Re: starship-design: Numbers needed for Colonization

[Bjorn Nilsson <f96bni@student.tdb.uu.se>]

On Tue, 12 May 1998, Kelly St wrote:

> Sorry to hear you were that sick.  Drink plenty of fluids and don't breath on
> the E-MAIL!!
> 
>    ;)
> 

I won't breathe, I'll cough... (And since you US types have absolutly NO
imunity to our NEW european "Superflues" you'll surely DIE!)

;=)


 >> 
> >> We never could come up with a reason for a colony.  Resources are more
> >> plentiful and easy to get to in space, and the danger of an ecology is
> less.
> >> But, this solar system is rich in stuff too, and its a lot easier to set up
> a
> >> colony nearer to your spare parts suplier.  ;)
> >> 
> >
> >Well, don't forget the most valuable comodity of them all: KNOWLEDGE!!!
> >
> >The amount of things that will be learnt from colonizing another solar
> >system is probably the best economic incentive of them all!
> >(This is espisially true of systems with alien lifeforms.)
> >
> >
> >This is also how the Colony will yield "interest" to the investors back
> >home! And the good thing is that "trade" of information/knowledge will be
> >posible at Light-speed (and fairly low-cost), where as PHYSICAL trade will
> >be quite a bit slower AND more expensive!
> 
> Given the danger of an alen world a orbital colony would be safer, easier, and
> have better access to resources.  On the other hand, you'ld learn as much by
> building it in our own solar system.
> 
> Scientific exploration is generally not very profitable.  It can't generally
> pay its own bills on Earth or our starsystem, so interstellar is a REAL long
> shot.
> 

Well, that depends on how you count... Many People would consider that the
Apollo programs of the 60's generated a Big return if you include all the
spin-offs and all the research based of it...

It all depends on which SCALE you look at it with... (Both in Time, and
space)



> >Another comment is that the same factors were in places for the Europeans
> >coming to the new world and they fared much better...
> 
> The Europeans also lost most of their population to deseases they imported
> back to Euroup.  Which was one reason most children died before the age of 6.
> 
> As to the new world deseases, they weren't as evolved as the ones recrited
> from Africa to Japan by the Euros.  (Yes we planed it all HA!!)    ;)
> 
> 
> >Bjorn...
> 
> 
> Kelly
> 

Yeah, but the imparitive word is _MOST_ of their population... Those who
did survive were generaly more resistent and "fit to live" and in a few
generations the Population was back to normal... Happens all the time in
nature...


Bjornie...