It’s the Space Development and Settlement, Stupid
Today is the 519th anniversary of Cristobal Colon’s (aka Christopher Columbus) discovery of what was to Europeans of the age a “New World.” But in keeping with these government-dominated times, it was celebrated (to the degree that it will be celebrated at all — such celebrations are now considered to be politically incorrect) on Monday, in order to allow some government workers a three-day weekend.
Popular mythology, at least as was taught in many schools,was that he was an explorer and adventurer seeking a new route to Asia. This held true until he became the fascistic ogre who allowed the plundering of the Americas and enslaving and massacring of Siberian-Americans — or more-recent revelations that we are perhaps celebrating the wrong Italian. So he persuaded Queen Isabella of Spain to hock her bling to finance his expedition.
Let’s ignore the fact that he was an awful navigator and misjudged the circumference of the globe by many thousands of miles, and that if America hadn’t been in the way of his route to Asia (he probably went to his deathbed thinking that he had gotten there), he and the crews of his three tiny ships would have died on the trip (probably him first, in a mutiny after which they might perhaps have turned back and lived, but probably not, because it would have been too late and their supplies would have run out). He blundered into it by dumb luck, and if he hadn’t found it, someone else (probably Portuguese, who were almost certain to bump into Brazil within the next ten or twenty years) would have soon.
The reality is the reason that Isabella scrounged up the moolah to finance his trip was that she was expecting a financial return — cheaper spices from Asia, at the time a hot commodity that involved long trips around the bottom of Africa and across the Indian Ocean, and back. She didn’t do it out of any noble search for scientific knowledge, and neither did he. He wanted to find wealth, seek fame, and spread the word of his religion (i.e., “God, Gold, and Glory”).
But in terms of space policy, we don’t seem to have learned the lessons of Columbus.
Since the sixties, our rationale for human spaceflight has always been described as for “exploration.” “For all mankind.” Star Trek, with its iconic beginning of “where no man has gone before,” did nothing to help. But space exploration for space exploration’s sake can’t justify the billions that we’ve been spending on it, particularly when robots are much more cost effective at it, and we haven’t “explored” anything beyond low earth orbit with humans in almost forty years.
It’s probably just coincidence, but it’s interesting that at the time of this anniversary of “exploration” by Columbus, NASA is slowly starting to take seriously the only viable rationale for human spaceflight — to actually create human settlements in space, for species preservation if nothing else — which is something that’s hard to do with robots. It’s admittedly a mixed message, but at least the topic is on the table:
This discussion comes as the National Academies is set to perform this fiscal year (2012) “a review of the goals, core capabilities, and direction of human space flight” as directed by the 2010 NASA authorization act. Some have likened this to a “decadal study” for human spaceflight, analogous to those performed in the sciences, although there is a debate about how useful such a study will be.
“We’ve charged in the bill the National Academies to do some work to try to help identify a consensus for what are the reasons for human spaceflight, what are some of the destinations that make the most sense,” Jeff Bingham, a senior advisor on the staff of the Senate Commerce Committee, said during a panel session of the AIAA Space 2011 conference last month in Long Beach, California. Space settlement advocates will soon find out how well their arguments stand up against other rationales for human spaceflight in that study — which, in turn, could provide some clarity for future space policy.
It’s not a new discussion, but it’s heretofore been implicit, such as in George W. Bush’s speech announcing the Vision for Space Exploration almost eight years ago, when he said that “human beings are headed into the cosmos.” But much of the speech was still couched in terms of the e-word, while hinting that the exploration should be a means, not an end. It’s time to make the discussion more explicit, because as the Augustine Panel agreed two years ago, if we aren’t doing this to settle space, then there is little point:
“We have just started, I think, to realize in the last eight or ten years that we do have a goal for the national space program,” [Greason] said. “There is a national consensus among policymakers that we have that goal, but everybody’s kind of afraid to say it, because they’re not sure we can do it.” That goal, he said, is the “s-word”: “It is actually the national policy of the United States that we should settle space.”
To support that claim, Greason cited a number of studies and speeches, including the conclusion of the Augustine Committee that “the ultimate goal of human exploration is to chart a path for human expansion in to the solar system.” He also noted President Obama’s speech at the Kennedy Space Center last April included a veiled reference to space settlement: “Our goal is the capacity for people to work and learn and operate and live safely beyond the Earth for extended periods of time, ultimately in ways that are more sustainable and even indefinite.”
If the s-word, and not the e-word, is the goal, what are the implications for our policy?
Eratosthenes correctly calculated the circumference of the Earth 1,700 years before Columbus. How C.C. managed to then so exponentially misunderestimate the distance to Asia remains one of histories great mysteries. The real question is not “How did he summon the bravery to sail into the unknown?” but rather “How could he have been so misinformed to not know that Asia lay 12,000 miles to the West, and not merely one or two thousand as he falsely assumed?”
It’s a myth that people of the era thought “the world was flat.” Maybe the average ignorant villager may have thought so, but the leading intellectuals and navigators knew it had to be round — from the curved line of the Earth’s shadow across the midpoint of the moon during a lunar eclipse, to the disappearance of ships over the horizon, to the shortening/lengthening of days near the poles, to Eratosthenes’ (and later folks’) measurements, and so much more. The evidence was there. Some recognized it. Columbus should have been among them.
But that’s OK. History’s greatest discoveries are usually mistakes.
The mistake seems to have been made by Paolo del Pazzo Toscanelli (1397-1482), generally considered one of the most skilled cartographers of the era. In 1474, he finished a chart of the “Oceanus Occidentalis” (Atlantic) which, as he stated in a letter to Fernans Martins de Roris, Canon of Lisbon, showed “all the islands from Ireland to India and south to Guinea (Ghana)… the straight lines across the map show the distance East-West… the others show the distance North-South… If you go West from Lisbon… you get to the fine and noble city of Quinsay (Cathay, China)… and… to Chipango (Japan)… full of gold, pearls, and precious stones.”
Toscanelli used a value for one degree of longitude at the equator of 75 miles. (Longitude is East-West; North-South is latitude.) From this, he concluded that Quinsay was about one-third of the circumference from Lisbon, with both at roughly 40 degrees North latitude. He divided his map into vertical “strips” about 250 miles wide each, and from this estimated that a trip from Lisbon to Quinsay going west would be 26 strips, or about 6500 miles.
