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Old 03-11-2008, 11:32 AM   #8
malloyd
 
Join Date: Jun 2006
Default Re: Long-term strategy for the Solar System

Quote:
Originally Posted by Jürgen Hubert
The leaders of the Great Powers of Earth aren't stupid - and they have some very smart SAI advisers as well. So they have likely dedicated a lot of resources and computing hours to figuring out the long-term trends that affect the colonization of the solar system - and how to make sure that their own interests are best served.
I know this view rather conflicts with what makes for the coolest gaming, but I think that even in TS, space colonization is a sideshow. It's a prestige project, something you spend surplus wealth on for display purposes, rather than something that you do for the expected returns.

Need for new land is obviously a non-issue, for people living in the part of the world with enough resources to afford space colonies there is existing land reverting to wilderness from lack of demand you can walk too faster than a spacecraft can get you to Mars. Even for poorer states, the classic SF trope of exporting people for population reasons is ridiculous in a setting where they end up living in sealed artificial habitats anyway. Nobody has a shortage of deserts or bare rock or otherwise useless ground where you can build exactly the same sealed habitats much more cheaply.

Spaceborn primary resources do not need many settlers to extract, and once they are extracted are going to be on the global market anyway. The truth is embargos really don't work, not short of the full dress blockade that would cut off your supplies whether the asteroid mines were yours or not. You'll note it has been a while since anybody felt they needed to settle people in Africa to secure African resources.

For that matter, they aren't really even that valuable - the cost of industrial and post industrial goods are so many multiples of the cost of the included primary resources most of them are almost negligible. The only possible TS exception He-3, but even this is exaggerated - remember this is a second generation fusion technology valuable mostly because it reduces the radiation shielding needed in spacecraft reactors - groundside energy production is, or at least ought to be, largely unaffected by He-3 supply.

Microgravity manufacture actually might be economically significant, but that works just fine in Earth orbit. The critical stuff to spend resources on is probably in order cis-lunar infrastructure investment, enough military presence outward of that to prevent the face loss of somebody else forcing your people out, and a little bit thrown into basic exploration and research just in case something turns up. Anything beyond that its pure prestige spending, something to compete with say hosting the Olympics or building the Grandiose Monument to the Glorious Leader's Ego for a share of the budget.
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MA Lloyd
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