On 29 Jul., 20:03, ornamentalmind <[email protected]> wrote:
> For the record, the above was written by fran and not me.
>
> And, yes, air, food, water...none are found in the asteroid belt.
>
Sorry, orn, not true for two out of three. Water and the gases needed
to constitute a breathable atmosphere are there. In fact, you really
only need oxygen, which can be easily won from water - the resultant
hydrogen left over could be used, among other things, as a propellant,
or source of energy. What we probably really need is the technology
for controlled fusion to get a lot of this going.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asteroid_mining
In the absence of FTL travel we seem to be limited in the foreseeable
future to the solar system. The scenario which Allan presents
(habitats in the asteroid belt) seems quite possible. The belt is a
rich source for all sorts of anorganic material - the economics of
extracting increasingly limited resources on our planet will make such
a step increasingly attractive in the next couple of hundred years.
Despite all sorts of philosophical, ethical and practical objections,
it seems likely to me that the genetical engineering djinn is already
truly out of the bottle, leading to possible applications in the area
of hydroponics and synthetic food production, perhaps even human
genetic engineering with respect to problematic aspects of
weightlessness.
I'm not saying that that many of the possible paths of development
don't contain aspects which I, personally, might find disquieting.
But, given the human characteristics of monkey inquisitiveness and our
propensity to take risks to make a potential buck - as well as more
noble motives - I do see it as probable that we will go this way. We
will probably not see it - our grandchildren probably will.
Francis
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