportunity for human habitat just offshore.

When it comes to off-world development I have a number of proposals, some longer term and others shorter but we should be prepared to alter ourselves at all points to adapt as much if not more than always changing what we find. However I think we should be farming asteroids and comets in a big way and also considering Venus more than we are. I know Venus is tough but there is a way to make it work and it involves some pretty big tech but it is doable.

The Jovian a Saturnian Moons are also going to be important.

[macdog]

I'm glad this thread seems to be going somewhere.

Nate, first off the world is already pretty overwhelmingly violent, there's no hypothesis involved. people kill each other every day because they are from a different tribe, the same tribe but a different family, have more money more water more love, over variations in skin tone. If you start getting close to living forever and getting a brain the size of a planet, I can assure you somebody's gonna try and take you out. I'm also not going to upload myself, that's just me. I'm not saying it's morally wrong or anything like that. I want to go out, not in.

Lazarus, I've talked in a number of other posts about altering the human form and capacity to harden it for more extreme environments or even make it simply more durable for extreme events in this environment. However, we don't want to strictly segregate outer space. We can't hang a sign on Luna that says "Transhumanists Only". There's also the not inconsiderable fact that if we keep any part of us organic (as I intend to do) you're going to need water and oxygen. Such resources need to be freely available in the environment, not just at expensive filling stations. People who decide to remain, well...people should have as much access to a terraformed world as anyone else. I'm also all for terraforming Venus, smack with a few asteroids to knock off some of the atmosphere and mix the rest of it up to balance the pH. That's going to take a lot more effort and money than going to the moon and starting to evaporate water, which I think could be started probably for less than the average NASA mission.

Cosmos, I certainly am upset with wastefullness of the average NASA, not to mention how ineffective they often are. But that's the problem with government programs, but with the award of the X-prize I think we're in for a new era. A more democratic space program. If the problem of polio had been left to the government we'd have the best iron lung in the world and no vaccine. Still, I think our technology has developed sufficiently to get started. How hard is it to send something to Luna that will find water and evaporate it? We got there over 30 years ago in three days and then abandoned it. even if such a project as I'm proposing is somewhat ineffective to making a habitable Lunar surface, the amount that we would learn from the attempt would inform every other effort we'd make. We can't simply wait until we've solved all the technological problems in the lab, because we'll probably just go on to learn that we got in wrong in the lab. We need to do it the feild. Imagine if right before the iron age someone went to the local shaman and said, "hey! Look what I made. I call it a boat" and the shaman replies, "this thing is going to be useless once we figure out how to fly over the ocean". That's how I feel about saying we need to wait until we've solved every conceivable problem with the terraforming model before we do anything.

Robots that evaporate water. That's all I'm saying. Little ones, and lots of'em.

I hope no one construes anything I have said as being combative for that is not my intent.

Mac

[Kalepha]

Cosmos, you’re right. Perhaps I could alter my view to also include perceiving expansive opportunities as they arise.

[Kalepha]

macdog I want to go out, not in.

And ignore the congenital reasons why you want to? The territorial phenotype was good for attracting mates in the ancestral environment. This behavior will continue provoking monotonous and disenchanting arms races unless our solutions distinguish between reality and fantasy. All cognitions within destructive range of each other (that's us) must either become completely cooperative and destroy competitive institutions, or get rid of imaginary desires, or achieve transhuman intelligence and grant individual universes to each cognition outside of destructive range of the cognition with the largest imaginary violative sphere.

[macdog]

Nate, I ignore nothing, especially your vituperative tone. I embrace being an animal, and find assertions of god-like status laughable.

"territorial phenotype" means nothing, as phenotype means the physical expression of genetic within a corporate body. Perhaps you mean territorial meme.

Your own "imaginary violative sphere" apparently includes forcing me to upload my consciousness into a computer. That is as arrogant and frightening a form of fascism as I have ever heard articulated. I don't want or need an individual universe, the one I find myself in is lonely enough as it is, and certainly larger than anything I could create in VR.

Yes, I want to go out, not in. I prefer the view from a mountaintop to the one provided by an X-box. If you want to dissappear into your belly-button go right ahead, meantime I'll be out here, trying to keep the planet your server is on from getting smacked by an asteroid or burnt up in a supernova.

