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I got interested again in space exploration and development way back in 1977 when I read a book by physicist Gerard K. O'Neill titled The High Frontier: Human Colonies in Space. That book laid out a case for building large rotating space stations -- called space colonies -- that could be as large as 5 miles long and 2 miles in diameter. By rotating them, it would feel -- roughly -- like Earth normal gravity inside. With a properly created biosphere inside, it would seem like living on Earth. What would the people in these colonies do to benefit people on Earth? One big idea was building space based solar power stations that would power the Earth cleanly and cheaply.

As the years progressed, I learned that such things, if possible, are far in the future. One group I joined was the L5 Society. Back in the early 1980s a common saying was "L5 by '95." We were young and very optimistic. I now sometimes say "L5 by '95 -- 2495." Since the 1980s we have learned we have much to learn about creating independent biospheres. Some of the Mars crowd is working on that. I think that is a good thing -- but it will take a long time.

Could people on Mars -- assuming they could get there -- do anything to benefit people on Earth as much as this? I and others doubt it -- at least in the near term future. Terraform Mars? Please.

All Dressed Up For Mars and Nowhere To Go by Elmo Keep goes into the problems with sending humans to Mars in far more detail than I can do in a short Slashdot post.

You use solar thermal collectors to process nonterrestrial materials, primarily from the moon and secondarily from Earth approaching asteroids to bootstrap to the asteroid belt with a very small seed infrastructure lifted to the moon from earth.

Killing Constellation might actually be the best thing for increasing the chances that a kid gets to fly in space. Constellation was going to lock us into a flight architecture that was not suitable for anything other than occasional grandstanding flights to the Moon or Mars. It was not suitable for the basis of a space economy or a scalable transportation system that could support a lunar mining base and orbital facilities to build solar power satellites, for example. NASA clearly doesn't have a direction to get people into space, but now that it's out of the way, maybe other efforts can get a toe hold. (NASA hasn't yet arrived at a formula for stimulating this, the COTS model was fundamentally flawed, but I suspect that perhaps as few as five more years of floundering, and buying rides from Russia, along with watching China and India get into space, will focus America on this problem.) Here are a few potential contenders:

Skylon
Mystery Lockheed Martin Test Program
Vulcan (DARPA)
SpaceX Falcon


Right now, there are too many disposable rockets, chasing too small a launch market. Most of the private efforts are not able to get sufficient funding for the sort of technology advancement which will be required to get the cost per pound in orbit down by much, which in turn is required if anything useful is gonna happen up there. A seldom-recanted but critical part of the X-33 story was that the business model for VentureStar fell apart. There were at least one, if not two satellite phone companies planning to orbit hundreds of telecom sats. They were looking for large buys, on the order of a flight per week, for years on end, of Shuttle-class payloads (50,000 lbs), and wanted lower cost per pound. When those companies looked like they were going to fail, the primary contractor concluded that the remaining launch market (NASA plus industry at roughly the level we see today) wasn't big enough to justify private funding for the VentureStar, even after they X-33 notorious technical issues were studied and believed to be resolvable.

• The Artemis Project - The project is a private venture to establish a permanent, self-supporting community on the Moon. Brief overview of the Artemis project.
• The Mars Society - To further the goal of the exploration and settlement of the Red Planet.
• The Moon Society - An international nonprofit educational and scientific foundation formed to further the creation of communities on the Moon involving large-scale industrialization and private enterprise.
• National Space Society - grassroots organization dedicated to the creation of a spacefaring civilization. Magazine.
• Stanford on the Moon (by 2015?) And yes, Stanford as in the university.
• Space Frontier Foundation - seems to have projects for space colonization, missions to the Earth's moon, and so on. Looks like a large scale organization.
• The Space Settlement Initiative
• Space Access Society - activism for getting out of the NASA-only paradigm/reality.
• Students for the Exploration and Development of Space - `... is dedicated to expanding the role of human exploration and development of space. We also seek to educate the public in such a way as to attain this goal. `
• Space Studies Institute - `SSI's stated mission is: Opening the energy and material resources of space for human benefit by completing the missing technological links to make possible the productive use of the abundant resources in space.`
• International Space University - `The International Space University provides graduate-level training to the future leaders of the emerging global space community at its Central Campus in Strasbourg, France, and at locations around the world. ` (mentions 'systems engineering' on the About page)
• Space Settlement Institute - `The Space Settlement Institute is a non-profit association founded to help promote the human colonization and settlement of outer space. `
• Cygo's Space Initiative - plan and conduct exploration missions to minor planets, build and mass produce (while in space) a multi-purpose interconnectable module, and to offer products and services using space and the materials therefrom.
• Freeluna - `Freeluna.com is dedicated to the proposition that the colonization of outer space is critical for the long term survival of the human species, and that colonization of the moon and the exploitation of the moon's natural resources is one of the very best first steps in that incredible journey off planet.` ... and when I first visited this page, I was visitor #3371. Yikes. Contact: Bill Clawson, wclawson@freeluna.com
• Island One Society - associated with the Artemis society, seems to be mostly a resource-help site.
• The Living Universe Foundation - `The Living Universe Foundation seeks to bring the galaxy alive with life from Earth, while healing the damage that humanity has already inflicted upon the Earth. We believe that expansion into space in the immediate future is a step towards accomplishing this aim.` turmith@yahoo.com --- This organization was inspired by the publication of a certain book. This is heavily related to Project Atlantis or Oceania (artifical floatin

A high altitidue balloon based launch platform .