Unfortunately for his later reputation, Toscanelli had used the exaggerated figure for Eurasia’s size given by Marco Polo (1254-1324), in his book of his travels in the East, “Il Milione”, published in 1291. (Not exactly working with up-to-date data, in other words.) But based on his figures, the voyage looked to be about equal to the coastal run down the West African coast to the Cape of Good Hope; a trade route the Portuguese had used for decades, and certainly “doable” by the naval state-of-the-art of the day. (NB; Today, it is exactly 6092 nautical miles from Lisbon to Johannesburg by this route.)
He sent a copy of the chart to Captain Columbus, who used it in 1483 as part of an appeal for backing he made to the Lisbon committee for navigation to the Spice Islands. They turned him down. Columbus tried other places, including the Spanish court, with the same results. He was about to go to France to try his luck with King Charles VIII when the Spanish King, Ferdinand, changed his mind (with some prodding from Isabella).
Columbus had Toscanelli’s map glued inside the cover of his atlas when he set out for Japan- heading west. As we now know, he ran into the Americas instead.
Source;
Burke, James. THE DAY THE UNIVERSE CHANGED. Boston; Little, Brown & Co. 1985. Chapter 3, “Point of View”, pp. 87-89.
cheers
eon
Columbus Day is nothing more than a national celebration of the fact that it’s better to be lucky than good.
Zombie…..(shaking my head)
misunderestimate?
Columbus should have been among them.
WTF? Sceptres from the roman emporers starting with Octavian had a round ball at the end signifying the world; it was well known since ancient times that the world was round, and moreover, at least all literate folks knew it. What was in some doubt was the circumference; at the time europeans had no useful way to calculate east-west with any degree of accuracy. North-south wasn’t a problem. Colon was well aware of the shape of the world.
The notion that people of the day thought the world was flat was an invention by washington irving. Victorians presumed that as moderns they were enlightened and viewed history via a weird prism that always showed them as superior in all ways to their forebears (a great deal like today’s PC.)
Colon was also a master navigator. Check out the “columbus landfall” page for cool discussions of the location of san salvador as well as general discussion from colon scholars regarding the voyages.
It’s hard to see human space settlement being any more sensible than human space exploration. Who is going to be content to live their life in a cramped, sterile space platform while looking down on an expansive, beautiful blue planet?
I rather like the whimsical idea of Fred Hoyle’s (Ossian’s Ride, The Andromeda Strain, and hinted at in The Black Cloud) of an intelligence which distributes itself through the galaxy by radio transmission.
You forgot to mention that if one stays in zero-G too long,
one goes blind, and grows hair on the palms of one’s hands.
No Smiley.
This and the other objections to life on the High Frontier
were all answered decades ago.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_High_Frontier:_Human_Colonies_in_Space
Sheer fantasy. Who, pray tell, is going to sink trillions dollars into a giant earth-like space toroid on the chance some people may go and live there? Or are they waiting for the next real estate bubble?
I believe the only reason to go into space is for national defense. Those countries who control space will best be able to defend themselves.
Your right of course, that would explain the concentration of low orbit “exploration”. General William Mitchell pointed out the obvious in post WWI debates, and paid the price of Court Martial for having done so. That the battleship is obsolete and whom ever controls the skies is now the super power.
Low level orbit is of course the next logical step.
This point is worth driving home by repetition;
Even if space were only a battlefield, commanding
the high ground would be an existential necessity
for the US in a future wherein there _will_ be war.
Historical addition: Mitchell was court-martialed
for disobeying orders _not_ to sink a target ship.
Some years later, A Navy officer ruined his career
by disobeying an order _not_ to succeed in his attempt
to attack Pearl Harbor during a war-game.
Funny how both episodes got left out of the history books.
Your right of course. As soldiers we’re taught to try to distinguish between lawful orders and unlawful orders. I believe that presented a problem for the General. A moral problem, and that is the exact word used by instructors during my military training.
I suspect that if one tries to look at going into space as any thing other than, “for pure science,” is evil. For some, it is probably too much like colonialism. Exploit resources in space? BAD!
One other thought about the line, “cramped, sterile space platform.” This would just be a beginning. I don’t know of too many explorers that started off is spiffy luxuriousness. I see this platform as just a step to building a place that the creative human mind to take root, and grow. You have to start some where, and there’s nothing that says it’s the end of growth. One has to start to learn to terraform some where. Of course, that’s probably too much like colonialism too.
Where man goes so goes evil. Colonialism is not evil, it’s nature, humans are territorial. Expansion is the result of propagation.
Columbus has long been the whipping boy for discovery as such. Not surprisingly, he has been characterized as a Jew. I wrote about Columbus’s bad rep as the founder of racism/colonialism here: http://clarespark.com/2010/04/08/racism-modernity-modernism/.
Hi Clare: Just read your piece, WOW! Astounding! You are an incredible thinker. Nothing I’ve ever read before inspired me so, while at the same time filled me with regret for not having a better education.
Also read ‘About You’ your ‘Pet Peeve is rich, I love it.
If I were younger I would say I’m developing a crush on you. Looking forward to reading more.
It was always clear to this writer the point of becoming a spacefaring people. That was/is to establish habitats beyond Earth. Up to this point in time, Humankind is putting all eggs in a single basket. That basket has always been subject to destruction of the species from many sources, too many to mention. And all of that is getting worse, scarier, and in fact, horrific.
The famed western novelist, Louis L’Amour, stated it well: He always believed that all human endeavor up to now was all in preparation to the outward march beyond the confines of earth atmosphere. And, of course, he made a good point.
Anyone who still doesn’t get that concrete concept needs to rethink the whole thing. Is all of this easy? Hell, no. Does that means it should not be attempted? Hell, no. Too comfortable here on good ole planet Earth? Don’t get too comfortable. It only takes one event to end it all. Captain Trips, anyone? Nuclear winter, eh? Name your poison. Best to scatter while there is time, energy, funds, technology, and such to keep going—-outward.
I’ve never understood why we went with the space station concept rather than a moon base.
Room to expand as necessary, easy to launch from, reasonable amount of gravity and loads of room for storing and assembling parts and supplies for further exploration.
I lean towards robotic exploration of outlying planets. Looking specifically for minerals we can use here.
Explore, exploit and grow.
“As the New World was, space will be settled. The only issue is by what nation or nations, and when.”
Or as Robert Heinlein said, space will be settled, but there’s no guarantee the language spoken will be English.
I’ve never thought that it was just coincidental that “Galacta”, the lingua franca of human space in Heinlein’s Lazarus Long stories, was a pidgin of Spanish and Portuguese. You also run into a similar situation in L. Sprague de Camp’s “Viagens Interplanetarias” stories, in which most spacefarers speak Portuguese.
