Re: Terraforming the Solar System
 

more than 900 terrestrial sized planets around F,G, and K type size V stars with periods under 42 days. The ones around the dimmer end may actually be in the goldilocks zone...

And if Luna had been in any way life bearing, Apollo would have been the start of the colonization rush. If Mars had been life bearing, the corporate rush from the US drug industry would have driven NASA to get there by hook or crook...

People have an intense desire to expand their territory. It's stupid, and while a person may be smart, people are stupid, dangerous and prone to panic-reactions. As well as other collective stupidities that are obviously not economically advantageous but are individually neutral or even beneficial. See also runs on banks, the accession and colonization of Alaska first by the Russians then the Americans, the similar patterns for Hawaii.

People are trying to come up with ways to build domed cities in the Russian Wilderness, floating cities at sea, and submerged cities under the sea. Those are equally as stupid as orbital cities... and without the view... in the long term survival of the species. Our survival as a species or even genus (for long-term colonies will likely result in speciation) demands we get our genetic material where it can't all be killed by one 50-mile diameter hunk of rock.

Re: Terraforming the Solar System
 

That's certainly part of it, yes. I suggest that you are overlooking the importance of naval stores, land shortages and labor glut in some European countries, the need to secure to transoceanic trade routes, etc.

Religion also fails as an explanation for Virginia, which predates the New England colonies and is arguably more important to the English economy in the 17th Century.

I'm not discounting ideology.I'm simply saying that these colonial ventures do have significant economic aspects, and that only looking at one factor, like religion, is a good way to miss a lot of other very important things.

Re: Terraforming the Solar System
 

I trimmed the quote , but I'll reply to the whole thing now.

I didn't mention China and India because I assumed that you didn't include those as part of 'The West.'


I agree that several Asian states have significant potential for the development of space based industry.


While I am very skeptical about the prospect of terraforming, I also think that it would be wise to invest in economic development of extraplantery resources. We could do quite a lot with robots and space stations. Mass drivers in orbit or perhaps on the Moon would be a good idea. Unmanned vessels could haul cargo between Earth and other planets.

I do think that some humans will probably live and work off-world, but I don't see much point in building large space colonies. There's no real incentive to do so. Social pressures might drive a few ideological oddballs to create off-world habitats, perhaps. More likely, humans living in space stations will be technicians and workers who are regularly rotated between Earth and spacefor reasons of health and comfort.


Private enterprise could certainly be involved. If no one is making money off the 'colonies', they probably won't be created, or won't last. I wouldn't be surprised if partnerships between states and for-profit-corporations played a major role.


I'm not talking about 'sufficently advanced technology', alternate physics, or extremely far future stuff. I'm talking about a plausible projection based on not only our current understanding of phsyics and our current technology, but on realistic economic and social considerations.

What any of that has to do with Traveller....

Well, it would all be useful for developing the history, economics, political system, etc a minor human race that had no direct contact with the major races until recently, and was confined to a single solar system.

Re: Terraforming the Solar System
 

We can deal with 'hunks of rock', as they come at us without leaving the Earth in large numbers. It is a danger, of course.The odds of such an event wiping us out are infinitesimal. We'd do better to worry about dangers like nuclear war, massive plagues, rampant human destruction of habitat, climate change accelerated by human industrial activity, etc. Those are real dangers to the species in the next few centuries or millennia.


In the really long term, of course, we are all going to die. Not only are we each doomed to die as individuals, but our species will become extinct at some point. On a long enough scale of time, everything dies. Stars die. While it would be nice for our species to stick around longer, I think we've missed the point of being alive if we think we can survive as a species forever. We can't.

I'm not suggesting that we don't colonize other worlds, if we develop a way to reach other life bearing planets (assuming that such places exist and can be reached- which may be possible with STL colony ships and deep space telescopes).

I'm just pointing out that, in the end, everything dies. That makes temporary (if prolonged on a historical timeframe) survival a worthy but ultimately insufficient goal .

What's important, beyond temporary survival a species? Science cannot give any answer. This is where religion, philosophy, the humanities, art, etc. come in.


YMMV

Re: Terraforming the Solar System
 

It requires somewhat related tech, but it's a lot cheaper to send out an asteroid deflector than to send out even a single major habitat.

Re: Terraforming the Solar System
 

Yeah, I agree.

Re: Terraforming the Solar System
 

Cheaper, but far less assured of survival of the species. A station with supplies for 2 years should be able to wait out the year or two of destruction expected from the impact of a largish asteroid.

At present, we don't have the knowledge to assure a deflection (Or so NASA sources have repeatedly asserted), in part because we don't know enough about those asteroids. We've several theories, but, as yet, insufficient data to know which methods will be successful in redirect, which will result in fragmentation, and which simply will fail.

Re: Terraforming the Solar System
 

Where did you get those numbers from? They sound rather optimistic.

As of Feb 2011 (the last big data release), Kepler had found 68 earth-size candidates, and 288 superearth candidates (and 662 Neptunes, and 165 Jupiters): http://kepler.nasa.gov/multimedia/ar...s/?ImageID=125. As of now only 21 Kepler planets are actually confirmed.

In total so far, from other sources, we've discovered 687 exoplanets. http://exoplanet.eu/catalog.php

Re: Terraforming the Solar System
 

Traub, Sept 2011
http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/...109.4682v1.pdf
linked to from
http://www.universetoday.com/89237/h...un-like-stars/

Re: Terraforming the Solar System
 

I was talking about planet candidates (based on observation, that may or may not be confirmed eventually), Traub is talking about predicted planets extrapolated from observation.

We have not observed 900 earthsized planets around F/G/K stars, and implying that we have is misleading.