Bay 12 Games Forum

Quote from: sneakey pete on January 30, 2012, 08:10:35 pm

Its chicken and egg for outer space industry really, as has been said. Sure, its much cheaper to build in space... but apart from building factors in space, what demand is there for actually building in space? currently very little.

http://www.spacedaily.com/reports/More_Than_1200_Satellites_To_Be_Launched_Over_The_Next_10_Years_999.html

Invest 400 billion in a moon colony and start building all our satellites up there.  In 20 years you've repaid your investment and you have a moon colony. 

Even better, you can probably lower the launch costs and increase the number of satellites that we use, increasing the size of the market.  If launch costs get low enough, you can start building microwave relay solar power satellites and start catering to the earth's vast energy market.

Investing 400 billion dollars would give us a base for 4-5 people. The ISS has a crew of 6 people orbiting earth, it's cost to date is 100 billion.

Do you guys realize how much work goes into making anything? It takes thousands of people to build something as technologically simple as your car. That means you would need to take the current manufacturing population that makes satellites and send them all up into space. Which would be tens of thousands of space ships. Which would be horrendously expensive. Their is no such thing as a "Space ship factory" what it is is hundreds of specialised factories all working to make single parts. You'd have to have a factory to produce things as simple as nuts and bolts. To make anything of this magnitude economically feasible you'd have to have each factory staffed by a lot of people. (Who you have to feed, clothe, bathe and find a place to sleep) So the upfront cost would bankrupt the United States. And what would it get it? Factories that cost many times greater then those on earth. Plus you would need to have hundreds of miners to produce the amount of material needed, smelters to smelt it into something useable. All which can be done on earth.

I'm all for a moon base, it's just not reasonable to have one that has more then 20 people.

Andrew: Contribute.

No you.

Stop ignoring me, Andrew.

Ok,

Is there any particular reason why you decided to put a third vote on Tolyk, Andrew?

No real reason, he was the first person I read's name so I wrote his name down and came up with a question. So far he has done little to prove himself townsworthy so my vote has remained on him.

Also I apologise for the state of my last post. It made no sense.

Okay, that last vote is blatant self-preservation.

Why do you think he is voting for you instead of jumping onto me? As of now we are in a three way.

Guys guys guys you don't seem to understand economies.

Any sort of metal is worthless if it's not on the earth and easy to get.

It will always be cheaper to build something on earth and send it into orbit then to build something on the moon.

Always.

So I don't think I could envision more then 400 people living on the moon. Unless they terraformed it but that is another ball game

I don't understand why anyone is concerned about the moon colony revolting.

Their would never be enough people up there to do that.

Plus most of them would be military men who would follow orders.

I think it would be way less expensive to manufacture stuff on the earth then send it to the moon then the otherway around. The cost of transporting an entire factory just to make nuts and bolts would be tremendously expensive.

Research rail gun technology and launch ships into space with that.

Quote from: Andrew425 on January 28, 2012, 04:50:50 am

I really wish Newt was serious when he said that.

Because if he was, and I was American I would think very hard about voting for him.


But in all seriousness we are looking at the wrong planets.

Venus is where we want to go. We can terraform that puppy in 20 years. Use the science from that to combat any sort of climate change on earth. Also have a near earth planet in weight.

Venus terraforming would take at least 100 years, and that wouldn't solve all the problems. The atmosphere is way to dense, full of sulphides and the planet suffers from a runaway greenhouse effect. The best thing we can do is drop some genemanipulated algae in there, wait a 100 years while they clean up a bit of the atmosphere and then we still have to build our base floating in the air because the pressure on the surface would turn us into pancakes. Also, while there would be enough oxygen in the atmosphere to breathe, the sulphides make the air extremely poisonous and corosive. Doesn't sound like a good place to live to me.

As for using the science to combat global warming on earth, forget it, the best we can get are some Co2 eating, higly acidic resistant algae.

I'd like to think we could do it faster.

Giant solar sails to cool down the planet. Drop some anti suphides.

It will be surviveable in 20 years. Habitable in 50.

And then we got earth 2.0

Best plan out there. No bone loss or anything.

I like the moonbase idea.

Bold

Sources close to me reveal that Andrew425 is almost certainly maybe scum.

Almost certainly maybe?


TolyK Are you a believer in the idea of first to post is usually scum?

Tiberius shouted at the spiders, showing no fear.

Go on you! Find me a tribute to kill!

He then motions them to go, and herd a tribute towards him