RAH and de Camp apparently had a pretty good idea of who would be the first to actually take interstellar travel seriously, and concluded that it wasn’t likely to be the Anglosphere.
cheers
eon
I think they were just being cute. The Spanish and Portuguese, leading explorers of the New World, also spearheading the exploration of deep space? Wow, history repeats itself!
In “Firefly,” everybody speaks Mandarin…
All those stories assumed that some other nation would take up
the torch dropped during the fall of the west; The US may well
end up as the junior partner to the Chinese in the Alliance.
Eh. The PIGS might have been great explorers once, but no more. Settlement of space implies settling habitable worlds. How many habitable worlds are there within the human life span?
Whoever goes, don’t forget Einstein and time dilation. A one-way trip for colonization to, say, Epsilon Bootes, about 180 light-years away, would take about two centuries at 95% of the speed of light. But ship time would be about 12% of that, or about a quarter-century. Even without suspended animation, cloning, or whatever, a 25-year mission would be well within a reasonable timespan for a human lifetime, especially if the idea of a “generation ship” is used. Think entire families going, with the children growing up enroute to become the primary colonists, with the “original” crew as the “tribal elders”.
In fact, it would be a lot like the opening of North America by the Dutch and English, in a psychological sense. The founders of Jamestown, New Amsterdam, etc., pretty much assumed that whatever happened, going “back home” wasn’t a realistic option. Most people today don’t realize that the mindset of those early colonists was very much “root, hog, or die”.
cheers
eon
Science fiction. I doubt whether humans will even make it to Mars let alone other star sytems. Robots are the only ambassadors from Earth that will be sent to the stars.
I read just the other day that those who are staying extended periods in zero gravity have trouble with their vision. I forget the details, but it seems the zero gravity as an effect on the eye that causes vision to blur. It appears that doing anything long term in space will be dependent on being able to create a 1G environment like we have on earth. Could we then figure out a way to limit the effect of zero gravity? Sure, but I think we need to be living off planet to be able to do that kind of research.
Of course, if America is to take part in space colonization we have to have leadership that is not bent on making America pay for her sins (whether real or perceived).
The loss of vision, which can be permanent
only recently came to light (pun intended). >:)
Two possible reasons for the timing;
1) Astronauts were reluctant to report it.
2) It was against government interests, until the threat
of competition increased its propaganda value; You decide,
after reading this:
http://slatest.slate.com/posts/2011/09/08/astronaut_shortage_nasa_needs_more_astronauts_for_space_station_.html
NASA is a roadblock created by the government
to _prevent_ the exploitation of space for profit,
and the acquisition of political power by the exploiters.
Ditto fission and fusion energy development.
Despite the worst efforts of the government, all three will
soon make major contributions to the reform and recovery of
the US economy by creating massive amounts of new wealth,
which the government, all too predictably, will try to tax away.
The point of this article was settlement, which is refreshing for PJM. Settlement and continuation of the species are the biggest reasons for going to space. Exploitation comes secondary, as a necessary fact of this settlement.
But what worries me about extraterrestrial “settlement” is the political aspect.
Any space settlement will be so prohibitively complex and expensive, only a Government entity could attempt it. There will be no stowaways, no tag-alongs, no secretly migrating individuals posessing the same level of technology (sail, sword, musket, spinning wheel, carpentry skills) to settle the place and “compete” with the “settling government” for future political power.
The sheer distance, cost, and technology required to settle space will dictate every aspect of the operation for several generations. The type and numbers of people allowed into the program, their genetic makeup, male/female ratios, temperment, and physiological profile. Settlers will be “NASA employees” in the exact ratios, roles, demographic and occupation specialties as “NASA” determines.
Their can be no illness, no reproduction, marriage, or handicaps allowed in the genesis of such an endeavor. And no chance for Democracy or the “normal distribution” of the human bell curve in by the (uncontrolled) influx of others who simply walked in and set up house in the woods, looking for a better place to live.
There will be no or privately owned self defense weaponry or property rights, NOT controlled by “The State”, and no subsitance level hunting/poaching farming done in your own best interests as you see fit…
Because YOU cant get there. Only “the government” can get people there, and what worries me about THAT, is thats going to be the Ultimate Triumph of Facism.
A whole planetary civilization, created by a single political entity that dictates and controls EVERYTHING from Air to Water.
I would give Cities in Flight by James Blish a read. He recoqnizes your point and answers it with an interesting tale.
Thank you,
I’ll have to look it up.
Always facinated with the “history” of exploration and technology….
Shackleton, Lindburg, the original astronauts…whoever dared to “do”, and the machines they built to overcome obstacles….
But the required scope of government involvement in Space Exploration always raises a few hairs on my neck.
I hope the author you recommend presents another viewpont I hadnt considered, and softens my uncomfortable suspicions about the future
Robotic space exploration for science is one thing.
As for space settlement: It is the stupidest idea ever advanced in all of human history. Proves only that some people while very talented can at the same time in some respects be very stupid in other ways.
“Proves only that some people while very talented can at the same time in some respects be very stupid …”
What’s your point Ted? To show that you can write stupid things too?
I think his point has something to do with emperors and clothing.
It’s currently the height of intellectual fashion to assume that we must colonize space.
It’s also a very stupid idea.
Indeed these are strong arguments against space settlement: it’s stupid.
Oh. Compelling and provocative.
I rather doubt that anybody (seriously) advocating extra-terrestrial settlement believes that there will not be challenges, both technical and human. There are probably much more difficult things to overcome than vision loss, bone issues, etc. But I fail to see how, knowing there are challenges, makes the CONCEPT “stupid.”
I can only assume that those advancing such nuanced arguments as “it’s stupid” are multi-millionaires, having acquired the ability to identify endeavors that will be completely without risk or challenge… there’s GOT to be some profit in such an ability!
Color me unconvinced based on this posting and the one a level or two above.
If the human race is to survive, then for the majority of its history the word ship will connote “spaceship.”
I think space will be settled in a way not planed or controlled from earth. Free spirits, looters, miners, utopians and non-conformists will open the solar system like a gold rush. Once we reach a minimum amount of space infrastructure we will start bleeding people into space in an uncontrolled fashion.
