Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!husc6!mailrus!cornell!uw-beaver!uw-larry!szabonj
From: szabonj@uw-larry (Nick Szabo)
Newsgroups: sci.space
Subject: Re: NSS Board membership
Message-ID: <98@beaver.cs.washington.edu>
Date: 23 Jan 89 04:05:05 GMT
References: <6145@thorin.cs.unc.edu> <1989Jan15.095906.18357@utzoo.uucp> <92@beaver.cs.washington.edu> <1989Jan18.043708.27547@utzoo.uucp> <1989Jan18.102436.12838@cs.rochester.edu> <6226@thorin.cs.unc.edu> <94@beaver.cs.washington.edu> <1989Jan20.180404.7740@utzoo.uu
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Reply-To: szabonj@uw-larry.UUCP (Nick Szabo)
Organization: U of Washington, CSCI, Seattle
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In article <1989Jan20.180404.7740@utzoo.uucp> henry@utzoo.uucp (Henry Spencer) writes:
>In article <94@beaver.cs.washington.edu> szabonj@right.UUCP (Nick Szabo) writes:
>>Space settlements are another example of *future* technology.  
>
>No, they are an example of future application of current technology.
>They are much less speculative than nanotechnology or the other examples
>cited; we could clearly build at least small space settlements today if
>the money could be found.

I wish this cliche could be put to rest.  What exactly do you mean by
"current technology"?    We haven't built any space colonies, so you can't
mean the exact technology needed for them.  Nor have we designed the supporting
structure, such as launchers of sufficient size, machines to build the 
launchers and the colonies, etc.  No space colony has ever been designed
in anything but the crudest macro detail.  No full-scale or even tenth-
or hundredth-scale models of colonies have been tested.  We have
never experimented with large spinning structures in vacuum or excavations
on the Moon.  We have never built any machines to extract tons of material 
in a vacuum, nor to extrude, bend, shape, mold, and the thousands of other
industrial processes required, which all must be ported to a zero gravity
and vacuum environment.  We could not build any colony of >1,000 people, in 
ten years, even given an infinite amount of money; there is simply too much 
to be learned and too many people to train.
(Unless you like the crude approach: 1,000 space station modules, cluttering 
up LEO, costing $5,000 billion, plus $500 billon per year to service, given
current shuttle cost.  If that is your idea of a space colony, I give up.)

In contrast, we have electric motors the size of a human hair, single
electrons trapped and measured, single molecules held in laser light, etc.
today.  It is not overly speculative to assume similar progress over the
next ten years, and even to expect that nanotechnology will play a big
role in both space exploration (check out the Microdevices Laboratory at
JPL) and in later space colonization.

Things we build in the future will use future technology.  I use computer
chips and bit-mapped screens, not vacuum tubes and punch cards.
If I had planned a computer back in the late 50's, and stuck religiously
to my plans, I'd be in pretty sad shape at the moment.  Planning space
colonies with today's technology is a similar mistake.  

Nick Szabo              szabonj@fred.cs.washington.edu