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You've heard of Hugo, haven't you? sigh

You mean the movie, or the author? Sorry... I'm a little dense. :-)

Also, I'm going to pick a little at your relating to women "exactly" the same as men. I don't think it should be the same. It depends on circumstances, but... you know what I mean? Not everyone has the same background and experiences and challenges, but yeah I'm going to make some basic adjustments--like maybe paying attention a bit more to whether I'm talking too much or taking up an aggressive physical posture, that sort of thing. It's just a matter of paying attention and using your head.

Yeah, I'm really thinking more along these lines, but for gender instead of race: For the white person who wants to know how to be my friend . It's a fine line to walk -- acknowledging and even celebrating the differences between men and women, but not being trapped by them to the point that you see the opposite gender as some "other" which must be tricked, supplicated, conquered, or patronized.

On the whole though, I agree with what you're saying here. Feminism isn't something you play along with to get what you want. It's something you incorporate because it's part of being a decent person.

Exactly. Basically, "don't be a dick", in both senses of the word.

Moon colony, orbiting L5 colony, whatever it is it must be permanent and able to manufacture using locally sourced materials because building something like this from within the gravity well doesn't make economic sense.

Under what set of conditions does it make any sense to launch a manufacturing plant into space, then send up raw materials? I assume that's what you mean by "locally sourced" because there isn't any 'local' material at the L5 point.

How would that ever be cheaper than launching pre-built sections and assembling them in orbit?

No what I meant by locally sourced materials was either moon mined materials or asteroid mined materials. Probably the latter as I believe things like iron are a little weak on the moon.

There's no way shipping ANYTHING up from the gravity well would allow us to build a ship of this nature within any reasonable time frame with the exception of using absolutely huge space elevators.

Try these, and follow links to get more info as desired.

composition of the moon:
http://www.neiu.edu/~jmhemzac/mooncomp.htm

lunar mining and refining:
http://www.asi.org/adb/02/02/

In short, aluminum, iron, and titanium are available in very useful quantities. Common additives for the creation of steel (excepting carbon, sadly) are readily available as well. Oxygen is abundant as is silicon. The majority of these materials can be extracted in thermal processes alone, or more efficiently through pulverizing and then heating. An RTG of sufficient capacity could easily run the extraction processes both electrically and thermally. Slugs of various metals and tanks of compressed oxygen would not be difficult to make by automated processes.
Carbon, nitrogen, and hydrogen are in short supply on the surface. A sustainable lunar colony would require periodic resupply of organic chemicals from asteroids or comets. On a material basis alone, metals and semiconductors are easy and plastics and plants are hard. Methane and ammonia ices would provide the missing bulk materials for continued plastic production and expansion of plant life.

Firefox didn't copy the second link properly, it should have been this rather than a repeate of the first.

Energy is indeed the only consumed resource besides rock. The process requires temperatures of around 1000C; these temperatures can readily be achieved using reflectors.
More oxygen is produced by the titanium-rich mare soil than by the prolific silica; it's like the difference between regular and premium gasoline. Rates of about 3.3% (by weight) are achieved using ilmenite at around 1000C in hydrogen, and rates of up to 5.5% using iron-rich glass. (Ilmenite, btw, is composed of oxides of iron and titanium, and makes up anywhere from 3% to 10% of lunar material.) In addition, the result is water vapor, iron metal, and titanium oxides. I'll take iron and titanium as building materials over silicon any day.
The question of dust on reflectors seems fairly simple, actually. Assuming one is using polished metal, rather than glass, the dust can be forcibly removed by positively charging the reflectors. Kind of like those ion air purifiers, only in reverse.
Composition maps: http://www.psrd.hawaii.edu/Dec04/LunarCrust.html
Table: http://www.neiu.edu/~jmhemzac/mooncomp.htm
NASA's earlier work on oxygen extraction: http://ares.jsc.nasa.gov/HumanExplore/Exploration/ EXLibrary/DOCS/EIC048.HTML
Artemis project: http://www.asi.org/adb/04/03/10/04/oxygen-extracti on.html
Lunar simulant with composition tables: http://ares.jsc.nasa.gov/HumanExplore/Exploration/ EXLibrary/DOCS/EIC050.HTML

It reminds me of Sim City 2000, where you could stick all your power plants in the corners and edges, so you would only deal with 1/4th to 1/2 of the pollution you would normally have to deal with.

Then again, maybe it's just karma (South Chicago, IL)

1. Oxygen: 42%
2. Silicon: 24%
3. Iron: 13%
4. Calcium: 8%
5. Aluminum: 8%
6. Magnesium: 6%
7. Other (including lots of Helium-3 & Titanium): 3%

That would be correct if the current consumed was proportional to the RF power emitted, but that's not quite right. Even at low powers, you still have to power up the oscillators, filters, mixers, and the baseband processing. You also lose the benefit of a super-duper receivers in the tower that allow them to be exceptionally sensitive and use less TX power (unless you enjoy carrying around one of these)