Larry Niven wrote a great article on the same two topics – Columbus and space – in “Stars and Gods”. Page 230:
http://books.google.com/books?id=fiyWETb2HYgC&pg=PA235&lpg=PA235&dq=larry+niven+christopher+columbus&source=bl&ots=45BUMd86nC&sig=Jv5cGBbItqmS76dQtCexrYGK8IU&hl=en&ei=G5KVTuKxA4qbtwer2sCABw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CB0Q6AEwAA#v=onepage&q&f=false
First and foremost Columbus was an entrepreneur. He refused to risk his voyage until he was guaranteed a share of the gain. He could of sailed for the Portuguese but they wouldn’t give him his cut. He held out until the Spanish crown named him “Admiral of the Seas” and granted him 10% of his gains.
Clear out the regulations regarding private enterprise in space, declare a 100 year space tax holiday – and stand back. That’s all you need do.
Xlnt analysis of Columbus, and his ‘mission’ to the new world. As far as colonizing space goes, it is ugly out there. There is no hospitable planet, or other celestial sphere found anywhere within man’s view via the most powerful telescope. Living on any planet, or moon requires a dome to protect against the deadly environment, or an underground base. Neither of which would appeal to most humans.
The exciting idea/dream of space exploration far exceeds the reality. The only habitable planet available at this time is the one we currently occupy.
Good point scizzorbill,
Goes to my argument that its so complex and expensive, no one but the Government can ever be involved. It will never be “settled” by “settlers” because the Government will control the technology to get there.
Space Suit? Propusion system? Life support?
Sure, you’ll build that on your own.
No home made raft, net, musket, knife and file could set you nicely in in space, as they could in the early frontier days.
Antarctica is a good example…its accessable by boat and airplane, AND it has an atmosphere…Antarctica is exponentially more hospitable to life than any “space place”, and yet no one moves there to live.
There are no “settlers” there, adapting, thriving, populating the bottom continent as they see fit, in and of their own best intetests….Only government projects, with minutia level control on everything from food to fuel, to communications to garbage disposal.
Antarctica will never be democracy based civilization/nation/state for you to raise you family in.
And niether will space
Unless we find a habitable planet with a breathable atmosphere.
Obviously that won’t be in our Solar System for the foreseeable future.
So space colonization requires effective interstellar space travel.
There is another possibility: Terraform Mars or Venus to be more habitable. Those planets could be seeded with algae to produce oxygen. But it would take thousands of years to generate enough of a breathable atmosphere.
It’s unlikely that any off-Earth settlement will occur, unless it’s carried out as scientific exploration for national-prestige reasons using appropriately scaled chunks of national moolah. Beyond low-Earth orbit (where satellites directed downward have a real dollars and cents value), there’s no money to be made in space.
What about all those “space resources”? Physics is completely against it for delta-V reasons, unless you can move the entire industrial process into space as well. If your business model for using space resources contains a step where you need to leave or land on a body with a non-negligible gravity, it falls apart.
The customer, the mine, and all the steps in between need to remain in the same gravitational field.
I thoroughly dislike NASA’s cozy “client capitalism” model for exploring space. But as noted above, I don’t see any model in which sensible, profit-seeking companies are going to send people off-Earth to explore, let alone settle. (Low-Earth-orbit tourist trips are simply a subset of the Earth satellite business.)
I’d love to be proven wrong, but basic physics and economics are against space settlement under any kind of profit-related motive.
Beyond low-Earth orbit (where satellites directed downward have a real dollars and cents value), there’s no money to be made in space.
There are more rare earths and gold in the asteroid belt alone than has ever been discovered on earth. The solar system is a storehouse of raw materials. Any process that man can make using these will benefit; the gravity well problem will be solved.
Even high-grade ore is still very diffuse and requires concentration and extraction, which in turn requires machinery even if run by robots. And even what that’s achieved, you’re still a long way from billets of metal (or whatever) in sizes and grades of purity that industries can use.
In discussions like this industrial processes always get assumed away by people with little direct experience of them. They are complicated, often heavy, messy, power-hungry, and at the end of the day, you still have to deliver the product to the next part of the chain.
…the gravity well problem will be solved.
This is assuming-away a severe problem. Any (practical) suggestions?
NASA had a choice between developing NERVA and this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_thermal_rocket
We could have had a deep space drive by now, and
probably a SSTO heavy lifter; Dr. Bussard’s last
gift to us, the Polywell fusion reactor, may yet
give us both – If the government does not hide
the results of the current proof-of-principle
experiment behind a burn-before-reading
security classification.
This is assuming-away a severe problem. Any (practical) suggestions?
The only thing severe here is politics and room temp IQs.
Gravity wells are the same class of physics problems that man is aware of; what lacks in space “conquest” at this point is merely cheap access to space, and this is something that is solvable. A reusable SSTO design (DC-X) was started and dropped a couple of decades ago, the upshot being that what and how are understood and it’s a matter of engineering. The rocket equation (e.g. specific impulse) is well understood.
As with all things what stops SSTO R&D is politics, pork, and morons. Clear away the beak wetting politicians and pork barrel requirements and you could see SSTO flying in under 15 years.
….what lacks in space “conquest” at this point is merely cheap access to space, and this is something that is solvable.
This is assuming-away again. “Merely” is the tip-off word.
If a company had an economic reason to send people into space for the company’s commercial gain — instead of doing it for a paying customer (a national government) — then such rockets would have been built already.
I’m in favor of human exploration of space, and perhaps someday settlement. But there is no present or foreseeable economically justifiable reason for doing this, without someone else (meaning a national government) paying the bill. And under those terms, it’s space settlement by fiat.
It is absolutely critical to understand the vast difference between spaceflight beyond low Earth orbit for private gain, and space exploration beyond low Earth orbit at the behest of a national government.
The latter could well be done using the model of Antarctic research settlements, the former won’t happen in the lifetime of anyone walking the Earth today.
It is remarkable how closely the arguments against the human space venture match those previously advanced against Columbus.
It is even more remarkable to hear those who owe their existence to Columbus repeat such blind-minded mockery.
Ungrateful children. They take the gift but denounce the spirit that gave it.
Dr. Zubrin, hopefully one day there will be ungrateful children on Mars mocking you and Elon Musk.
Odds are good Ed, since the ungrateful mocking of both has many years already.
The most valuable thing Columbus found was real estate. I believe a single square kilometer claim by individuals is both reasonable and all that is required to finance any level of exploration and settlement at current costs (which should only improve in time.)
Having governments recognize Alaska sized claims is not only unnecessary but counterproductive to settlement. Banks could fully finance a travel package that has a better than 800% ROI. Starting less than five years from today it would provide a settler with not just their one sq. km. claim, but a half hectare developed habitat and Zubrin hobbyfarm available the moment of arrival and a few years of supplies to get them started. Upon signature, the colonist will have a liability to the bank and a means of paying it while the bank will get a substantial down payment (not from the current signer, but from a previous one already on mars) with the incentive to find more colonists. This means of settler income will last an entire lifetime and be enough to afford the cost of earth imports to improve the settlement. Individuals will be free to improve their own situations and those of their fellows without a central planning committee telling them what they must do.
