----- Original Message -----
From: "Joshua Bell" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Friday, November 03, 2000 6:58 PM
Subject: RE: The Space Station
> dendriite [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] wrote:
> >
> > The odds of being killed by an asteroid are greater that
> > being struck by
> > lightning or being killed in a plane crash. It sounds
> > strange, but asteroids
> > (like weapons of mass destruction) kill so many when a fall
> > does occur, that
> > it greatly increases the odds for a single individual.
>
> But does it make more sense to invest heavily over the next 10 years on
> an asteroid defense program versus investing lightly over the next 100
> and spending the additional money on infrastructure or other research
> avenues that will help the defense mechanism in the longer term?
Dont get me wrong, I believe we have a good while before we need to
seriously wory about it, but we should be seriously planning an asteroid
watch satellite system and a tracking system to keep tabs on all near-earth
bodies. (Some interesting things might be learned by watching for variations
and discrepencies of asteroid orbits.)
>
> The risk that an asteroid will sneak up on us within 2 years and wipe
> out humanity is very low, but non-zero. So should we put 100% of the GDP
> of the industrialized world into a defense program so that it's ready in
> 12 months? No, that would be silly - the risk over that time frame is
> too low to mandate such a destructive course.
I was just pointing out a quirk of statistics. The chances of the earth
being hit in any particular year are vastly smaller than your or my chance
of dying in an asteroid strike during our lifetime. Weird stuff......was in
the news frequently a year or two ago.
>
> That's one reason I would put gobs more money into nanotech than space
> research. If nanotech pays off (an admitted gamble) the benefits to
> space travel are enormous; essentially send your design for a SSTO ship
> to NanoKinkos and have them fab it overnight. If not, well, then we have
> to do it the hard way and it will take several lifetimes to build up
> enough infrastructure for Joe Schmoe to take the trip - but we tried.
>
I'd use those bots to make fuel in remote locations. That could give us a
greater reach in manned and unmanned exploration.
xponent
rob