To believe that what you could create and experience in a universe of your own creation is superior to what you can find out among the planets and the stars is a mindless position, and unworthy of you sir.

and don't be bitter because I'm better at attracting mates than you are.

[macdog]

okay that last was combative, too combative. especially after you said you'd be willing to think about expansive opportunity, and then I come at ya and probably harden your position.

Still, I think it is a tendency of some of the membership in here that people (like me) who happen to enjoy some of the basic experience of being an animal (as long as it's a healthy, young animal) are treated as though we're stupid. I'm not stupid just because I don't want what you want. I'm not going to try and stop you from getting what you want, so long as that doesn't involve you making others do what they don't want to do.

What I really do want is to find something we can agree on that we can work together towards, and by that I don't really count not wanting to die. Of course you don't, and neither do I. We may well be on the cusp of radical life extension, perhaps even immortality. So what are we going to do with it? Download porn and eat ding-dongs? Not me, I want to sit on the shores of Lake Armstrong and write poetry about people flying through the air with strap-on wings.

And that's what this thread is really supposed to be about.

Who knows something about electronics or robotics and want to design a pilot program to propose to NASA for inclusion into the multi-billion budget initiated by Bush for a totally wastefull spaceport on Luna? Anybody?

[Kalepha]

Macdog, existential threats to my cognition are just as significant to me as they are to you – the difference being, as I see it, my philosophy tries to incorporate efficiency, economy, and coherence between my contingency and the ambitions of others. I have no particular contention with your goal system. I simply wouldn’t adopt it for myself. It would unnecessarily expand my perceived violative sphere, which is something that’s unsafe to do as a vulnerable, pre-Singularity human. I aim to protect the only territory that matters – my cognition – while avoiding unnecessary claims on extrinsic spaces and material whenever possible. Expansion doesn’t have more weight than compression in my philosophy. Considering all relevant projects, there would be zero good reasons for it. To be clear, compression implies optimizing spaces and material. It doesn’t ignore physical existential threats or some of the heavenly pleasures worth preserving.

But I will leave this thread alone. Your dreams are inspirational, and that's good enough for me to enjoy from my hole.

[kraemahz]

Mac, I've actually been thinking a lot on this lately and I've concluded that in order for humanity to achieve any such feats of terraforming would require advanced cooperation far beyond what we currently have on Earth. The endeavor is simply too costly - be it in a money-based economy or a nanotechnological resource-based economy - to be performed by any one group of people. Which pretty much brings us back to the starting line; uncooperativeness, agressiveness, selfishness, the reasons we see Earth as not as enjoyable a place to live as it could be are the very same reasons that hold us back. If we are incapable of making cooperative efforts now to get the technology in the first place, it would most certainly have to be a changed climate in the future to properly utilize them. Any results that didn't come out of cooperation would either be very slow to come or so small as to be ineffective. Maybe some future advancement would change my mind, but I doubt it. Resources are resources are resources, and there's no magic way to get materials and energy out of nothing.

[macdog]

geez Nate, way to make me feel like a schmuck, disagree with me and then call my dreams inspirational. I'll have to remember that next time we debate

kraemahz, I do take your point, but I think one way to start cooperation is to form a seed of an idea. Like an irritant in an oyster, the layers of nacre can be built around it slowly. The Wright Bros. didn't want to form a discount airline, they just wanted to fly. I have to believe that a small group of people can change the world, in fact it seems that all major changes start with a small group of people. If we could form a seed a here, we might then find that people in other parts of the world are also thinking this way. We are after all, trying to live forever, which means that if we make small gains every year, one day we'll see that they have accumulated into a huge gain. Also I fear if we wait for some big instution to start in on this it will only slow progress, NASA has not so much advanced the purpose of space exploration as impeded it, and yet still the soical pressure to discover something out there has led to major gains.

[Lazarus Long]

We are already dead if we wait for governments and larger institutions to lead on this issue. They have really failed already and are generating so much inertia that getting past them is like lifting off in the gravity well of a singularity.