All the other mythical dragons will be dispelled once we actually go, experience and overcome the challenges of settlement. But money is no longer the issue.
Claims are legal by historical precedence and require no government to enforce except those members that go themselves to make the [reasonable individual] claims.
First of all Colombus wasn’t an awful navigator since he crossed the Atlantic on caravels. He can’t be blamed for not having read the works of the ancient Greeks who had calculated the radius of the Earth since probably no contemporary sailor had. (BTW, Ferdinand’s and Isabel’s astronomers had read the Greaks and advised their masters against funding the expedition)
Second of all: Colombus was a funny Italian since he spoke and wrote poor Italian and perfect Castilian.
Third: It looks absurd to me to blame Colombus for things who happened decades or centuries after him just like blaming Gutenberg because his invention allowed to print Das Kapital and Mein Kampf.
Fourth: Just like the Chinese who were being murdered by the over two hundred thousand by the Japanese see Hiroshima and Nagasaki as a good thing who saved countless Chinese lives, I think the people who, by the thousands every year (on special festivals by the tens of thousands) were having their hearts torn of their chests by the Aztecs would not agree with those virtuous members of the Council of Churches. In fact Cortez’s conquest of Mexico would have been impossible without the Tlazcaltecs who in addition to direct combat involvement, supplied him, patrolled his lines and communication, transported the brigantines who would allow Cortez to rule Mexico’s lagoon and provided the lookouts against suprise attacks. They did it because they had many, many, many dead to avenge.
Frank Borman is on record as saying, “Anyone who thought we went to the Moon for exploration is nuts. But we sure wanted to beat those Russians.”
Though exploration is admirable, it is also very expensive. While most Americans ponder the notion that astronauts on Mars might happen in the years to come, there is really no great value to it, realistically, other than to say, “We did it.”
But we have not only sent numerous probes to Mars, of which we got more than five years of data when the expected longevity was only supposed to last months, we have also sent a probe to Titan, one of Saturn’s more interesting moons, as well as plans to explore the ice-bound moon of Jupiter, Europa.
Robotic exploration is the way to go, clearly. Sending people, given the limitations of the effects of zero-g on human physiology is just not practical, yet.
That’s about right. Send people when there’s actually something up there for them to do that can’t be done by robots. No, there’s no substitute for “boots on the ground.” But space exploration is mainly an engineering problem, and engineering is about tradeoffs. Right now, we’re trading “boots on the ground” for money, safety, and efficiency. It makes sense. One day, maybe the bots will find something up there that we’re willing to sacrifice money, safety, and efficiency for. Probably not in my lifetime, though.
One thing robots can’t do: have babies.
Columbus also pitched an attempt to win back Jerusalim by this route. The big question,though, Can we worship GAIA if we are off planet?
How would that even work? Israel is on the east coast of the Mediterranean, and there is no sea route into Israel that doesn’t go through the Mediterranean.
Red Sea, Gulf of Aqaba.
Robert Zubrin makes a good point above – many of the comments here show how small-minded many people are.
It may take centuries to grow the off-planet industry base, but if it can be made profitable, it will happen. Living in space will be hard and the joys of a walk in the park will be sorely missed. But that’s what explorers and settlers do, isn’t it? They make sacrifices towards their future benefit.
Making travel from Earth to space (and back) cheap is the first step.
Sorry I have to disagree in the details while agreeing with your overall point. They should be prepared to deal with some hard ships to reach the goal.
However, there is absolutely no reason settlers have to give up shirtsleeve walks in the park in [a relatively short] time. We don’t have to send just a few people (with flags) we can send all that want to go with many hands to build malls with skylights among other things. We shouldn’t deprive the children of pets, trees to climb and grass to run on. Many hands will make it possible.
Making it cheap is cart before the horse. Realizing it’s already cheap enough (but will get better) because the assets to finance the trip exist in abundance (144 million claims more or less for mars alone and more elsewhere.)
I submit, then, any/all national socialists who want a shot at utopia get aboard the next freight-rocket to Planet X. Bring your calculator and iPod.
Plenty of opportunity for “shared sacrifice” and “community give-back”. Yup.
Communal living was, is and always will be a monumental failure. The ideology that “if people set out with a clear goal in mind, everything will fall into place” is absurd. Human nature takes over. Greed, avarice, lust, the whole list of commandments.
Jamestown has produced evidence to that effect; Indentured servitude(slavery) in the 1600-1700′s in colonial America. And on and on. And they had access to clean water, fresh air, good soil for crops and the lot.
On some place, as yet unknown to us, survival will be in stark contrast to elements the earliest settlers faced. And when you add the potential for keeping people in a “bubble” because the atmosphere of said planet is toxic or non-existent, you will find people going wonky. If you’ve read the report on Biosphere in Arizona, one of the problems they had was the volunteers getting very aggressive and irritable which was possibly linked to an excess of CO2.
http://www.biology.ed.ac.uk/research/groups/jdeacon/biosphere/biosph.htm
But that was an all-volunteer group with good attitudes and desires to do something meaningful but later divided into two factions and though they “could work together, they couldn’t get along”. And this, with the fresh air, terra-firma, drive-with-the-top-down world right out there as a parachute.
Such would not exist on a world where you make a biosphere bubble habitat.
Even the Apollo astronaut’s said that sometimes they just wanted to get the hell away from each other.
Frank Borman and Jim Lovell spent two weeks in space, chosen for their ability to be diplomatic and get along with others, yet they found it both boring and annoying with the “other guy” always right there.
Many people think that space-travel will be some “Star-Trekian” thing where crew members will have their own quarters and someday we’ll figure out how to solve the gravity problem. But given the ultimate challenge, that of human frailty, we have learned that no one is immune. Remember the astronaut Lisa Nowak who drove from Houston to Florida in a jealous rage? Imagine that happening in the confines of even a roomy spacecraft.
We have a long way to go before colonization can happen. On Earth, what kept people going was the hope of finding riches, new land, some sort of “new-ness” that was promising. Air, water and soil were a given. Human weakness often led to disaster which is bad enough, but it can be just that much worse in space.
And as we all know, “In space, no one can hear you scream.”
