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White House Wants Ideas For "Bootstrapping a Solar System Civilization"

Posted by samzenpus on from the to-the-stars dept.

MarkWhittington writes Tom Kalil, the Deputy Director for Policy for the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy and Senior Advisor for Science, Technology and Innovation for the National Economic Council, has an intriguing Tuesday post on the OSTP blog. Kalil is soliciting ideas for "bootstrapping a solar system civilization." Anyone interested in offering ideas along those lines to the Obama administration can contact a special email address that has been set up for that purpose. The ideas that Kalil muses about in his post are not new for people who have studied the question of how to settle space at length. The ideas consist of sending autonomous robots to various locations in space to create infrastructure using local resources with advanced manufacturing technology, such as 3D printing. The new aspect is that someone in the White House is publicly discussing these concepts.

8 of 352 comments (clear)

  1. Biggest motivation? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

    Prison colonies!

    1. Re:Biggest motivation? by z0idberg · · Score: 5, Funny

      The only problem with that is that their descendents will then come back in 200 years and beat our descendents in all the sports we invented.

  2. so...... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

    where did they find oil now?

  3. Step one by SlowMovingTarget · · Score: 3, Funny

    Step one: corner the maple syrup market.

  4. Sheesh. Five cases of Ebola and by jpellino · · Score: 3, Funny

    they start asking how to get off the planet? Lightweights.

    --
    "Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
  5. Re:One word: by JonathanR · · Score: 4, Funny

    I think we would be better off going 100% silver bullets. That would instantly fix everything.

  6. Re:How about... by Will.Woodhull · · Score: 4, Funny

    Republicans.

    Tell them the space program is an effort to protect the one percent from ebola, and to get away from all them do-gooder, pesky Democrats. And all them immigrants. That would shake the money tree.

    --
    Will
  7. Just impractical by fyngyrz · · Score: 5, Funny

    I have an idea...we could name a ship Botany Bay and send the worst criminals into space.

    I don't think we can make a spaceship large enough to hold congress and the supreme court at this time. Your idea will have to wait.

    --
    I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.