henry@utzoo.UUCP (Henry Spencer) (09/16/84)
> On "libertarians out in space": Space doesn't, I'm afraid, hold a lot of > fascination for an unemployed worker seeking a job. Perhaps in the past > one could have "gone west" to homestead a farm, starting with minimal > resources, but to compare this with "going up" is pretty ridiculous. Please justify this in more detail. Space homesteading is impractical right now because of high cost; it may not remain so for very long. Remember that the Mormons spent their entire life savings moving to Utah, and the Plymouth Rock colony not only did this, but was up to its eyeballs in debt for many years thereafter. Launch vehicles like Hudson's "Phoenix" design may bring the cost within reach quite quickly; there is no doubt that the technology exists to do so. > The environment is *so* hostile, and will remain so, that a lot of > resources are needed simply to survive. The space environment is fairly benign, actually, compared to the Canadian prairies where one of my great-grandfathers homesteaded. The survival time for an unprotected human in a Saskatchewan blizzard isn't much better than in vacuum. The space environment is much more *controllable* than any Earth environment; this is why Gerry O'Neill observed that an industrial civilization is better off in space than on a planet. One needs a minimum of resources to start with, which means homesteading will be practical on the moon or the asteroids but not (immediately) in open space, but given this minimum there is nothing ridiculous about homesteading in space. Difficult and dangerous, probably, but not ridiculous. -- Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology {allegra,ihnp4,linus,decvax}!utzoo!henry
mwm@ea.UUCP (09/20/84)
/***** ea:net.politics / flairvax!baba / 6:38 pm Sep 17, 1984 */ And there are going to be lots and lots of rules and laws that will restrict the liberties of people living in these colonies, if only because there are more ways in which a stupid or malicious person can harm (i.e. kill) the community when even the air they breathe is available only through the efforts of many men and machines. Seems to me to me to be the *last* place I'd expect to find Libertarians. Baba /* ---------- */ Why? If the rules in question are more reasonable than those on earth (not hard to imagine, given the state of the rules on earth), they would be very attractive to libertarians (note the small l). <mike