Defeatist strawmen is what’ absurd. Close quarters are difficult which is why large internal volume is a good thing for a ship traveling between orbits. I propose we send two ships and a dozen colonists, each ship at least a BA330 internal size followed by several dozen colonists at the next opportunity.
Once on mars, many hands will lead to large mall spaces and regular sized apartments… Not anything like the restrictions of biosphere 2.
Settling the Americas took a commitment (and close quarters for months.) Settling a new planet will take something similar.
If we are unable to settle the closest earth analogy in our solar system… it’s over.
Dude sailed to America to MAKE MONEY! Everybody who came to America except maybe the Pilgrims came here to BE THEIR OWN BOSS and to GET RICH QUICK!
Space exploration at the moment is not even remotely comparable to the sea voyages of Columbus’ day. Technologically, space travel hasn’t even reached it’s “age of sail.” We’re not even paddling around in dugout canoes. We’re sort of drifting around on log rafts. Also, there is no business model for space travel comparable to any of the schemes used by the early explorers. Rich people could invest in a voyage and hope to get a cut of the profits. Poor people could invest themselves and hope to make it as colonists. If all else failed, explorers could steal stuff from the Indians or kidnap them and sell them as slaves. Today, only PhDs and billionaires, plus the occasional novelty act like a school teacher or a Congressman, are allowed in space. That’s because at the moment there’s nothing up there for the rest of us to do.
No. It’s because reaching high orbit is too expensive. Once you are in orbit, you are halfway to wherever you want to go. Cheap lift to orbit – such as a space elevator, makes everything from tourism to asteroid mining possible and profitable.
Which is why everyone is cashing in their savings bonds to invest in the space elevator.
Unfortunately you would need a decent fleet of lift vehicles to assemble it and for the crews to work out of – like the Space Shuttles. The only real technological challenge is the wire material which several firms claim to have solutions for. The rest of it is engineering.
That’s a good point. That’s why a seat on the Shuttle was so expensive and why NASA had PhDs up there moving space furniture and installing space toilets. Maybe that’s another reason (in addition to the logistics) why we don’t have a giant, beautiful, spinning space wheel: the labor costs are too high. It would be like trying to build an apartment complex using nothing but MIT-graduate engineers instead of the usual framers, roofers, concrete-pourers, etc. Even if you got it built, the custodians would also be engineers and only engineers, scientists, and fighter pilots would be allowed to live in it.
I think the question is, if you solve the gravity problem – then what? Suppose it becomes cheap enough for Joe Blow to go into space. What’s he going to do when he gets there? Build giant spinning space wheel? Why?
So many questions…
Right now China is buying up basic resource companies all over the world. When they run out of companies to buy here on earth, they’ll move to outer space. All European exploration was motivated by the need to find new resources when the old ones were exhausted. In the process of extracting the resources, settlements are built. When smart people whose resources run out get desperate enough, they invent whatever they have to invent in order to access new sources for what they need.
The problem with resources is gravity.
Either you gotta haul them up there into space (=$$$) — or if you gather them up there, you gotta bring ‘em back down to Earth without making a crater or burning them up on entry (=$$$).
Vanishingly few off-planet resources, even when supplied “free for the taking,” can get around this fundamental problem at the corner of Physics and Economics.
Free ore is no bargain because ore is the cheapest part of whatever widget you’re making. How much did the price of iron ore contribute to the cost of your last car? Not much, pal.
Nearly all the expense to manufacture widgets occurs between the mine and the customer. And before you talk of “microbots” and “smart molecules” and “bioengineered organisms,” let’s see some scalable experiments that don’t require backdoor subsidies that nullify the entire exercise.
Chasing space resources is a fool’s errand if the purpose is to have commercial enterprise drive space exploration and settlement. Not. going. to. happen.
The only model for off-Earth settlement that makes sense in the foreseeable future is in the style of Antarctic research stations. Done by national governments for national prestige and scientific research, and with rotating crews.
No one alive today will see any other kind of space settlement.
Space Elevator.
The only model
…or realize that real estate is sufficient to pay for everything without any government assistance.
“We’ve charged in the bill the National Academies to DO SOME WORK to TRY to HELP identify a CONSENSUS for what are the reasons for human spaceflight…”
Excellent… we’re asked to think about trying to consider helping some unidentified person or agency arrive at some sort of group-think for… whatever.
“The reality is the reason that Isabella scrounged up the moolah to finance his trip was that she was expecting a financial return…”
Fifty percent of the voyage was funded by private investors.
ETs are here. Not sure whether they intend to help us or kill everyone, but the issue of space flight won’t matter soon.
“To Serve Man” is a cook book.
“My Jeffersonian Home” has the acid flashback view of space exploration already crystallized and it’s all about wealth generation. When you see HULC starting to be deployed from Lockheed-Martin, SpaceX, CNC, and 3D printing–you gotta know that we’re really in the 21st century and it’s time we started acting like it!
If Columbus had not found land, his crew would not have mutinied nor would they have starved to death.
The agreement Columbus had with his crews was that they would sail west for 30 days, and if they did not find anything turn back. (The had 3 or 4 months supplies aboard.) At about day 28-29 they began seeing signs of land nearby. On day 30 (the mutiny alleged by 19th century historians) the crew went to the Admiral of the Ocean Sea, and essentially said “Chris. It’s day 30 — time to head home.”
Columbus replied “Well, yeah, but we are seeing stuff that indicates land is near — tree branches, that kind of thing.” Crew pretty well conceded that was so.
Then Chris said, “let’s go on a couple more days — then turn back. Sure would be a downer to head home when we are only a day or so from land.”
So they said okay — went on a few more days, saw lights (probably from a good ol’ boy shining for fish with a torch), went one more day and found land.
But, yeah. He did torque up the size of the Earth. Big time.
The big problem with space is that there is nothing there.
Everything we need is on Earth. There’s air, water, food and a temperature that we can stand. There’s also plenty of living space. Anyone who thinks we need to expand from our planet to relieve population pressure should take a look at the Sahara and Antarctica. Both places are far more hospitable for human life than space, but no one lives there. We have plenty of places to live.
As for minerals, it’s always going to be cheaper to dig deeper into the Earth’s crust than it is to mine asteroids. We’re already here.
Proponents of space settlement need to answer the question “Why?” If we aren’t even using our deserts or arctic regions, why should we spend the enormous amount of resources needed to go into space?
I think there is a case to go out there. For the moment the only reason to send people into space is science. There’s no, repeat no, economic reason to do so. The current “private” space companies are competing for government contracts. It’s not really private, except for the space tourism business.
