[Space/Spaceships] Getting the velocity/Delta V I want with the tech I want

[Ulzgoroth]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

How can you know that? Aging is poorly understood and only irregularly studied in humans. Anumal aging is even less studied partly because animals live so much shorter lives that they don't make good models for humans.

There's considerable research on aging in animals (and even hyper-aging animal models) exactly because they have shorter lives and thus it's actually possible to run experiments on them. (Plus all the other usual problems with human experimentation.) There are a number of tricks that look pretty good for life extension in rodents, actually. Of course, whether any given approach crosses over to humans is impossible to really say without many decades of testing.

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

Nevertheless there are studies that claim that slowing your metabolism down by eating less will extend your lifespan. By everything I understand slowing your metabolism to 10% should slow all your metabolic processes proportionately and aging I a metabolic process.

You're 'understanding' a lot more than we actually know, I think. It's very unlikely you can slow all metabolic processes at once by 90% by any means other than chronostasis.

Originally Posted by malloyd

The fundamental problem with trade of that sort is what do the customers pay with? Finding something rich high tech places have that third world places want a lot isn't difficult, it's finding something with an equal value density goes the other way that's hard. If the colonies don't have something equally valuable to send home in the same number of ships, they don't have the money to buy infrastructure heavy imports with.

Realistically, space colonization doesn't particularly work economically. The only things a low-development colony can reasonably buy imports with are subsidies and very-long-term credit.