Imagine a platform at 160,000 feet, that uses a mass driver to toss cargo into low orbit .

High altitude ballons could carry the cargo to the platform 30 miles above the earth .

NASA has already done a small scale version of this :

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2002/08/02082 7063353.htm

It would be a huge and complex task, but imagine a giant platform with many ballons in case one
fails, and a magnetic mass driver near the center to toss cargo into low orbit .

Power the mass driver would be difficult at that altitude with nearly zero oxygen .

Perhaps fuel cells, solar panels, or other non-combustion method .

I am curious how much a 30 mile headstart plus mag driver boost would help with fuel
cost to achieve Low Earth Orbit .

For the Anti Mass Driver crowd NASA has considered this before .

http://www.freeluna.com/spasnotes.htm

http://www.ssi.org/body_research.html#mass-drivers

http://members.aol.com/oscarcombs/moondust.htm

Thanks !
Ex-MislTech

"I think it's very important that we become a spacefaring civilization, and that we eventually become multiplanetary."

Although I didn't want to encumber the story's synopsis with it, I really think Musk needs to discuss his vision of space migration with Gregg Maryniak who was the head of Space Studies Institute for sometime after Gerard O'Neill's death.

It was Gerard O'Neill who put forth the vision of space settlement after challenging his Princeton physics class with the question:

"Is a planetary surface the right place for an expanding technological civilization?"

His conclusion, backed up by much subsequent research, is that the answer is a resounding, "No!"

A better statement would by Musk would be:

"I think it's very important that we become a spacefaring civilization, and that we eventually become heliocentric."

Best way to solve the space problem is to figure out how to build something like this in orbit and beam the energy down to smaller microwave antennas. Actually someone already though about this.

An effect of O'Neill's proposal is the creation of space settlements which could house thousands of times the land area of the Earth from asteroidal materials alone. The creator of the space-settlement FAQ, Mike Combs, says in that FAQ to the question "Is space settlement a solution to the overpopulation problem?":

Probably not. No space transportation system we can imagine (although that might be a significant qualifier) could keep up with the number of babies being born.

An effect of O'Neill's proposal is the creation of space settlements which could house thousands of times the land area of the Earth from asteroidal materials alone. The creator of the space-settlement FAQ, Mike Combs, says in that FAQ to the question "Is space settlement a solution to the overpopulation problem?":

Probably not. No space transportation system we can imagine (although that might be a significant qualifier) could keep up with the number of babies being born.

Actually that could be a really bad idea, the majority of asteroids threatening Earth are probably not solid bodies - more like aggregations of rubble. A blast could smash such bodies to rubble (all of which would still be heading our way). Many bodies have a composition similar to foam - very fragile with lots of pores and spaces filled with volatiles. When hit by a blast, a small amount is vaporised, the remainder just soaks up the explosion - and keeps on coming.

There are several proposals for deflecting asteroids - either attaching a mass driver to produce a small, almost constant thrust. Alternatively a huge solar mirror could be put on to a trjectory close to the asteroid. It would focus the light of the Sun on to one point on the asteroid - vaporising material into space and creating a thrust.

Sadly both approaches need us to have plenty of warning. The accelerations produced are so small (in the orders of cms^2) that you need plenty of time to get a sizeable deflection.

Such an observation system could be put in place for a tiny fraction of the cost of Star Wars or NMD and wouldn't cause any international uproar. Sadly it doesn't produce nice fat Pentagon contracts.

There's quite a nice summary of the various technologies here.

Beat wishes,
Mike.

Since the Moon is about 400,000 kilometers from the Earth, the one-way signal time at the speed of light (300,000 km/sec) is about 1.3 seconds. Thus if a person on Earth sends a Moon rover a command, the rover responds at least 1.3 seconds later, and the Earth operator observes the response no sooner than 2.6 seconds after the signal left the Earth antenna. With allowances for hops to and from synchronous communication satellites plus any internal system delays, a three-second response delay is likely.

The Space Studies Institute has plenty of studies and reports on the benefits we could receive from power from space - solar satellites, Lunar Solar Power, etc.. There is no basic technology mystery there (unlike, say, fusion), the hardest pieces are some development bits relating to large-scale construction in space and use of resources on the Moon. But there's no public political interest in this for some reason, and the NASA budget category for this has been basically zeroed out for years (I believe the total spent has been about $50 million, with only $2 million spent looking at lunar options).

Why aren't we at least spending more money on research in this area? So many billions are spent on nuclear power, but space-based solar power is the ONLY way we'll ever move beyond Kardashev leve 0.7!

The Space Studies Institute has plenty of studies and reports on the benefits we could receive from power from space - solar satellites, Lunar Solar Power, etc.. There is no basic technology mystery there (unlike, say, fusion), the hardest pieces are some development bits relating to large-scale construction in space and use of resources on the Moon. But there's no public political interest in this for some reason, and the NASA budget category for this has been basically zeroed out for years (I believe the total spent has been about $50 million, with only $2 million spent looking at lunar options).

Why aren't we at least spending more money on research in this area? So many billions are spent on nuclear power, but space-based solar power is the ONLY way we'll ever move beyond Kardashev leve 0.7!

The microwave systems that SSI have studied are basically like a UHF tv station transmitter (sans Weird Al).

