Re: starship-design: HIGHLY OPTIMIZED TOLERANCE

[KellySt@aol.com]

In a message dated 3/17/00 7:12:44 PM, bfranchuk@jetnet.ab.ca writes:

>KellySt@aol.com wrote:
>> 
>> Now adays whole coutries can't get enough people to be self suficenty.
> You
>> expect a few hudred folks in a ship to do it?
>>
>
>I guess I have read too much "Mother Earth News" in my youth. 

Sounds like.  ;)  Seting up a little cabin in woods is a bit differnt then a 
space colony orboiting another star.  To be fair even the Mother Jones types 
arn't as independant of the technological society as they like to consider.  

>Countries
>have different resource bases, Canada is great for wheat, lousy for
>Bananas.
>One Could grow them in green houses, but it cheaper to trade wheat for
>bananas.
>( Fictional example ). To recycle costs more ( $ wise ) than to throw
>out
>and buy new raw material.

Even pasty that, they don't have the population resources to build and 
maintain a technical society.


>> Where do you get this idea from?  And do you consider the rest of the
>factry
>> to turn those wafers into stacks of usable chips?  Then stacks of circut
>> board?  Circut board designers?  System designers/manufacturing?
>> 
>  Nope -- use for repair of damaged equipment.  Solid state logic
>lasts a long time, providing 1) operates cool 
>2) Not pressured to by a new product from M$ or Intel.

So your not planing on being self sufficent.  Just a encampment dependant


>> Actually the demands will be higher in the artificial environment of
>the
>> ship.  Much less the fact the ship will be presumably doing exploration
>and
>> researh, which takes more exotic equipment.
>>
>
> What is artificial about the equipment? It breaks -- repair it. Just
>avoid the "Green Slime Creatures". I assume by this time in-system
>transport is fast and reliable, with asteroid mining down pat for raw
>materials.

Again.  IC chips, alloys, complex machinery, etc are not something to be 
fixed by home handymen without equipment.



>> >A robotic - mining factory with only 25 people for exotic material might
>> >make
>> >a stock-holders rich,but will not do much for colonizing a planet.
>> 
>> Your point?  We can't colonize any planets we find out there.  Even if
>we
>> could, since we can't make the starship self suficent, supporting the
>remote
>> colony from here would be even more impossible.
>
>By 2150? I assume that we would have self-sufficient colonies on other
>planets
>and they would be more supportive than mother Earth.

Why would they be more supportive?  If anything a interstellar colony would 
compete with them for resources from earth.  Self sufficent colonies would 
take millions of people.  Oh, and why would we settle that many people on 
them?

Kelly