I argue long and short term strategies because I look for the steps that can be accomplished first to lead to the larger ones later. Those of us that think we are becoming lifers need to make a practice of the long view and the long view is not one that throws caution to the wind by constantly betting everything on single options.

Again asteroids come to us and asteroids also go out there and comets and asteroids are already above the gravity well with resources that are accessible for the taking. Creating a foothold on asteroids does three things simultaneously: establishes operational bases for transport, stockpiles of known proven resources for further development, and develops the tech for eliminating one of the most dangerous long term existential threats we face (other than ourselves that is).

I have identified four major (over a half Km long) asteroids that are all coming within .2 AU distance from Earth in the next twenty years and two do it routinely along with intersecting the orbits of Mars and Venus.

BTW you don't need an *asteroid* to terraform Venus, you need a planetesimal. A huge hunk of planetoid ice. The reaction will oxygenate the atmosphere as well as releasing H2O and is probably what happened to the Earth to trigger our conversion from the primordial Ammonia/Methane atmosphere into the world we have all come to know and love. That impact may even be what created our moon.

[macdog]

Lazarus, this may be the beginning of beautiful friendship.

You're quite right about the asteroid thing, I thought about changing that after I wrote but sometimes I type the way beauracracy moves. Let the old mistakes work themselves out and then deny, deny, deny.

Freeman Dyson estimated that the surface area of asteroids and comets in Sol System equals roughly the land area of a billion Earth's.

Maybe it would be best to start with some asteroids, not so much proprietary inetrest as there is for Luna. Hollow one out maybe, spin it up, pressurize it and boom you've got a microworld. Just add water.

I would like to hear more about these asteroids, and since I think starting small is a fine thing to do, what if our only objective was to stick a small radio telemetry device on one? Something that only weighs a couple of grams. That device could be a way to establish ownership. Space is definitely going to be a squatter's rights type affair. There's got to be a way to build an amatuer device that could get something out of Earth orbit and "land" on one during the time it so close. I put land in quotes because the idea would be more like "smack into and stick". Claiming proprietary rights to one of these orbiting 'roids could be the first step in creating a new service industry: terraforming supply.

I'd like to hear more and work with you.

"Be not afraid of going slowly; be afraid of standing still."
-Chinese proverb

Mac

[JMorgan]

Hmm, aren't the physics of terraforming something as small as the moon or an asteroid actually more complicated than Mars or Venus? I understood that one of the reasons the moon can't sustain an atmosphere is because of its size. It's just too small to keep the atmosphere from dissipating into space. Mars has an atmosphere, albeit one that is very thin, also due to Mars being smaller than the earth. Probably early efforts of terraforming will be in isolated conditions (such as the sci-fi bubble or dome we're all familiar with).

[Lazarus Long]

Building internal habitat is a lot easier than terraforming a body the size of even the moon. You are missing the issue as these are not mutually exclusive concepts, they are just not the same ones malchiah.

Spinning an asteroid to give it internal gravity doesn't require altogether new tech and by grabbing a half klick long rock to begin with you ensure enough material to make the effort worth it as we are dealing with a potential structure *thousands* of times larger than the ISS, along with artificial gravity and shielding sufficient to begin farming off world as well as Zero_gee fabrication in the axial core.

Water can be harvested from cometary material and enough of it to make the effort a lasting one. Build a way-station in deep space and humans can have sufficient material support in a timely fashion to go farther, faster.

The physics is on my side of this problem since I could spin a rock that size without fuel just by unfurling a pinwheel solar sail attached to a designated equator.

Oh before you try and remind me that spinning will send everything *off* the surface please remember we are building *INTO* the rock and walking on the ceilings of a cavern built like the inside of a nautilus shell. Everything mined is also used and a lot is refined through solar heat and voltaic conversion.

Those pinwheels are also massive Solar collectors.

[JMorgan]

Macdog, regarding the violence in the world, you might be interested in reading The Pentagon's New Map, by Thomas Barnett. He divides the world into two sections: the globalized core of the industrialized world (US, Europe, Russia, some parts of Asia) that have essentially integrated their economies so much that they will never go to war with each other; and the non-integrated gap in the middle (virtually all third-world nations) that remains isolated from the rest of the world economically.