Birds don't cook, people don't mutate, airplanes won't crash from this. Since this is a line of sight system, the range is probably less than 20 miles. Even so, it will make a terrific demo that proves the practicality of powering cities from SPS.

Note his figures on depopulating Earth via space migration and the market for depopulation. If you don't have a market for depopulation you won't get it to happen short of massive die-offs.

It is wrong to argue that Earth will continue to have sufficient resources for the population for the foreseeable future because people have been prematurely predicting resource crises for centuries.

The correct argument is over proper measurement of the probability that critical resources will become unavailable within a given time period multiplied by the down-side of such a loss. This number tells us something about the degree of present investment that may be wise to make as an insurance policy on the chance that something does limit technological civilization's viability.

I don't think so.

The posting implies that NASA is leading these studies. Not at all. It's primarily the academic community and non-profits like the Space Studies Institute and the National Space Society. NASA generally puts its mouth where its money is, and that's the ISS, which does little or nothing to help advance the cause of space development.

Given the very poor ROI of the ISS, who would seriously trust NASA to lead the way on lunar, asteroid and cometary resource exploitation? The best they can do is sponsor science missions so that we can understand what these resources are and where. In fact, they are doing that.

Like any conference, there will be loads of good and not so good ideas presented, but the fundamental logic is the same: it makes no sense to build things in space with materials brought from the ground. There are loads of materials on the moon (and no biosphere to damage) that have the potential to supply a large proportion of a spacefaring civilization. Big question is, do we want to be a spacefaring civilization?

This study by government or government-selected authorities ignored the radical option of lunar construction materials that, if properly used, could comprise almost all the mass of the satellites for a fraction of the transportation costs due to low lunar gravitation and absence of atmosphere on the lunar surface to interfere with techniques for lofting materials that would be impractical through atmospheric drag.

Space Studies Institute was the early leader in these studies of SSP-from-nonterrestrial-materials, and its founder, the late Gerard K. O'Neill had this to say about the option:

Space Studies Institute

The World's Energy Future Belongs in Orbit

by Dr. Gerard K. O'Neill
Trilogy January/February 1992

...

To make solar power satellites (SPS) practical and economical, we do not need any new science; we only need to apply what we are already doing in the more advanced industries: robotic production, computer control, and the replication by robotic machines of some of their heavier, simpler components. We do need one more thing: materials. It is neither practical, nor economical, nor environmentally acceptable to lift from the Earth by rockets the thousands of tons of materials needed to build an SPS that would supply Earth electricity equal to the output of ten nuclear power plants.

Let the Moon Pitch In

Fortunately, we do not have to. We were given something unique in our solar system: an enormous moon, orbiting tantalizingly nearby, and containing on its surface just the materials we need. Lunar soils contain 20 percent silicon for solar cells, and about 20 percent metals. Much of the rest, surprisingly enough, is oxygen. The moon has two other great advantages as a source of materials: its gravitational pull is only one-sixth of the Earth's, and because of its small diameter, the moon's gravitational grip is less than a twentieth of the Earth's.

The moon's second advantage is it has no atmosphere. The combination of the moon's weak gravitational grip and its vacuum environment makes it practical to locate electric mass accelerators on its surface which would be capable of lofting a steady stream of small payloads to a precise collection point high in space.

Such machines, called "mass-drivers," were tested nearly a decade ago under the sponsorship of our small, quiet, nonprofit foundation, the Space Studies Institute (SSI). Mass-drivers were shown to obey their computer design programs within one percent - no new science there - just straightforward engineering. Since then SSI has sponsored laboratory research on making useful products from ores similar to lunar soils.

Can SPS Technology Deliver?

As people concerned about our environment and about the world we leave to our children we should question proposed solutions to major physical problems. As fossil fuels, nuclear energy, ground-based solar, and other conventional sources of energy all fail to make sense in the world.

First of all, there is plenty of energy in space. Even in a narrow band 25,000 miles above the equator, where a satellite can maintain a fixed orbit, plenty of solar energy streams by constantly to supply far more than enough energy for the Earth of 2050.

What of the conversion on Earth? It was demonstrated years ago. The antennas convert the radio waves with an efficiency so high that less than 100 watts of waste heat goes into the environment for every 1,000 watts that goes into power lines. For coal or nuclear the numbers are: 1,500 watts waste, 2,500 watts total; for ground-based solar they are several thousand watts waste plus another thousand to make up the total - different from an Earth without solar cells - because solar cells absorb more heat than the ground they cover.

Transmission is the question that deserves continuing research: How to send the low-density radio waves from an SPS to antennas on the Earth. I have satisfied myself that transmission does not involve significant risks. But I invite you to do your own research. One of the best sources on the subject is The Microwave Debate by N.H. Steneck (MIT Press).

The points that seem to me most important about radio transmission of energy are that people would not be in the beams; that for fundamental physical reasons the beams could not be intentionally or accidentally redirected; that their intensity would be comparable to sunlight; that unlike the massive shielding around a nuclear reactor, the only shielding necessary would be a layer of household aluminum foil; and that, unlike the present irreversible dumping of 5,000 megatons per year of fossil-fuel carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, or the generation of long-lived nuclear wastes, the SPS system would leave no chemicals or radioactives behind if our descendants decided to turn it off.

