Re: Re: starship-design: One way (again...)

[Kelly St <KellySt@aol.com>]

In a message dated 12/6/97 2:52:53 PM, lparker@cacaphony.net wrote:

>Several months ago I made the statement that there is more incentive to 
>stay in space where power is cheap, resources are plentiful and 
>(comparatively) easy to get at. So I really have a hard time seeing why 
>anyone would want to go to another star just to _settle_ on a planet.
>
>If you bear that in mind, and look at the mission profile as one that is 
>designed to begin building an outpost in orbit in that system for the 
>purpose of continuing exploration and creating a spaceborne infrastructure 
>for follow on missions, only some of which might be concerned with actually 
>landing on a planet, then it is not a one way mission. Nor is it exactly a 
>colonization mission.
>
>It is a team of scientists, and engineers and technicians with a definite 
>purpose - build a fully self sustaining outpost in orbit around another 
>star. Once they have done that they can then build power stations to 
>produce more fuel so that 2-way travel becomes more practicable. There 
>would be additional personnel arriving on follow on missions and maybe 
>eventually some of the original personnel might even get to go home.
>
>Remember that most of the people who will be going on these missions will 
>probably have come from our off-planet population in the first place. They 
>aren't going to see a great deal of difference between a colony on Luna or 
>Ceres and one orbiting another star.
>
>Lee

That is an interesting mission profile, but has two problems.  

One it assumes your sure you want to keeping going back to that star systems
on a regular basis.  So far I never heard any credible reason we'ld want to.

Two - your sure you want to keep using that system for decades.

Three - it assumes you want to come back and forth so often that you'ld pay to
send a much (10-100 times?) bigger construction expidition, and not just a
couple exploration expiditions.

First you send Lewis and Clark, then the pioneers, then the rail roads.  ;)

Seariously a big question we've never gotten very far with is why anyone would
send such a mission?

Kelly