Since World War II, and more so since the end of the Cold War, ALL conflicts have taken place within the non-integrated gap. The world needs to concentrate its resources to help integrate nations that are still in this gap, or eventually nothing else will matter. Interestingly, both conservatives and liberals tend to agree on this, but differ on the approach.

There's also the not inconsiderable fact that if we keep any part of us organic (as I intend to do) you're going to need water and oxygen.

Actually, isn't one of the possible applications of nanotechnology an improvement on the human's red blood cells? Our cells are notoriously inefficient in transporting oxygen around the body. Nanotechnology would allow us to deliver oxygen to our cells better, improving our ability to use it while also consuming less. We can also use "rebreathers" that take the carbon dioxide and converts it back to oxygen. Essentially we could survive in any environment that contained some form of oxygen, including carbon dioxide.

And Laz, you make these ideas sound so simple. I can't wait to see that in action!

[macdog]

malchiah,

as I said previously an atmosphere on the moon would not last forever, but it would last many thousands of years. Enough time to solve some of the other problems. It is my opinion that the barriers to terraforming Luna are not as much technical as they are socio-economic.

Before you get too proud of yourself for living in the western world where conflicts are few, you might want to consider we got our @$$es handed to us on 911. Not to mention the well over one thousand people who get murdered in the US every year, or the tens of thousands of assaults, rapes, and violent burglaries that occur.

As far as your last stanza, you only reaffirmed my point, we need water and oxygen. Yes, we most certainly MIGHT get some nanotech improvements to our use of oxygen, but to put it plainly, I'm not holding my breath.

[JMorgan]

Before you get too proud of yourself for living in the western world where conflicts are few, you might want to consider we got our @$$es handed to us on 911. Not to mention the well over one thousand people who get murdered in the US every year, or the tens of thousands of assaults, rapes, and violent burglaries that occur.

True. September 11th changed everything. Until then, the United States military was still structured to deal with a large identifiable entity like the Soviet Union, or even China. Now it is being restructured to deal with smaller entities, or even specific individuals. But still, 9/11 may have taken place here, but its orgins and the reasons it happened all come out of the same non-integrated gap.

Regarding the violence within our own country, we still have a long way to go, but it's interesting to see what will happen if the mainstream public starts to believe we can live to be hundreds, if not thousands of years old. People will change. People will be less willing to engage in risky behavior. (Not everyone, but perhaps most.) One difficult implication of this will be that people with this technology may no longer want to go to war, while underdeveloped nations will continue to do so. Terrorism will also increase. That's why it's imperative that things get worked out now.

[Lazarus Long]

After the obvious issues of shielding, navigability and habitat containment these three are to be considered the most important criteria in all spaceflight in this order:

Air, Water, and Food.
The simplest quarter pounder costs almost 5K$ to feed to an astronaut and 2.5K$ was just the transport cost.

Malchiah I didn't say it would be easy I said that physics is on my side, so are the economics.

BTW I agree that we should be improving ourselves but in the meantime we must make do with what we have. The time lag for those changes will require too much time to be able to take advantage of upcoming opportunities.

It is long past time to put what we have been recently learning together with what we already know. In a little over two years if we could have MEM tagging devices ready for an orbital launcher using the lunar gravity well to accelerate them into intercept trajectories, we could then begin a massive transponder tagging and assaying program. But since the average lead time on almost all ESA and NASA programs is nearly ten years you can assume they are not who will be doing this.

[Lazarus Long]

Now it is being restructured to deal with smaller entities, or even specific individuals. But still, 9/11 may have taken place here, but its origins and the reasons it happened all come out of the same non-integrated gap.

Since you mention this I think it is appropriate to point out that this Administration has really still been fighting the cold war as per its defense budget requests. Try reading this NYTimes editorial.

http://www.nytimes.c...l?oref=login

I intended to post the text on Iraq revisited anyway. They came in with an agenda they have not deviated from even after 9/11. They are fighting the wrong war.