SPS Stuck in Bureaucratic Morass

You and I know that satellite power aided by the use of construction materials from the lunar surface is an idea that is still almost unheard of, much less the subject of national debate, as it should be. Indeed, those most seriously studying SPS are Japan and Europe. Why does this conspiracy of silence exist? The reasons are partly unfamiliarity: three-dimensional thinking is often unwelcome in a two-dimensional world. Oddly enough, it is often more unwelcome to people who think of themselves as experts than to people who have a general, rather than a specialized education.

Institutional barriers and the normal behavior patterns of bureaucracies explain the rest of the "why". Since shortly after World War II the generation of scientists who contributed so greatly to winning that war have championed nuclear power. Though that generation is well into retirement now, it remains a powerful force in advising the government. It is joined by the heavy industries which see (or used to see) nuclear power as a market opportunity.

Fusion power research has gone on in large part because governmental science agencies like the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the Department of Energy, and the National Science Foundation are extremely responsive to the scientific establishment. That establishment is led by such organizations as the National Academy of Sciences. The academy is made up of intelligent and highly qualified scientists, but as a body it is very conservative. Indeed, one of my colleagues high in its councils once described it as an "Old Men's Club." Fusion power research has been supported for some 40 years because, literally, generations of scientists have worked on it as graduate students, then gone on to positions of authority, and finally risen to positions where their recommendations arc heard with respect by government agencies.

In the bureaucratic format, satellite power has no natural home and no built-in constituency. NASA, now a timid, fearful NASA made up of aging pre-retirees rather than the young tigers who made Apollo work in just eight years, would be frightened out of its skin by a tough, make-it-work assignment with a tight budget and a tighter time scale. And NASA's charter doesn't cover energy. The DOE? Its charter doesn't include space. The NSF? Satellite power isn't science, it's engineering.

That's why research support toward satellite power has been left largely to the Space Studies Institute, a small foundation supported by thousands of private citizens -much as the organizations of the environmental movement are supported. Environmentally concerned citizens and groups, and SSI, should be talking. Their concerns are the same and their goals are the same. Since the governmental-scientific establishment in the United States is making no useful move toward a serious review of satellite power as a practical alternative, it may well be that concerned citizens are the only force that can bring about the necessary action. We as citizens have often succeeded in "Stop!" actions. Let us review, carefully and with open minds, whether SPS is something that we may want to "Start!"

To quote Gerrard O'Neil (in The High Frontier, p20):

Using the "optimistic" low growth rate population projected by the United Nations, by the year 2060 there will be some 13 billion people. If at that time the present great disparities in the wealth of nations have been reduced, so that all are using energy at about the same per capita rate, that maximum tolerable rate turns our to be greater than our own by an amount that is only 3 percent per year of per capita growth. The "heat limit" is therefore a real one. It may be that it could be pushed back, for a while, by covering large areas of Earth with mirrors to reduce the total absorbed solar energy. But it cannot be delayed for long -- another fifty five years and we would be putting into the biosphere ten percnt as much heat as is received by the Sun. A continual growth of energy usage on the surface of Earth, therefore, even if the growth rate is moderate, is one of the "absurdities" of which Schumacher has written.

Wealth is highly correlated to energy consumption, and the third world won't be a third world for much longer. So, even without the greenhouse effect, we'll soon be cooking ourselves anyway!........(unless we move our eggs out of the cradle, which is the point of the rest of this "old" book that I pulled the quote from...)

All (or at least most) tax-payer funded space research and missions should be privatized. A company can do things better, cheaper, and faster than a government can. NASA has been proving that for years...

Bids should be VERY open, so that there isn't any pork-belly pay-offs like are so common now, and there should be massive accountability with the funds (hey, thats MY money you just blew up...).

With all of the money NASA has spent, there is NO reason we should have a station on the moon, entirely self-contained, solar powered (without an atmosphere the moon is a VERY efficient place for solar power and harvesting).

The moon is 20 percent metal, 20 percent silicon, and 60 percent oxygen (not in an atmospere). It is the perfect place for solar harvesting. The panels could even be made in factories on the moon. It would be zero polution, as electricity is free on the moon, all you can eat.

It should be done, and it should be done immediately. Such an effort on the moon would change life as we know it here on earth, and could eliminate fossil fuel needs by 2010...

Not yet suitable for anything more fragile than rock/ore/steel.

"Is the surface of the Earth really the right place for an expanding technological civilization?" -- Dr. Gerard K. O'Neill

Sci-fi began speculating about human habitation & industry in space back in the 1900's. It was Gerry O'Neill in the late '60s/early '70s who began rigorous analysis of the potential, and founded the Space Studies Institute, collecting private money to finance experiments toward space industry & permanent human habitation of space.

The "killer app" I'm waiting for are the solar power satellites: high capital cost, but the lowest kilowatt/hour to manhour ratio of any power source. Let's live off the Sun, oh yeah!

The real benefits of asteroid mining will be to make self-replicating cities in space. These will allow a diversity of human-derived cultures to flourish.

What will be of value in the space frontier is using the energy from the sun and matter from the asteroids to build space cities or space habitats. These will provide homes for trillions of ideas. The wealth that will flow back to Earth won't be material -- it will be spiritual (new dreams), intellectual (new designs), and political (peacemaking).

Such habitats will also provide a place for misfits to go -- as the American frontier was for a time -- letting the Earth settle down.