Columbus was trying to get somewhere where people already lived and had something that he could sell. Space has neither of those things. The comparison to Columbus is not correct.
It won’t always be that way. We need to develop the technology to make space feasible, and the only way to do that is by trying. It won’t happen on command and we can’t just throw money at the problem. I suspect that we’ll colonize space when the world economy is so large that the costs become manageable. We are nowhere close to that.
Answer: one really big rock (ask the dinosaurs)
One big rock every 100 million years isn’t a good enough reason, especially since any off-earth colonies are far, far more likely to be wiped out by asteroids, radiation, or any number of unknown causes. In fact, they almost certainly will at the current level of technology.
Sure, we’ll get around to it, but we need to have real incentives to do so. What I see in space fans is enthusiasm looking for reasons to go into space. It’s not rational.
The Vikings, at great expense, got to America. It did no good because they didn’t have the wealth or technology to do anything once they got there. We’re in the same position. We’ll get there, but it will be a long time.
Another answer (if one big rock isn’t compelling): Yellowstone Shield.
Another answer (if rocks and massive volcanoes aren’t sufficient): the hoary old 60/70/80 spectre of nuclear war
All the objections sound, pardon me, kind of whiney. If this were a movie, it would be coming from the character the director wants the audience to NOT identify with (and will probably be eaten at some point). No, life is NOT a movie, but the “it’s too hard” and “why go anyway? We have everything we need right here” are rationalizations for inaction, not reasons to forego expansion.
Fortunately we are beginning to get around the point where it really matters that the naysayers and the pork-digging politicians say… technology is advancing at the hands of people with vision (SpaceX, Virgin Galactic, Spaceport America, etc.), and if it’s too scary, dark or cold out there, you don’t have to come and you won’t have to pay any taxes to support it. Problem solved. The $/lb-to-LEO will drop, the technical issues will be addressed… as with most predicted disasters/problems, man does not just sit around waiting to die or rot or whatever… that’s why we aren’t starving to death as predicted in the 60s: we invented our way out of it… who’d have thunk it?!
“Columbus was trying to get somewhere where people already lived and had something that he could sell. Space has neither of those things.”
Unless we’re contacted by actual space aliens.
We’ve been dancing around that L-word–”life”. But that’s the real issue.
Every place that humans have traveled to on this planet had life. Even Antarctica has penguins.
And life means an ecosphere, an ecology, in which humans can live too. We breathe the same oxygen in Antarctica that the penguins do. The settlers to North America found water to drink and game to hunt and eat. Etc.
But so far, space is lifeless. We’ve found no evidence of life anywhere in the Universe.
Should that change, then the cost-effectiveness of space travel might change dramatically for the better.
So I believe that we’re marking time until we can get a better handle on whether there’s life in the Universe beyond the Earth.
Maybe we could just rocket all the democrats and other genetic sludge into outer space. That would be nice. We wouldn’t have to hear so much whining, untruths, shouting, smell so many unwashed bodies.
Yup, god, gold, and glory, that’s what I was taught and read. You left out the reason the spice trade was going around the Cape of Good Hope was because the Muslims had the cheaper eastern med tied up and the traditional over land route blocked. As I recall, Columbus blindly ran into the New World as Ferdinand and Isabel finally kicked the Muslims out of Spain. Maybe when the Muslims take over Europe and Africa doing Arab Spring trip those dastardly European imperial warmongers in the New World will decide to colonize the stars–isn’t colonize currently a politically incorrect term? I know, we can call it going on a star crusade. Will be star crusaders, he ha. Of course, being ostensibly first to the New World didn’t work all that well for Spain.
It won’t be a nation or nations.
Exactly what I was going to say. The nations are going broke. They have been a hindrance for many decades now. We would probably be much farther along by now if not for NASA.
Having grown up on Asimov, Heinlein, Pohl, Silverberg and Anderson, then moving on to Pournelle and Niven, all while watching the launches of Mercury, Gemini and Apollo, I always expected that we would just naturally colonize the moon, followed by the planets and, ultimately, the stars.
Then I grew up and studied economics. John Lynch is correct, every reason that is tendered as to why we should go is inferior to why we should stay. Invoking Sir Edmund Hillary is insufficient when spending other people’s money. Given the current cost of getting a pound of payload into orbit and returning it to the surface in a sustainable fashion, commerce is impossible. Without commerce, space settlement is impossible.
Furthermore, the Columbus model is fatally flawed. If we go, then we should follow the model of Prince Henry, the Navigator. Make incremental advances that pay for themselves, while learning from your mistakes in a non-catastrophic manner, is the better model. Before we go to the asteroid belt (Mars is a waste of time and resources) we need to have a substantial knowledge base on how to: 1)economically crawl out of our gravity well, 2) develop true space vessels that are capable of safe systemic travel to and from our destination on a time scale comparable to that of sailing to the Orient and back, 3) overcome the various medical issues, such as bone loss and blindness, 4) find some economic reason for leaving the surface, at great risk, so that investors and colonists can be found in support of these endeavors, and 5) prove we know how to thrive in space. Not merely survive. That would imply a moon base that is capable of generating its own air and water – things too expensive to lift – and something of value that can be sold, to pay for the things that the colonists need, at a reasonable cost. That will probably take 40 to 50 years. Or more.
Additionally, North America was primarily colonized using private investors, through corporations, to raise the funds necessary, expecting to receive profits in return. Government funding will always be subject to popular whims and as such is not to be depended on.
I first read about these issues in a book, since given away, called, “The Third Industrial Revolution.” I think it was first published in 1975. I haven’t seen anyone cover the topic more thoroughly. I would encourage everyone to read it. Because, until the economic issues are solved, there will be no space settlement. No matter how fervently we argue the need to preserve the species.
A real free-market approach would be to remove any limiting regulations (including space treaties that prohibit nuclear drives) and simply leave it alone. No government spending, no grants, no contracts. If it makes sense someone will do it.
Why is space different from anything else?
I’d like to see us go everyplace, but the belt isn’t the place of juvenile novels and mars and possibly the moon are the only two places that are not a waste of time and resources. Everyplace else will follow.
1)This is just wishes, not reality. We do need an economically viable model. Good news it exists at today’s costs. Doing it drives down tomorrows costs (rather than the cart before the horse model people seem to prefer against all reality.)
2) For $300m we could do this now with components already tested in space. They should have lunar shakedown cruises before we send two of them to mars.
3) You can always find reasons not to do something. We should not.
4) 800% ROI. http://planetplots.blogspot.com/2011/09/business-model.html
5) Yes, survive with style as Pournelle put it in the 1970s. We can do that on mars if we put enough people there.