[JMorgan]

Everyone wants to talk about terraforming Mars, but I'm opposed to it for now. There is simply too much to learn up there to start pumping a bunch of corrosive O2 into the atmosphere. There's also the peroxide problem, that I have yet to hear any of the Green Mars factions address. Further, I'll bet $20 that there's already a complex ecosystem on Mars, and if that proves to be true, then you've got a better chance of building condos in Yellowstone than Terraforming Mars.

I just re-read your initial post. You're right, isn't there still a possibility of finding life on Mars? And since some people believe humans originally came from Mars, isn't it worth checking out before we contaminate it?

I'm excited about the possibilities of returning to the moon and exploring Mars, but perhaps terraforming it is a bit premature. I'd rather focus on building a colony on the moon. (And if you want to terraform that, go right ahead.) The moon would serve as a jumping off point for further exploration such as using asteroids as Lazarus mentioned.

I think Bush's timeline for returning to the moon and going to Mars is like 10-15 years from now. We need to step that up if we really want to do anything. NASA needs to support more involvement from the private sector. Yes, Lazarus, ten years to do anything is way too long. (But that's the nature of bureacracy... one subway station here in NY has been under renovation for almost 2 years just to install an elevator!)

This Administration has really still been fighting the cold war as per its defense budget requests.

Yes, with a change this big, it will take 2-3 administrations and alot of political infighting to restructure the military properly. Take the Iraq war, for example (which I supported). Execution of the actual war itself was flawless. It took only a few days and we marched right into Baghdad with hardly any casualties. This was the old military doing what it does best.

The aftermath however, was far from perfect. Our military still does not know how to handle these situations, which is unfortunate because we will be dealing with these situations for the next 20 years.

[Lazarus Long]

Back to astrophysics.

Here is an example of a candidate there is almost no way we will be ready for. It is on the Palermo scale with three possible impacts for this planet over the next century. It is traveling at over 20 km per second and it is just under a half klick in diameter (.420 km).

It also so happens that 2004 XP14 is passing by the Earth next year on July 3rd 2006 at a distance of .0045 AU. A little under twice the distance to the moon.

Tagging it would do more than confirm its trajectory if that equipment included assaying ability. Most of these bollides are nickle/iron but what if there is a content of heavier metals worth making the effort to mine much more profitable?

http://neo.jpl.nasa....k/2004xp14.html

[JMorgan]

Hmm, with these asteroids coming so close to earth, it would be a good idea to tag them. We could track them and get a better idea of their paths in the future. We wouldn't want to use an asteroid that will smash into something, or worse, impact earth.

[macdog]

Lazarus: given the proximity of XP14 isn't it possible to try and concieve a project that will at least attempt to put a marker on it. I'd love to assay the thing thoroughly, but I'd bet you if we can put something on it that marks it as "ours", even if ownership remained a debatable topic for awhile, the world would beat a path to our door.

I'm imagining something the size of the microchip we implant in our pets to identify them, fractions of a gram in weight. You wrap it up in some sort of adhesive and smack it into the thing. The possibility remains that there will be an excess of surface which will prevent it's adherence. Still, the publicity generated in the attempt would be so huge that few would question the intent of ownership. perhaps the adhesive could have some sort of piezo-electric illuminant that could let ground based observers get an idea of where it landed. Even so, at a later date it could be a simple matter to survey the surface and see if it stuck.

As for a launch vehicle, I envisage something not unlike the Pegasus deployment system. A rocket launched by a high altitude flyer. Who was it that won the X-Prize. Isn't the Virgins Airline guy all over that now. He's got all kinds of money, and a certain love for risky ventures. I think a well prepared presentation would get through to him. Especially if we could get the weight of this organization behind it.

By July 2006 I should have graduated from college, and would be able to spend much more time on it. As it is, I'm sort of using my x-mas break (and my lack of a social life) to spend time posting to these forums. I also have a business partner with whom I'm planning on doing some rough diamond buying in Africa this next summer, so I should start ahving some money soon.

I think we need to figure out how to attach a launch package to the extant civilian space launch vehicle and work out the math. Gotta tell ya, math really ain't my forte. Once we hollow out an asteroid and need to grow food, and design an ecosystem, I'm your man. Another reason why I need to live a long time.