To create a space city that can self-replicate from asteroidal ore and sunlight will take a better understanding of manufacturing and how webs of manufacturing processes fit together.

Links:
http://members.aol.com/oscarcombs/s ett le.htm
http://members.aol.com/oscarcombs /sp acsetl.htm
http://www.permanent.com/
http://science.n as. nasa.gov/Services/Education/SpaceSettlement/
http://www.luf.org/
http://www.ssi.org/
http://www.ssi.org/alt-plan.html http://www.spacedev.com/
http://www.spacehab.com/
http://www.kurtz-fernhout.com/oscomak/

The real benefits of asteroid mining will be to make self-replicating cities in space. These will allow a diversity of human-derived cultures to flourish.

What will be of value in the space frontier is using the energy from the sun and matter from the asteroids to build space cities or space habitats. These will provide homes for trillions of ideas. The wealth that will flow back to Earth won't be material -- it will be spiritual (new dreams), intellectual (new designs), and political (peacemaking).

Such habitats will also provide a place for misfits to go -- as the American frontier was for a time -- letting the Earth settle down.

To create a space city that can self-replicate from asteroidal ore and sunlight will take a better understanding of manufacturing and how webs of manufacturing processes fit together.

Links:
http://members.aol.com/oscarcombs/s ett le.htm
http://members.aol.com/oscarcombs /sp acsetl.htm
http://www.permanent.com/
http://science.n as. nasa.gov/Services/Education/SpaceSettlement/
http://www.luf.org/
http://www.ssi.org/
http://www.ssi.org/alt-plan.html http://www.spacedev.com/
http://www.spacehab.com/
http://www.kurtz-fernhout.com/oscomak/

1. Open source library of knowledge for developing nations (making the world's intellectual wealth available to all)
http://www.oneworld.org/globalp roj ects/humcdrom/
http://www.oneworld.org/globalprojects/& lt;/a>
http://www.oneworld .or g/globalprojects/humcdrom/copyrigh.htm
http://payson.tulane.edu:8888/
; http://www.globalprojects.org/
; http://www.humanitylibraries.net/ http://www.villageearth.org/
http://www.villageearth.org/ATLi bra ry/cdrom.htm

2. Open source knowledge management systems
http://www.bootstrap.org/
http://bootstrap.org/colloquium/ar chi ves.html
http://www.bootstrap.org/dkr/discussion /

3. Self-replicating space habitats (support trillions of humans in style without overrunning the earth)
http://members.aol.com/oscarcombs/s ett le.htm
http://members.aol.com/oscarcombs /sp acsetl.htm
http://www.permanent.com/
http://science.n as. nasa.gov/Services/Education/SpaceSettlement/
http://www.luf.org/
http://www.ssi.org/
http://www.ssi.org/alt-plan.html http://www.spacedev.com/
http://www.spacehab.com/
http://www.kurtz-fernhout.com/oscomak/

4. Pursue the "Ecocity Berkley" vision in the book by that name by Richard Register and look for related visions of sustainable development
http://www.amazon.com/exec/ob ido s/ASIN/1556430094/
http://www.co-intelligence.or g/y 2k_commtyorgs.html
http://www.fuzzylu.com/greencenter/h ome .htm
http://www.ulb.ac.be/ceese/meta/sust vl. html
http://www.rmi.org/

5. Work towards ending the drug war and pardoning hundreds of thousands of Americans imprisoned on non-violent drug charges. (I believe drug use is wrong and should be avoided, and by all means as it is now illegal, so don't do drugs! But as with alcohol and tobacco and caffeine, drug abuse should be considered a medical problem, not a legal one (except when like DUI it hurts or puts at risk others directly)).
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pag es/ frontline/shows/drugs/
http://www.drcnet.org/facts/

6. Teaching tolerance and compassion
http://www.splcenter.org/
http://www.splcenter.or g/t eachingtolerance/tt-index.html

7. Open source educational simulations and simulation construction toolkits (one of the most meaningful ways to use computers in the classroom).
http://www.gardenwithinsight.com/ http://riceinfo.ri ce. edu/armadillo/Simulations/simserver.html
http://www.creativeteachingsite .co m/edusims.html
http://www.workingmodel.com/
http://www.idsia.ch/~andrea/simtools.h tml

8. Preserving biodiversity (when it's gone, it's gone forever)
http://www.tnc.org/
http://www.environment.about.com/newsissues/enviro nment/library/weekly/aa091700.htm

9. Develop any specific sustainable technology in energy (e.g. solar), recycling (e.g. recycle computers), materials (e.g. plastics from starch), society (e.g. participatory democracy & social justice).
http://www.google.com/sear ch? q=sustainable+technology
http://www.edf.org/issues/Recycling.htm l
http://www.sustainable.doe.gov/

10. Make corporations more accountable to human needs
http://www.adbusters.org/inform ati on/foundation/
http://www.adbusters.org/c amp aigns/charter/death.html
Previous link vanished, try instead:
http://www.google.com/search?q=cache:www.adbuste rs.org/ campaigns/charter/death.html+corporate+death+penal ty&hl=en
http://www.cwsl.edu/news/n_corpo rat e_death.html
http://monkeyfist.com/articles/340& lt;br> http://www.chaordic.org/

11. Reform the "Intellectual property" laws and their related organizations, perhaps so that copyrights are for a couple decades and most patents are for a dozen years and only for true innovations. Ensure that any IP developed with any government money is immediately put into the public domain.
http://danny.oz.au/fre e-s oftware/advocacy/against_IP.html
(Lots of other Slashot links!)