Speaking of the danger of keeping all eggs in a basket, humans need to put their consciousness in biological or computer clones, which are spread first around the solar system, then around the galaxy, and (much) later far beyond.
Only then will it be possible to assure relative immortality.
Mr. Simberg and others are correct that Columbus greatly underestimated the circumference of the globe and therefore stumbled unexpectedly on the New World. This of course does not diminish the magnitude of his discoveries. Also, with regard to the statement that the Portuguese would have discovered it anyway in a few years, the probability is that they had already discovered the New World before Columbus’ famous voyage. To make the long tack that was required to sail through the south Atlantic to round the Cape of Good Hope brought them so close to Brazil that they undoubtedly already knew of the new great continent. But their highly profitable trade routes to the East made them very secretive about what they knew, and protective of their hard-won knowledge as well. They feared the competition and the threat to their lucrative enterprise. They were not above inventing stories of sea monsters, and sailing off the edge of the world, and claiming that the sun turned your skin permanently black when you sailed southward. They sank interlopers on sight. The Portuguese achievements were remarkable. Unfortunately in 1580 they became part of the Spanish Empire, when one of their kings foolishly got himself killed fighting Moors in North Africa, leaving no heirs, so that King Philip of Spain acquired Portugal for eight years. Philip’s wars then used up the Portuguese fleet, drawing from their distant stations the galleons that protected the Portuguese eastern empire and squandering them on his fruitless enterprise against England in l588. The best ships in the Spanish Armada were Portuguese. But Columbus in l492 was just trying to get to the treasures of the Indies by sailing westward because the Portuguese in the south Atlantic and the Muslims in the eastern Mediterranean blocked any other way.
The author’s assumption appears to be that only the government can send people to space.
How about shutting down NASA and making it easier (“deregulation”) for private citizens to develop the means and tools to go into space?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_private_spaceflight_companies
Arguments that people won’t want to live on a cramped, uncomfortable space platform make me laugh. I live in rural Texas and I like visiting New York and San Francisco but I can’t imagine why anyone would want to LIVE in a cramped, smelly, dirty city like that. Read Heinlein’s story “It’s Great to be Back”. As for resources being shipped to Earth at great expense, all it takes is ONE resource that can be shipped back economically (like energy via solar power stations that can be microwaved to Earth) to establish a bridgehead and transportation system, then other resources will be exploited using those systems. It’s called “bootstrapping”, and every important innovation in human history starting with the wheel begins this way.
The stumbling blocks here are “Congressional direction,” and the massive, risk-averse NASA bureaucracy it has created, which have together given us our patched-up and now retired fleet of basically 1970s technology space shuttles, a ramshackle “International Space Station,” and no way for U.S. astronauts—the dwindling number who are left–to get back into space now, except as a suppliant hitcher on some other country’s rockets.
With the odd exception here and there, we are, after all, talking about a basically scientifically illiterate group of Congressional “decision makers” who, I am almost positive, have never read much, if any, science fiction, and who are much more focused in terrestrial matters, like winning the next election and seeing to it that their district gets some of those NASA funds, regardless of the project or the competence of that district’s manufacturers and suppliers.
Thus, two institutions likely to block any real progress—which does involve taking risks and the inevitable injuries and deaths–institutions virtually guaranteed to suck the life out of any unorthodox and/or “risky” ideas, and to do their best to prevent them from becoming reality, have been in charge, with the result that I view our vaunted “Space Program”—now apparently concluded–as having been both a massive failure and a monumental joke. Trillions spent, and we Americans are still stuck here on Earth, with nothing to show for our efforts, sacrifices, and treasure but a rusting pile of junk, lots of fancy, collectable “mission patches,” and increasingly idle infrastructure, but no way to productively use them, or to get into space again.
Unfortunately, having private enterprise lead the way from now on faces enormous problems, due not only to the complexity of the task and the enormous sums of start-up money needed to create or to adapt the necessary technology and infrastructure, but also to the web of rules and regulations the government has put into place to discourage such private “adventures” that might compete with the government and NASA’s monopoly on space flight and exploration.
So, right now, it looks like the first explorers and likely settlers on the Moon and Mars, and perhaps further out as well, are going to be the Chinese or explorers/settlers from some other nation, but certainly not from the U.S.
As for nobody wanting to settle space bercause it is not very hospitable, remember that to many of the first new world settlers the new world was not very hospitable either, but that didn’t stop them.
I suspect that space will attract the same kind of settlers as the new world did, either minorities looking for political and religious freedom, or the ambitious looking for wealth.
I agree that to get real space settlement, you will definitely need to resolve the problem of getting private property rights in space. That “space is the common heritige of all mankind” stuff is complete BS. Nobody is going to settle in space if the UN can take everything they have built whenever they please. We need a sort of a homestead act for space, so if you live on any asteroid, moon, or planetary body for x length of time, you get x acres of land that you will own, and any orbital space habitat belongs to either the residents or the builder.
Hectares Richard. Who remembers 640 acres to the sq. mile? 100 hectare to the sq. km. is much simpler.
Otherwise, absolutely right. Nobody owns space which makes reasonable claims legally enforceable. I’ve realized that a single sq. km. per individual with boots on the ground is all it takes to finance everything. Other economic factors follow naturally from that. No need to export anything to earth and the income is life long.
It would be nice to get national recognition but it isn’t needed. We just need colonists to agree to a settlement charter. Get banks to finance it and they can start today (the actual trip beginning within a decade) at todays cost which will go down with the greater activity.
Best of all, each colonist controls millions of dollars in new assets with the stroke of a pen (and a mortgage liability the banks will take care of for them.) Anybody could go regardless of current wealth.
He was called Colon because he was an asshole. His discoveries ruined Spain as importing stolen gold and silver is unproductive and leads to inflation. It became a nation of hidalgos not entrepreneurs and is still a backward statist economy. Most of Latin America is also backward. What that continent needs is a hundred million Chinese immigrants
Regarding Columbus, the “genocide”. Seldom mentioned is that the Carib Indians were originally from South America, and were eating their way up the island chain. They were cannibals, and they did not leave any “left overs” running around. They also committed suicide when their sense of superiority got a reality check. “Wah. Columbus so bad.”
I fail to see why Columbus isn’t celebrated as the world’s greatest liberal, a sort of precursor of his royal highness, Obama: he didn’t know where he was going, didn’t know where he was when he got there, did it all on borrowed money, governed with tyrannical incompetence, and was eventually thrown in jail…