I think we should do this, the mission as I've described above must be doable in the timeframe alloted by the approach of XP14. We need to figure out the chemistry of an adhesive that will work in the vacuum of space, then we take an off the shelf ID microchip and see if we can't get the Virgin to let us use his spaceship. A long time ago I read that seminal book about mining asteroids, can't recall the title...oh yeah! "Mining the Sky". Since the Virgin Airlines guy already has interest in a space based biz, it should really be quite simple to get him interested. Even if we can't make this particular one work, if we show him that it can in general work and for a low cost, he'll go for it.

BTW I love your motto

[kraemahz]

Digging into asteroids and terraforming planets all seems to be a lot more effort than we need to put into space colonization. It would be in our best interest to leave massive bodies behind altogether. There's a massive energy and engineering challange to escaping from planets, and with little atmosphere conventional flight is limited. For most reliable colonization totally man-made spacestations are our best bet. We don't have to worry about finding the right asteroids or even where to build our colonies. It would be hard enough to mine an asteroid let alone tunnel into one even if it was just right.

Some artwork from the 70's of space stations Just look at those views! I especially like this one, but it's probably the least feasable, due to the large surface area of the transparent surfaces that would need to remain perfect or be remarkably well self-healing. Anyway, the point I'm getting at is that not only are there severe technical challanges to terraforming a planet, planets are also, well, big. Hardly the get aways they were once they start becoming crouded. A space station could be limited to 10,000 people, and thus remain very well isolated from the rest of humanity if they so chose. The moon might be the first "stepping stone" but it's simply too small to have an atmosphere, it's a technical nightmare of wide-scale colonization, since everyone would have to live inside sealed buildings with their own oxygen supply.

[Lazarus Long]

Kraemahz it costs vastly more to build on Earth and assemble in space than it would if we can get those resources from sources that are already up there. Artwork is all well and good but the reality is that they abandoned most of these efforts as unrealistic in terms of the energy required to loft them.

It is still 10 thousand dollars a pound to lift anything.

One rock can produce the resources necessary for thousands of people a lot sooner than we can lift it. Also we need to build up there and farm up there and harvest up there and some of us need to be the first to do it. Space stations are too little too late and too close. We also need to go onward and outward.

Anyway colonizing asteroids is like building space stations except that they are not necessarily trapped in Earth orbit.

[Lazarus Long]

BTW Mac *if* these bollides are nickle/iron they are are also able to be grappled magnetically. Once an anchor is set it becomes a lot easier to reel in and dock. After a vessel with drilling ability is able to grab an outcropping or hold in place magnetically then what could be done is to use an electron beam to melt the surface and start a refining process that also begins to bore a hole. After the hole were large enough to insert expansion chambers then mechanical tunneling could begin. These chambers could be expanded into the openings with low pressure gas extracted from the mining process.

The same kind of electron beam boring device could be used to construct the anchor holes for the masts. Electron beams work extremely well in a vacuum.

[Kalepha]

Lazarus Long We also need to go onward and outward.

Observational Note: Inside the space containing cognitions whose supergoals can and do trivialize the supergoals of others, just because some might believe their supergoals are tending “onward” and “outward,” they won’t necessarily acquire these attributes from mere will.

[Lazarus Long]

Going onward and outward is not a *contradiction* or trivialization of developing inward Nate, it is a necessary opposite providing needed balance IMO.

Our problem is that of late as a species we are becoming stagnate culturally by focusing too much inwardly in a superficial fashion and losing the perspective of contrast that broader horizons provide. That superficial fashion is when we become fixated on our subgroups factionally inducing what is euphemistically understood as racial and cultural conflict.

Historically and culturally this may be understandable as it is the normal reflection of the social pendulum but it is still a dangerous extreme if either inward focus or outward focus is allowed to be the only focus.

Though I would appreciate it if you would elaborate on this:

just because some might believe their supergoals are tending “onward” and “outward,” they won’t necessarily acquire these attributes from mere will.

If you are describing a form of self delusion I couldn't agree with you more however if you are describing how some have navigated the unknown and taken humanity beyond its self imposed horizons since prehistoric times I couldn't disagree more.