12. If you don't want to get you hands dirty volunteering your own time, look around and find good people (not organizations, although the people may be in organizations) already doing good things. Pick people with a track record of years of fighting for the common good or who have already made a major accomplishment demonstrating commitment and just anonymously give them $100K without strings attached. Example: Marty Johnson at Isles, Inc.
http://www.isles.org/mileston.html& lt;br> Find people just starting a career of public service or a charitable venture and struggling to do good things and give them $20K and tell them you believe in their promise and cause. Expect a bunch of the money to be wasted but give it anyway and learn how to give effectively. For ideas, look at the grantees list of any foundation. Then ask those people who they know who are just starting out and trying to do a good job.
http://www.beldon.org/grants2000_07.htm l

When I was about thirteen, I got about seven books out of the library on money thinking I wanted to become a millionaire. Six told me how to get rich (start a business and run it well.) One of them asked me "why do you want to be rich?" That is the one whose name I remember and the ideas in it have changed my life. For advice on setting a direction of what to do with wealth, read the Book "The Seven Laws of Money" by Michael Phillips and Sally Raspberry, especially the chapter on how foundations fail in their mission and how grants go to people who sound good but usually can't deliver (i.e. how hard it is to give money away).
http://www.seeingmoney.com/SevenLaws.ht m
http://www.hallbusi nes ses.com/biographies_primers/1420.shtml

My wife and I are working on a few of these issues ourselves (and a few example links are to our stuff). We make money contracting and spend it to "buy" our own time for making quality software the market can't or doesn't seem to want to pay for. Even without IPO riches, any competent software developer can make $75K-100K in today's market. Graduate students can live on $20K a year, and so can many software developers (kids make it harder) if they follow the path of Voluntary Simplicity. It's a question of priorities.
http://www.life.ca/subject/simplicity .ht ml
http://www.simpleliving.net/slj/ http://www.scn.org/earth/lightly/ http://www.thegarden.net/simplicity/

Voluntary simplicity leaves a lot of funds for doing good deeds - even if they are done on your own time by using your own money to take time off and develop open source software or do other worthwhile ventures. Or take a job that doesn't pay as well but involves helping an organization that you believe in.
http://www.idealist.org/

There are awesome things happening over the next twenty to forty years. According to Moore's law, desktop computers in twenty or so years will be a million times faster than today's. Already computers can drive cars somewhat well and identify vegetable better than humans.

http://www.research.ibm.com/resources/magazine/199 9/number_3/machine399.html ;

Other breakthrough innovations are happening in technological areas like energy, materials, nanotechnology, communications, agriculture, biotechnology, and robotics. Use your wealth to think deeply about what all this means and do something to ensure human survival with style.

It is saddening to see people spend so much money on less important stuff (another night club in this case). Now if it was a night club where these issues are discussed, then maybe it makes sense.

Capitalism without charity is evil, because capitalism only meets the needs of people with money.

1. Open source library of knowledge for developing nations (making the world's intellectual wealth available to all)
http://www.oneworld.org/globalp roj ects/humcdrom/
http://www.oneworld.org/globalprojects/& lt;/a>
http://www.oneworld .or g/globalprojects/humcdrom/copyrigh.htm
http://payson.tulane.edu:8888/
; http://www.globalprojects.org/
; http://www.humanitylibraries.net/ http://www.villageearth.org/
http://www.villageearth.org/ATLi bra ry/cdrom.htm

2. Open source knowledge management systems
http://www.bootstrap.org/
http://bootstrap.org/colloquium/ar chi ves.html
http://www.bootstrap.org/dkr/discussion /

3. Self-replicating space habitats (support trillions of humans in style without overrunning the earth)
http://members.aol.com/oscarcombs/s ett le.htm
http://members.aol.com/oscarcombs /sp acsetl.htm
http://www.permanent.com/
http://science.n as. nasa.gov/Services/Education/SpaceSettlement/
http://www.luf.org/
http://www.ssi.org/
http://www.ssi.org/alt-plan.html http://www.spacedev.com/
http://www.spacehab.com/
http://www.kurtz-fernhout.com/oscomak/

4. Pursue the "Ecocity Berkley" vision in the book by that name by Richard Register and look for related visions of sustainable development
http://www.amazon.com/exec/ob ido s/ASIN/1556430094/
http://www.co-intelligence.or g/y 2k_commtyorgs.html
http://www.fuzzylu.com/greencenter/h ome .htm
http://www.ulb.ac.be/ceese/meta/sust vl. html
http://www.rmi.org/

5. Work towards ending the drug war and pardoning hundreds of thousands of Americans imprisoned on non-violent drug charges. (I believe drug use is wrong and should be avoided, and by all means as it is now illegal, so don't do drugs! But as with alcohol and tobacco and caffeine, drug abuse should be considered a medical problem, not a legal one (except when like DUI it hurts or puts at risk others directly)).
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pag es/ frontline/shows/drugs/
http://www.drcnet.org/facts/

6. Teaching tolerance and compassion
http://www.splcenter.org/
http://www.splcenter.or g/t eachingtolerance/tt-index.html

7. Open source educational simulations and simulation construction toolkits (one of the most meaningful ways to use computers in the classroom).
http://www.gardenwithinsight.com/ http://riceinfo.ri ce. edu/armadillo/Simulations/simserver.html
http://www.creativeteachingsite .co m/edusims.html
http://www.workingmodel.com/
http://www.idsia.ch/~andrea/simtools.h tml

8. Preserving biodiversity (when it's gone, it's gone forever)
http://www.tnc.org/
http://www.environment.about.com/newsissues/enviro nment/library/weekly/aa091700.htm

9. Develop any specific sustainable technology in energy (e.g. solar), recycling (e.g. recycle computers), materials (e.g. plastics from starch), society (e.g. participatory democracy & social justice).
http://www.google.com/sear ch? q=sustainable+technology
http://www.edf.org/issues/Recycling.htm l
http://www.sustainable.doe.gov/

10. Make corporations more accountable to human needs
http://www.adbusters.org/inform ati on/foundation/
http://www.adbusters.org/c amp aigns/charter/death.html
Previous link vanished, try instead:
http://www.google.com/search?q=cache:www.adbuste rs.org/ campaigns/charter/death.html+corporate+death+penal ty&hl=en
http://www.cwsl.edu/news/n_corpo rat e_death.html
http://monkeyfist.com/articles/340& lt;br> http://www.chaordic.org/

11. Reform the "Intellectual property" laws and their related organizations, perhaps so that copyrights are for a couple decades and most patents are for a dozen years and only for true innovations. Ensure that any IP developed with any government money is immediately put into the public domain.
http://danny.oz.au/fre e-s oftware/advocacy/against_IP.html
(Lots of other Slashot links!)

12. If you don't want to get you hands dirty volunteering your own time, look around and find good people (not organizations, although the people may be in organizations) already doing good things. Pick people with a track record of years of fighting for the common good or who have already made a major accomplishment demonstrating commitment and just anonymously give them $100K without strings attached. Example: Marty Johnson at Isles, Inc.
http://www.isles.org/mileston.html& lt;br> Find people just starting a career of public service or a charitable venture and struggling to do good things and give them $20K and tell them you believe in their promise and cause. Expect a bunch of the money to be wasted but give it anyway and learn how to give effectively. For ideas, look at the grantees list of any foundation. Then ask those people who they know who are just starting out and trying to do a good job.
http://www.beldon.org/grants2000_07.htm l

When I was about thirteen, I got about seven books out of the library on money thinking I wanted to become a millionaire. Six told me how to get rich (start a business and run it well.) One of them asked me "why do you want to be rich?" That is the one whose name I remember and the ideas in it have changed my life. For advice on setting a direction of what to do with wealth, read the Book "The Seven Laws of Money" by Michael Phillips and Sally Raspberry, especially the chapter on how foundations fail in their mission and how grants go to people who sound good but usually can't deliver (i.e. how hard it is to give money away).
http://www.seeingmoney.com/SevenLaws.ht m
http://www.hallbusi nes ses.com/biographies_primers/1420.shtml

My wife and I are working on a few of these issues ourselves (and a few example links are to our stuff). We make money contracting and spend it to "buy" our own time for making quality software the market can't or doesn't seem to want to pay for. Even without IPO riches, any competent software developer can make $75K-100K in today's market. Graduate students can live on $20K a year, and so can many software developers (kids make it harder) if they follow the path of Voluntary Simplicity. It's a question of priorities.
http://www.life.ca/subject/simplicity .ht ml
http://www.simpleliving.net/slj/ http://www.scn.org/earth/lightly/ http://www.thegarden.net/simplicity/

Voluntary simplicity leaves a lot of funds for doing good deeds - even if they are done on your own time by using your own money to take time off and develop open source software or do other worthwhile ventures. Or take a job that doesn't pay as well but involves helping an organization that you believe in.
http://www.idealist.org/

There are awesome things happening over the next twenty to forty years. According to Moore's law, desktop computers in twenty or so years will be a million times faster than today's. Already computers can drive cars somewhat well and identify vegetable better than humans.

http://www.research.ibm.com/resources/magazine/199 9/number_3/machine399.html ;

Other breakthrough innovations are happening in technological areas like energy, materials, nanotechnology, communications, agriculture, biotechnology, and robotics. Use your wealth to think deeply about what all this means and do something to ensure human survival with style.

It is saddening to see people spend so much money on less important stuff (another night club in this case). Now if it was a night club where these issues are discussed, then maybe it makes sense.

Capitalism without charity is evil, because capitalism only meets the needs of people with money.

If you want to get a feel for the probabilities, you might want to read Rain of Iron and Ice by John S. Lewis. A section of the book gives the results of multiple computer simulations of the chances of the Earth being struck by various size objects as fictionalized descriptions of the results. Many large objects can hit the ocean without being noticed, except by any sailors unlucky enough to be in the area.

"but you need quite a lot of reaction mass. It appeared to be more than what current launch vehicles can handle."

Did you consider a mass driver? Take chunks of the asteroid itself and throw them off into space. The asteroid becomes its own reaction mass.

For many, the thought of removing technological civilization from planetary surfaces is simply too radical to consider. They have enough trouble dealing with questions of sustainable human carrying capacity on Earth such as how much does urbanization contribute to solutions or problems of sustainable carrying capacity? For those people I would suggest they at least consider the possibility that carrying capacities approaching present day are feasible under neolithic constraints, focused more on careful breeding practices, as appeared to have been the case in the early societies that gave us domesticated plants and animals.

For example, Blind Genes, Friendly People: Hybrid infertility in humans reports evidence of vastly greater sustainable carrying capacities among neolithic peoples than is commonly taught:

The process has recently been demonstrated in Britain. Using mitochondrial DNA analysis, which follows only female inheritance, scientists have looked at the bones of people who have migrated into the British Isles. The pre-Celtic Britons once lived there in vast numbers. A casual inspection of the English countryside will show terraced hills. Big fields have subtle changes in the color of their vegetation that look like a patchwork quilt. Obviously all of Britain was under intensive cultivation, far more so that now. It is and was a fertile land. They raised more food; they must have been feeding more people. They built vast monuments, including ominously an area around Avebury where there are a number of monuments, each of which resembles monuments from a different area. In other words, from time to time they gathered peaceably from all over Britain. Everyone had a monument like the ones at home.

Then the population crashed. You see, not everyone in Britain was alike. The DNA analysis shows six entirely different groups living there by the time Avebury was built. They had lived there since the English Channel cut them off from the continent thousands of years before. They lived in peace, and at Avebury for the first time they physically got together to cooperate and make friends. They crossbred. They almost died out.

They did not die out altogether, because modern DNA analysis identifies their descendants. At least a few hundred survived when their numbers were lowest. That is because among humans it takes more than a hundred people in a breeding group or the group will die out because of inbreeding. Yes, excessive inbreeding will kill off a population just as surely as cross breeding. I doubt more than a very few thousand survived, because they must at some time have reached a sort of equilibrium so their numbers could recover, and it is hard to reach equilibrium with a large number of people.

So a population of perhaps a hundred million fell to a population of perhaps under a thousand. Imagine the loss. Imagine the human despair, the loss of cultural treasures, the loss of so much of what makes us human. But this was England, one of the most fertile, safest, most hospitable places on earth. They had a long history of successful cooperation, and for a long time they were free of any outside pressure. They survived.

By the time the Celts arrived in about five hundred BC, the land was still just about empty. The Celts overran Britain, then the Romans, then the Anglo Saxons. There were Viking raids and at last the land was conquered by Normans. And today they have gone back and looked at the DNA. It is ninety-nine percent pre-Celtic. All those other invaders arrived only to interbreed and die out.

For example, consider the bubble designs by Michael Savage, consisting of a large air filled bubble, a layer of plastic, six feet of water (for cosmic ray shielding) and another layer of plastic (gold coated to control glare).
http://www.luf.org/bin/vie w/GIG/GalacticInformationGuide
http://www.luf.org/

Or consider the huge O'Neill habitats.
http://www.ssi.org/space_art.html

Sometimes, you just need to so something on a big enough scale.
http://www.imax.com/films/distributi on/L5.html

NASA needs to get over its fascination on building tin can space ships to go to planets (and tin can space stations to support that). It needs to start researching and doing civil engineering in space -- making new land and cities in space.
http://www.spaceandrobotics.org/debate.h tm

At least some people at NASA get it:
http://near.jhuapl.edu/

NASA's Shuttle was supposed to have provided per pound cost of access to low earth orbit for hundreds of dollars, not thousands or tens of thousands. In fact, a Shuttle derived heavy lift vehicle was proposed that was projected to bring the transportation cost to LEO down under $100/lb.

When O'Neill et al realized that NASA was incapable of delivering on even a fraction of their promised performance figures, they started scrambling around to find ways to lessen the critical mass of equipment required to get a self replicating facility put in place on the moon.

This resulted in the publication of the paper: O'Neill, Gerard K.; Driggers, G.; and O'Leary, B.: New Routes to Manufacturing in Space. Astronautics and Aeronautics, vol. 18, October 1980, pp. 46-51.

That paper defined much of SSI's research and development agenda and inspired my activie participation with SSI as local support team leader. I ceased my involvement with SSI when they later entered into what I considered an inappropriate relationship with NASA.

Work along the lines laid out by O'Neill, Driggers and O'Leary has not died out entirely. See, for example Advanced Automation for Space Missions.

When discussing AI, especially when combining it with self-replicating machines, several questions/comments emerge.

OK, so the computer is artificially intelligent. But is it smarter ?? (i.e. more adaptable, able to produce insights, or able to produce useful results from systems that don't model well mathematically)

I recall a book, late 70's/early 80's, by James Hogan, called "The Two Faces of Tomorrow". It started with a problem-solving computer being asked to help remove a small hill on the Moon, as the on-site crew lacked the equipment to remove it (forgot the basic reason). However, lacking, for want of a better word, "Common Sense", it removed the hill. . .by arranging a mass-driver-launched ore packet to impact on the site, "excavating" it meteor-fashion. Sort of like burning down a house to rid it of fleas: the technique is effective, but tends to have far too many unwanted side-effects. Hence the question: if the computer is Artificially Intelligent, does it also have a Articifical Experience Base to base solution evaluation criteria on ???

Number of computing-capable units only gives a brain, whether it be wetware or hardware, a certain information-processing capability. It's the software that really makes the difference.

So, to steal from Red Dwarf, it doesn't matter if the computer has an IQ of 6000, if it doesn't have the overall programming to effectively interface with the external universe...

I used to work for them, they kick ass. The Space Studies Institute!